He stared into my eyes with the old direct look that seemed able to read the secrets of my soul.
“Drink this,” I commanded, releasing his hand not too gently. “All of it.” I lifted his head.
He drank, his eyes still upon me. I had a moment of weakness. I had known him intimately for so brief a time and yet he had meant so much.
“Deirdre ...”
I knew I must not think about love; it was too painful. Anyway, it was all in the past—a young girl’s foolish fancy.
“Try and get some sleep, Ian,” I said in the brisk sickroom voice that Page would recognize.
Lucile called the next day. She had hardly gotten her gloves off before she said, “It’s all over the fort.”
“What is?” I said, taking her cloak.
“That you’ve got Mr. Ian Montgomery in your spare room, that he was shot while defending your honor.”
“It was nothing like that,” I said.
“What happened then? I can’t get a thing out of Mr. Billings. Those Englishmen are as closemouthed as clams. Why d’you know when I had them for dinner they would scarcely tell me anything about themselves. Naturally one asks about wives. Mr. Billings said, yes, he was married—”
“So is Mr. Montgonery.”
“Oh? Well, Mr. Billings did make a passing remark about their wives—or was it wife? I can’t remember—coming out.” She gave me a bright, birdlike look. “How well do you know Mr. Montgomery, my dear?”
“Not too well. He was a guest at Wildoak for a few days, but that was years ago. Meeting him again was coincidence, a lucky one for me. He saved my mare from a pair of horse thieves and for his trouble took one of their bullets. I thought it only right to have him here instead of the hospital.”
“Was that it? Gossip is always so far off the mark.” She unpinned her hat and sat down.
“Sherry? Coffee?” I offered.
“Sherry will be fine. Ward said you got lost while riding on the prairie, were thrown, then found by some people named Lowery. No broken bones, I hope.”
“No. A slight concussion, a few bruises. I stayed with them until I recovered. Then, as I was coming back to the fort, two men tried to steal my horse.”
“I see.”
She gave me another birdlike look. For a moment I was tempted to tell her the truth—all of it: how my anger at Ward had made me run off, how the Lowerys had found me, my horrible experience in the tent (only another woman could share the haunting revulsion I still felt), and my confused feelings toward Ian. It would be such a relief to unburden myself, to get it all out. But I couldn’t. Except for some shared confidences with Aunt Carmella, and my outpouring to Ward that first night in Chicago, I had spent a lifetime keeping things to myself. I couldn’t change now.
But I did say, “Ward has asked me to marry him.”
“Oh, my dear!” She covered my hand with hers. “That should make you feel so much better.”
“I told him I would think about it.”
“You can’t mean you haven’t jumped at his proposal?”
“I’m not sure I want to marry Ward.”
“Is it army life?”
“It is rather rootless. I don’t know ...”
“Well, in the meanwhile, if you don’t mind a friend’s advice? You must be careful of your reputation. A woman alone with a very handsome, virile man—no matter his wounds or present incapacity—occupying a bedroom upstairs? My, my!”
“But there’s Mrs. Sprockett,” I pointed out.
“Ah, yes,” she said knowingly, with a laugh. “I had forgotten. Mrs. Sprockett!”
Ian seemed to be progressing. The fever disappeared and he began to fret about getting up. But Dr. MacKenzie cautioned against it. “You want to give things time to heal. Burst my stitches and I’ll only have to put them in again.”
I hadn’t heard from Ward and didn’t know when to expect him. I dreaded his return. I was no closer to a decision than I had been a week ago. I tried not to think about it. Seeing Ian again had complicated the matter for me—as if things weren't complicated enough.
One night I was awakened out of a sound sleep by a shout from Ian’s room. I listened, my heart racing. Ian was mumbling. I thought at once that the fever had returned. Throwing a wrapper over my nightgown I hurried to his room. With hands forced to steadiness I lit the lamp. His eyes were closed and he was waving his arms about. I managed to dodge them and touched his forehead. “Thank God,” I breathed. Not the hot, fiery skin I had expected.
He grabbed hold of my wrapper and before I could release myself his eyes flew open.
