Lonesome Bride (21 page)

"This will be the way I wake you every morning and put you to bed each night,” he murmured against the curve of her shoulder. “When we're married."

Instantly, Caite stopped moving beneath him. Sensing the sudden change, Jed pulled back to look at her face. It was stricken, the flush of excitement rapidly leaching from her cheeks.

"Married?” she asked slowly, her voice still husky with arousal. She used her hands against his chest to push him slightly off her.

As he began to shrink inside her, Jed realized he had said something wrong. Very wrong. He tried kissing her again, nearly desperate to regain the passion that had overtaken them. The feel of her unresponsive lips against his own was more than enough to make him slip out of her entirely.

"Yeah, married,” he answered, moving off her so she could sit up.

"So you love me now?” Caite asked with quiet dignity. Her green eyes shone, but not one tear fell. She did not even attempt to cover herself from his gaze, just merely waited for his response.

Tarnation. What's this love talk again?
Hadn't he just been making love to her? Didn't that show her how he felt? Why would she insist on dragging from him the very words that stuck in his throat like a bad piece of bacon?

"Caite..."

He saw the shift in her eyes and knew his response had been wrong.
Well, blue-eyed blazes and blast!
How was he supposed to know what she wanted him to say? Wasn't that just like a woman, always expecting a man to be able to read her mind? The trouble is, he thought as he watched Caite carefully begin to gather her clothes
, I know just what it was she wants me to say.
So why couldn't he say it, then?

"I think we'd better cease this conversation,” Caite said, stepping matter-of-factly into her second-hand pants and pulling them up to her waist.

"I reckon so.” Suddenly, he was aware he was still kneeling, naked, in the grass under the vast blue Montana sky. He began to dress as well. His balls throbbed like a rotten tooth. Sliding into his pants only made the feeling worse.

Caite had turned her face to the sun, shielding her eyes against the glare. “I think we have just enough time to reach Staghorn before dark."

Again, she stunned him. “You still want to go?"

She turned to look at him with such a look of utter disdain he felt instantly as low as the dirt beneath her boots. “Of course I still want to go, Jed. I must interview for a schoolteacher position."

His face flushed at her tone of voice. She had made him feel stupid. He hated feeling stupid. He jerked his thumb toward Tripper, still cropping grass contentedly a few yards away.

"We'll have to ride double,” he said.

Caite raised on perfect eyebrow at him. “Obviously, Jed."

Blast, there she'd gone and knocked the loop out of his lariat again. She certainly had a knack for it. Jed narrowed his eyes at her.

"Don't expect me to cater to your every whim forever, Caitleen. I'm doing you a mighty big favor by taking you to Staghorn with me in the first place."

Again, the raised eyebrow. “I promise I shall never forget your kindness,” she said with obvious insincerity. She pointed at the sun still inching its way across the sky. “Now, I think we'd better get moving, unless you want to ride in the dark."

Jed grunted to indicate he didn't need any tenderfoot woman telling him how to ride a trail. The worse part of it was, though, she was right.

Jed kept Tripper at the fastest pace he could manage, carrying the two of them, for the next several miles, Caite kept her arms wrapped around his lean waist. She pressed her cheek to his broad back, the rising and falling of the animal beneath them causing the unfulfilled ache between her thighs to remain constant. She shifted a little, which brought her pelvis square against Jed's rear. That was certainly no help.

"If you don't stay still back there, you're going to fall off again,” Jed snapped without turning around.

Caite smiled sadly against his back, but did not move. She supposed Jed was suffering just as she was. Their lovemaking had been wonderful before it had been interrupted.

Caite wished she could just take what Jed offered and make it enough. But what use was his body, if she could not have his heart, too? She had lived too long in a home without love to make the same mistake. Caite had seen flowers wilt and die from lack of water. She knew that living every day with him, taking him to her bed and bearing his children, but never hearing him say he loved her ... well, she would wilt just like those flowers. Her hands tightened unwillingly on his waist. If only the ride could go on forever, with this excuse for her to touch him.

"There's Staghorn up ahead.” Jed pointed.

