His Make-Believe Bride

by Martha Hix

  Things could be worse.

  Chapter 6

  This had. to be the worst food Sam Kincaid had ever put in his mouth.

  Whoever did the teaching and testing at that Heaven’s Gate school must have hit the bottle heavily. The former Miss Ermentrude Linnea Flanders’s beans were hard as bullets and lacked one grain of salt, although they swam in two inches of side-meat fat.

  The cornbread—if you could call it that—had to be no more than water, cornmeal, and an abundance of fat. He had feared the worst. He had since the moment his bride eyed the inside of that bag of beans, like the sack might be filled with some of those flying cockroaches that always deviled the ladies of Mississippi.

  Thankful for a leftover cup of the lemonade he’d picked up at the Jerry & Larry Café, Sam gulped himself a big drink after choking down his bride’s supper offering. “Damn, that was good, woman!” he lied.

  “Why, thank you, sir,” Linnea came back, blushing beneath the freckles he loved so much.

  He noticed that she hadn’t taken a bite from her plate. Which could mean one of two things. Either she had poisoned the beans . . . or she was too excited about the wedding bed to eat. He went with the second choice.

  He had in his blue jeans pocket Granddad Craig’s silver toothpick. Chest puffing, Sam leaned his chair back on two legs. “Damn, Linnea love, you are a woman after my heart. I know tonight will be your first time and you’re eager for it, but I don’t want to scare you off. I promise to make it good. I just have to warn you. My thing is what you might call an inch or five longer than most fellows’, but . . .

  “Wait,” he went on. “I bet I don’t have to tell you any of this. I bet your momma had a talk with you when she found out you weren’t coming back home after finishing at that school. Now, honey, stop that blushing.”

  “I wish you’d stop embarrassing me.”

  “Between a man and his wife, it’s no good when the two of them can’t talk about what’s gonna feel good. Or not.”

  She wiggled in her chair, frowned, and put down her fork. “You, sir, are moving way too fast for me. What I’d prefer to discuss is tomorrow’s breakfast. What is your preference?”

  It was his turn for panic. “Tomorrow’s Sunday. Don’t you be troubling yourself. The Lord wouldn’t like it, were we to work on His day, so I suggest we stay in bed as long as we please, like city folks, and then I will fix you a nice Sunday dinner.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “I would. I will. I am going to.” He had to. There was no way Sam Kincaid would suffer through more of her cooking, not until after he found a way to get her some real lessons with a frying pan.

  She moistened her lips, her green eyes suddenly rounding. “Does that mean a hen will live to cluck another day?”

  “Sure as shootin’, wife. Sure as shootin’.”

  Sam grinned at Linnea. Despite his jovial mood, he was hoping and praying those rock-pellet pinto beans wouldn’t get in the way of tonight’s performance in the marital bed.

  There was no getting out of sleeping together in the same bed, Linnea concluded after Sam took his leave to allow her privacy to change into a nightgown. After brushing her hair and teeth as best she could, she went to her stack of discarded clothes and found a peg for her traveling suit.

  Her one presentable everyday frock now had big splatters of bacon grease on the bodice.

  She grumbled, “Disgusting.”

  What she needed was an apron. She glanced at her unpacked valise. No apron there.

  Over and above toiletries and two changes of drawers, she had packed a cotton nightie, her Bible, and a book of dark poetry by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe that she had found wedged beneath a boardinghouse mattress when Percival had tried his hand in New Orleans. Also a Sunday-go-to-meeting summer outfit, and a uniform and boots she’d worn for the Restons.

  Tomorrow, she would simply have to wear the uniform.

  Once she found a cake of soap, then shucked and rinsed out her drawers, she hung them between two pegs nailed between the portraits.

  Then she dressed in her nightie and plaited her hair into one queue, taking the water kettle from the hook above the dying coals—cow patties!—from supper. While fretting and removing grease spots from her dress, she began to fight with her “platonic” vow.

