My Highwayman came to me for protection. I found him in the garden, bleeding and in need of sustenance. Without a word, I drew him through the French windows and bade him lay upon my bed. Slowly, piece by piece, I removed his shirt, his boots, his breeches. I bathed him, dressed his wounds, and fed him. Yet, when he still gazed at me with a deep, insatiable hunger, I knew it wasn’t the food he needed most But me.
Me.
“What are you staring at?”
Lettie jerked back from her fantasies to the hot, ordinary confines of her bedroom. The wispy foundations of her dreams slipped into the darkness.
Silence shuddered between them, heavy with words and sensations best left unexplored.
“Nothing.”
The stranger glanced down at his chest as if searching for flaws. “You keep watching me like I’m a bug on a pin,” the man muttered. His glance flicked in the direction of the door to her bedroom.
“I’ve got to go, you know,” he murmured, his voice low and silky smooth, but a thread of steel lay buried in his tone nonetheless. He chewed and swallowed, then reached for the crock of milk. “I can’t stay here tonight.”
Lettie watched wide-eyed as he lifted the crock to his lips and quaffed a third of the contents. She nearly warned him of the sleeping powder, but something within her forced her to remain silent.
When the stranger looked at her, she offered him a halfhearted smile. “Good?” she asked weakly.
He glanced at the crock in his hand. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had fresh milk with nutmeg,” he murmured, an almost regretful tone tinging his words.
He drank again, and Lettie watched with wide eyes. When she’d laced the milk with so much of the sleeping powder, she thought he’d only drink a sip or two.
Not half a quart.
The stranger set the crock on the tray and reached for a slice of roast beef. For several long moments, neither of them spoke, but as Lettie watched the stranger eat, she saw the drug beginning to take hold. It evidently worked much more quickly when there was such a large quantity.
“How old are you, Lettie?” the man asked, breaking her free from her study.
“Nineteen.”
“Nineteen,” the man echoed. He blinked, shook his head, then murmured, “I remember nineteen.” After a moment, he added, “Vaguely.”
The quiet of the night enveloped them in a hot cocoon of tension. Bit by bit, Lettie watched as the stranger’s eyes began to lose their intensity, their guardedness. She was surprised by the haunting loneliness she saw hidden in their summer-blue depths.
“What’s your name?” Lettie finally whispered.
The man’s posture began to weave a little, and he leaned back, resting on his elbows.
Lettie moved toward him, inexplicably drawn by the weary set of his shoulders and the pallor of his skin. She was only a few inches away when he suddenly looked up.
“Nineteen,” he whispered, so softly that she propped her knee on the mattress and bent down to hear him.
One of his hands lifted. A finger brushed against the back of her wrist, then skimmed up her arm. When he reached for her shoulder, he tugged on the fabric of her dress, forcing her to sit on the bed beside him.
Lettie nervously licked her lips.
“What’s your name?” she whispered, when his gaze became a little too piercing.
He frowned as if finding it hard to grasp her words. Then he suddenly offered her a devilish grin and reached out to stroke her hair. “Yes,” he murmured. “Nineteen is a very good year.”
The way he said the words, like a verbal caress, caused gooseflesh to rise on Lettie’s skin.
His opposite hand lifted as well, and both palms reached to frame her face, pulling her inexorably closer.
Lettie’s breath snagged in her throat. Her gaze flicked from his lips to the azure power of his eyes. He was watching her the way a man watched a woman. Just before he kissed her.
The stranger’s grip remained firm, but gentle, and he lay back upon the ticking, pulling her with him.
For a moment, she faltered, losing her balance, but he pulled her even closer. Her hands flew out to brace themselves on his chest. She had barely a fleeting expression of firm masculine flesh, then he drew her head toward him. Only a hairbreadth separated them now.
“Your name,” she breathed.
He merely smiled, drawing her the last remaining distance.
Lettie knew he was going to kiss her. And she knew she shouldn’t let him. But her heart was hammering, her breath came in shallow gasps, and a tiny voice whispered
just this once
, so she closed her eyes.
His hands slid down her arms to clutch her elbows. His breath brushed against her lips. And then…
Nothing.
Her Highwayman was fast asleep.
Lettie pushed away from him in frustration and stood beside the bed. “Oh, blast and bother!” she muttered to herself, staring down at him with hands on hips.
