Regan [The Sisters O'Ryan 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Jenna Stewart

  “We planned to raise cattle as well as farm. My husband’s cousin bought the land originally, but his wife didn’t care for the West and they didn’t stay for even a season. He coaxed Davey into buying the land with the house and barn and anything else they couldn’t get home, at what seemed a good price. Davey was so excited to strike out for Oregon.” She stopped, thinking guiltily that she lived to fulfill her husband’s dream while he lay in a Wyoming grave. “When you grow up in the city as Davey and I both did, it’s hard to appreciate how much land this is. Now I’m not sure what to do with all of it.”

  “That’s what we’re here to help with,” Hay said, then went back to eating, humming his pleasure with the food.

  Seth stayed quiet, but that was all right. Regan found more comfort eating in silence with Seth Pratt and Hay Lawrence than she had the last few months of living with her husband. How much of that she should assume blame for she didn’t know. And right now, she couldn’t care. She had enough on her plate trying to make a success of the farm and worrying about the dwindling funds in the Cold Springs Savings Bank. Guilt had to wait its turn.

  * * * *

  If Regan knew he watched as she bathed she’d be furious, and rightfully so. Still Seth couldn’t feel guilty. He’d been with beautiful women before, but his arousal never raged through him as it had this morning. Even now, seeing her form on horseback, her butt clothed in riding trousers gently swaying with the horse’s movement, his cock throbbed.

  Regan rode ahead of him next to Hay, the thorn in Seth’s rosy fantasy.

  Using his usual cheerful charm, Hay had Regan laughing before they even left the cabin to explore her property. Seth wished he had the kind of personality that could bring a smile to a woman’s lips with a few clever words. Women liked him, but no one brought out the best in a female—from saloon girl to fancied duchess—like Haywood Lawrence.

  Seth also wished himself more educated and smooth. Until Regan, he had never compared himself to Hay much. He was who he was, and he felt it never did a man much good to wish for more. But when watched her with Hay, when he saw just how wide the gulf spread between him and Regan, he felt the deficit sorely. Riding out from the barn, they discussed a play called The Princess that Regan had seen two years ago in London when she made the European tour with her mother and three sisters.

  Her family must be rich if she could afford to travel to London, England! Until the war, Seth had never been anywhere except Texas and Kansas and the trail between. His narrow scope of life made him suited for a common girl, not someone of Regan’s class.

  Hay said he enjoyed Gilbert’s work and teased Regan about Princess Ida and thinking women were superior to men. Now just who the fucking hell is Princess Ida? Regan must have known because she laughed back and said women were at the very least equal to men, if not superior. That led to discussion of a political article in the Atlantic Monthly and then to a common acquaintance, one of Hay’s fellow classmates at the military academy at West Point who hailed from Regan’s neighborhood in Asheville.

  How could Seth compete for Regan’s attention with Hay around, even assuming he had a snowball in Hell’s chance, which he didn’t?

  Having already seen the land between the barn and the strip of woods that marked the eastern border of her farm, they rode now along the bottomland. Seth reaffirmed his initial impression that the farm held promise, the land rich and fertile from the Umatilla’s early flooding. This could be a proper place with the right care and attention. Cattle would do well on the hilly pasture land, and crops would flourish down here.

  Up the trail they rode, Seth following the other two at a respectable distance while they chatted. A man of few words normally, he might have some extra things to say to Hay tonight in the bunkhouse. Like how he could do worse than settling down with a lady as fine as Regan. A blind man could see that they suited each other. Both had culture, education, and money. Help could always be hired to do the farmwork.

  It wouldn’t be Seth doing the work, though. No, he would be on his way as soon as he did his job, which was to find water for a well. No way could he stay around to watch Hay captivate Regan like a stallion with a ripe mare.

  They passed the path leading to the house. “Hold up, Koda,” Seth said in a low voice. He sat still, watching a passing bee, then two.

  Hay pulled up, too, and turned in the saddle. “What do you see?”