“Deirdre!”
“You were shouting,” I said. “Did you have a bad dream?”
“Terrible. Oh, God, it was dreadful!” He still held on to my wrapper. “It was a dream I used to have as a child, about a ghost at Invernean chasing me through that drafty old castle.”
“But you aren’t at Invernean. You’re at Fort Lincoln. I’ll get you another blanket. You’re shivering.”
“Never mind the blanket, Deirdre. You warm me.” He touched the ends of my hair, loose and falling past my shoulders in an auburn cascade. He wound a strand about his fingers and brought it to his lips. That tender gesture stirred me more than a thousand lustful grapplings. I felt my skin go warm, a glow rise to my cheeks.
“How many times I’ve seen you this way in my thoughts,” he whispered. “So beautiful, your eyes looking at me with that softness .
I abruptly pulled away.
“No!” I said, sanity returning in a cold flood of remembered anger. “Is that how you described me to Hart Benton?”
"Who?’’
“Hart Benton. In the letter you wrote to him, saying you knew me better than most men, that you had seduced me.”
“Hart Benton? Benton? That degenerate? I hardly spoke to him. What on earth would make you think I wrote him? And in that vein. What do you take me for?”
“Don’t try to wriggle out of it. I saw the letter.”
“Then it was a forgery. Who showed it to you? Where?”
I told him about Agnes’s trip to Chicago, the will.
“And you read the letter, actually read it all?”
“Enough to know the handwriting was yours, enough to see that you had boasted of a conquest.”
“Listen to me.” He grasped my wrist, a surprisingly strong hold for an invalid. “I want you to answer truthfully. Did you read the whole letter?”
“Well . . . no.”
“As I thought. Typical of you. Agnes was bluffing, don’t you see? I never wrote to Benton, but I did to her. I remember answering a letter in which she deplored the fact that her father was courting you. I replied by saying that I knew you better than most, that you were a fine, loyal woman who would make any man a good wife.”
“You didn’t write to Benton?” I whispered.
“No. How could you possibly believe that of me? But then, perhaps it is possible. We’ve been at loggerheads more than once. We quarreled the last time we met. I can’t even remember why. And I had the notion that underneath it all you still loved me. I see where I was mistaken. Any woman who would accept such a slanderous accusation without question ...” His voice trailed off.
“Can you blame me?”
“Yes. I learned Agnes’s capacity for trickery early on. Incidentally, it was that rather than your silly trumped-up story of a mad mother that put me off. But you, knowing Agnes longer, must have been well acquainted with her devious character.”
He was right. Wily, clever, and ruthless, Agnes had been bluffing. My first guess about Judah’s will had probably been right. He had written it to placate her, planning to change it later. And all these years I had blamed Ian.
“Well . . . ?” He still had hold of my wrist.
“I suppose I owe you an apology.” Seeing the shadow in his eyes reflecting my halfhearted apology and feeling ashamed, I bent down and touched his cheek with my lips. “I am sorry, Ian.”
He raised his arm and cupped
the back of my head, pulling me closer, his firm mouth pressing mine. It was a lingering sweet kiss, touching a chord in me that I was sure had long since shriveled and died. But it hadn’t; it was all still there— the tender yearning, the longing to cherish and be cherished.
“Warm me, Deirdre,” he whispered, his hand stroking my If air. “Take away the cold.”
He touched my breast, his fingers curling around it, and the feel of his palm through the transparency of my gown sent a tremor down my spine. Sitting there, trembling but unable to move, I stared into his eyes and saw a look that took me back through the years. It seemed I stood once again in a dim barn smelling of fragrant hay with rain slanting across a window while opposite me a man’s silent gaze told me that everything I had been or would be was now, here, in the moment.
“I can’t,” I heard myself murmur.
“Come, be beside me, darling.”
Lifting his good arm, he pushed the wrapper from my shoulders, his fingers untying the ribbons of my gown. Slipping his hand inside, he caressed the white mounded flesh, the burning nipple blooming under his erotic touch.
“Let me feel your skin—all of it—next to mine, Deirdre.”
