Summer Breeze

by Catherine Anderson

  Chapter Eight

  With one more thrust of his shoulder, Joseph heard the door casing split. He threw himself at the panel of wood one more time, and the door burst open.

  Swathed in another white gown, her thick night braid falling forward over one breast, Rachel huddled in the bathtub, back to the spigots, her eyes huge as she stared up at him. In so small an enclosure, the single candle, set on a small parlor table in the corner, made the room as bright as day. Joseph scanned the area, saw no one, and relaxed his fists. Buddy leaped into the tub and began sniffing Rachel, as though to check for injuries.

  “What?” Joseph asked. “You were screaming. What’s wrong?”

  Another whimper erupted from her. “N-night—m-mare,” she choked out.

  All that ruckus over a dream? Joseph could scarcely believe his ears. “I thought someone was in here.”

  She shook her head wildly and pushed the dog’s nose away from her face. “Only a n-nightmare.”

  Joseph turned to assess the damage. He’d flat torn the hell out of the water closet door. The entire casing had come loose, the top rail dangling. He didn’t want to think what her barricade must look like. Easing his head out the doorway, he scanned the debris and said, “Well, shit.”

  “I’m s-sorry. I h-have bad d-dreams.”

  He raked a hand through his hair. “They must be all-fired awful.” He glanced back at her. “What the hell did you dream about?”

  She wrapped her arms around Buddy and pressed her face into his fur. “I’m not sure,” she confessed raggedly.

  If that didn’t cap the climax. How could anyone scream that loud when she wasn’t even sure what she was screaming about? Joseph felt his temper rising and tried to calm down. She’d scared the bejesus out of him, and after a bad fright, he always got fighting mad for a bit. That didn’t give him license to take it out on her.

  He left the water closet to assess the damage to her barricade. “Well, that’s catawamptiously broken all to pieces.”

  He heard movement behind him. Then a faint, “Oh, dear heavens, what have you done?”

  The panic in her voice gave Joseph a really bad feeling, and when he turned to her, he forgot all about being pissed off. Her face had lost all color. Her eyes glowed like huge, wet ink splotches on a stark white sheet. Lantern light ignited the recalcitrant curls that had escaped her braid, the golden tendrils creating a nimbus around her head. Buddy paced in nervous circles around her, as if he sensed something was very wrong.

  Even as Joseph watched, Rachel’s chest started to catch. Her gaze still fixed on the mess he’d made of her barricade, she pressed a hand to the base of her throat.

  “With a little bit of fixing, it’ll be good as new. I promise.”

  Her lips were turning blue.

  “You’re not outside,” he cajoled as he moved toward her. Waving a hand, he said, “Rachel? Honey, look at me.” But her gaze remained fixed on the scattered boards behind him. “It’s still only a hole, just a slightly bigger one than you had a few minutes ago. That’s nothing to panic over. I’m here. No one can hurt you.”

  A horrible rasping whine came up from deep inside her, and her eyes went buggy, like someone choking on a chunk of meat. She extended one slender hand, her fingers curled like claws. Joseph could see that she honestly couldn’t breathe. This was bad. This was really, really bad. And he had no idea in hell what to do.

  For want of anything else, he hollered at the dog to shut up. A lot of good that did. Buddy just barked more insistently, as if imploring Joseph to fix things. Joseph wished he knew how.

  When he got within arm’s reach of her, Rachel latched on to the front of his shirt, her fingernails scoring his skin through the cloth. Then her knees buckled.

  “Christ.” It was more a prayer than a curse.

  “Sweet Christ,” he said for good measure as he barely managed to catch her from falling. Feeling panicked himself, he scooped her up in his arms and hurried into the water closet. “You’re safe, Rachel. See? Walls all around.”

  He sat on the commode seat, putting her back to the doorway so she couldn’t see the damaged framework. To his surprise, she hooked both arms around his neck, buried her face against his shoulder, and pressed rigidly against him, still struggling to breathe. Acutely aware of her feminine softness and warmth, Joseph hesitated to slip his arms around her. But then she shivered, and he instinctively embraced her, determined to ignore the reaction of his body and stay focused on her need to be soothed and comforted. Buddy whined and came to rest his chin on her knees.