Squinting, Caite was just able to make out the first view of a cluster of buildings. “I see it."

Jed reined Tripper to a walk, giving the steady gelding a chance to cool down. “We'll be there in a few minutes. You can see Horner's Hotel from here."

Indeed, she could, if one could call that ramshackle building a hotel. It looked more like a sad excuse for a chicken coop. In fact, the closer they got to Staghorn, the less impressed Caite was. Lonesome, while certainly somewhat uncivilized compared to East Frankton, had at least been bustling with activity. Shops, saloons and offices had lined the streets, at least as far as she had seen from the train station. From her vantage, Staghorn looked like hardly more than a saloon, a mercantile and the so-called hotel, all ringed around a tiny, dusty square.

"Where's the school?"

Jed pointed to an equally uninspired building squatting next to the hotel. “There it is, next to Horner's."

Caite's stomach sank to her toes. She was going to leave the beauty of Heatherfield for this? She glumly decided she truly did not have any options. Not after what had almost happened on the way here. She could not stay around Jed Peters. Not if she wanted to be happy.

By now they were entering the town proper. Caite tried to convince herself the place was not so bad after all. As they rode past the trading post, she saw some pretty bolts of fabric in the window. A delicate wind chime hung from one of the beams supporting the porch. It tinkled lightly in the breeze of their passing. At least someone in the town had an eye for beauty.

"That's where Pa met Sally,” Jed said, pointing to the trading post. “It was her family's mercantile."

"Oh.” Was she supposed to be jealous? If that was what he was expecting he would be sorely disappointed.

"And here's the land office.” He indicated another low building wedged in between the trading post and the saloon. “That's where I'll be doing my business."

With every foot deeper into town, Caite was relieved to see Staghorn was not as decrepit and lowly as she had thought. It was no Heatherfield, true, but then cities were often not as lovely as their country counterparts. Perhaps she would be able to make a place for herself here after all. She would still be only a few hours ride from Lorna and Albert ...
and Jed,
she reminded herself. Maybe Lonesome, with its three-day distance, would be better. Besides, from Lonesome she could go anywhere.

"And here's the hotel.” Jed pulled Tripper up to the hitching post, slid off the horse's back and held up his hand for Caite to take.

"It's very nice,” she said, trying to conceal her dismay at the building's peeling paint and weatherbeaten exterior. She took the hand he offered and slid from Tripper's back. Dust puffed up around her ankles when she landed.

"It's not Buckingham Palace,” Jed said, pulling Caite's bundle from Tripper's saddlebag. His belongings had run back to Heatherfield with Zeus.

Was he teasing her again? Would he dare, after what had happened on the way here? Caite took her bundle from his hands firmly.

"I never expected it to be,” she retorted tartly. “As long as it's clean, I shall be fine."

Jed laughed. “Clean? Maybe."

He pushed ahead of her into the hotel. There's really no need for me to attend him while he makes arrangements for the next few nights, Caite thought. She wanted to take a look at the schoolhouse. Although, she decided, picking her way through the piles of horse dung on the street, it certainly did not look as though Staghorn boasted many people, much less students.

She peeked through the doorway of the small building to see an immensely tall, incredibly thin man with the palest skin she had ever seen, including her own. His hair was an inky, oily black that seemed to shimmer in the dim light of afternoon. He was sitting, bony knees drawn up, behind the desk at the front of the room. The schoolmaster, then. He was very clearly bored, listening to a lisping boy of about ten read his lesson.

"Hastings, sit down,” the schoolmaster suddenly thundered, slamming a thick ruler along the edge of the desk. “Your incompetence astounds me."

Caite watched the next student, a carrot-topped little girl with her two front teeth missing, rise from her desk. In a clear, halting voice, the child began to read the words scrawled on her chalkboard. When she had finished, she made a little curtsey and sat down, clearly relieved to have made it through the lesson without complaint from the schoolmaster.

There would be ample time tomorrow to interview with the man running the school. Caite was not very hopeful, however. There seemed to be hardly enough students to keep one teacher occupied. The chances the town would need another seemed slim indeed.