Lettie looked at the man in her bed, absorbing the masculine wave of his dark hair, the clean-hewn features. He lay in such a position that one hand had been flung above his head, while the other—despite his drugged state—still firmly clasped his revolver.
“Damn, damn, damn,” Lettie muttered. Although she’d meant to ensure the Highwayman stayed the night, she hadn’t wanted to send him into oblivion. At least not without learning his name first.
Her gaze slipped to absorb the breadth of his chest, the flat plane of his stomach, his hips. As she had before, Lettie felt something warm and tingly settle within her.
She took a quilt from the railing that surrounded the staircase and gently laid it over her guest, drawing it up to his chin. He didn’t even stir.
Lettie tried to remove the revolver from his hand, but when he shifted, moaning deep in his throat, she reached toward the bedside table, retrieved the napkin, and lay it over the weapon. If she couldn’t set the blasted gun on the floor, the least she could do was cover it up so she didn’t have to look at it.
After only a moment’s hesitation, she lifted the quilt aside and tugged off his boots. The man was so drugged by now that he didn’t stir, though she’d had to yank and grunt in order to get them off. He didn’t even fuss when she reached out a finger to touch one bare toe, which poked endearingly from a hole in his sock.
Her stomach fluttered a little when she realized that there was nothing more intimate than caring for a man’s wounds or undressing him for bed. And there was certainly nothing more intimate than knowing the condition of a man’s socks. It was something only a woman with a special relationship would know. A wife.
That thought caused Lettie to shiver in delight. Such an intimate awareness was something to be savored and locked deep in her memory until—
Savored
. Another word for her list.
Backing away from the bed, she crossed to the wardrobe and slid open one of the bottom drawers. The wood squeaked and she glanced over her shoulder, but the Highwayman continued to sleep.
Reaching deep into the drawer, tunneling beneath her underdrawers and petticoats, Lettie withdrew a dog-eared book and carried it to the rocker in the corner. A secret anticipation began to flood her limbs as she briefly caressed the marbleized paper on the cover, then opened the pages and removed the stubby pencil inserted into a paper pocket she’d pasted to the flyleaf. Hurriedly skipping past the scribbled snatches of her poems, journal entries, and the accounts of her better fantasies, she finally reached her list of “vocabulary.”
On the last two pages, painstakingly written in her most elaborate script, lay column after column of words Lettie didn’t want to forget. Some day, after she had suffered sufficiently, Lettie intended to become a poet. One of the world’s greatest poets. To do so would involve a new set of words. Words like
conjugal
and
insatiate
.
So far, Lettie didn’t know what all of the words meant exactly; she only knew that the Beasley sisters whispered some of them behind their fans and blushed. One day, Lettie had tried to look up a few of the more challenging words in her mother’s dictionary, but when Celeste had caught her looking at the definition of
consummation
, she’d hidden the book.
A heavy sigh of disappointment escaped from Lettie’s lips at the memory, but she pushed the emotion away. Some day, she and her mother would travel to Chicago, just as Celeste had promised, and then Lettie would take her list of words to the lending library and spend the whole day looking them up.
After carefully printing
savor
in the list of words she already knew, Lettie glanced up at the stranger, then smiled when her heart began to pound and a brilliant idea flashed through her head. Judging from his speech, the man had a decent education. No doubt he could tell her the meanings of the words she didn’t know; that way her literary career wouldn’t be stunted in its very beginnings.
A slow smile spread across her features.
Yes
, she thought in delight,
I’ll ask him
. After all, a man as worldly and handsome as he could surely tell her the meaning of words like… Her eyes skipped to the page. Words like
nebbish
. And
slaked
.
Perhaps even…
consummation
.
After closing her notebook and replacing it in the drawer, Lettie gazed again at the stranger. A tingling began to radiate through her body.
Her Highwayman was here. Really here. In her bed.
Easing onto the edge of the rocker, Lettie reached down to untie the laces of her shoes and pull the high tops from her feet, all the while watching the sleeping stranger. Then, even though she knew the man wouldn’t wake for hours and hours, she tiptoed around the edge of the bed and gingerly sat on the opposite side.
The man didn’t stir.
Feeling a dangerous thrill of the forbidden, Lettie eased her legs beneath the quilt and propped her back against the footboard.
The man didn’t awaken.
Very slowly, she reached to touch his shoulder. The muscles beneath her fingers were firm and resilient. She smiled, then ran the palm down his arm to his elbow.