  When he wasn’t spouting about how she could keep herself occupied—suggestions which were many!—she admired his physical appearance. . . and she hadn’t even gotten a gander at his naked form. Reason told her he wouldn’t have the consumptive look to him.

  And he had yet to return to the cozy mud hut.

  The gingham now saved from bacon blotches, she got into bed. As she forced herself to pull the covers over her head, she closed her eyes and tried to think of anything besides the fact that her bridegroom would return any moment now.

  Why don’t I simply tell him the truth?

  No, she decided. Now that she had him, she didn’t wish to lose him—at least not until she could decide if they had a chance at a real marriage.

  Ease into the truth.

  It was all too much to think upon. Exhausted from the long trip, both from Shreveport and down the aisle, she dozed off, only to awaken in the semidarkness of night and the flicker of meager flame from a kerosene lantern.

  “Linnea?” Sam was saying. “Wake up, sleepyhead.”

  He was stretched out beside her, under the covers. And if his unclothed chest and shoulders were any indication of what was between the sheets . . .

  “Is it morning?” she whispered.

  “No, little darlin’. It’s not even the midnight hour.”

  He turned on his side to face her and ran the edge of his thumb along her jawline. His toe tickled her ankle. Did he know how much that excited her?

  “I was hoping you’d forgotten to pack your nightgown . . .”

  “Heavenly days, Sam. What in the world would I have worn?”

  “Me.”

  She giggled. “You silly.”

  “Yep, I am.” He chuckled, too.

  Could he tell that she yearned to run her finger along the line of his lips, then have him delight her throat with that mustache of his?

  It was as if he heard her. He raised up just enough to lean his head into the crook of her neck. With his tongue and his mustache, he elicited shiver after shiver of desire. She moaned, feeling the tip of his erection. She wiggled closer, while he ran his palm along her waist, then her hip.

  “Do you have freckles on your pretty parts?” he asked hoarsely.

  “A . . . a few.”

  “Good.”

  “I like your home decorating,” he said, a tease in his whisper. “Wedding-night britches hanging between the Kincaid grandparents.”

  “I should take them down.”

  “Nah. Leave ’em.” He chuckled. “They pretty up the place.”

  She ached with desire. More so than ever before in her twenty-three years, and that was a lot. “I feel . . . so different.”

  “Yes, both . . . we both feel . . . need . . . want.”

  He was working the buttons at the top of her nightgown, moving the material aside, and she was powerless to stop him. The fingers of one hand entwined with hers, and he brought her knuckles to his lips, brushing them with his breath and tongue, then used his mouth and his tongue on her bosom.

  His opposite hand was smoothing, teasing, holding her, and she found herself moaning his name. She did so again as he let go of her hand so that he could do more and more to excite her. Sparks shot through Linnea as she felt his tongue and his fingers work magic on all the places that craved his touch.

  He continued his velvety torture until she writhed beneath him. She tried to stop—but found that her body had a will of its own.

  Stop him. Make him stop. This can’t go on! Oh, yes, it can. I need this. I want this. Your vow of chastity is as much for him as it is for you. But I want him! You wanted Percival, and where did that get you? Percival is dead. Thank the Lord!

/>   “Don’t hurt me,” she moaned from her heart. “Please don’t hurt me.” Please don’t break my heart, or let me break yours!

  “Hurt you? I want to love you, honey, not hurt you.”

  She begged herself to get hold of this situation. “I’m scared.”

  Sam reared back. “Lil darlin’, I’m not out to hurt you. But I have to tell you. I’ve been aching, all these weeks waiting for you.”

  “I understand, but . . .” Her wanton body craving more, more, more, a grain of sensibility managed to take hold. “A few nights to get acquainted before we . . . before we consummate this marriage would be appreciated.”

  “I rightly wasn’t thinking to abstain from my privilege as a husband.”

  “What were you thinking, then?”

  “I was wondering if we could start over. I could give you a kiss. My lips to yours.”

