Jack let her eat in peace for a few minutes. When he spoke again, it didn’t sound as though he were gloating. “Pete didn’t mean to upset you, Miss Honeycutt. He and Antelope are forever pulling tricks. He was just teasing you a little bit.”
Phoebe shot him a glare.
“I know it wasn’t nice of them, ma’am, but you see, they get sick of people always expecting the worst from them merely because they’re Indians.”
The explanation surprised her. Phoebe watched him suspiciously out of the corner of her eye.
“You said you were frightened of them, Miss Honeycutt. Pete said you looked white as a ghost.”
“Well, of course we were frightened. Who wouldn’t be? They sneaked up behind us like a couple of thieves in the night and didn’t say a single word. What did they expect of me? That I’d welcome a couple of strangers with open arms? For all I knew they could have been Indian versions of that dreadful Yves Basteau.”
Jack sighed. He could almost feel her frustration. It rode the air between them, silent and bitter. He didn’t know what to say.
After thinking about it for a long time, he finally decided on, “You and Pete have a lot in common, Miss Honeycutt.”
“What?”
Her indignation made him grin. Usually when she reacted to him with indignation, it irritated him. For some reason he didn’t mind this evening.
“You’re both the proud remnants of a ruined society, and neither one of you will admit it or bow to the inevitable changes that have to be made to accommodate the new order that’s taking over.”
Silence stretched out between them so thick Jack entertained the fanciful notion he could slice it and serve it up with supper. He could sense Phoebe quivering resentfully next to him and had the feeling she was either going to burst into tears of hurt or shrieks of rage any second now.
At last she did neither, but began to speak in a tight, controlled voice that sounded like it hurt as it squeezed out between her lips.
“And what new order is that, Mr. Valentine? The order of Chaos? Of destruction? Of hate and ugliness? Is it the order of the vile Carpetbaggers who’ve swarmed over everything I ever loved in my life, torn it apart, smashed it to pieces, and are now feeding on the remains?
“Is it the order that renders manners irrelevant and medical services impossible to secure so that those poor children’s parents had to die of diseases we’d never even heard of before your precious army ripped our land to shreds?
“Is it the order that took my brothers? My father? My mother? My sisters? My—”
She had to stop. The breath she sucked in was ragged and visibly shuddered through her, causing her slim shoulders to shake.
“I’m sorry, Miss Honeycutt.”
“You’re sorry?” Her irony wounded, and Jack winced in spite of himself.
“I can remember a time when there was peace in my life. And manners and rules and—and beauty. It’s all gone now; replaced by—by confusion and misery and ugliness. If that’s your new order, I’d just as soon ignore it.”
Phoebe apparently didn’t trust herself to elaborate because she turned away sharply. Jack saw her arm lift. He suspected she was having to blot away recalcitrant tears. Oh, Lord, dealing with women was a tricky business.
He was about to draw breath and try to console her when she surprised him by speaking again. She didn’t look at him when she said, “I guess you’re right about the Indians and me, though, Mr. Valentine. We’re the tag-ends of a species nobody needs anymore. We’re unnecessary bits of debris who don’t belong anywhere.
“The children aren’t like we are. It’s only those of us who are old enough to miss what we lost who are wasted. Wasted and useless. And ridiculous in our uselessness.”
She started to eat again and Jack didn’t say anything because he thought she needed her nourishment. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, eating his own supper, until she was finished.
Then he asked, “How old are you, Miss Honeycutt?”
She shot him another glare. “That’s a question I’m surprised even a rude Yankee would ask, Mr. Valentine. Shows what I know about your new order. If you must know, I’m twenty-five years old.”
“You’re young still, Miss Honeycutt.” She looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. Some imp of truth nudged him to add, “You’re young and beautiful. You’ll get married one day and have children and the past will fade. You’ll see.”
A moment of intense silence followed his declaration. Phoebe stared at him as though he’d just admitted to manslaughter. At last she said, “Mr. Valentine, you might find it amusing to make fun of people, but I don’t find it amusing at all. Why, I’ll bet when you were a child, you used to pull the wings off flies!”