“I can’t . . . downstairs ...”
“She’s sound asleep.”
He pulled me closer, nuzzling my neck, my throat. Again I felt a great need for his tenderness, for sweet words, for loving gentleness. It was a hunger that made me forget everything. Shrugging out of my wrapper, lifting the filmy gown over my tangled hair took only a moment or two. And then I was beside him, lying against his unwounded side.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Ian.”
“As if you could,” he said, hushing me with a kiss that drove away all doubt. “Your skin is like satin.” His hand stroked my back, falling to my buttocks, holding one firm globe, then the other. He shifted me higher on the pillow so that he could reach between my thighs.
“My darling,” he whispered, brushing the tender places, each stroke like silken fire, advancing inch by inch until he reached the moistness between, now quivering with desire. Inside, his caressing finger sent wave after wave of heat to my face.
“Please, Ian,” I begged. But he went on with his sweet torment, the unbearable tide sweeping me along to the ultimate ecstatic, shuddering fulfillment.
“Oh, Ian, Ian,” I murmured, turning my face to his. “If I could only make you as happy.”
“You innocent. You’ve already had a good start.”
He took my hand and guided it down to his rigid manhood, curving my fingers around it. Instinctively I knew what he wanted, what would pleasure him. I stroked and gently squeezed until his shaft pulsed moistly with desire.
“Deirdre—oh, God,” he groaned, turning. He would have mounted me but I forestalled him.
“No. Let me finish.”
I straddled him, lowering myself until I’d absorbed the whole of his rock-hard maleness inside me. He seemed enormous, possessing me with a completeness I never thought possible. I leaned over, my hands resting on the bed, my hair falling in a scented silken curtain, closing us in as I began to move my hips up and down, rocking them from side to side, lifting and falling in a rhythmic comingling of heated passion. His hands on my bobbing breasts excited me, whipped me into wilder and wilder gyrations. I wanted to prolong it, to continue those thrilling sensations, the sense of power and mastery that filled me. But Ian suddenly gave a soft cry that triggered my own climax, shaking me from head to toe with spasms of utter delight.
I shifted and lay beside him again, and he held me, stroking my hair. “I love you,” he said simply. “I’ve never stopped.”
“Nor I.”
It was love that made the difference. I could sleep with Ward and do the same things, but it wouldn’t feel the same or mean as much when it was over. Not like this, never like this. Love bathed one in completion, happiness. But suddenly, even as I sighed contentedly, realization stabbed at my heart.
“Your wife,” I said, drawing away. “I had almost forgotten. And we . . .” I couldn’t finish.
“My wife? Darling, I was sure I told you. I thought at least that somewhere in my fevered ravings . . . ?” His eyes sought mine and saw the bafflement in them. “I have no wife. Haven’t for two years.”
“But Mrs. Berryman—Lucile—said ...”
“She was wrong.”
“But then what happened?”
“Marian didn’t want me. She hated England, detested my father, did not want to be married to me. She made her rich Papa get her a divorce.”
“Oh, Ian!”
“It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I had a terrible row with my father after that. I told him I was done with rich women and American dowries—any kind of dowry. I refused to be auctioned off like a stud bull. He disowned me.” Ian paused, gazing up at the ceiling.
“Did it hurt that much?” I remembered his feverish outcries against his father, the pleas, the oaths.
“A little. But it wasn’t devastating. I got a job with British Metals, as Billings must have told you.”
“Yes, he did.”
“And you, Deirdre?” He turned his head. “Have you been happy being Mrs. Gamble?”
“Ward is not my husband.”
“Ah . . .”
“He wants me to marry him.”
“But you won’t. You can’t. Not now.”
“No,” I said. “I know that.”
He grasped my hand, bringing it to his lips, kissing it. “Darling, this is only the beginning.”
“Oh, Ian, it seems like a miracle.”
The next morning before going downstairs I looked in at Ian. Awake, he smiled and winked lewdly at me. “I think I feel well enough to get out of bed,” he said. “Wonderful medicine I had last night.”