  “No worries,” he whispered fiercely. “You’ve got me, and I’m a whole lot better than a wall. Trust me when I say no one will get through me, not with a shotgun or any other damned thing.”

  Joseph felt her lungs expand and took heart. He had never been one to blow his own trumpet, but sometimes necessity dictated. She desperately needed to feel safe.

  Holding her tightly, he rubbed her back and kept talking. “Remember asking me last night if I’m fast with a gun?” All he got as a response was a labored whistle. “I was afraid to tell you the truth for fear you’d go into hysterics and swoon from sheer fright, but the truth is, I’m very fast.” She took another breath. Joseph searched his brain for something more to say. “From the time I was about twelve, Ace insisted that I had to be good with a gun and made me practice every day. Practice makes perfect, as the old saying goes. After nineteen years of practicing, I’m so fast now that you can barely see my hand move when I go for my weapon, and I’m deadly accurate, to boot.”

  He listened to her breathing and gave himself a mental pat on the back. The whistles were coming less often, and he could feel the rise of her chest occasionally, which told him that her lungs were starting to work properly again.

  Warming to his subject, Joseph went on to say, “I can go up against five men who are pretty damned fast and be the only one still standing when the smoke clears.”

  That was no lie. He had actually done it once. It was one of those memories that still haunted his dreams, a moment in time that he couldn’t erase, a regret that he would have to live with for the rest of his life. He closed his eyes and buried his face in her hair. It was every bit as soft as it looked. The scent of roses clouded his senses.

  “No one is going to hurt you,” he whispered gruffly. “I’ll kill any man who tries, Rachel.” As Joseph made that promise, he realized he meant it with all his heart. In a very short time, this lady had gotten under his skin. Not a good situation. But that was a worry he would chew on later. “You’ve got my word on it. If anyone comes into this house, he’ll be one sorry son of a bitch.”

  She made a mewling sound and pressed closer, as if trying to melt into him. “My walls,” she said tautly. “I need my w-walls, Joseph. I know it’s c-crazy, but I c-can’t live without th-them.”

  Though he doubted that he would ever really understand it, Joseph was slowly coming to realize that she truly did need her walls. He guessed some things just had to be accepted whether you understood them or not. There was a sickness inside her head, pure and simple. Not insanity, like he’d thought at first, just a strange, obsessive need to have barricades all around her. He likened it to his obsession about never settling down to sleep along the trail without first checking his bedding for snakes. Even when he’d only just shaken out his blankets, he still had to look. Rationally he knew no snake could possibly be there, but reason held no sway. On some level, Rachel knew that her terror of open spaces was irrational as well, but knowing didn’t lessen her fear.

  When she was breathing evenly again, Joseph loosened his hold on her, but she clung to him like a baby opossum to its mother. “I thought I might see about fixing your barricade,” he whispered. “Where do you keep your hammer and nails?”

  “No, no. Please don’t leave me.”

  Joseph heard her breath hitch again. He hurried to say, “I won’t leave you, honey. A team of wild horses couldn’t drag me away. I just need to fix your b
arricade, is all.”

  “No boards,” she squeaked. “We have no boards.”

  When a woman couldn’t breathe for panic, Joseph could get very creative. He would find something to cover that damned archway even if it meant ripping up floorboards in another room of the house.

  Only Rachel wouldn’t turn loose of his neck. At the mere thought of his leaving her, she was starting to grab for breath again. In all his days, he’d never seen the like. All of this over a hole in wall? What was it like when she stepped outside? Joseph decided he didn’t want to know.

  “I won’t leave you,” he assured her softly. “I’m here, I’m staying. Just calm down, Rachel.”

  It occurred to Joseph that he might be asking more of her than she could give. Buddy chose that moment to whine and nudge her leg.

  “You’ve got Buddy worried about you,” he observed. “He can’t figure out what the problem is. Why do you feel afraid when you’ve got a sterling watchdog like him on duty?”

  “Is he a g-good watchdog?” she asked.

