Only Mine

by Lowell, Elizabeth

  Dear God, help her in her time of need.

  The silent, involuntary prayer that vibrated through Jessica was deeper and more powerful than her jealousy. She could take no pleasure in the agony that awaited Willow in childbed. Nor could she hate Willow any longer. Jessica could feel only a terrible empathy with the girl whose fate was to writhe and scream for mercy that never came, a wife’s endless cycle of male rutting and childbed’s torture; and over all, around all, consuming all was the black wind and the disbelieving shriek of the newly damned.

  The realization of what awaited Willow made the sound of her laughter and teasing voice almost too painful for Jessica to bear. She watched with helpless agony as Willow took Wolfe’s arm to steady herself across the uneven ground where small patches of snow and mud competed with the green resurgence of life.

  When Willow walked past Two-Spot, she looked up at Jessica with curiosity and a quick smile that offered friendship. Jessica smiled in return, but Wolfe didn’t stop or even look up.

  “Wolfe?” asked Willow, tugging on his arm.

  “Your present is next in line.”

  Grinning, Rafe kicked his right leg over his horse’s mane and slid to the ground. When he took off his hat, the sun blazed in his pale gold hair, hair that was the exact color of Willow’s.

  Willow stared, made a sound of joyous disbelief, then began laughing and crying and saying Rafe’s name over and over again. Rafe picked her up in a big hug and held her for a long time, saying things that were too soft for anyone but Willow to hear. Finally, he set her down and blotted the happy tears that were streaming down her face.

  “Well, Willy, I have to say you grew up to be quite a woman. From what Wolfe told me, you’ve got yourself a fine man.” Rafe paused, then added slyly, “Sure as hell he’s a potent one.”

  Willow flushed, laughed, and swatted her older brother on his broad chest. “Shame on you. You’re not supposed to notice.”

  “Be kind of like overlooking a mountain,” he retorted. “When are you going to make me an uncle?”

  “In a few weeks.” She smiled up at her older, much bigger brother. “Dear Lord, Rafe. It’s so good to see you! I can’t wait until Caleb and Matt get back from checking the north meadow.”

  “I can’t wait, period. I’ll ride out as soon as we’ve unloaded the pack animals.”

  Willow slipped her arm through Rafe’s and said, “I’m almost afraid to let you out of my sight. It’s been years.” She rubbed her cheek against his arm and took a deep breath. “Now, introduce me to your wife. She’s beautiful, but I expected that. You always had an eye for beauty, whether it was women, horses, dogs, or land.”

  “Red is beautiful, all right,” Rafe agreed, “but she’s Wolfe’s wife, not mine.”

  Open-mouthed, Willow spun and stared at Wolfe. Every question she had died unspoken when she saw his bleak, blue-black eyes.

  Swallowing quickly, Willow turned to the girl who sat in her sidesaddle so elegantly. She had a delicate, elfin face, aquamarine gems for eyes, and hair whose buried fire rippled and shimmered with every motion of her body. The riding habit she wore had seen hard use, but its fashionable lines and fine fabric spoke eloquently of wealth.

  Abruptly, Willow remembered. “Lady Jessica Charteris?”

  “Not any longer. My name is Jessica Lonetree. Or Jessi.”

  “Or Red?” Willow asked innocently.

  “Or Red,” Jessica agreed, smiling slightly at Rafe. “It’s the Western way to have nicknames, I’m told.”

  “Get down and come into the house. You must be exhausted. I remember my first trip over the Great Divide. If it hadn’t been for Caleb, I wouldn’t have made it. He ended up carrying me.”

  “We came the easy way,” Wolfe said. “Lady Jessica has neither your strength nor your adaptability.”

  Willow gave Wolfe an uncertain look, wondering at the edge to his voice.

  “I disagree,” she said quietly. “Anyone who came through those moutains riding sidesaddle is stronger than I am.”

  Wolfe grunted and said nothing.

  Jessica began dismounting, moving stiffly. Before she could put any weight on her right leg, Rafe caught her waist between his big hands and supported her until her left foot was able to take most of her weight.

  “I could have managed,” Jessica said in a low voice, “but thank you.”