Then, quick as a wink, she scrambled off the boulder and darted toward a small grove of trees, leaving her tin plate of gnawed bones rattling in her wake.
“What the hell . . .?”
Jack stared after her, thunderstruck. She thought he was making fun of her? Good God.
Although Jack knew as well as he knew his own name that she wanted to be alone, he followed her. He was going to clear this up if he had to follow her to China.
“God damn it, Miss Honeycutt, I meant what I said! I wasn’t making fun of you!”
“Ha!”
He caught up with her and yanked her around to face him. “Ever since I found you and your family, I’ve been trying to help you, and all you’ve done is fight me. I meant what I said back there, damn it. I’m not a liar, and I’ll thank you not to call me one!”
She said, “Ha!” again. Looking at her sharply, Jack saw the pain in her eyes, and his heart lurched. Oh, Lord. She was the one who believed herself to be a useless old maid, stripped of her life’s purpose because the old ways were gone. No wonder she thought he’d been making fun of her.
Softly, he said, “Damn it, Miss Honeycutt . . .”
“Don’t you dare swear at me, Jack Valentine!”
“Aw, hell.”
Jack pulled her to his chest and held her tight. He knew he was a sucker; he couldn’t help it. There was just something about her.
“Unhand me, Mr. Valentine,” Phoebe demanded with a fair show of huffiness.
“No. Damn it, you’re going to listen to me. You’ve had a hard time of it, and I’m trying to make it a little easier. I’m sorry Pete and Antelope scared you. I wasn’t making fun of you. Just relax a minute, will you? Just take a minute and relax for once.”
He felt her shoulders give a couple of good shudders, and guessed she was trying not to cry. She didn’t say anything.
The grove where they stood was shady with cottonwoods and willows growing in a clump beside the river. It was cool and dark here in the late afternoon, and it felt good to hold her. She felt like a wisp of smoke in his arms, and Jack had a gut-wrenching feeling she would be about as easy to destroy.
He liked having her pressed against him this way. Now that he’d flung her corset away, there was nothing to disguise her womanly charms, and they were manifold. As if compelled, he rested his bristly cheek against her pretty hair and wished he could first make beautiful love to her and then take all of her sorrows away and restore everything that had been ripped away from her. Lord, what a damn-fool jackass he was.
“Will you please unhand me now, Mr. Valentine?”
“Not until you admit I wasn’t lying to you back there.”
He allowed her to draw away from him a fraction. When he looked down, he found her scowling at him, and he didn’t let her go.
“Admit it, Miss Honeycutt. I told you the truth. I think you’re a beautiful young woman.”
Her lips pinched up like raisins, and Jack felt like shaking her. “Why the hell is it so hard for you to take a compliment, damn it?”
“Stop swearing at me! All right, I believe you!”
It was the hope on top of her bravado that did Jack in. He knew he was a villain when he dipped his head and captured her lips with his, but
he was too far gone to care. She struggled for only a second before she sagged against him and began to return his kiss.
Jack tasted her ever so lightly with his tongue. She tasted like heaven and he groaned. Lord on high, he wanted this woman. He was as hot and as hard as a pistol barrel in an instant, and he realized he’d just made one of the biggest mistakes in his life.
Great God in heaven, what was wrong with him? Black Jack Valentine, scourge of the south, defender of the Union, right-hand man to Little Phil Sheridan himself, felt as though his heart had just been pierced by one of Cupid’s arrows, dead center.
When Phoebe realized what she was doing, she wished a bolt of lightning would strike her dead right now and get it over with. A Honeycutt kissing a Yankee devil! And enjoying it! Her mother and father must be turning in their graves. She was a disgrace to her name.
She pushed herself away from him and tried to turn and run, but he wouldn’t let her. She could feel her cheeks heat up when she turned to face him, her back straight, the determination not to humiliate herself any further today making her chin lift defiantly.
“Don’t run away from me, Miss Honeycutt. Please.”