  “Maybe nothin’.” Seth pulled the reins to the left, and Koda edged into the bushes and then into a strip of woods. The land took a sharp upturn, then leveled out, then veered up again. The incline caused him to swing his leg over and lead Koda rather than ride, but he soon found what he suspected. On a narrow ledge of ground nearly hidden by vegetation, bees entered and exited a hole. “This might just be it,” he told Hay, who walked close behind. Seth tied Koda to the branch of a nearby tree.

  “Looks like a bush to me,” Hay replied.

  “There’s a hole under the bush.” Seth pulled back a branch, exposing a tiny indentation in the earth with a dimpled opening.

  “Okay, looks like a bush with a hole. I don't know how the hell you knew that, but so what?”

  “Yes, Seth,” Regan said in a hushed tone. “What does that mean?”

  He turned to look at her. She and Hay had left their horses below. Waves of auburn hair, which had been neatly held under a wide-brimmed hat, now fell loose over her shoulders. Burrs covered her hat, and a leaf hung on the ribbon no longer neatly tied in a bow at the back. Her cheeks flushed a lovely pink, and her hazel eyes shone with excitement. Seth couldn’t miss the rise and fall of her breasts resulting from the strenuous climb. He reined in the desire to touch her hair, to skim his knuckles across her cheek, and forced his gaze back to the tiny entry hole beneath the bush.

  “It means water, if I’m right.”

  “Water?” Regan examined their position. “But we’re just above the house. So close. Is this really possible?”

  “If Seth says there’s water, then there’s water,” Hay said. “Didn’t I tell you he had a way about him?”

  “You did indeed.” She turned to Seth with a brilliant smile then threw her arms around his neck in a tight hug.

  For a few seconds, her body melted against his. The hug came so unexpectedly, he couldn’t think and held on to the bush he’d pulled back to show Hay the water hole instead of taking advantage of wrapping his right arm snugly around her waist. Fool!

  Damn, she felt good, her heat infusing his clothing and then his skin. Her hair brushed his neck. The scent of her shampoo and soap filled his nostrils. His cock rose then. Embarrassed, he stepped back.

  “I’m sorry, Seth,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to…I’m just excited.”

  “How do you know it’s water?” Hay asked, crouching to study the ground more closely. A bee exited the hole and flitted around his head.

  Seth cleared his throat and willed his body back under control. “Bees. They find food, their hive, and water. This isn’t their hive, so it must be—”

  “Water,” Hay finished.

  “Fascinating,” Regan murmured.

  Hay stood, brushing his fine black wool jacket of burrs and dust. “I don’t know where you learned all the things you know, but you should write a book. What’s our next step?”

  Seth dropped the branch and crossed his arms, his right hand holding the elbow of his left arm. That way, he’d learned, hiding his stub, he appeared almost whole and normal.

  “You and I dig first to make sure I’m right.”

  “I believe in you. You are right, Seth, I feel it.” Regan smiled at him again, this time with more decorum.

  He nodded in her direction and tried to ignore the swell of pride he felt at her words. Too much believing her and he’d find himself wishing once more for something he couldn’t have and didn’t deserve. “If I am, then we put in the well here.”

  “Let’s get started,” Hay said. He and Regan headed back down the rise to their horses, Hay reach
ing out for her hand to help her on the slope. She looked into his face, smiling.

  A surge of emotion gripped Seth, and he sighed. All of his earlier jealousy melted away, for what was the use? If anyone besides him could have Regan’s love, he hoped it would be Hay. Seth knew him to be good and honorable, worthy of a woman as strong as Regan, though the man ran from something in his past that he hadn’t divulged to Seth.

  Well, everyone had their secrets, and he kept plenty from Hay, too. Yes, if he couldn’t have Regan, he’d like her to be Hay’s.

  But really, he wished she could be his.

  * * * *

  The next morning at the same hour, Regan bathed. Breathlessly, she ensured the fire raged and the oil lamp burned from behind the hip bath so as to display her silhouette to best effect. But as she stretched first one arm and then the other, turned in profile, and leaned back her head to show her long neck, she had no sense of déjà vu. Disappointed and ashamed of her desire to tempt one of the men to lustful thoughts, she wrapped a warmed towel around her torso and sat before the fire to comb her hair dry.

