The creak of the floorboard in front of her door made her step back. She opened her mouth to send him away, when her gaze landed on the slip of paper sliding under the door.
She snatched it up and walked over by the window, where she unfolded it.
Like me the coffee’s waiting, chores are, too, the sun is shining, but all I see is blue, there is no one to share with, everything, Catherine, waits for you.
“It’s not the Song of Solomon, Catherine,” he said against the door. “I’m afraid that writing poetry is beyond my skill. You did read it? Catherine? Answer me. Did you read it!”
“Stop shouting. Even through the door I can hear you just fine. Yes, I read it. And I never said I admired Solomon’s song. This is—”
“Damn you! Open this door or I’ll break it down. I know you’re crying. Don’t cry, please, don’t.”
She twisted the key and yanked opened the door. “Do you know what your trouble is, Mayfield? You think every woman wants to fall at your feet.”
He saw the ravages of tears and nothing else. But he heard her. “I don’t want you to fall at my feet. Fall in bed, yes. But as for the rest of time, by my side is where I want you.”
“No, you don’t. Do you know why I’m crying?” She sniffed, but didn’t wipe her tears away. “I had the most miserable night you could imagine. On second thought, you couldn’t. You’re a man.”
“You know, Catherine, I’m getting very tired of your throwing my gender in my face every time you can’t think of telling me the truth. Try me. I had a sister. I’ve had—”
“Go on, say it. You’ve had women. Lots and lots of women. But I’ll bet you that not one ever thought she was having your baby.”
“Baby?” He had a blank look that was replaced by panic. His gaze fell to her stomach. His hand lifted from his side toward her, then fell back. “Are you—”
“No. I’m not. And yes, I’m sure.”
Knowledge dawned in his gaze. “Is that why you’re crying? Hell, sweetheart, if you want a baby, I’m your man.”
“You want children?”
“With you, lots of them. All little girls with bright blue eyes and sunshine hair.”
She swayed toward him and planted a kiss on his chin. “Thank you. But not yet. I still have a bet to win.” She stepped back before he could take her into his arms and closed the door.
He stared in disbelief as he heard the lock click.
“Woman, if you don’t marry me soon, my sister won’t send me away to cure my health. It’s my mind that she’ll be worried about.”
“Greg,” she crooned against the door, “you woo me with an ardor that simply takes my breath away. I don’t know another woman who hears such lovely, loverlike sweet nothings whispered to her. My heart is beating so fast, I feel faint.”
He shoved his hands into his pant pockets and rocked back on his heels. She didn’t sound as if she were still crying. Truth was, unless the door distorted her voice that badly, she sounded amused. Joyful, more like his Catherine. That woman and her mercurial moods!
“So you like sweet nothings whispered in your ear?”
“Love hearing every word.”
“I’ll promise to say nothing else but loverlike utterances for the rest of our lives if you’ll forget this bet and marry me.”
“You will?”
He grinned. She’d be opening the door and flying into his arms. She’d be kissing him and hugging him and likely drag him off to bed to celebrate. He rocked. He waited. He listened to the growing silence.
“Catherine?” He put all the aggrieved male frustration he could into her name. It gained him nothing. He could hear her moving about in the room. He barely kept a lid on his temper. “Aren’t you going to answer me?”
“What did you want to know again?”
He growled and heard an echo. A quick look showed him Lord Romeo sitting at the top of the steps. The cat stared at him with that intense curiosity peculiar to him.
“The morning wasn’t bad enough. It only wanted you to show up.”
“What’s that you’re mumbling, Mayfield?”
“I wasn’t talking to you. I said that to the cat. I want an answer. If I promise—”
“Oh, yes. You promise sweet nothings. I marry you. I forget the bet. You know, Mayfield, your mind might be showing early signs of dementia. I add that up and come out with two minuses for me and only one for you. Equality, remember?”
He was suffering from dementia? She dared say that! If anyone’s moods indicated mental illness… Greg froze. The whole conversation replayed in his mind. Crying. Baby. No baby. More crying. Teasing. Calling him Mayfield. He hit his temple with the heel of his hand. And he had bragged that between his sister and the women he’d known, there was little she could keep secret.
Whistling, he walked away.
She heard him go and was tempted to open the door. Had she driven him off with this latest refusal? But if she gave in now…no, she wasn’t even going to think about doing that.
She finished dressing, made her bed and generally delayed as long as she could.
When Catherine opened her door, it was to find a few boxes from Nita’s dress shop stacked there. Perched on top, like the decoration on a towering cake, was her best teacup. A sip of the still-warm liquid told her it was chamomile. How could he have known?
The man was weakening her resolve with his kindness. All without embarrassing her. She wanted to fight off the memory of the first time she had told Louis. It was painful to remember his disgusted reaction. He hadn’t wanted to know. She developed a week-long series of headaches, and to provide her with comfort, he slept in one of the guest rooms. No one, from his father to the multitude of servants they employed, thought anything wrong with the arrangement.
