Kate Wingo - Western Fire 01 (6 page)

Although a staunch Unionist, Mercy inwardly acknowledged that Spencer McCabe was more than likely telling the truth
. The war along the Missouri-Kansas border had long ago degenerated into a murderous tit for tat, few men bothering to don a uniform, let alone the cloak of patriotism. In the nine years since her family had settled in Kansas, she’d witnessed enough violence to last a lifetime.

For several moments, she and Spence
r stood silent, neither of them willing to take the argument any further. In the evening light, Mercy saw her own pain mirrored on Spencer’s face. And though curious to know if he, too, had been forced to witness the death of a father or a brother, she couldn’t bring herself to ask the question. Too much blood had been shed, too many loved ones lost. So many painful memories that could not be put to rest.

“Come on,
honey. It’s been a long day.”

To Mercy’s surprise, Spence
r wrapped a companionable arm around her shoulders.

Bone weary,
Mercy permitted him to lead her back to the house. Spencer McCabe was a Southerner; worse yet, he was a bushwhacker. But for some reason, a reason that she was at a loss to understand, it was easy to pretend otherwise.

As Spence
r slowed his long-legged stride, the two of them soon fell into step with one another.

To her chagrin
, Mercy realized that she was attired in a sweat-stained calico dress, one sleeve torn asunder, her hair hanging in unkempt tresses about her face. Certainly no prize to fight over. Yet that’s exactly what Spencer had been prepared to do. Twice already. In addition to which, he’d seen to it that her family had been kept out of harm’s way. The reason for the man’s gallantry, if his actions could be called such, mystified her.

As they neared the house, more than one bushwhacker cast a glance in their direction.

“Hey, McCabe. You’re not plannin’ to keep the little lady all to yourself, are you?”

“Yeah, Spence. How about lettin’ the rest of us have a go at her?”

At hearing the spate of lewd remarks, a rush of warm blood suffused Mercy’s face. Glancing at Spencer, she was incensed to see a smug expression stamped onto his face.

Having suffered enough indignities for one day, Mercy yanked herself free from the masculine arm still slung around her shoulders. The moment she did, Spence
r unexpectedly grabbed her by the waist and pulled her against his chest. In the next instant, his mouth clamped down on hers in a brutally possessive kiss.

Unrelenting, his mouth moved against
Mercy’s tightly closed lips.

“Damn, but Spence is puttin’ it to h
er good,” someone jeered.

Imprisoned in the steel band of Spence
r’s arms, Mercy struggled in vain to free herself, pummeling his chest with balled fists. To her relief, the punishing kiss soon ended, Spencer pulling away from her with a look of pure, masculine conceit. Reeling in stunned disbelief, Mercy gaped at him.

“You go on up to bed,” Spence
r ordered in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “I’ll be along in just a few minutes.” Spinning on his heel, he then swaggered over to the circle of laughing men, more than one bushwhacker elbowing him in the ribs with a sly wink.

Utterly humiliated, Mercy swallowed her ire as best
she could. Dragging one tired foot in front of the other, she headed back to the house.

Still in a state of shock, she made her way up the stairs, stopping to check on her mother. Opening a door, she peered into
the dimly-lit bedroom, the hallway sconce shedding enough light for her to see that not only her mother, but Prudence and Gabriel, as well, were sound asleep in the huge four-poster bed.

Careful not to wake them, Mercy
closed the door and tiptoed down the hall, unnerved to hear the cacophony of loud snores that emanated from Pru and Gabriel’s vacated rooms.

Safe at last behind her own bedroom door, she made haste to turn the skeleton key
. There was nothing under the heavens that would induce her to unlock it before morning.

Once the curt
ains were tightly drawn, Mercy lit a candle. Quickly unbuttoning her bodice, she removed the soiled, ripped dress, as well as her undergarments. Pouring water into the wash basin, she did her best to clean the soot and grime from her body.