  By all the saints, what had led her to do such a thing? The eyes she felt on her the previous morning had probably belonged to an animal, her own raging desire for male attention making her think it had been one of the men in the bunkhouse. Really, neither of them displayed an iota of interest in her beyond politeness and a gentleman’s urge to help a lone woman. Hay was charming, Seth rather reluctantly kind. For some reason, he didn’t seem to like being around her—or maybe he simply didn’t like her but was too nice to show it. She gulped, unhappy at the thought. More used to being a favorite than not, the very notion that he might find her lacking in some way bristled.

  Reluctant or not, Seth remained to help, and for that Regan was grateful. In the course of one short day, he had found water at a high enough spot to be piped to the house and the barn, making her plan for cattle feasible. The bottomland had the river at a handy distance for crop irrigation. For the first time since she arrived, the plan she and Davey discussed since before leaving Asheville seemed possible.

  I’m sorry you aren’t here to see this, Davey. But she wasn’t sorry not to be married to him any longer. Sighing, she said a quick Hail Mary. No one could say for certain, but she feared women went to Hell for less than being happy they were no longer married to their lawful husbands. Even if in this case God Himself had put them asunder, she should be sorry for his death. And she was sad Davey had died. Should she also be sad that, had he lived, she would have been miserable as his wife? Surely God couldn’t wish that on her.

  Pushing thoughts of Davey aside, she concentrated on the men a few yards away. She had little experience in making love, Davey being the only man she’d ever slept with, and truthfully, it hadn’t been the miraculous, thrilling activity she’d always imagined. Of course she had had no idea what to expect. Her mother had passed on before Regan began her menses, but even if she had lived, Regan learned from friends that their mothers had not been forthcoming in what to look forward to in the marriage bed. Her mother might have been no different.

  From her girlfriends, she heard she had a duty to allow her husband access to her body. She had done that. She heard he put some part of himself into her. Davey had done that, though not as often after they had joined the trail. She heard she must endure lying with him whenever he wanted. She had complied with that. What she had not heard, and what she still didn’t know, was what she was supposed to gain from the union. There had been pain on her part, mess and discomfort, plus loss of sleep some nights when pure exhaustion meant she could hardly open her eyes. Davey seemed to reap all the pleasure.

  Did all women experience sexual congress as she had? She suffered it only because God and the Church said she must, and honestly, she hadn’t missed it since Davey’s death. Until Seth and Hay arrived.

  When Hay placed his hand over hers at the dinner table or helped her down the hill after Seth discovered the water hole, her heart skipped a beat. With him, she found herself utilizing flirting skills she hadn’t drawn on for almost a year. Seth affected her in a different way but no less. Whether he liked her or not, she fell back into the dreamy attraction she’d known on the trail. The tightly leashed power that flowed from him made her breathless. Her admiration for his form couldn’t touch what she felt for his character, now that she knew him a little better. Shamefully, her bloomers moistened when unbidden, erotic thoughts of him invaded her mind.

  What would it be like to kiss either of them? How would it be to lie with them, to touch them, to be touched? Were their bodies very different from Davey’s, or would they stun her into speechlessness? She found she wanted to know, very much.

  Regan crossed herself and said another Hail Mary even knowing the prayer was futile to save her soul. Prayers had effect only when the penitent was truly sorry for committing the sin. For the life of her, Regan couldn’t find it in herself to be sorry for wanting to be with Seth and Hay.

  Her eyes flew open. “Mary and Joseph! I meant Seth or Hay.”

  She warmed from more than the fire as she admitted that she had it right the first time. If she sinned, she might as well make it a good one. Although she had absolutely no idea how such things worked, if intercourse with one of the virile men in her bunkhouse could prove desirable beyond belief, how much better would it be with both?

  Chapter Four

  Two days after finding the well, Seth fit the bridle into Jethro’s mouth and slid the top loops back over his ears. Regan petted the horse’s nose and admired the efficient way Seth hitched the horse to the wagon. He used the strength in his shoulders unlike any man she’d ever seen, and though he lacked a left hand and lower arm, his dexterity in using his upper arm amazed her. He managed to handle Jethro by himself while Hay leaned against the barn door, talking and casually watching.