She had a feeing that Greg wouldn’t be like that. He’d comfort and cuddle and spoil her. He wouldn’t shun her. No wonder he walked away whistling. He had it all figured out. She did, too. All that stood in her way was pride. Still in a thoughtful mood, she went down to the kitchen. She could hear Greg hammering with his usual audience, judging from the horses hitched to the corral fence. She could no longer see him or his henhouse. The tent canvas had been nailed to poles to prevent each other from seeing the almost completed work.
Mary had opened the door to a stranger and his child in need and found love. Had she done the very same thing?
Chapter Twenty-Two
From the kitchen window, Catherine watched with dismay as additional poles and canvas were erected on Greg’s side of the barn.
What was he building? A two-story addition to the barn?
She couldn’t ask. After their last squabble over their respective projects, they had agreed not to talk about them to maintain some peace.
But she worried about him. He worked up on ladders most of the time.
And she had other, more pressing problems to think about. They were building chicken coops, but the hens were off their feed and the egg count was down.
And Miss Lily was missing.
The first problem was easily solved. She had to get rid of all the company they had had these past few weeks. People constantly milling about, walking in and out of the barn, disturbed her flock. She had tried to put a stop to it and ended up with a group of irate males. Almost every man had bet money that Greg would win. They came out at all hours to check his progress. They no longer offered well-meaning advice. A few had come to blows over the right and wrong way to build a henhouse.
Greg, true to his contrary and most honest nature, had his own vision in mind.
Catherine’s hand faltered on the pot she was scrubbing.
He would never forgive her for what she had done.
She simply had to know, and last night, after making sure he was asleep, she had gone outside to sneak a peek at what he had built.
It truly was a brief look. But she was certain that in all the history of mankind, no chickens had ever been housed in so grand a creation. If the man added on
e more embellishment, the structure would collapse.
There was no doubt in her mind that she would win the bet.
It was what she had worked hard toward, what she really wanted.
Wasn’t it?
Nita, bless her interfering soul, had told her repeatedly it was not. What did she know?
What Catherine knew was that Nita had become an unsuspected problem. She also had her own suspicions that Nita was behind the sabotage that had slowed her progress. The woman meant well. Catherine believed her when she claimed that she only wanted her happiness.
But singing Greg’s praises within his presence was calculated to get her back up.
Catherine shrugged. She couldn’t explain the contradicting feelings to herself. She finished washing the lunch dishes.
When the last plate had been dried and put away in the cupboard, she went outside and reminded everyone that Caroline’s engagement party started at seven. There was an argument in progress, but she retreated into the house.
She could be thankful that Caroline, too busy with plans, hadn’t joined forces with Nita. The brief times she had seen her friend, she had marveled at the changes in her. Peter had proposed to her after the box lunch social. He didn’t want a short courting period and quiet wedding. Caroline, so in love with him, willingly put aside her wishes for his.
Catherine knew she had more backbone than that.
Later, staring into her mirror, she wondered where her backbone had gone. She gave in without a squeak of protest and wore one of Greg’s gifts.
His impeccable taste and Nita’s talented hands made her appear a new woman. She felt new from the skin out, for all the underpinnings had accompanied the gown.
She ran her hand over the bronze grosgrain silk panel below the pointed bodice. The side panels were trimmed with six bands of bronze gimp. Beading edged the cuffs and the oval neckline. It was elegant, and in the very height of fashion with its satin ribbon bow perched on the bustle.
She pinned a smaller bronze satin bow with a few French rosebuds attached to her upswept hair. A shawl of black silk Spanish guipure lace rested on her almost bare shoulders.
“Backbone, Catherine?” she asked her reflection, and then answered, “Sometimes a woman makes small sacrifices.”
She lifted her hem, smiling at the kid slippers. Greg had provided them, too. She opened her bedroom door just as he opened his.
Greg lost his breath somewhere for a few seconds. Had he been out of his mind in truth? What had possessed him to ask her to wear that particular gown tonight? That damn neckline dipped low enough to reveal the soft rise of her breasts! He wasn’t going to be the only man to notice, either! His heart beat fast, and heat filled him as he drew in one ragged breath after the other.
Catherine was frozen in place on the threshold of her bedroom. She had to moisten her lips before she could ask him what was wrong.
“You look positively green, Greg.”
“Green?” Wasn’t that the color of jealousy? Jealous? He didn’t have a jealous bone in his body. He’d never objected to another man’s admiration of his latest lady love. But this was Catherine, for the love of all saints! His Catherine! He was overcome with the force of a possessive male need to wrap her in a blanket and lock her in her room.
Preferably with him.
“Greg, please, don’t torment me. Didn’t I button and tie everything in its place? Is the color all wrong? The hem sagging? What is wrong? Are you having second thoughts? Don’t you want to be seen with me?”
“Not seen, there’s a thought, but no…” He shook his head. “I love the way you look. A spun-sugar creation to tempt the most jaded appetite. Just like something my French chef would create to entice my dinner guests into bursts of rapture. Beautiful. Lovely. Did I buy that flimsy excuse for a shawl? Don’t you have something warmer? Heavier?”