Finished with her toilette,
Mercy removed a cotton nightdress from the bureau and pulled it over her head. As she did every night, she loosened the pins from her hair and pulled a bristle brush through her waist-length blond tresses.

Inadvertently glancing into the cracked mirror above the bureau, Mercy stopped in mid-stroke, the brush falling from her fingers with a clatter. The face staring back at her was not one
that she’d ever seen before, the kiss-swollen mouth surely belonging to some other woman.

Raising a hand, Mercy
gingerly touched her lips.

A
few seconds later, a silent tear rolled down her face as it belatedly dawned on her that the degrading public spectacle had been her first kiss. Filled with shame, she swiped at the errant tear.

As God
is my witness that’ll be the last kiss any man takes without my consent!

E
motionally and physically spent from the day’s ordeal, Mercy blew out the candle. Pulling back the quilted coverlet, she eased herself onto the feather tick. No sooner had she done so than she heard the hall stairs creak under a man’s heavy weight. Sitting upright, she listened as that same man made his way down the hall, coming to a halt outside her bedroom door. There was no doubt in her mind that Spencer McCabe stood on the other side of the locked door.

A
few seconds later, the door rattled in its frame.

“Open the door, Mercy.”

Trembling, Mercy clutched the bed quilt to her chest, a flimsy shield of armor, at best.

“I said, open the door.”

Again, she ignored the command, praying that Spencer would call retreat.

Whe
n she heard him take several steps away from the door, she breathed an audible sigh of relief. A sigh that ended in a gasp as the door suddenly flew open.

It
had not dawned on her that he would circumvent the lock with one firm kick.

Stepping into the room, Spence
r slammed the door shut behind him. A moment later, she heard a match strike, her heart hammering against her chest as he lit the candle on the bureau.

“No lock can keep me out and you’d be wise to remember that from here on out,” he warned before pulling his shirt over his hea
d and flinging it to the floor.

Mercy’s jaw slackened. Bronzed and muscular, Spencer McCabe had the chest of a gladiator. Terrified, she knew
that she didn’t possess the physical strength to fend him off. Hearing a loud thud, she was disheartened that he’d removed one boot and was well on the way to removing the other. A few seconds later, hearing the second thud, her heart sank another notch.

Dejectedly, Mercy turned her head, unable to watch as Spence
r proceeded to unbutton his trousers. She’d seen all that she needed to see. One look at that well-honed torso and she knew that she could not possibly stop him from having his way with her.

Feeling utterly
helpless, Mercy pound her fist against the bed.

No!
I will not yield to him!

If it took every bit of strength in her body, she would
never
willingly submit to him. And while she knew that she stood little chance of warding off such a Goliath of a man, she would nevertheless fight Spencer McCabe to the bitter end.

Her mind made up
, Mercy turned to face him, relieved to see that he was wearing his drawers. At least she was to be spared
that
indignity.

“You are a brute of a man, Spencer McCabe
. And while you may have forced your unwelcome advances upon me earlier, don’t think that—”

“Any other woman would be thanking
me for that ‘unwelcome’ kiss.”

Mercy stared
at him, incredulous. “Why in God’s name would I want to do
that
?”

“
Because if I hadn’t marked you as mine, they’d be lined up right now outside that door.” Spencer stepped toward her side of the bed. “I think the least you can do is show me a little gratitude.”

Fear-struck, Mercy
clutched a pillow to her chest, her earlier bravado having deserted her. “I’m w-warning you not to come n-near this b-bed.”

Spence
r stared at her, his whiskey-colored eyes lingering on her quivering lips before trailing the length of her quilt-covered body.

“I’m gonna do you one better, sweetheart. Not only am I gonna get
near
the bed, but I gonna get
into
that bed with you. And there’s not a damn thing that you can do to stop me.”

With two fingers, Spence
r snuffed out the candle. A heartbeat later, the mattress sagged to one side as he pulled back the quilt and settled his tall frame on the feather tick.

