“Alicia!” A grin spread across his face, though Alicia could swear he was still not conscious. The fever raged beneath her hand and his brow was still damp to the touch.
He jerked from her touch, yelled, “Go away!” and returned to his muttering. Giving in to curiosity, Alicia tried to interpret his ravings, catching the word “lady” once or twice. Then suddenly, Travis sat up, said distinctly, “Go away. You’re not Alicia,” and rose from the bed stating, “I’m going home.”
Alicia didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as Travis strode naked across the tiny cabin in rampant masculinity. She could see what he wanted from her, even in his illness, and she wondered hysterically what poor woman’s favors he had rejected. Before the chill of the room could kill him, she went after him.
“You’re a fool, my worthless viscount,” she berated him, wrapping her arm around his waist and steering him in the direction of the bed. “Any woman could give you what you want. You don’t need me.”
Travis followed the sound of her voice, but she could not pry loose his grip on her shoulder when she tried to return him to bed. Not until she climbed upon the bed first and pulled him down would he follow. Suspiciously she touched his forehead, but he was drenched in sweat and unaware of her concern.
As she tried to pull away to find the sponge, Travis caught her in his powerful grip. Not since that night in the Indian camp had he held her like this. He had taken her against her will then. This would be little better now. Her body was not fully healed, and he knew nothing of what he did.
Travis muttered incoherently, repeating her name as his hand stroked down her back, pressing her closer to his heat. Alicia cried out as her gown rode upward, and he grasped her buttocks. Without thought she slid away and captured his swollen member with her hand. Travis cried out in relief and began to move urgently. Within seconds his seed spilled across her hand and thigh, and he fell back against the pillow, sound asleep.
Wonderingly Alicia touched a hand to his forehead and found it cooler. She curled up beside him, resting against his chest so she could feel him breathe.
In the morning Travis was awake, and Alicia rejoiced, even as she blushed crimson as his gaze fell on her milk-filled breasts. Hastily she rose to answer her son’s cries. After last night, she was self-conscious.
When she sat on the bed with their son, Travis shifted to stack the pillows so she could sit comfortably. He lay with his hands behind his head as she fed Dale. The bed was narrow and Alicia could feel his heat next to her, but it did not feel so much like a furnace as it had the day before.
When Dale had drunk his fill and seemed prepared to play, Alicia tied her nightgown ribbons and lay him beside his father before rising from the bed. Travis watched his son chase dust motes and make gurgling noises, while Alicia washed and dressed.
When she was done, he rubbed at the scratchiness of his bearded jaw, then stretched. He lifted his son atop his chest and grunted in appreciation at the breakfast tray a maid carried into the room. The maid hastily departed.
Alicia regarded her husband with a grin as she studied his appearance. “It is a good thing you don’t have a tomahawk in your hand.”
With black hair tumbling across his brow and down to his shoulders, he appeared more savage than any Indian she had ever seen. “I might have a bandanna and earring in my trunk that you could wear to complete the image.”
His mocking grin spread slowly. “I think the lady’s been left alone too long and needs to be taken in hand,” Travis informed his gurgling son, setting him to one side.
Before she could guess his intentions, Travis tugged her down beside him, tumbling her across his chest. He pressed his whiskered mouth against hers, drawing her breath away, while his hand explored her curves.
Not until she realized he was still quite naked and that anyone could walk in on them did she recover enough sense to squirm from his hold.
“You’re out of your mind,” she retorted, brushing down the wrinkles of her gown and attempting to retrieve some respectability from the disheveled remains of her coiffure.
Travis shrugged, his laughter still glinting behind ebony eyes. “Just making certain you hadn’t grown too cold. Do you intend to join me at breakfast or just glare at me?”
“I think I’ll just give you back to the Indians.” Still flustered, Alicia strode out, leaving Travis to tend the babe. She needed her privacy for a little while, and, she suspected, so did he.
There was little enough privacy to be had, though certainly more than the keelboat offered. Besides the Roosevelts, the crew boasted a pilot and engineer, six hands, a cook, a cabin boy, and two maids. The main cabins offered no hiding place; there would be no avoiding Travis for very long.
Shedding his illness like an old skin, Travis rebounded with more energy than before. He was all over the boat within days, and the incorrigible Nicholas was right beside him.
Only at night, when there was time for quiet conversation behind closed doors did they have opportunity to meet without the buffer of strangers. It was awkward at first. They had never really shared a bed together, but it was not to be avoided now. Alicia could not ask Travis to return to sleeping on the floor, and she did not feel inclined to join the crew or Lydia and Nicholas in the main cabins.
As Travis blew out the lamp and undressed in darkness, Alicia lay waiting for his weight to sag the narrow bed. She had grown accustomed to his company, and she enjoyed these moments before they slept. As long as he did not touch her, she could drive away the images that haunted her, and pretend he was bodiless.
Gazing at his shadow beside her, she asked, “Are we far from New Orleans?”
“Not far. The river is clearing, so it won’t be quite so dangerous.”
“Your crew? Is there any way we can find out what happened to them?” The keelboat that had carried them had become a part of her life. Surely the crew would have made it to safety by now, but whether the boat had survived was questionable. His father’s city man and soldiers must be feeling out of place in the middle of the wilderness they had left them in.