Laws!
She’d never known such a thundering burst of anticipation could shoot through a person’s body at the simple exploration of a man’s arm.
The man muttered something and she snatched her hand away, as if fearing a sudden bolt of lightning would fry her on the spot.
But nothing happened.
Smiling to herself in delight—but deciding not to tempt heaven any further than she already had—Lettie settled back against the headboard and drew the quilt over her chest. Then, reaching for a cup of milk from the tray beside her, she held it aloft in a silent toast.
“To mother possums everywhere.”
Even from the depths of my slumber, I could hear the distant grumbling of thunder and the patter of rain against the windows of my bedroom, and I frowned. Dread settled within me like a leaden weight, pulling me from my sleep. It had been months since I’d seen him. Long, long months. Yet the sound of rain and the scent of fresh-washed earth never failed to bring back the memories. And the pain.
I’d known for some time that he was in danger, but lately, I’d heard rumors of his capture. And his hanging.
A hot knife seemed to sear through my stomach, and I groaned, wrapping my arms around my waist and turning to bury my face in the downy pillows beneath my head, my hair spilling about my shoulders like a silken curtain. How would I bear life if the news were true? How would I find the strength to live out each day, knowing that I would never see his face, his smile?
Deep sobs wracked my chest, dry heart-wrenching sounds made all the more painful by the lack of soothing tears.
“Shh.”
The sound came to me like the whisper of a summer breeze. Whirling against the pillows, I opened my eyes to find him silhouetted against the weak light that seeped through the French windows. Around him, the delicate lace curtains danced in the rain-kissed breeze as if jubilant at his return.
My Highwayman!
Slowly, I pushed myself upright, staring at him, hoping that this was not some specter of the night that would vanish if I were to reach out and touch him.
My heart began to pound, my breathing came in jagged sobs. “Are you real?” I managed to whisper, my voice choked with desperation and need. “Or are you merely a ghost come to torment me?”
A smile creased his features. A smile laced with humor and a tinge of inner pain. “Nay. No ghost, madam. But a man. A man who has longed for your smile, your joy, your sweet healing caress.”
As if to underscore his reality, he slowly unbuckled his saber from about his hips. Narrow, masculine hips that I longed to have crushed against my own.
He set the saber on a nearby chair, then whipped the cape from his shoulders, dropping it in a black puddle beside his sword. He took a step toward me. Two. The weak light of dawn played against his back, emphasizing the dark hair clinging wetly against his head and drawn back in a queue against his nape. Water dripped onto his shoulders. His shirt, which usually flowed about the muscled contours of his torso, lay plastered against his chest. The lacings had evidently worked free during his ride, because the fabric gaped open nearly to his navel, revealing the dark hair that delineated the firm shape of his chest, then stretched down, down, down, like an ever-narrowing ribbon toward his waist.
Real or not, I found myself responding to his nearness, growing hungry for his touch. My fingers lifted to tug at the delicate satin tie of my nightcap, and I slid the cap from my hair, dropping it onto the floor.
His eyes blazed with pleasure. Eyes the color of a hot summer day, yet twice as warm, needy.
“If you be some ghost or demon from hell come to taunt me with my pain, tell me not of my lover’s death,” I whispered through a throat grown tight with unshed tears.
“If this be death, then may I never live.”
I gasped at his words, my fingers reaching to pluck free the ribbons of my nightshift, moving from my throat, to my chest, to my underbust. His eyes followed every motion with the intensity of an actual caress, and despite the delicate silk fabric of my gown, I ached at his whispering glance as it passed across the fullness of my breasts. I longed for the moment when he would push the nightshift aside. And touch me.
The bed sank beneath his weight The scent of rain and wind and his own masculine fragrance filled my lungs. Holding my breath, I reached out a tentative finger. I had to touch him, to see if he was real, or merely the product of my anguished soul.
“Touch me, love,” he whispered. “Touch me!”
With a choked sob, I closed the distance between us and lay my finger against his cheek. I encountered warm, masculine flesh, slightly stubbled, but real nonetheless.
His arms whipped around my back and he bent toward me, holding me so that I was pressed against him, breast to breast, hip to hip.…
Lettie jerked awake, her lashes flying open when she felt a crushing weight pressing against her chest. Briefly, she became aware of being pinned beneath a man’s torso, his head resting on her shoulder, his thigh flung over her hips.