Catherine’s fear that he had lost his mind gave way to confusion, and then slow dawning of what was truly wrong. A cat-licking-the-cream smile creased her lips.
“There is an old horse-blanket jacket hanging on the back door. Is that more what you had in mind? Or I could,” she couldn’t resist adding, for his eyes had this strange unfocused glazing, “snatch the quilt from my bed. That would cover me from neck to feet.”
“Yes.”
The word came from between gritted teeth with a choked, growling sound.
“Having a fit, are we?” She had no mercy in her eyes, less in her voice.
“Tell me, sweet Catherine, do you bother to use a knife when you dine, or is your tongue sharp enough without?”
She stepped across the hall and took hold of his arm. “Poor love. That would depend on what’s being served.”
“Meaning?”
“Food or you.” She turned and offered an arched, innocent look and was thoroughly kissed for her sass.
She tasted that kiss for most of the evening. The fiddlers were in fine form, helped no doubt by a few trips out the back door of Caroline’s house, where a jug was stashed in nearly every wagon.
Most of the parlor furniture had been cleared from the room, and couples crowded the floor to dance.
Caroline had never looked lovelier. She simply glowed every time she held out her hand to show off the emerald-and-diamond ring that Peter had given her. It had been his mother’s, and Caroline had shown her where she had wrapped string around the band to make it fit her smaller finger.
Catherine thought her glow was catching. Each time she was apart from Greg, her gaze sought him out and found that he was looking at her.
There was a great deal of laughter, especially when toasts were made to the engaged couple.
“Peter, you remember that the best way to get married is with ignorance and confidence,” Marcus Jobe said.
“Never mind,” Ollie said. “You treat her well. Take good care of that gal. I’m a mite fond of her pies.”
Caroline’s cheeks flamed hot when Ollie finished. She opened her mouth to answer him, but Nita beat her.
“Ollie, ain’t you heard that if women are foolish, it’s ’cause the good Lord made them a match for a man?”
There was a great deal of laughter and clapping from the women.
And so it went around the room, with most people offering good wishes for their happiness. It was Greg’s turn next, and he tried to do the same, but a few men wanted more from him.
“Tell us what those eastern dudes say,” someone called out to him.
“About the same advice.”
But no one was satisfied with his evasive answer.
“All right. All right, be quiet. Peter, Caroline,” Greg said, lifting his punch glass. “Try not to make his ring around your finger feel like a rope around his neck, Caroline, for we all know that a man is incomplete until he falls in love, and then he’s simply finished.”
Hoots and catcalls followed, while he offered more sincere and appropriate felicitations to the happy couple. Shouts for Catherine to make a toast brought quiet to the room.
Some enterprising soul shouted for her to go Greg one better. She doubted she could, but a wink from Caroline told her she had better try.
“Peter, if Caroline can’t make you miserable, she can’t make you happy. Caroline, if you can’t tease him, he isn’t in love with you, for a day without a laugh shared makes for a sorry marriage.”
“Got you there, boy,” Ollie said, slapping Greg’s back. “Go get her, son. We’re all countin’ on you.”
Greg’s gaze found Catherine’s. He lifted his near empty glass. “You know you’re in love when there are only two places in the world…where she is and where she isn’t.”
He earned boos from his male cohorts, but sighs from the women. Catherine, being urged to respond, felt as if she were in the middle of town without a stitch on as all eyes focused on her.
She couldn’t respond in kind. The message she saw in his eyes was too intimate, too private to be shared.
In the end, her sense of humor rescued her.
“As every married woman knows, there are two very important things a man must do to keep his wife happy. First, he must let her think she’s getting her way. And second—” she paused and smiled “—he’s got to let her have it.”
“Gotcha, boy.” Nita hooted. “You best remember that when a woman’s had her say, you’d be plum loco to start it up again.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Greg drained his glass, set it down and came to fetch Catherine for the next dance, a waltz.
“Have I told you how beautiful you are, Catherine?”
“Tonight?”
“I don’t think I’ve said it enough times. I don’t believe I’ll ever tire of telling you that.” His hand tightened its hold on hers. “When can we safely leave? I want very much to make love to you.”
She gazed into his eyes, already dark with need, and felt an immediate response echo within her. “Soon. But first they expect us to announce when the grand unveiling will be.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes, that’s fine.” She was floating in his arms, but drowning in the hot, silent promise of his eyes.
“Late afternoon, Catherine?”
“Very late.”
He swirled her to the space where the laden tables were. “That’s good that we agree. I love a biddable woman.”
“As much as I love a biddable man.”
His lips grazed her bare shoulder as the last note of music died away. “I always wondered if satin had a taste all its own. Now I know.” He raised her hand to his lips, but turned it over so his lips kissed her wrist. He lingered just long enough to know her pulse raced as madly as his own.
They waited until the fiddlers retired for their liquid refreshments before they made the announcement. It was almost an hour before Greg made good their escape.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Catherine Page 22