“The crew will be fine if they did not let Scott bully them into carrying on. I imagine they’ll lay over in Natchez until the river clears. I’ll leave word where I can, though, in case they decide to finish the run. Do not worry over things you cannot control, Alicia.”
“It was horrible,” she said decisively. “I don’t know that I’ll ever dare make that journey again.”
“Perhaps you will not have to, my love,” Travis whispered. The journey to England held worse dangers, but he did not tell her that. He would prefer to stay here, explore the possibilities of steamboat travel, raise his horses, and put an end to his wandering life, but the nightmare of his past had come back to haunt him.
Sleepily, Alicia asked, “Will your father mind terribly that you did not marry a Lady Somebody-or-Another?”
Travis heard her fears and touched her cheek. “He will be so thrilled with you that he will most likely leave me behind. Don’t fret, Alicia. It will be all right.” For her, at least. Not so much for him.
Chapter 40
The arrival in New Orleans of the first steamboat to traverse the Mississippi River caused great excitement and celebration, and Travis’s small family slipped away from the docks without notice. The Roosevelts deserved to have this day to themselves, and farewells had been exchanged the night before.
Nervously Alicia clung to her son and studied the exotic sights of New Orleans as the hired carriage carried them away from the docks. Her best gowns had been left on the keelboat and could be under water by now. The lovely French designs she saw around her put even those to shame.
The hired carriage carried them past street vendors and crowds on the levee, up the wide expanse of Canal Street. Alicia stared in wonderment at the delicate filigree of the wrought iron railings. and the crowded narrow streets of shops in the Vieux Carre so different from her home in Philadelphia. She glimpsed only a small portion of the walled
side yards and lovely old homes in the French quarter. On the other side of a wide street sprawled the bare expanses of newer American suburbs.
Under Travis’s instructions the carriage turned down a narrow side street in one of the older sections, past the more pretentious homes, in an area of respectable modest two-story residences. In the French style, many of the homes had shops on the street level, but the one Travis pointed out was wedged in between two others that had obviously been converted to simple residences. The graceful iron balconies provided the only accent to the townhouse walls, although the others displayed magnificent pots of geraniums and the green traceries of ivy. The house the carriage stopped before seemed abandoned.
As if he had only just returned from a brief trip, Travis leapt from the carriage and unlocked the front door. With a gesture to the driver he indicated their one trunk should be unloaded. Then with a gallant bow he led her Alicia into the house.
“It is small and neglected but private. You will not mind too much? Just for a few days?” Anxiously Travis watched her face.
Holding Dale close, Alicia glanced at the cloaked furniture and high ceilings with amazement and shook her head, unable to voice her surprise. It was small, but lovely, and they would have to share it with no one. Or would they?
Hesitantly she asked, “Who does it belong to?”
Travis met her gaze frankly. “It is ours, Blue Eyes.”
Alicia eyes widened as she grasped the implications. Her cheeks grew hot as she examined the furniture. He had kept a mistress here. She could tell simply from the way he waited for her condemnation. He would have kept a woman to share his triumph when he carried a load safely down the river.
He had not called her Blue Eyes since he had returned home. He had used all the meaningless endearments men tended to use when they wanted something, but not this term of twin affection and aggravation. Had he called the woman who had chosen this furniture by a pet name? She wanted to fling everything out the door, but ladies did not indulge in fits of jealousy. For that was what it was.
She was jealous. She was jealous of all the other women he had known, even that flamboyant Molly in Cincinnati.
Blithely ignoring the hornet’s nest he had stirred, Travis explored the house, apparently checking for leaks or damage. Alicia stomped up the stairs to locate a bedroom. When Travis was done inspecting the house, he entered while Alicia was at the dressing table attempting to return order to her rebellious curls while Dale slept on the bed covers.
Resting his hands on Alicia’s shoulders, Travis met her gaze in the mirror. “I thought we might relax and mend our wardrobes before calling on my father, if you do not mind. Or would you prefer to go directly to his hotel this evening?”
The look in his eyes sent shivers down Alicia’s spine. Why did he have to look so damnably masculine with his wide shoulders straining at the seams of his old shirt and his buckskin trousers stretched tight across narrow loins? And why did she have to notice? She ought to punch holes in his male arrogance, but she no longer could find the fury. Too much had gone between them. Anger no longer suited her needs.
She touched his hand. “I am in no hurry, though your father may be sick with worry by now. Perhaps you should go to him and leave me here?”
“I go nowhere without you.” Travis repeated the words that had begun this journey. “I will send a message to my father that we are well and arriving within a few days. Will that suit?”
She clung to hope. Surely he would not be so adamant about her company if he did not feel anything for her? She nodded agreement.
He bent a kiss to her cheek and said, “I’ll find a messenger. Then I will take you somewhere to eat.”
He left, and Alicia cursed her image in her mirror. Why hadn’t she given him some sign, made some movement, done something to let him know how she felt? Would she ever be able to unbend her stubborn pride to let him see that she loved him, that she wanted to be his wife again, that she had been wrong to deny him?