His hand covering her breast.
Instinctively, she reared back and shoved him away. The man’s weight left her suddenly as he woke with a start, floundered, then dropped to the floor with a loud thump.
“Dammit all to hell!”
Lettie peeked over the edge of the bed to see him staring blearily at the ceiling, holding his head as if it might explode.
“Lettie?”
The voice of Lettie’s mother floated up from the floor below.
Glancing at the window, Lettie realized it was dawn and another day had begun at the boardinghouse.
“Lettie? Are you all right?”
Laws! Her mother!
Scrambling from beneath the covers, Lettie raced around the bed and grasped the stranger’s hand, yanking him upright and pushing him toward the wardrobe, which stood awkwardly against one sloping wall of the garret bedroom.
“My hell, woman, what are you doing?”
“You’ve got to hide!” she hissed, whipping open the door to the wardrobe. “Get inside.”
“But—”
“Get inside!” Reaching out a hand, she pushed a swathe of garments aside, then gestured for him to climb in. When he hesitated, she grasped a handful of his shirt and yanked him toward the open door. “That’s my
mother!
” she whispered fiercely. “If she finds you here, you’ll be lucky if they only hang you for the robbery.”
The rattle of the doorknob at the bottom of the stairway seemed to convince him, and he wriggled inside. Lettie quickly dumped an armful of dresses over his head, then slammed the door closed. Glancing down, she groaned silently to herself when she realized she was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, and once again she’d managed to unbutton half of her bodice while dreaming of the Highwayman.
Quickly ripping the rest of the offending buttons free, she tore the garment from her shoulders, opened the wardrobe, threw it inside, then reached for another bodice. She had only one glimpse of the Highwayman’s startled features before she heard her mother’s footsteps on the stairs and slammed the door closed again.
“Lettie?”
“Ye—” She cleared her throat when her voice emerged too high. “Yes, Mother?”
“What on earth is going on up there? It sounds like a herd of buffalo has been stamping around.” Her mother stopped on the last tread, peering over the edge of the railing that surrounded the stairwell. Her lips pressed together in displeasure. One cardinal rule of the boardinghouse had always been, Never waken the boarders until absolutely necessary.
“Well?”
“I—I fell.”
“You fell?”
“Well, actually, I stubbed my toe first, then while I was hopping around the room … I fell.” The words sounded weak in Lettie’s own ears, and she hoped her mother wouldn’t catch her in the act of lying. She’d never been a good liar, but with her mother, she was notoriously bad. And if caught, her mother would gaze at her with a look of such supreme disappointment that something within Lettie always shriveled up in shame.
This time, however, her mother seemed to take her words at face value. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, yes. Fine.”
Her mother regarded her again with narrowed eyes. “Be careful, will you? I don’t want you hurting yourself.”
“Yes, Mama.”
Her mother’s eyes fell to Lettie’s rumpled skirt and the bodice she clutched in her hands, then her eyes skipped to the bed. Lettie cringed, wondering if there was some way a mother could tell if a man and woman had slept in the same bed together simply by the way the sheets lay in careless disorder. But her mother merely turned to regard her again in confusion.
“Did you sleep in those?” she asked quietly, gesturing to Lettie’s skirt and camisole. Her lips once again pressed into a disapproving line. The second cardinal rule of the boardinghouse: Always appear neat and well-groomed.
“I was just getting dressed.”
Her mother opened her mouth as if to remonstrate her, then closed it again. “Perhaps you’d better choose another skirt. That one is a trifle… gritty.”
“Yes, Mama.”
Her mother looked at her again, her dark eyes probing in the weak morning light. “A proper young woman is always careful of her mode of dress, Letitia. She should wear things that are neat, freshly ironed, and clean. Otherwise, one tends to make the wrong impression and attract the attention of the wrong sort of people.”
“Yes, Mama.”
Evidently finished with her remarks, Celeste turned and moved toward the steps. “We’ve got baking to do today, and after all the noise this morning, the boarders will probably be coming down early. Don’t take too long.”
“No, Mama.”
“Your brother came by this morning. He wanted to speak to you, but one of his men called him away. He told me to tell you that he’d be by later.”
“Yes, Mama.”
Celeste reached out a hand to grasp the banister, then paused when her eyes fell on the tray that still lay on the bedside table. The bits of leftover food and drink could be clearly seen, as could the two cups.
