Prairie Moon

by Maggie Osborne

  Cameron pressed her hand. “I have the name of an attorney. If necessary, we can go from here to his office.”

  After Cameron lifted a heavy brass knocker, Della narrowed her eyes. “I detest these people for taking my baby. They are not going to shove me aside again!”

  The same dark woman who had swept the porch yesterday opened the door and studied Della with a curious glance. “The mister’s expectin’ ya’ll. Come on inside.”

  It was so quiet in the foyer that Della heard her pulse thudding in her ears. She was unable to concentrate on anything but holding herself together; however, she caught a dim impression of expensive wall coverings and wood floors and bannisters polished to a high gloss.

  The woman smoothed a spotless white apron, then led them down a wide corridor to the double doors of a parlor stuffed with chairs, settees, a dozen little tables, and every surface draped with something gauzy or fringed.

  Della’s gaze was drawn to the fire, and she didn’t immediately see Mercator Ward sitting before the warmth in a high-winged chair. She jumped when he spoke.

  “I apologize for not risin’.” He gestured to a foot propped on a padded footstool. “A touch of the gout. Comes on me every year ’bout this time.”

  Shock dried Della’s mouth. She would not have recognized this frail old man draped in an afghan that Mrs. Ward had made when Clarence was a boy. His hair had thinned and turned completely white. And while he was meticulously dressed, his clothing had been tailored for a man fifty pounds heavier and now hung on his sunken frame.

  Della drew a breath and wet her lips. “Father Ward, this is James Cameron. Mr. Cameron was kind enough to escort me from Texas to Atlanta.”

  Cameron leaned to clasp Ward’s hand and stared into his eyes. “I’m seeing to Mrs. Ward’s interests. In that regard, there are some issues that you and I need to discuss. If tomorrow is convenient?”

  “Well now, I can’t think what we’d have to discuss, sir, but this visit is mighty puzzlin’ to begin with. If you want to come again tomorrow to talk issues, I reckon we can do that. I sure never thought to see you again,” he said to Della. “Sit down, sit down. Manda? I know you’re out there in the hallway. Bring the coffee cart.”

  Della wondered if Mrs. Ward was also lurking in the hallway. She placed a hand over her heart and gave herself a moment to settle into the chair and will her racing pulse to slow.

  “Will Mrs. Ward be joining us?” She ground her teeth together and told herself that she would stay in her chair and would not run out of the parlor.

  Mr. Ward looked at her with an expression so like Clarence that she stared, then lowered her head and clasped her hands in her lap. How could she have forgotten that Clarence had a cleft in his chin?

  “I guess you didn’t hear. Mrs. Ward passed on about eight years ago.” He tented his fingers beneath his chin and studied Della. “She was never right after the war. The war was hard on women. They gave their brothers and husbands and children. Gave their jewelry, money, heirlooms. Gave their homes. It was more than some could bear. The doctor said it was Mrs. Ward’s heart that killed her, but it was the war.”

  If Della said the usual thing, that she was sorry, Mr. Ward would recognize the lie and the hypocrisy. She said the only truthful thing she could. “I’m sure you miss her.”

  “That’s a fact.”

  Manda wheeled a cart into the parlor and positioned it before Della. She waited for Della’s nod before she glanced at Mr. Ward, then withdrew.

  The heavy silver coffee service had been sold during the early days of the war. This pot was painted china that matched the cups and the plates for raisin buns or triangles of toast and marmalade. Della couldn’t have swallowed a bite. The coffee was difficult enough. She served the men, then took a sip from her saucer and set it aside.

  Every now and then, she raised her eyes to the ceiling, listening for sounds from above. And she had covertly examined the parlor, searching for signs of a young lady.

  “Well,” Mr. Ward said after remarking on the chill in the air, “you said you came from Texas to Georgia. Is that where you live? Texas?”

  “I live on the farm you gave me,” she said, her tone cool.

  “Is that right? I sure never figured you’d want to live there.”

  “What did you think I’d do?”