Or was she still avoiding the violence in him that had separated them from the first?
Alicia went to bed that night in a room with a high, carved poster bed similar to the one they had left behind. With daring, she had donned a pale, batiste nightgown heavily embroidered along the deep décolletage and at the long slits in the seams from her ankles to her knees. She almost lost her courage and sought another, but the tread of Travis’s feet outside the door warned it was too late.
She pulled up the covers as he closed the bedroom door. His gaze traveled over her, and cautiously, he advanced into the room.
“I don’t think I can share the bed you slept in with your mistress,” Alicia announced primly.
A corner of Travis’s lips quirked upward as he sat down to pull off his shoes. “That is my bed. I shared it occasionally with a bottle of whiskey but nothing else.”
She refused to let the subject go. “Where is she now? Did you find her when you went out walking after dinner?”
Travis drew off his shirt and dropped it over the bench. “We parted ways years ago. I don’t even remember her name. What’s the matter, Alicia? Do I detect just a small glimmer of jealousy?”
She sent him a scathing glance. “I would wear myself out if that were the case, wouldn’t I? With your whores telling me how good you are, your Indian lover living on our land, the untold women you’ve been with these last months, and now this . . .” She threw her hand out to indicate the bed and all its trappings. “Did you carve this for her, too?”
An unholy light sprang to his eyes as he stalked across the room to the maligned bed. Alicia jerked the covers up to her chin. With a sweep of his hand, the blankets slithered to the floor, revealing the enticing confection beneath. Travis had to catch his breath to keep from gasping in delight. She had donned that gown for his pleasure, not her own.
He didn’t know her game, but when her long legs flew over the side of the bed, Travis caught her by the waist..They both tumbled into the mattress, Travis pinning her beneath his weight. He held her shoulders as he stared down into unfathomable depths of blue.
“I have not had a woman besides you since we met. You are the only woman in my life, Alicia, and you’re making me crazy. I admit, I deserve everything you toss my way. I’ve embarrassed and humiliated you and frightened you beyond the bounds of necessity. But somewhere it has to stop, Alicia. You’ve tormented me more than enough to make up for everything I may have done. When can we call a truce?”
He stroked her skin, placing his buckskin-clad leg between her thighs, praying she would accept him. Instead she froze.
“When you treat me as something more than a horse to be rode and put out to pasture at your convenience,” she whispered determinedly.
Travis studied her pale face in its circlet of dark curls. His body ached for the possession he had thought surely won, but she was telling him it wouldn’t be that easy. She had taken him back without a word after he’d left her for months, registered no complaint at being hauled from child bed to the treacheries of the river, nursed his son, his wounds, and his temper, but she would not submit to his bed without a fight. Why?
Slowly Travis released his grip on her shoulders and rolled over to stare at the ceiling. The vague scent of gardenias drifted to him as he lay there, and he knew it came from the soft curves of the woman at his side. He had only to reach out and pull her to him, stroke the firm lines of her body until she responded, and she would be his. He knew that. The current of desire between them was too strong to be ignored. His loins ached for the freedom she would grant him. He could almost taste the sweet honey of her lips. And he knew the urge was reciprocated, that if he just caressed the soft juncture of her thighs . . .
He sighed. That was what he had done the first time, seduced her into surrender. And then he had taken away her choice. Both times she had given her body but nothing more. That had been enough then, but was it still enough now?
“Alicia, I do not know how to give you what you want.
” Travis flipped on his side to stare down at her. “I thought by giving you marriage and a child, I was giving you what you wanted. You once said you would laugh in my face if I quoted poetry to you. I have no experience in whispering pretty words and wooing you with my wit. What would you have me do?”
Alicia smiled at the pained look of puzzlement he knew must be on his face. “If I have accomplished nothing else, I have forced you to admit there is something you cannot do. We’re a sorry pair, aren’t we?” she murmured. “I do not have the words to tell you what I seek, and you do not have the knowledge to provide it. Perhaps we should have stuck to being friends.”
Frustrated, Travis got up to blow out the lamp and finish undressing.“To hell with friends. Right now I’d settle for lovers,” he muttered.
The trill of laughter from the bed did nothing to alleviate his mood.
Chapter 41
Garbed in an expensively tailored suit that had been poorly mended and not recently cleaned, the fair-haired gentleman slouched in his chair at the cafe, and watched the passing crowds of strangers. The little he had won at the game the night before he had spent on whiskey, and his stomach rumbled a complaint at the lack of solid fare. Wondering where his next meal would come from had taken precedence over his pride in his good looks. As he drank his coffee, he scarcely noticed the parade of fashion before him.
Until the sight of a tall, well-dressed couple caught his gaze—and alarm bells clamored in his befuddled mind. He narrowed his eyes as he followed the progress of the black-haired, bronzed gentleman and his graceful, blue-eyed companion. Neither wore the finery of the New Orleans society, but no one would doubt their wealth or status. They carried themselves as if the world belonged to them, and they entered the doorway of one of the most exclusive clothiers on the street.
Edward Beauchamp III ground his teeth with rage.
Lord Rogue Page 34