Mercy
maneuvered as far away from him as possible. Unable to breathe, unable to move, she waited for him to grab her. To touch her.
To have his way with her
.

Long,
agonizing minutes passed before Mercy realized, and not without some measure of shock, that Spencer McCabe had fallen asleep.

Listening to his deep, evenly-spaced breaths, the tens
ion slowly eased from her body.

“Come on, honey. Wake up.”

Mercy’s eyelids fluttered, her breath coming in short, uneven pants. Hovering in the void between wakefulness and sleep, her mind flipped through the violent tableau of her nightmare. Inundated with a mixture of fear and grief, she shuddered. It was the same dream that had tormented her since her father’s death. Brutally vivid, the recurring dream forced her to relive that tragic day. Again. And again.

As the violent images faded from her mind
’s eye, Mercy slowly became aware of her surroundings. Blanketed in the gray hues of early dawn, her bedroom seemed little more than a shadow world of dark shapes and eerie silhouettes. Trying to move her lower limbs, she discovered that she was unable to do so, her body pinned to the feather tick by a warm, heavy weight.

Dear God!
Spencer McCabe was lying on top of her, his hips wedged between her spread thighs.

“Get off of me, you fiend!”
Mercy frantically pushed against his bare shoulders, unnerved by their intimate proximity.

“Not until I know that you’re all right.”

Mercy stopped her thrashing, confounded by the note of concern in Spencer’s voice.

“I was just . . . jus
t having a dream. That’s all.”

“And a bad one from the sound of it.”
His actions curiously tender, Spencer framed her face between his hands. “It made you cry,” he added in an uncharacteristically subdued voice, wiping her wet lashes with his fingertips.

Mercy’s breath caught in her throat
as her body went rigid with a strange sensation. One with which she was entirely unfamiliar. When Spencer slightly shifted his lower body, she gasped, the tight throb between her legs unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.

What in heaven’s name
is happening to me?

“I can assure you that . . . that I’m quite fine,” she croaked, assailed by yet another warm pulse in her woman’s place. Battling the instinctive urge to thrust her hips against Spencer’s body, Mercy willed
herself to remain chastely still. “Now, w-would you pl-please remove yourself from my person,” she stammered, having reasoned that Spencer was the cause of her strange agitation.

“Are you sure that you want me to do that?”

Unnerved to hear a low, husky catch in his voice, her eyes widened. To her consternation, Spencer presumptuously angled his head so that his lips nuzzled against her neck. Unable to control herself, Mercy shivered, every nerve in her body having suddenly awakened.

“You haven’t answered my question,” Spencer crooned, his lips slowly making their way up her neck. Gently, he rubbed his cheek against her face, the stubbled caress curiously pleasurable
. In much the same way that the weight and heat of his bare chest was also pleasurable to her.

Mercy closed her eyes, flustered and confused. Admittedly, she had no experience with the temptations of the flesh. Which might explain why she now found it so difficult to p
ut up much, if any, resistance.

As Spencer tenderly rained soft kisses on the underside of her chin,
Mercy shamefully whimpered, her hands convulsively clutching at the bed sheets.

“
How about letting me give you a proper good morning kiss?” Spencer whispered, his mouth only scant inches from her quivering lips. “Cause if you do, you’re gonna make one happy man.”

On the verge of nodding
her assent, Mercy suddenly froze, startled to hear a full-throated rooster belligerently usher in the dawn. Clearly, she wasn’t the only one caught by surprise. Frowning, Spencer angled his upper body away from her chest.

With his restraining weight suddenly removed, Mercy was able to wiggle out from under him. As soon as she did, she lunged from the bed, dragging the quilted coverlet with her. Darting to the far
side of the room, she turned and faced her tormentor.

Too late, she realized her mistake
. In removing the quilt, she’d exposed a very scantily clad Spencer McCabe, the man wearing nothing but his drawers.