  At least he seemed casual to someone who didn’t know Hay as she’d come to in the past three days. The way he held his shoulders and the tense muscles in his thighs as he chatted easily proved he would be ready to spring into action if needed. She’d observed him studying Seth like this many times, as though wondering when he would be needed for backup should Seth falter, something she hadn’t witnessed yet.

  Seth watched Hay, too. She came upon them as they explored the bee hole the day before, shoveling and probing the ground until it gave up its secret, that a full-running stream lay below the surface. At the discovery, Hay danced around, whooping and hollering while Seth calmly gathered the tools and watched his friend, a slow smile covering his face. She slipped away then, feeling that she intruded on a private moment. Despite the cavalier way the two discussed Hay’s supposed imminent departure for the coast, the intensity of their friendship was apparent.

  Now Seth steadily kept to preparing for the trip into town while Hay cracked jokes that he laughed at hardest himself.

  “Tell me again why I have to do this,” Seth said.

  “Because we need supplies to put in the well and you’re the one the townspeople know,” Hay explained for the third time. “They think you’re out here with your wife, remember?”

  “Oh, right, Francis.”

  “Do you have an objection to taking me into town alone, Seth?” Regan rested her hand on Jethro’s nose and met Seth’s startled sapphire gaze.

  “’Course not,” he said, then looked away, proving his words a lie.

  “No, of course not,” she murmured. Slipping her hands into white lace gloves, she moved to the side of the wagon. Hay dashed forward to help her up, and she carefully folded the skirt of her best day gown around her legs.

  Hay reached up to cover her lap with a travel rug. “It’s still a bit chilly,” he said.

  “Thank you.” The wagon dipped as Seth clambered up and settled beside her. Through the nip in the morning air, his body radiated heat that warmed her to the core.

  “Don’t worry about the farm while you’re gone. I’ll take care of things.”

  “That’s wh
at I’m worried about,” Seth grumbled. “We’ll only be a few hours.”

  “I’ll even find something for dinner,” Hay said.

  “Lord, Regan, best say your prayers now ’cause after eatin’ it’ll be too late.”

  She laughed then clamped her hat to her head when the wagon jerked forward. Turning, she called out, “Bye, Hay. Anything you want from town?”

  He jogged to the wagon’s side. “Naught but ‘a round unvarnish’d tale’ of your journey.”

  “Shakespeare again,” Seth muttered. “Here we’ve gone two whole days speakin’ normal English.” He shook his head. “We’ll bring back somethin’ sweet,” he said to Hay. “Now git outta the way before I run the wagon over your toes.”

  Hay grinned at Regan. “Ah, friendship is indeed a gift from heaven.” He raised his hand in farewell and dropped back.

  Seth wrapped the left rein around his elbow and used sheer strength to hold Jethro in line while working the wagon brakes with his right foot. He brought horse and wagon down the steep incline as well as anyone could, once more earning Regan’s admiration.

  She waited until they had passed a good many minutes, and then she could stand the silence no longer. She had to speak her mind. “You’re remarkable, you know.” She stared at his profile as a stain of pink covered his cheek.

  “A man learns to do what he has to when he’s disabled.” He settled the left rein around his shoulder and back to his lap where he took it into his right hand with the other rein.

  “But you make everything you do look so easy.”

  He snorted and shook his head. “I’ve had years to learn.”

  “Seth.” Without thinking, she laid her hand on his knee. Mary and Joseph and all the saints, what possesses me to do such forward things? Beneath her fingers, his muscles tightened, and she started to withdraw her hand. Only a fierce will allowed her to continue. “Seth, I want you to know how high I hold you in my regard. I heard tales of you on the wagon train, how you were always the first man to volunteer when someone needed help, that once you rode out to deal with the Indians in Nebraska when no one else would, that no one pitched in and did more of the work than you. I believed you then to be a man cut above the rest, and I do now.”