Daring to stare him straight in the eye, Phoebe spat, “Please unhand me, Mr. Valentine.”
“Only if you promise not to run away. We need to talk.” His voice sounded like roughened velvet and he was breathing heavily.
Since she couldn’t run, she glared. “About what?”
“About what Pete Spotted Pony and Antelope told me.”
Phoebe looked pointedly at his fingers still digging into her arm.
“Will you stay here and listen to me?”
She nodded grimly.
He drew in a ragged breath. Phoebe was surprised he wasn’t looking at her in triumph. She had always been told that gentlemen—or, rather, men who were not gentlemen—gloated when they’d had their way with an unsuspecting female. How odd. In truth, Jack looked rather shaken and confused, which is exactly how she felt.
When he released her arm, Phoebe felt as though her lifeline had just been cut. It took every ounce of her energy to maintain her posture of defiance.
“Pete and Antelope said they got word that Yves Basteau is on the prowl and looking for some lady and her two children. It must be you. I guess you made him mad when you knocked him over the head with that frying pan.” Jack looked as though he were trying for a smile, but it only skimmed his face and then sat on his mouth a little lopsided.
A shiver scraped Phoebe’s backbone at the thought of Yves Basteau.
“He tried to rape you, didn’t he, Miss Honeycutt?”
Phoebe tried to slap Jack’s face, but he caught her wrist easily, and she was embarrassed. Why did this awful man insist on airing all her soiled linen, stripping away all her protective masks?
Taking a deep breath, she said, “I do not choose to discuss the incident with you, Mr. Valentine.”
He exhaled rather loudly, giving Phoebe to understand her refusal irritated him. Well, that was just too bad. If the only things she had to call her own were silence and pride, then Phoebe planned to cherish them.
“Miss Honeycutt, I’m not trying to pry. I just want to know why Basteau’s after you. Do you owe him money?”
“What?” In spite of her resolve to say nothing, Phoebe cried, “I should say not! He has nearly every penny I left Georgia with!” She clamped her teeth together, annoyed with herself for allowing her temper to govern her good sense.
“He took your money? More than you agreed to pay him?”
Phoebe found herself nodding. Jack’s voice was sweet as spun sugar, and he was looking at her with those dratted eyes of his. They didn’t seem wicked at the moment, only filled up with softness and caring. She knew better than to believe them, but she couldn’t contain her blasted nod.
“Then he’s not mad about the money. I expect he’s mad because you got the better of him when you foiled his attempt to rape you.”
Phoebe set her teeth. She absolutely would not respond; the truth was too humiliating. She remembered all too well Basteau’s drunken voice taunting her: “Come on, sweet thing. You’re too old an’ cold for anybody else anyway. Call it you givin’ me a bonus. Nobody else’ll ever want you. Come on, sweet thing.” A tremor of left-over revulsion made gooseflesh rise on her arms and she smoothed them with her bandaged hands.
She almost fainted when Jack’s big, warm hands took over and rubbed her arms for her. His hands felt nearly as scratchy as her bandages, but her bandages didn’t make her insides melt and bubble or make her want to climb into his arms and purr. Oh Lord.
“You’ve seen a lot of trouble in your life, Miss Honeycutt, and I’m sorry.”
The sympathy in his voice made alarm bells go off in Phoebe’s brain. She couldn’t afford to trust this man—any man. “You needn’t waste your regrets on me, Mr. Valentine. I don’t need you patronizing me.”
With a sigh, Jack said, “I’m not patronizing you, Miss Honeycutt. I’m genuinely grieved that a young lady has had to brave the tragedies you’ve experienced.”
“That’s neither here nor there.”
Jack shook his head. She just wasn’t going to let him in. “Well, whatever the reason may be, Basteau’s after you, and he’s the meanest son of a buck in the borderlands. Pete and Antelope were trying to find you and offer you their protection. They’ll ride along with us now, at least until we get Basteau taken care of.”
“They were trying to find me?”
“They’re good men, Miss Honeycutt, even if they are a trifle playful.”