  Joseph considered the dog’s worried face. He guessed Buddy was shaping up to be a fairly good watchdog. He just needed another year of maturity to make him more dependable. As it was, he sometimes grew too interested in food or playing to keep a really sharp eye on his surroundings, and when he fell asleep, he went completely off duty.

  “He’s the best,” Joseph replied.

  Hell, if he could brag on himself, he could brag on his dog. In Joseph’s opinion, Buddy was the best at just about everything, watching out for danger included. He was just a little young yet. In a few more months, his talents would really start to shine.

  “He has hearing like you wouldn’t believe.” That much was absolutely true. If Joseph touched the cornbread pan to grab a quick snack, the dog came running from any room in the house. “And, boy, howdy, does he raise sand when strangers come around.” Sometimes Joseph still had to alert the silly mutt that strangers were approaching, but that was beside the point. “And he’s loyal to a fault.” Except around golden-haired ladies with big, frightened blue eyes who made stew that smelled too wonderful to resist. Then the dog was a turncoat.

  Joseph’s spine was starting to ache. He wondered how long she might cling to his neck. Surely not all night. Then again, maybe so. That’s what a man got for bragging, he guessed: a woman who counted on him to protect her.

  Evidently her muscles were getting cricks in them, too. She squirmed on his lap to get more comfortable. Uh-oh. Joseph stared at a curl poking up in front of his nose. Now that she was breathing okay again, a certain part of him, which he’d named Old Glory in puberty, was starting to notice all that warm softness. This won’t do, Joseph thought. But he couldn’t think of a way to rectify the situation. Her butt felt powerful good, and Old Glory had never heeded a single thought in Joseph’s head. Nope, Old Glory just did his own thing, and sometimes, like now, that could be pretty damned embarrassing.

  He felt Rachel stiffen and knew she felt the hardness. Given the way she’d lived the last five years, Joseph fleetingly hoped that she wouldn’t realize the significance. Fat chance. There were some things a female instinctively understood, and a flagstaff poking her in the butt was one of them.

  Her head came up, and Joseph found himself being pinned by an alarmed blue gaze. He couldn’t think what to say, but, true to form, he opened his mouth anyway. “Don’t let that worry you. Old Glory just stands at attention sometimes.” Like now, with soft, warm, feminine flesh melting all around him. “In my younger years, I let him influence most of my decisions. Those days are gone forever. I finally figured out that he’s got a nose for trouble, and I never pay him any mind.”

  Her cheeks went bright pink. Joseph was glad to see some color come back to her face, whatever the cause.

  “Maybe I should move.”

  She scrambled off his lap and back into the tub. On the one hand, Joseph was glad to be able to stretch and get the crick out of his spine, but he wasn’t pleased to see her gaze shift to the doorway. She locked her arms around her knees, her fingers interlaced and clenched so tightly that her knuckles glowed white. Then she jumped.

  “Did you hear that?”

  Joseph tipped his head. “Hear what?”

  “That.”

  He listened again and heard only the wind buffeting the house, but the creaks and groans clearly terrified her. “It’s just the house settling.”

  “No, no.” Her pupils went large, the blackness almost eclipsing her blue irises. “A footstep,” she whispered. “I just heard a footstep.”

  Buddy whined.

  “There, you see?” she said. “He hears it, too.”

  Buddy was reacting to the fear in her, plain and simple. Animals could smell it. “It’s nothing, honey, just an old house shifting in the wind.”

  She went quiet, but Joseph could tell that she hadn’t relaxed a whit. He found himself wishing he had some of Doc’s laudanum. That would relax her. As things stood, it promised to be a mighty long night, and she needed some rest.

  A sudden thought occurred to him. “Buddy,” he said, “go get my saddlebags.”

  Fetching the saddlebags was a trick that Buddy had learned out on the trail, a fairly easy one for Joseph to teach him, actually, because the dog knew all their food was in one of the pouches. The shepherd was nothing if not accommodating when it came to getting his treats. He sped off for the dining room.

  It took Buddy an uncommonly long while to drag the bags back to the water closet. Joseph figured that the leather probably had gotten hung up in the archway where a few broken boards still protruded.