  Remembering how his lips felt at the church, she wanted more, but . . . Where the hell is my strength of character? Barring that, my senses? “No. No kisses,” she managed to say. “No anything.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  Wordlessly, he tossed the horse blanket away to sit on the edge of the bed.

  Getting a first look at him—the manly glory of all of him—she felt a heightened rush of longing. Never had she dreamt the male staff could be so beautiful. He might be broke in the wallet, but he was certainly tall, dark, handsome, and well-fixed at the top of his groin!

  How on earth could she possibly manage to behave in a maidenly way, when she really wanted to ride and be ridden by this magnificent man? No matter how appealing her new husband might be, Linnea knew she had to try harder to keep her vow.

  She closed her legs.

  “I’m having a hard time understanding you,” he said at last. “You’re the one who said yes when I asked for your hand in marriage. What is it that you’re after, Linnea?”

  “A home,” she whispered. “Some children.”

  “You’re not gonna get the children. Not unless you’ve got a man.”

  “I understand everything about the man part,” she shot back. “I’m not as ignorant as you believe me to be.”

  Linnea watched in horror as he whitened beneath his tan. “You don’t mean . . . Tell me you’re not saying . . . Woman, have you been touched?”

  She looked away, a tear forming. Honesty is the best policy, Miz Myrtie used to say. It suddenly dawned on Linnea just how disappointed her grand lady would be, were she to know about this plot to snag a good man.

  She needed honesty, whatever the price.

  “Yes, Sam. I’ve been touched.”

  She forced herself to glance once again at his face. In the flickering light from the lantern, it now appeared set in stone.

  Her husband surged to his feet. She looked upon his smooth, muscular back. He went to the fireplace as if to gaze into the dead fire. The heel of his palm on the mantel, he rubbed his temple with a thumb and ring finger. “This is not good.”

  Now that she’d allowed him a portion of the truth, she took a deep breath while lifting her chin. “I’ve been touched . . . many times over the past three years.”

  “A maiden of eighteen with a string of lovers?” He glared at her. “Tell me something. What did you have to do to get them to let you in that school for decent ladies?”

  “I am a decent lady! I was married those three years.”

  “Married?” he yelled, as if that were worse than what he’d first imagined. “Married!”

  “Yes. My husband died some time back.”

  “You married at fifteen, or was it fourteen? Were you brought up in the backwoods? Natchez gentry don’t marry little girls. What kind of creek-bottom lowlife defiled you as a child?”

  “I wasn’t a child. I was eighteen when we married. I’m twenty-three, not eighteen.”

  It was now Sam’s turn to take a deep breath. A series of deep breaths. “Good God.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her throat tightening.

  “Sorry? You’re sorry. Married three years—where are your children, goddammit? Where!”

  “There weren’t any.”

  “Great. Just great. Now I’ve got me a widow woman who can’t produce a family.”

  I won’t cry. I won’t let him know how much that hurts me! “I haven’t given up. I do want children.”

  His teeth bared, he turned to the portraits of the man and woman, saying across the dim cabin, to implore of the canvas, “Where did we go wrong? It wasn’t enough, how the Yankees ruined us all? That wasn’t the end of it. Four long decades of hard times, then the Mississippi drowned all my Natchez family, save for Charlie. Now this?”

  Linnea hadn’t even gotten to the whole truth, and he was already to the point of talking to dead ancestors?

  Where did I go wrong? I’m not even left with an uncle. Why did I have to lose my own family? Why couldn’t I produce babies? What nasty sin did I commit that brought Percival to Reston Oaks, and now this?

  “Sam Kincaid, people will think you’re a candidate for a lunatic asylum if you make a habit of whining to dead people.”

  He turned his frown to Linnea. “I don’t whine.”

  “You do.”

  “I’ve got a right.”

  “Maybe so. Could be you do. Yes, actually you do. But it’s been near to forty years since the Union Army took control of the Mississippi River. And you haven’t starved to death yet. As you pointed out to me, you have land and a bright future, and now you have a wife.”