Phoebe gulped and said, “I-I don’t know what I’ll pay them with, Mr. Valentine.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“A Honeycutt pays for services rendered.”
“Miss Honeycutt, Pete and Antelope weren’t going to offer you protection just for the hell of it. They’re nice fellows, but they aren’t especially benevolent. They wanted to collect the bounty on Basteau and figured riding with you was the quickest and surest way to accomplish that, since he’s apparently hunting you.”
“There’s a bounty on him?” Phoebe hated the way her voice trembled.
“A big one.”
“Oh, my. I-I didn’t know that or I’d never have hired him.”
Jack tried to summon up an ounce or two of condescension, but couldn’t do it. He’d become too tangled in her alluring web to despise her for not having recognized Basteau as a bad man. “Of course you wouldn’t have.”
Then he turned to leave before he could make a fool of himself and kiss her again. He needed to get back to camp where it would easier for him to maintain his distance. He decided he’d try very hard not to get himself off alone with her again.
As he strode toward the voices by the fire, he shook himself like a big, shaggy bear. Then he tried with every ounce of his fortitude to dislodge the damned cherub’s dart which appeared to be stuck in his chest.
Chapter Seven
The children seemed to take to Pete and Antelope right off. At the moment they were being entertained by Pete’s tall tales of life on the Texas plains. Antelope did the occasional magic trick, thereby assuring their giggling, adoring attention.
“I hate to break up the party,” Jack told them dryly. “But Bill and Sarah need to wash up the supper dishes before it gets too dark to see.”
The obedient William stood at once to do Jack’s bidding. Sarah gave him a little pout. “Aunt Phoebe, do I got to wash supper dishes?”
“Do as Mr. Valentine says, Sarah.”
As Sarah scrambled up to help her brother, her pout still in place, Jack turned to observe Phoebe walking into the camp. Her face was impassive as a mask.
“Good kids,” Pete observed.
“Yes. They are,” Jack answered absently.
He was concerned about Phoebe’s emotional state. When they’d first met she’d been annoyingly prim and proper, her notions of decorum and behavior completely at odds with what he perceived to b
e the reality of her situation. She’d carped and fussed and driven him batty with her silly standards and decrees. That was before he knew anything about her.
He still didn’t know much, but he knew at least enough to recognize this grim faced silence as uncharacteristic. She seemed to have lost her spark, and that worried him. She wasn’t even defiant; didn’t respond by so much as a nod—or even a scowl—to the greeting offered by Pete and Antelope. He wished he knew how to snap her out of her despondent mood.
Jack was afraid to touch her again, reluctant to set off the fire such an action would surely provoke, but he knew he had to. “I’d better tend to your bandages, Miss Honeycutt.” He was hoping for furious resistance—or even a haughty sniff.
“Fine,” was all he got.
Phoebe sat on a rock near the fire and held her hands out in front of her. She looked like the designee at a human sacrifice. Compassion and irritation waged a little battle in Jack’s breast. He allowed irritation to win as being the more prudent emotion.
“For God’s sake, Miss Honeycutt, I’m trying to help you. Those hands of yours are a mess.”
“I’m sure you know best, Mr. Valentine.”
“Let’s have a look.” Pete got up to stroll over to them.
Jack saw a flicker of something pass over Phoebe’s face before her stolid mask fell into place once more.
“They’re a sight, all right. Gonna leave scars,” Pete murmured.
Jack glanced quickly at Phoebe and was surprised when she remained impassive, as if the prophesy of scars on a gentle maiden’s hands weren’t a dreadful one.
“Got me somethin’ in my bags that might help. Some ground-up plants. Supposed to be good for blisters and such.”
“Thanks, Pete.” As Jack peered at Phoebe’s hands, he murmured, “Sometimes those Indian cures work quite well, Miss Honeycutt. I think you’d be well advised to use it.”
“You’re in charge, Mr. Valentine. Do what you will.”
“They’re your hands, Miss Honeycutt,” he reminded her sharply.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Jack wanted to shake her.
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