  “Why, sell the place, of course. I figured you’d sell and then head for the nearest big city. Frankly, it’s a puzzle that you didn’t remarry, a handsome woman like you. I told Mrs. Ward, I said you’d be married within a year of leavin’ here.” He slid Cameron a long glance of speculation. “I bought that farm sight unseen. Never saw it myself.”

  “It’s in damned sorry shape,” Cameron commented, his tone suggesting that Ward was to blame.

  Mr. Ward narrowed his eyes and gazed back and forth between them. “Why did you come here, Della?”

  “She’s here about Claire,” Cameron said when Della couldn’t speak.

  Della’s heart hammered against her ribs. A ringing began in her ears and got louder. The storm rushed forward and caught her up, thundering, flashing, howling in her mind. She thought her body was going to explode.

  “Who?” Ward gripped his coffee cup and frowned.

  “Claire . . . Della and your son’s daughter.”

  Eyes fixed on Ward’s dawning understanding, Della stood on shaking legs. She felt the blood drain from her face and she swayed on her feet. She shook her head and stepped backward. “No,” she whispered. “No, don’t say it.”

  “Claire died years ago,” Mercator Ward said, looking surprised. “Don’t you remember? She was just a bitty thing. Couldn’t have been more than a week or two old.”

  “Oh God.” She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. The room spun around her, picking up speed. She sank to the floor on her knees.

  Ward raised an eyebrow at Cameron, then peered down at her. “Surely you remember. We followed the hearse to the old cemetery and buried the baby next to Clarence.”

  “No.” Tears scalded her cheeks, choked her. The hearse. It was Claire’s hearse she followed in the dream. Now she remembered the tiny white casket beyond the gold vines etched on the windows. “No, no, no, no, no.” There was nothing more soul searing, nothing more brutally devastating than a tiny white casket.

  “Please, please no.” Pressing her hands against her empty belly, she doubled over until her forehead almost touched the wood floor. “My baby! My baby!”

  Strong hands lifted her and held her. She gripped Cameron’s lapels and looked up at him through streaming eyes. “My baby is dead! She died! Oh, Cameron. Help me. My baby died!”

  “Lord a’mighty, girl. It was a long time ago. Is she touched in the head, Mr. Cameron?”

  Even now her mind threw up a wall of resistence, not wanting to accept the unthinkable. Leaning past Cameron’s shoulder, Della whispered in a harsh voice, “She’s not dead. You’ve hidden her, haven’t you?” She started to turn with the intention of running up to the second story. She had seen the curtains move yesterday. Claire was upstairs.

  “Della.” Cameron’s large hands held her immobile. In his eyes she read sadness and pity, and her head jerked backward. More than anything else, his expression shocked her into facing what she had refused to see for ten years and didn’t want to see now.

  Her fingers dug into his sleeves. “I don’t want it to be true.”

  “I know.” His hands slid up her arms then framed her face. “I know.”

  “As long as Claire is alive, then I have a reason to be alive.” She was empty, hollow inside. There was no substance to hold her upright. Her knees collapsed and she sagged against Cameron’s chest.

  He lifted her in his arms and carried her out of Mercator Ward’s house.

  It was only noon—too early for liquor, but Cameron ordered a bottle of whisky sent up to the suite. “Here. Sip this.”

  “I can’t stop crying.” But she sipped the whisky, then wiped a hand across her eyes and rested he
r head on the back of the sofa. “How could a mother forget that her baby died? How is that possible?”

  Cameron sat beside her and pressed his handkerchief into her hand. There was nothing he could say, no words that could possibly comfort her or ease her pain. All he could do was be there and listen.

  “I never doubted that she was alive. And while Claire was alive, I had someone to love even though she wasn’t with me.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “So I pretended she was there on the farm. But I knew—damn it, I absolutely knew she was with the Wards. They stole her from me, but she was growing up happy and well cared for. I knew this beyond a shadow of a doubt. It was true!” She took another long swallow of whisky. “Except it wasn’t true. Am I crazy, Cameron?”

  “Maybe. In this one area.”