  “Good boy!” Joseph said warmly when the shepherd reappeared, tugging the saddlebags behind him. “First things first.” Joseph opened the side pouch, which he had replenished with rations, and pulled out two pieces of jerky. “There you go, partner.”

  Eyeing Rachel, Joseph opened another bag, found what he sought, and drew it out. Pulling the cork with his teeth, he took a swig, wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve, and then passed the jug to his charge.

  “What’s this?” she asked as she grasped the bottle in a shaky hand.

  “Ne’er may care,” he said with a grin. “A remedy to cure what ails you. Have a snort.”

  She sniffed the contents and wrinkled her nose. “It smells like whiskey.”

  “I like ‘ne’er may care’ better, but whiskey’s another name. Bottom’s up.”

  She pushed the jug back at him. Joseph held her gaze and slowly shook his head. “Not an option, darlin’. You’re as jumpy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers. The way I see it, we’ve got two choices. I can go repair that barricade”—he paused and arched an eyebrow at her—“or you can put a brick in your hat and calm down.”

  She looked back at the jug. “You expect me to become intoxicated?” she asked in a scandalized voice.

  “Think of it as getting happy.”

  “Ladies do not overindulge, Mr. Paxton.”

  “My name’s Joseph, and sure they do when the circumstances call for it. For tonight, think of it as a medicinal remedy. With a few swigs of that under your belt, you won’t care if every wall in the place blows down.”

  “Precisely why I don’t choose to obliterate my good sense with drink.”

  Joseph pushed to his feet. “I reckon I’ll see what I can do with that archway, then.”

  She gave him a glare, put the jug to her lips, and took two dainty swallows. Then she gasped, her eyes went watery, and she started whacking her chest.

  “It’ll pass,” Joseph assured her. “The next swallow will go down like warm honey.”

  She eyed the jug askance. “I don’t care to have any more,” she said thinly.

  Joseph leaned down to get nose to nose with her. “You’ll drink that whiskey or let me go out there to fix the hole. Your choice. Your eyes look like they’ve bled onto your cheeks. You have to get some sleep.”

  She took another gulp of the whiskey. “How much do I hav
e to drink?”

  Joseph resumed his perch on the toilet seat. “That’ll do for the moment.”

  She rolled her eyes and made a face. “Nothing, not whiskey or anything else, will calm my nerves about that hole.”

  Joseph had a double eagle in his pocket that said otherwise, but he just shrugged, checked his watch, and winked at her. Holding the neck of the jug clenched in one fist, she remained in a tense huddle, one arm locked around her knees. Every time the house creaked, she wiggled like a Mexican jumping bean.

  He liked her nightdress. It was different from the one last night, still a Mother Hubbard but trimmed with lace over the front and at the cuffs. With her knees drawn to her chest, the hem rode high on her shins, revealing shapely calves, trim ankles, and dainty feet, tipped by ten shell pink toes. In all his days, Joseph had never clapped eyes on such tiny toes.

  When five minutes had passed, he asked, “How you feelin’?”

  She jumped at the mere sound of his voice. “Nervous. It won’t work, I tell you.”

  “Try three more swigs.”

  She lipped the bottle.

  “Not sips, sweetheart, swigs. By definition, that means big swallows.”

  He saw her throat working, counted the times her Adam’s apple bobbed, and then watched her shudder down the burn. As she settled the jug beside her, Joseph noticed that her fingers limply encircled the neck now. That told him she was starting to relax.

  “Now three more,” he urged.

  She narrowed an eye at him but obediently tipped the jug and took three more gulps. When she came up for air, her cheeks were flagged apple red. She swiped at her mouth with the sleeve of her gown. “Goodness, me.”

  Joseph grinned. “Feelin’ any better yet?”

  She fanned her face. “Is it hot in here to you? I’m stifling.”

  He couldn’t very well open a window to let in fresh air. “It’ll pass.” At least she wasn’t listening to the house settle now. “Here in a bit, you’ll feel fine as a frog hair.”

  “Fine as a what?”