  Only Willow saw the instant of anger before Wolfe brought it under control, just as she had been the only one to see the small, almost involuntary movement he had made toward Jessica when she began to dismount.

  “No point in pushing your luck,” Rafe said. “Your ankle still isn’t up to snuff.”

  “What happened?” Willow asked.

  “She fell off,” Wolfe said curtly.

  “It’s nothing,” Jessica said. “A bruise. Nothing at all.”

  “Nonsense,” Willow said, seeing the strain on Jessica’s face. “Come in and sit down. I’ll make you some tea.”

  “Tea?” Jessica looked stunned. “You actually have tea?”

  Willow laughed. “It’s left over from Wolfe’s last visit. He’s the only one who drinks it.”

  Jessica gave Wolfe a shocked look, remembering how many times she had longed for a comforting cup of tea.

  “But we had only coffee,” she said faintly.

  “Western wives drink coffee. You wanted to be a Western wife. Remember?”

  The cool taunt in Wolfe’s words was unmistakable. Rafe’s eyes narrowed as he winced and said something under his breath. But he said nothing aloud. He and Wolfe had reached a tacit agreement where Jessica was concerned: Jessica was Wolfe’s responsibility, not Rafe’s. Rafe didn’t understand what was driving Wolfe, but he was certain that Wolfe wasn’t a cruel man by nature.

  So was Willow. With a perplexed look at Wolfe, she took Jessica’s hand.

  “Come with me.”

  “First I have to care for my horse,” Jessica said.

  “Let Wolfe do it.”

  “Western wives take care of their own horses. They curry, saddle, bridle, clean the feet of, rub down, and otherwise—”

  “Go to the house,” Wolfe interrupted curtly. “I’ll see to your horse.”

  “Well, I should hope so,” Willow said tartly. “Jessi has ridden just as far as you have and she hasn’t a third your strength. Plus that ridiculous sidesaddle. I’d like to see how spritely you’d feel if you had to ride that way. Honestly, Wolfe, what’s gotten into you?”

  Jessica wondered at the dull red stain on Wolfe’s cheekbones as he turned away and led horses toward the barn, but Willow tugged at her hand, distracting her.

  “I’ve never been able to make a good cup of tea,” Willow confessed, leading Jessica firmly toward the porch. “You’ll have to show me how.”

  “A paragon who can’t make tea.” Jessica blinked. “Impossible. Breathtaking.” She smiled slightly and shook her head. “Actually quite wonderful.”

  “Who said I was a paragon?”

  “I did,” Jessica admitted. “With a lot of encouragement from Wolfe.”

  “Good Lord. Why?”

  “Because compared to me, you are.”

  Willow made a rude sound. “You’ve had a very long trip. It must have affected your mind. Not to mention Wolfe’s. I’ve never seen him so edgy.”

  “Perhaps a cup of tea would help,” Jessica suggested with an unconscious sigh.

  Willow muttered something that sounded like, “A swift kick in the pants might do more good.”

  “Paragons don’t think such things.”

  The hazel flash of Willow’s eyes was alive with wry laughter. “Perhaps. And perhaps paragons just aren’t caught thinking them.”

  The front door opened and closed, cutting off the sound of women’s voices. The men hadn’t been able to hear any real words for the last few minutes, but it hadn’t been difficult to guess what the topic of conversation was—Wolfe’s manners.

  Or lack thereof.

  After a few
moments of silence, Wolfe glanced up from the pack horse he was working on and let out a long breath. Hearing it, Rafe smiled.

  “Well, I can see that marriage hasn’t trimmed Willy’s tongue one bit,” Rafe said wryly as he undid the saddle cinch. “She can still tear a mean strip when she has a mind to. Only thing she does better is make biscuits.”

  Wolfe grunted.

  “Of course,” Rafe said, lifting the saddle one-handed from the horse’s back, “the fact that a man knows he has it coming tends to make it sting all the worse.”

  Wolfe spun around, ready to take exception to Rafe’s calm words, but the other man had already turned away. Saddle balanced on one shoulder, saddle bags and bedroll slung over the other, Rafe was walking through the barn door.

  Letting out another long breath, Wolfe made another stab at reining in his temper. The whole point of bringing Jessica to the ranch had been to show her how completely unsuited she was to be a Western wife. It hadn’t been to point out how hard Wolfe was being on her. He knew that already.