  Pursing his lips, a muscle tic at his jaw, Sam studied the ceiling. A few seconds later, he lowered his gaze. “You have a point there.”

  “Moreover, that was a nasty, mean remark about my inability to provide you with a family. If God wants you to be a father, He will let you. Furthermore, if you’re the kind of man who takes pleasure in meanness, then I want no part of you.”

  A long moment passed before he grimaced, then said, “You’re right. I was being mean. I regret that. I can’t take back what I said, but I do apologize for it.”

  “Thank you. Apology accepted. Now . . .” Her voice fell to a whisper. “My intentions with you are nothing but honorable. Can you see your way clear to forgive my lies of omission?”

  “I . . .” He clicked his tongue. “I’ll sleep on it.”

  That was probably the best she could do for the present, she decided as he left the cold fireplace to take her drawers from the wall, tossing them atop a chair’s ladder back, and put out the lantern light. Lowering her lids over scratchy eyes, she felt his weight as he returned to the bed and maintained his distance from her.

  Eventually, she heard the deep, even breathing of sleep. It seemed to take forever.

  Praying he’d find a way to forgive the entirety of her deception once she revealed it, she tried to fall asleep herself, yet her prayer got replaced by visions of his masculine qualities. It was all she could do to take control of temptation. She rolled away from her bridegroom, keeping the vow she’d forced upon herself.

  For one night, anyway.

  Chapter 7

  Linnea awoke, finding herself pinned securely beneath Sam’s strong arm. One powerful leg was thrown over her body, as well. How good it felt. How warm and loving . . . and right.

  Wrong!

  Still and all, in the light beginning to stream in from the window, she studied the beautiful, manly sinew of his forearm. Something about the perfect amount of hair on his arm and even his knuckles made her feel quite feminine lying alongside him.

  After an undetermined number of minutes basking in his warmth, and the male splendor hard against the side of her body, she forced herself to rise, even though the position he had her pinned in was entirely too tempting.

  A terrible ache of longing ... and grief went through her. He was all she ever wanted, if she could overlook his tableau of lies. Wasn’t that the pot calling the kettle black? He didn’t offer the sort of life ladies like Mrs. Rutherford G. Reston took
for granted, but he did seem sincere.

  Yes, and he’d been sincere about withholding the mating act.

  She hurriedly donned her uniform, a black cotton blouse with mutton-chop sleeves and a stiff white collar. The skirt was also black, also cotton. Percival had thrown away the apron years ago, saying that his wife was no one’s maid. I sure wish I had that apron now so that I could be my own maid.

  Her own maid.

  Never in the past had she had anything of her own to tend to.

  God and Sam Kincaid willing, she would . . . and she loved the idea.

  Smoothing the front of the skirt, she noted that it could have used a good ironing. She might not know her way around a skillet, but she had ironed countless tablecloths and doilies, dresses and shirts. However she didn’t see an iron anywhere.

  Her prized earrings didn’t match the work clothes, so she left them in their box, then brushed her hair and twisted it into a fashionable knot, securing it with combs and pins at her crown.

  A sudden banging on the door startled her, yet it didn’t seem to disturb the still-sleeping Lord of the Keep, not until she shouted, “Samson! Someone’s here.”

  “Probably my uncle,” he surmised aloud and groaned a greeting to the clear light of day. He managed to pull on some britches and rake four fingers through his dark hair before answering the door.

  She nearly melted into the floor, so hot was she from the erotic sight of his dressing.

  “Howdy, y’all!”

  It was, in fact, his uncle calling. Carrying a bucket filled almost a third of the way to the top with milk, Charlie Craig stepped indoors, big as the Lone Star flag.

  “When did you start knocking?” Sam barked at his uncle.

  “You’re married now. Don’t wanna disturb nothing, in case the two o’ you were sleepin’.” He chuckled and doffed his hat to wiggle his ears and bushy, sandy brows, as his line of sight homed in on her drawers that were clinging to a rung of an eating chair. “Or not sleepin’.”