  “The truly crazy part is that the Wards said and did hurtful things, but the one thing I most blamed them and hated them for, they didn’t do.” Bitterness roughened her voice. “With every fiber of my being, I believed they stole Claire. I believed she was here, in Atlanta with the Wards. I believed it!”

  She bent forward and mopped her eyes. “I’m sorry. I just can’t stop crying. I keep thinking I’ve used up all my tears, but today the supply seems to be endless.” She covered her face and her shoulders shook. “It’s like losing her all over again. I’ve lost her twice.”

  Nothing made a man feel more helpless than a woman’s tears. And particularly in this case. Della wept for the child she’d had with a man that Cameron had killed. After several minutes, he stood and walked out on the suite’s terrace. A light haze hung over the Blue Ridge Mountains reminding him of a time he didn’t want to remember. After lighting a cigar, he watched a column of steam moving away from the train station. Before the war, Atlanta had been a railroad town. At least half a dozen lines had converged here. He didn’t know if that was still true.

  It was time to consider what came next.

  When he looked at Della, he saw a soldier he’d killed, the last in a long line of good men. When she looked at him, Della saw the loss of everything she had loved and valued. Maybe now that she’d been forced to face and accept Claire’s death, she could begin to recover and put the past behind her. But only if he walked away.

  There was no reason for them to remain together. He could leave her enough money to go back to Texas if that’s what she wanted to do. And he’d speak to Mercator Ward about providing her a stipend and an inheritance. And then . . .

  She’d taken off her shoes, so he didn’t hear her cross the terrace in her stockinged feet, didn’t realize she was behind him until she slipped her arms around his waist and laid her head against his shoulder blades.

  “Oh, James.” Her voice was so low and anguished that he could hardly hear her. “My baby girl is dead. And it hurts so bad.”

  Now, finally, he was free to hold her and comfort her. Turning, he gathered her into his arms and placed his chin on top of her head. She fit in his arms like she’d been made to go there.

  “Tell me how I can best help you,” he said gruffly.

  “Take me to bed and just hold me,” she whispered after a minute. “Let me cry myself to sleep. I don’t think I’ve slept in a week.”

  In the bedroom, he pulled the draperies shut, kicked off his boots, mounded the pillows against the headboard, then laid down and opened his arms. She hesitated, giving him a long, measuring look, then raised her skirt and placed her knee on the bed. In a moment, she’d stretched out beside him and nestled her head on his shoulder. He closed his arms around her.

  She pressed her hand flat on his chest, then absently tugged at a button. “I said I believed Claire was with the Wards. But that can’t be entirely true. I’ve had the dream for years, about following the hearse . . . and it was always hers, not Clarence’s as I told myself it was. And there was the feeling of dread, of not wanting to know or to change anything.”

  The warmth of her ran down his right side. He stroked her arm and tried to rise above thinking about the soft fullness of her breasts pressed against the side of his chest. Today she’d worn her hair twisted into a bun on top of her head, and he could smell the scent of the lemon and vinegar that she used to rinse away any traces of shampoo. When she spoke, he caught a faint whiff of whisky.

  It made him feel good to know that she mixed lemon and vinegar to rinse her hair, and that, unlike most women, she enjoyed a glass of whisky. He’d seen her small clothes hanging to dry on prairie bushes and knew her shimmies and petticoats and pantaloons were plain with only a narrow band of inexpensive lace trimming the hems. He’d tasted her cooking and ranked her biscuits among the best. He had seen her iron and he had heard her whistle. He’d watched her laugh with joy and weep in pain.

  He would love her until the day he died. There could never be another woman for him.

  He blinked and looked down at the top of her head. While he’d been indulging in reverie, Della had unbuttoned his shirt and slipped her hand inside. He felt her fingers on his skin. Instantly his chest and belly tightened into ridges of muscle.

  She noticed. “James?” Her voice was a husky whisper. “I’ve been thinking . . .”

  “Yes?” The word came out as a groan because her fingers had slid to his waist.

  “I can’t hate you any more for using me twice than for using me once.”