  Just as he knew his plan to make Jessica cry annulment was working. Slowly, surely, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, he was wearing down her certainty that she would win the contest of wills with Wolfe.

  I shall not tire of being your wife.

  Yes, you shall.

  With each breath Jessica took, they were coming closer to the moment when she would be forced to admit her defeat and free both of them from the cruel trap of a marriage that never should have been.

  Wolfe hoped Jessica would give in soon. Very soon. He didn’t know how much longer he could go on grinding a graceful elf into dust. He had never felt another person’s pain so clearly. It was worse than being hurt himself, for he had learned to control his own pain long ago, when he had realized that to many people his Indian mother put him beyond the pale of true humanity.

  The viscount’s savage.

  But there was no way to control the effects of the pain Wolfe was causing Jessica. There was only the knowledge that when the pain became great enough, she would quit the sham marriage between aristocrat and halfbreed bastard.

  Nothing of Wolfe’s grim thoughts showed on his face as he worked over the horses, or later when he went to the house and found Jessica asleep in the extra bedroom. In the daylight filtering through the muslin curtains, she looked almost ethereal. Asleep, the fierce will that burned so surprisingly beneath her fragile surface was banked, giving no hint of what lay beneath the delicate features and fine bones.

  Broodingly, Wolfe looked at the translucence of Jessica’s skin and the lavender shadows beneath her eyes. Seeing her like this, he could barely believe she had the strength to sit up, much less to defy him when men far stronger than she was would have given up the game long since.

  Unbidden, a memory surfaced in Wolfe…a cold day in spring and a creek in flood. Trapped amid the debris was a blue-eyed wolf cub whose back had been broken. The cub had snarled silently up at Wolfe, prepared to die fighting with teeth that had known nothing but a mother’s milk. Wolfe had allowed the cub’s needle fangs to sink all the way to the bone, for it had been the only way to get in close enough for a quick, clean kill, ending the cub’s suffering.

  With an effort, Wolfe banished the memory and the chill that had come in its wake. He wasn’t going to harm Jessica physically, much less kill her. The trap they were caught in was less tangled than flood debris. It would spring open at a single word from her pale lips.

  Annulment.

  Wolfe tore his attention away from Jessica and began looking for places to put the valises and fur blanket he had brought in. The far corner looked promising, but a second look showed that it was occupied by a cradle. Stacked nearby were other tiny pieces of furniture, waiting the for next generation of Blacks to be born.

  The thought of what it would be like to be awaiting the birth of his own child went through Wolfe like lightning, leaving only darkness in its wake. He set down the valises and turned to leave. His steps brought him past the bed. He stopped, held by something he could not name.

  Jessica stirred and shivered with the residue of winter that still gripped the house. Despite her chill, she didn’t awaken. Instead, she huddled around herself as though understanding even in sleep that she must hoard her own warmth, for there was no one to care for her.

  Jessi…damn it, what are you doing to us? Let go of me before I do something that we’ll both regret to our dying breath.

  The soft fur blanket settled as lightly as a sigh over Jessica. Wolfe drew the blanket up to her chin, stared at the beauty of her hair against the lustrous fur, and then left the room in three long, silent strides.

  *

  “WHY am I called Reno?” he asked, repeating Jessica’s question.

  “Oh dear,” Jessica said quickly, looking up from a plate of Willow’s delicious food. “Was it rude of me to ask? I’m still not certain of your customs.”

  Reno smiled. The flash of his teeth against his black mustache was vivid, but not as vivid as the green of his eyes framed by thick lashes a woman would have envied. Like Willow and Rafe, Reno’s eyes were slightly tilted, almost catlike in their impact. Unlike Willow, there was nothing the least bit feminine about Reno. He was as big and hard as Rafe.

  And life Rafe, Reno had been captivated by the delicate British elf whose ice-blue eyes and coolly accented English were at odds with the fire buried in her glorious hair.

  “Red, you couldn’t be rude if you tried.”

  As Reno spoke, he kept an eye on the huge basket of biscuits that was making the rounds of the dinner table. If he didn’t watch closely, Rafe would make off with more than his share.