Transfixed by the sight of so much muscular virility, Mercy
couldn’t help but stare.

“Come on back to bed, honey.”
Clearly unconcerned with his indecent exposure, Spencer patted the vacated space beside him.

“You, sir, are a depraved libertine!” Mercy exclaime
d as she wrapped the quilt around her body.

“Guilty as charged. Now, why don’t you just scoot on
over here so we can finish what we started.”

“I
most certainly will not!”

“And why’s that?” he asked, his slow sou
thern drawl sinfully seductive.

Mercy gulped, her mind wantonly recalling the feel of his lips on her neck and cheek
.
Warm. Insistent
. Having aroused a frenzy of wayward emotions. Somehow, in the space of a mere few seconds, Spencer had slipped past her defenses, seducing her with sweet words and tender kisses. Unable to resist, she’d succumbed; and in so doing, she’d opened Pandora’s Box, unleashing a torrent of heady emotions. The likes of which she’d never before experienced.

And never hoped to experience ever again. Such potent feelings left one weak-kneed and vulnerable
. Utterly defenseless against a man like Spencer McCabe.

You took advantage of me,”
Mercy accused, leveling him with an indignant glare.

“
Is that so? Because I don’t recall you telling me to stop.”

“Perhaps not. But I can assure you that I was thinking it.”

At hearing that, Spencer smirked. “Now that’s real funny because I was certain the only thing you were thinking about was how good it felt, and how you’d like to wrap your legs around—”

“I
refuse to listen to anymore of this shameless talk!” Mercy punctuated the avowal by turning her back on him. The man had the morals of Lucifer, and she would not let him tempt her with his shocking words and illicit virtue.

Behind her, the bed posts creaked as Spencer eased himself from the mattress. Still
chastely wrapped in the quilt, Mercy peered over her shoulder, relieved to see that he was slipping into his trousers.

She waited until
he was fully dressed before she spun around to face him. Ready to do battle, she said without preamble, “Your behavior upon waking was reprehensible.”

Refusing to
pick up the gauntlet, Spencer stood motionless as he leisurely appraised her loose, unbound hair, her cotton nightdress, and her bare feet. To her chagrin, one corner of his mouth actually quirked upward in the makings of a smile before he snatched his gun belt off of the bureau. Slinging it over his shoulder, he headed for the door.

A few seconds later, he came to a sudden halt, inclining his
head in her direction. “Do you know what’s even more reprehensible, sweet Mercy? It’s you not being woman enough to admit that you liked it. Well, don’t you worry, pretty lady. Nightfall will be here before you know it.”

Yanking the door open, Spencer left the room before she had a chance to reply. Furious, Mercy flung the quilt from her body, stomping her foot on the wood-planked floor.
She then rushed toward the open bedroom door and slammed it shut.

How dare he insinuate that
I enjoyed being pawed by him!

Still fuming, she snatched the quilt
off of the floor and carried it back to the bed. Noticing that Spencer’s pillow was indented from the weight of his head, she pound her fist into it, sending a flurry of white down into the air.

Unable
to look at the tangled sheets without imagining him flagrantly lying there, she hurriedly went through the motions of smoothing the covers into place. Satisfied that she’d obliterated all traces of the man, she stepped over to the wardrobe, removing a cotton dress and clean undergarments.

As she
dressed herself for the day, Mercy pondered the meaning of Spencer’s departing remarks –
‘Nightfall will be here before you know it’
– considering it a dire warning, indeed.

Finished with her toilette, she reached for her bristle brush, hurriedly pulling it through her hair. Deftly, her fingers having performed the ritual hundreds of times, she braided her hair and coiled it into a bun at the nape of her neck, anchoring it in place with bone hair pins. Glimpsing her reflection in the bureau mirror, Mercy was taken aback to see
that her eyes glistened with unshed tears.