  Rising above her, he looked down into her damp hazel eyes. This close, he noticed green and gold flecks. “Are you sure?”

  “Our truce is almost over.” Her gaze dropped to his lips and his mouth suddenly dried. “We need to talk soon. But not now.”

  He reached for the small buttons running down her bodice then hesitated. “Della, this feels like taking advantage.”

  “If so, it’s me taking advantage of you.” She brushed his hand aside and opened the buttons herself. “I want the pain to go away for a while. I don’t want to think about the past or the future. I just want to lose myself in the here and now, and I want you to help me do it.”

  Her bodice opened to the sight of soft mounded breasts, and Cameron’s questions vanished along with any thought of hesitation. He took his time undressing her, not hurrying, learning the sight and touch and taste of her, kissing the various parts of her as he revealed them.

  He kissed her shoulders and arms as he drew off her jacket, returned to her lips then ran his tongue down her throat to the deep cleft between her breasts. Here he encountered the powdery fragrance of rose water beneath the warm mix of musk and apple that was the scent of her skin.

  Next, he removed her skirt and petticoats, then paused to admire the hourglass shape of her. Most women didn’t like corsets, but Cameron appreciated the way a corset defined a woman’s form, accenting breasts and hips. As this corset laced up the front, she faced him while he opened the laces, and she tugged at his shirt while he kissed the tops of her breasts, then the sides, and after he dropped the corset off the edge of the bed, he devoted himself to teasing her nipples into hard pink buds.

  After pulling her to the side of the bed, he kicked off his trousers, then knelt on the floor, placed her foot on his naked thigh, then drew her garters off. He ran his hands up her leg, shaping the contours of ankle, calf, thigh beneath his palms, then teasing his fingers inside the top of her stockings. His mouth found the bare skin above her stockings and he licked the inside of her thighs as he rolled the stocking down on one leg and then the other.

  “James.” Reaching with suddenly urgent fingers, she drew him back to the bed and pressed him on his back. “It’s my turn,” she whispered against his lips. “I’m new at this . . .”

  He’d made love to women, but being made love to was a new experience, and one he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. It was difficult as hell to lay quietly while she slid down his body trailing hot kisses over his nakedness and doing things with her hands and fingers that made him feel crazy inside. The pins had come out of her hair, and a dark cloud of silken tresses spilled over his chest and belly.

  When
he felt her fingernails inside his thighs, he groaned her name. “Don’t . . .”

  “I want to.”

  The heat of her mouth on him was electric and more arousing than anything he could have imagined. He thought the top of his head would fly off if he couldn’t have her beneath him now, now.

  Pulling her up to him, he rolled her onto her back and rose above her, staring down into her radiant eyes and parted lips. He wanted to remember this moment always. Her hair wild on the pillow, her eyes shining with desire. He wanted the taste of her sweat on his lips, and the scent of their lovemaking permeating every breath.

  “Della.” He entered her gently, almost reverently.

  He’d never had trouble arguing the law or debating issues or principles. But Cameron had never been a man to discuss feelings easily. Yet here, in bed, with no barrier between them, he could let his body speak to her of love and admiration and desire. His tenderness could share her loss. His caresses could comfort. And when their passion transcended gentleness and spiraled into the wild urgency of crescendo, he took what she offered and gave himself entirely.

  After she had caught her breath, she leaned over him and kissed him, lingeringly and sweetly. “I can sleep now.” Then she stretched out beside him and, in minutes, fell asleep.

  Cameron woke her at seven for a supper he’d ordered delivered to the suite. Then he tucked her back into bed and lay beside her, smoking in the darkness, listening to her breathe, and thinking about the future.

  She had said their truce would end soon. The message couldn’t have been clearer.

  Chapter 21

  “I won’t be long,” Della said after the hired driver handed her out of the carriage. She spoke to Cameron through the window. “Perhaps twenty minutes.”

  He wore that hard-eyed, tight-lipped expression that made her think he’d have something to say if he were the type of man to speak of emotions.

  “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.” Bending her head, she inhaled the fragrance of the flowers filling her arms.