  “A while back I was looking for gold over in the Sierra Nevadas,” Reno said absently. “I came across an old Frenchman who had had some bad luck with a gold claim he called Reno’s Revenge. Later, I found the men who had the Frenchman’s gold and explained how much the old man needed it for his granddaughter. They thought it over and gave the gold back. After that, people started calling me Reno.”

  Wolfe made an odd sound and put his napkin to his mouth. Nearby, Caleb choked quietly on a mouthful of venison. Jessica didn’t need to see the unholy laughter in Caleb’s amber eyes to realize she hadn’t heard the full story of how Matthew Moran had come to be called Reno.

  “Dammit, unhand those biscuits,” Reno complained.

  “I haven’t had thirds yet,” Rafe said.

  “Over my dead body.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Willow thumped her husband’s broad back and at the same time buried her face in her napkin, muffling her own laughter. After a moment, Caleb turned, captured Willow’s hand and brushed it against his lips. She lowered her napkin and curled her fingers through his as he returned his hand to his lap. Husband and wife resumed eating one-handed, for neither wanted to separate their closely linked fingers.

  “Pass those biscuits along, boys,” Caleb said dryly. “There’s more in the kitchen.”

  A curious sensation went through Jessica as she glanced from the corner of her eyes at the slender hand that was so carefully held in Caleb’s much more powerful grip. The longer Jessica watched Caleb and Willow, the more she realized that there was a genuine and quite baffling affection between husband and wife. Despite the fact that Willow was so heavy with the results of Caleb’s rutting that she could barely rise unaided from a chair, Willow watched her husband as though expecting the sun to rise in him at any moment. He watched her in the same way, his love very plain in his golden eyes.

  Yet at one time Caleb had cared so little for Willow that he had given free rein to his baser nature, knowing full well that the result would be her agony in childbed. Caleb didn’t have the excuse or requirement of duty forcing him to put his wife at risk in such a way. There was no need for Willow’s painful fate, for Caleb had neither titles nor wealth nor ancient bloodlines to pass on to another generation. Yet Willow was pregnant just the same. Even more baffling, she appeared quite
happy about her state.

  Frowning, Jessica tried to reconcile Willow’s dangerous pregnancy with Caleb’s obvious love for his wife. It was even more difficult to reconcile Willow’s obvious pleasure in a man who had so little regard for her welfare. Yet there, too, Jessica had no doubt of the reality of Willow’s emotions. She did not shrink from her husband’s touch. Rather, she sought it in subtle ways, crossing the room just to stand close to him when he laid the evening fire.

  “You sure that’s how you got your moniker?” Wolfe asked neutrally.

  “Close enough,” Reno said.

  “That’s not even close enough for horseshoes,” Wolfe retorted.

  As Wolfe spoke, he snatched a handful of biscuits before passing the basket on down the table. A week of watching the two brothers steal Willow’s biscuits had taught Wolfe to grab first and worry about manners later.

  “Way I heard it,” Wolfe continued, splitting a steaming biscuit, “was that old Frenchman found himself a glory hold and went to work cleaning it out. When he was finished, four men jumped him, left him for dead, and took off with the old man’s gold.”

  Jessica looked up, caught by the thread of amusement and something else that ran through Wolfe’s words. It took her a moment to identify the emotion. It was affection. The camaraderie between Wolfe and Reno was as real and, in its way, as deep as that between Reno and Rafe. The same emotion extended to Caleb. The mutual respect was striking, for it was based not on family or name or position, but on each man’s assessment of the others as men worthy of friendship.

  “You found that Frenchman, nursed him, then tracked the claim jumpers,” Wolfe continued. “You walked into the saloon, called them thieves and cowards and some other names not fit for the dinner table, and then you demanded they return the gold they had cleaned out of Reno’s Revenge. Instead, they went for their guns.”

  When Wolfe said no more, Jessica made an impatient sound and asked, “What happened?”

  Wolfe’s smile was as cool and clean as the edge of a knife. “Way I heard it, Reno waited until they got a grip on their guns and started pulling them out. Then he drew. The first two claim jumpers never even got their guns clear of their belts. The rest of them got their guns out, but never got off a shot.”