“Shall I ask Mrs. Sprockett to lay another plate?”
“Yes, please.”
When I told Mrs. Sprockett that she needn’t make up a tray, Ian was coming downstairs, she gave me a sour look. I wondered if she had been awakened by our impassioned thumpings overhead. Probably not. Thank goodness for her deafness.
As we ate I took care not to look at Ian. Mrs. Sprockett may have been deaf, but there was nothing wrong with her eyes. I was afraid she would notice the glow in mine.
“I ought to be moving on,” Ian said “Though I hate to.”
“Why don’t you wait a day or two?” I urged. “You can’t do much with that arm yet.”
“All right.” He gave me a wide grin. “I’m easy to persuade.”
“I have go to out today,” I said. “Only for a few hours. I promised Libbie Custer I would help her make up party favors. She’s having a birthday celebration for her sister-in-law.”
I was gone all day. The hours were long, interminable.
Once in the midst of tying ribbons on a nut basket, I thought: I won’t have to play the colonel’s wife much longer. Ian and I hadn’t spoken of the future. We hadn’t had the opportunity. Nothing had been said about marriage, but of course it was understood. Perhaps if Mrs. Billings came we might find accommodations together while our husbands did their “prospecting.”
“You look very pleased with yourself,” Lucile Berryman said at one point.
“Perhaps I am,” I replied mysteriously.
It was well after four o’clock when I got home. The house seemed unusually quiet. Going upstairs I gently cracked Ian’s door open. The bed was made up, the counterpane smoothed, the pillows tucked into their shams. I edged the door wider. “Ian. . . ?”
He was gone. The bureau where his clothes had hung was empty. I hurried downstairs and into the kitchen, where Mrs. Sprockett sat darning Ward’s socks.
“Where is Mr. Montgomery?” I had to repeat my question, raising my voice.
“I dunno,” she said with her usual disgruntled air. “A woman came to fetch him.”
“A woman? Who was it?”
“She didn’t tell me, but I heard Mr. Montgomery call her Marian.”
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I stared at her without speaking.
“She was a dark-haired lady. Young and pretty,” Mrs. Sprockett added maliciously.
Marian. Young and pretty. I wanted desperately to sit down, but I stood there, unflinching, my face a composed mask under Mrs. Sprockett’s gloating gaze.
“Did Mr. Montgomery leave a message?” I asked, the question emerging in a normal tone, though my mouth had gone dry.
“Not a word,” she said with what seemed to me grim satisfaction. “You’d think after all we did for him—”
“We only did what colonel Gamble would have wanted us to do,” I interrupted tartly. “I’ve no doubt Mr. Montgomery will send us a letter to of thanks.”
I hurried upstairs to see if he might have left a note, yet even before I searched his room and mine I felt in my heart there would be none. I was right.
He had lied to me. There had been no divorce. Lucile had said they (Mr. Billings and Ian) thought their wives might join them. All during those passionate moments when we were making love, when he’d said, “Darling, this is the beginning,’’ he had known his wife was on her way to Bismark. The part about the quarrel with his father, even Agnes’s letter, might have been true. But everything else was a lie. A lie! And I had believed him. Had he planned to tuck me away somewhere as his mistress? Or, having had his amusement, simply fade out of my life?
What galled me was the way I had succumbed to his blandishments, his soft words and lingering kisses, like any green, innocent maid. How long would it take before I learned my lesson? What a fool I was!
I was through with men. I wanted nothing more to do with them, certainly not as lovers or husbands. I would go back to Wildoak. Somehow, in some way, I would manage to keep Page in school. I could start a school of my own, board oldsters, work in a shop, anything. I didn’t need Ian—or Ward.
Chapter 13
Anger carried me over the worst of the pain and I kept it at white-hot heat. No letter came from Ian (I had expected none); however, I wrote to him:
“After reflection,” I said, “I realized my so-called love for you was nothing more than a natural response to male ardor. I am marrying Colonel Gamble as soon as he returns to Fort Lincoln. You will do me a great kindness if you refrain from intruding upon our privacy either in person or by message— Deirdre Falconer.”
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