Lettie opened her mouth to explain, but her mother merely glanced at her and shook her head in bewilderment. “Lettie, one of these days you’re going to have to stop your foolish daydreaming” was all she said before she lifted her skirts and retreated back down the stairs.
Lettie waited until long after she’d heard the squeak of the door and the click of the latch before sagging against the wardrobe in relief. It was some moments later before she heard a low rap from inside the armoire.
Spinning around, Lettie yanked open the door, confronting the sight of her Highwayman sitting in the bottom, with half a dozen garments tangled over his head.
“May I get out now?” he muttered tightly.
“Yes, of course.”
She helped him pull the clothing out of the way, then stepped aside to let him pass. Very carefully, he swung his legs to the floor and pushed himself free. Then he turned on her, his eyes blazing with a blue fire.
“Just what kind of a game are you playing?” he demanded.
“What?”
“I knew your brother was desperate, but I didn’t think he’d stoop so low as to offer me his sister for the night, just to ensure my whereabouts.”
Lettie gasped and her hand whipped out, slapping him across the cheek. “Of all the ungrateful things to say!”
She moved to stalk past him, but he grasped her arm, yanking her hard against him. Hard enough that she could sense the careful control of his breathing, feel the leashed power of his anger. The red imprint of her hand seemed to glare at her from the firm contours of his cheek.
“Damn you! What’s your brother trying to prove?”
“Nothing! If you’ll remember, I hid you from him last night.”
“You also drugged me, didn’t you?
Didn’t you?
” He clasped her elbows and shook her.
“I—”
“Don’t lie to me!”
“All right! I drugged you.”
“Why?”
She clamped her jaw together in obstinate silence.
“Lettie”—he shook her in warning—“
why?
”
“I knew you’d try to leave. The house was being watched. I couldn’t let you try to escape.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s the truth.”
The room shuddered in silence as the man who held her seemed to pause and digest her words. “Then why is he coming this morning?” he asked, his distrust still tightly threaded within the tone of his voice.
“I don’t know.”
“Lettie.”
“I don’t know!”
The stranger’s stance remained taut, his features rigid. Clearly, he doubted her words, but more than that, he doubted her intentions. “Why are you helping me if this isn’t some plan of your brother’s?”
Lettie pulled against the restraint of his arm until he released her. She forced herself to step away, even though her heart had begun to pound.
“Why, Lettie?” he demanded. When she didn’t answer, his voice rose.
“Why?”
“Shh! You’ll bring the whole house charging in here like a flock of sheep.”
The man glanced over his shoulder as if her words could conjure someone behind him, and for a moment, Lettie saw a flash of vulnerability within his features, like an animal who felt trapped and unsure of his own ability to escape. In a moment, however, his expression once again became closed and wary.
“Why did you help me?” he repeated again through gritted teeth.
“Because I had to,” she finally said, spinning away from him and marching back toward the wardrobe. Snatching a day dress from the garments that had fallen untidily onto the bottom, she slammed the door and whirled to face him. “If I hadn’t helped you, you would have slept in jail.”
The soft twitter of birds seeped into the silence of the room. Lettie stood up, stiffly withstanding the stranger’s regard. She’d forgotten how piercing his gaze could be. Finally, when his scrutiny became almost unbearable, Lettie whispered, “Please turn around.”
“Why?”
She licked her lips, then rued the gesture when his gaze zeroed in on the fullness of her mouth. “I need to change my clothes,” she murmured uncomfortably. “I can’t do that if you’re watching.”
The man’s eyes narrowed, but, as if he realized he would get no more answers from her, he slowly presented his back.
She quickly stripped off the bodice and previous day’s skirt and tossed them onto the foot of her bed.
The man’s head seemed to jerk in the direction of her fallen clothing, then returned. His shoulders straightened, but he didn’t speak.
Lettie’s eyes narrowed in consideration. Her gaze slipped from the tousled dark waves of his hair to the sleep-wrinkled expanse of his shirt. Her eyes clung, then could not be pulled away. The simple chambray workshirt had come untucked at his waist on one side and the tail of fabric draped over one buttock, clearly emphasizing the way his rib cage curved in such a beguiling way into his waist. Once again, Lettie was struck by the narrow square of his hips, the firm swell of his buttocks, the lean strength of his thighs. The Beasleys would have been delighted.