"There you are,” Jed declared when she entered the hotel lobby. “Our room is all ready."

His words stopped her in her tracks. “Rooms, you mean."

Jed came over, grasped her by the upper arm, and steered her toward the rickety looking staircase to the left of the front desk. Smiling heartily at the desk clerk, who was looking at them suspiciously over his spectacles, Jed remarked in a loud, carrying voice, “Yes, darlin', our room is ready."

"What are you talking about?” Caite tried to wrest her arm away from him without success.

By this time they were ascending the stairs to the hotel's second floor. Tugging her down the hallway lit intermittently by foul-smelling oil lamps, Jed hushed her. Finally, they stopped in front of one of the doors, and Jed pulled a key from his pocket.

"They only have one room left,” he explained, opening the door and pushing her inside. “They'll only rent it to married couples, Caitleen. Unless you want to spend the next two nights in the stable, you'll shut your yap and play along."

"Oh, no you don't,” Caite exclaimed. “I won't have it, I tell you! I know exactly what you are trying to do, and it will not work!"

"Caite,” Jed said wearily, shutting the door behind him. “Believe me, this is not what I had planned.” At her dubious look, he amended himself. “All right, I had planned something like this, but that was before."

"Before what?” she demanded, hands on her hips.

The look he gave her made her feel suddenly small and shrewish. “Before this afternoon."

Before she had unmanned him, she could almost hear him saying. Before she had rejected him yet again. Well, poor Jed Peters, Caite thought vehemently, angry he might be trying to make her feel guilty. She was the one being rejected over and over, not him.

"What do you propose we do about this?” Her eyes raked the well-worn room from top to bottom and found it severely lacking.

"We make the best of it,” Jed replied.

"The best of this?” Caite found herself laughing. “This is the sorriest excuse for a room I have ever seen, Jed. Even worse than your cabin."

At the mention of the cabin, each fell silent. She could remember what had happened the last time they had been forced to share a bed, and she knew he could, too. She did not think it was something either one of them was likely to forget.

"I'll sleep on the floor,” Jed declared gruffly, as if he were reading her thoughts.

"Good.” Caite moved to the tiny washstand and poured some water into the basin. “I don't know about you, but I think I'd like to wash up."

"Go ahead,” he replied, walking over to the tiny, grimy window and peering out.

Caite stared at him pointedly. “I'd like to do so privately, if you don't mind."

He turned to look at her, amusement tinged with annoyance in his clear green eyes. “As a matter of fact, I do mind. If you want to get washed up, then go ahead. But I reckon I paid for this here room, and I'm not going to spend my time standing outside in the hallway."

Caite blushed. “For modesty's sake, Jed, please."

He guffawed incredulously. “Caitleen, I've seen you naked as the day you were born! You've got nothing to hide from me."

"Please. At least turn around.” She must have looked as miserable as she felt, because he suddenly looked chagrined.

"All right,” he grumbled, throwing his hands into the air to show the world what a fool woman she was being. “I'm going out anyway. I might as well go now."

"Where are you going?"

He looked levelly at her. “To the saloon. To have a good time."

Oh, she understood the good time men had in saloons, all right. It was her father having that kind of good time that had landed her in this mess in the first place. Caite laughed harshly.

"To drink, you mean,” she said spitefully. “To drink and to gamble."

Jed looked at her, cocking his eyebrow in the expression she had come to imitate so well. “I reckon I might do some of those things."

How easy it was for men to do as they pleased! Caite clenched her fists in sudden anger. Men could get themselves stinking drunk, if they wanted. They could gamble away everything they owned, and even what they did not, and no one would condemn them—because they were men. Suddenly, Caite was sick to death of men and their selfish pastimes.

"How common of you,” she sneered, tears sparking against her eyelids. She saw Jed's face pinch in anger, and was almost glad of it. She wanted to drive him away, wanted him out of this room with her. Out of her life! “How just like a man. Go and drink, then, Jed! Go and gamble away the money you take from working your father's land. Go and lose your dignity in liquor so you can stumble back singing your own praises and the praises of every man on this earth who is just like you!"