How
can I possibly spend another night in the same bed with Spencer McCabe?

The answer, plain and simple, was that she could not
. And would not.

Her mind made up as to what had to be done, Mercy slipped on her old leather work shoes and
departed the room, bracing herself for the start of another day.

By late morning, Mercy had devised a plan. Although risky, it was the only way to keep Spencer out of her bed. More importantly, it was the only way to protect her
family from untold future harm.

In light of the fact
that a gang of southern bushwhackers had maliciously killed her father, she’d been foolishly naïve to think that Ned Sykes would not murder her entire family before returning to Missouri. Quite frankly, there was nothing to stop him from doing so. And while Spencer had guaranteed her and her family’s safety, he was but one man. It was highly doubtful that he would risk his own life to save any of them.

Which is why
she had decided to take her family’s safety upon her herself. The devil could take Spencer McCabe and his hollow promises of protection. She had no need of him.

Seated at the kitchen table, Mercy finished dicing a handful of carrots. Trying not to call undue attention to herself, she’d spent the last hour or so preparing a stew for supper. In preparation for her plan, she’d sent Prudence upstairs to sit with her mother and Gabriel outside to play. Now all she had to do was wait for a quiet moment so that she could put her plan into
action. Having seen a group of bushwhackers ride away from the farm a short while ago, she suspected that moment was fast approaching.

When several minutes
had passed in relative quietude, she got up from the table and put the diced carrots into the stew pot. Taking a deep breath, she left the kitchen and made her way to the front hallway, furtively glancing to-and-fro.

Not seeing any bushwhackers lurking about, she tiptoed into the parlor and hurried over to the large cupboard on the other side of the room
. Again, she surreptitiously peered over her shoulder to verify that she wasn’t being observed. She then opened a drawer, distressed to see that its contents had been thoroughly rifled through. Evidently a bushwhacker had thought to find some treasure hidden within.

Quickly finding what she was searching for, Mercy deposited the items in
to her apron pocket before making her way back to the kitchen. Once there, she gathered up the basket of dirty laundry she’d earlier set aside and stepped through the back door.

Standing on the kitchen stoop,
she scanned the farmyard, satisfied that a lull had indeed descended upon the farm. Although she knew full well that it was only a temporary respite. Which was the reason why there was no time to waste. Espying young Gabriel on his hands and knees playing in the dirt, she hurried toward him.

“Gabriel, I have some laundry to do and I would like for you to accompany me.”

The child glanced up, eyeing the laundry basket with obvious surprise. While used to helping in the garden and feeding the farm animals, Gabriel was unaccustomed to assisting with those chores that clearly fell within a woman’s domain.

“Laundry? But I never
—”

“Perhaps you’d like to do some fishing while we’re down at the stream,” Mercy coaxed, knowing how much Gabriel enjoyed that particular boyhood pastime.

“Fishing? Really?” His brown eyes lit up with gleeful anticipation.

“Yes, really,” she assured him, her plan wholly dependent on Gabriel’s cooperation.

With a boyish whoop, Gabriel scurried toward the shed to retrieve his fishing pole.

As Mercy waited for him to return, a bushwhacker rode into the yard, his horse throwing up a cloud of dust. Nervously gripping her wooden laundry basket, she tried to act as nonchalant as possible
; a difficult feat given the way that her heart frantically beat against her chest.

“You got room in that basket for one more shirt?” the bushwhackers asked, reining his horse to within an arm’s length of where she stood.

Mercy nodded, too nervous to speak. Opening his saddlebag, the man handed her a wrinkled homespun shirt. Without a word, she placed the dirty garment in her basket, surprised when he tipped his hat.

“Much obliged, ma’am.”

Relieved, she watched him take his leave and head for the corral. A moment later, Gabriel emerged from the shed, a hat on his head and a fishing pole in his hand. Taking a deep, fortifying breath, Mercy knew that what they were about to do would either save them or get them all killed.