Resurrection

by Linda Lael Miller

  Emmeline didn’t blame them, and in fact would have shared their enthusiasm at most any other time. Entertainments were few and far between on the plains of the Montana Territory, and most everywhere else in the West.

  “Today’s fellowship will be held inside the church building,” the Reverend finished, “on account of that rain we’ve been praying for has finally arrived. Shout hallelujah, brothers and sisters!”

  While the brothers and sisters were shouting hallelujah, Emmeline shoved past Gil Hartwell and marched herself down the aisle and the outside steps, paying no heed whatsoever to the soft, warm rain wetting her dress and spoiling her bonnet. Anger and humiliation propelled her across the yard, through the gate, and straight down the middle of the street, puddles and the mud Montanans call “gumbo” notwithstanding.

  Gil caught up to her just as she was turning in to the alley, and held his handsome new suit coat over her head like a canopy. His shirt was saturated, front and back, revealing the splendid masculine chest beneath, and Emmeline felt yet another surge of heat.

  How on earth was a woman to keep to the straight and narrow, she asked herself, when she was faced with subtle temptations at every turn?

  Perhaps, she reflected bitterly, Reverend Bickham had been right, after all, in aiming that blistering sermon of warning directly at her. She could not deny, to herself at least, that she harbored wanton thoughts.

  Emmeline allowed Gil to escort her all the way to the mud porch of the judge’s house, where they stood under the slanting shingle roof, staring at each other, drenched and dripping. Gil had gotten the worst of it, of course, since he’d used his coat as an umbrella for Emmeline.

  “You shouldn’t have followed me here,” she said, lamenting the muddy splotches lining the hem of her good brown dress. “I lost my temper and made a fool of myself by storming out that way, but there was no need for you to join in as well. The gossip will be even worse than before.”

  A smile lurked in Gil’s blue eyes as he shook out his coat and hung it on the peg next to the one that supported Emmeline’s bathtub. Then he reached out, bold as you please, peeled the sodden bonnet off her head, and set it on the bench beside the back door. “Gossip has its season,” he said, “like everything else. Sooner or later, the good people of Plentiful will turn their busy tongues to some other subject.”

  “You only say that because you’re a man,” Emmeline responded, wiping her shoes before proceeding into the kitchen to put a kettle on to boil. “Men don’t mind what folks say about them. In fact, something like this can only improve your reputation. For a woman, things are quite different.”

  Gil drew a chair from the kitchen table, turned it around, and sat astraddle of it, with his arms folded on the back. Even wet through to the skin, with his hair plastered to his head, he was at ease. He’d always had a gift for living in the moment, and it seemed he’d perfected that during his years of alleged captivity.

  “What do you suppose folks are saying about us, right this minute?” he asked in a teasing voice.

  Emmeline got the yellow crockery teapot down from a shelf, dumped in two scoops of loose-leaf orange pekoe, and leveled a frown at him. “It’s not what they’re saying,” she pointed out coolly. “After all, they wouldn’t dare speak of such things in Reverend Bickham’s presence, lest they get themselves a sermon of their very own. No, Mr. Hartwell, it’s what they’re thinking that mortifies me to the bone!”

  “And what are they thinking?”

  Emmeline flushed; it was a flaw she had often attempted to overcome, without significant success. “That by now you’ve ripped my clothes off—and your own, of course—and we’re rolling about on the kitchen floor, our two bodies entwined in passion.”

  Gil’s eyes twinkled, and he grinned that slight, one-sided grin of his. “Miss Emmeline!” he scolded, and then made a tsk-tsk sound with his tongue. “I’m surprised at you, crediting the townsfolk with an image like that when you so obviously conceived it all by yourself.”

  Emmeline went crimson and whirled away to shove wadded newspaper and bits of kindling into the cookstove. The cast-iron lid clanked in a satisfying fashion when she slammed it into place. “Did you follow me home just so you could torment me?” she demanded, and it was only after several deep breaths that she trusted herself to turn and speak to the man who was—and at the same time wasn’t—her husband.

  Elbows resting on the table, fingers steepled under his chin, Gil regarded her with both amusement and something else, something that kindled a flame deep down inside Emmeline, even as the fire caught and then blazed, crackling and fragrant, inside the stove. “No, ma’am,” he said at long last, his voice low and smoky. “I came to remind you of the things we used to do on rainy Sunday afternoons. Like the picnics we had in the hayloft, just the two of us. And the times we played cards until the lanterns burned out …”

  Emmeline remembered those times with bittersweet clarity. She had been so happy then, so impossibly happy. Perhaps, she reflected, turning away again to add wood to the fire, they’d tempted fate, taking such joy from so little. “We’re not the same people now,” she said shakily. “So much has happened since we were together.”

  She heard him push back his chair and rise, and her body went as taut as the strings on a violin when she realized he was moving toward her, then went slack again when he laid his hands on her shoulders.

  “Emmeline,” he whispered, and as she felt the warmth of his breath on her nape a shiver went through her that had nothing whatever to do with the clammy wetness of her dress. He turned her into his embrace, his arms lying loosely around her waist. “Whatever else you’re thinking, you mustn’t believe for a moment that I ever meant to leave you.”

  She blinked, and sniffled once, inelegantly. “You said you wrote letters, but I never got any,” she said, and felt silly for the way she’d framed the words.

  Gil sighed. “I sent half a dozen, Emmeline, but the circumstances weren’t exactly ideal.”

  Emmeline simply looked at him for a long time. She wanted to believe, wanted to trust, but she knew the pain would be terrible beyond bearing if that trust turned out to be misplaced. She felt tired, used up, and very confused, for while her mind warned her to be cautious, her body yearned to submit to his in the old, uninhibited way. “You said you’d make love to me when I asked,” she said, as thunder crashed directly over the roof of the house, like a reprimand from God, rattling the dishes in the cupboards and causing the unlighted lamp over the table to sway a little. “Will you do it now?”

  “No,” Gil said, his expression solemn, his thumbs making light circles on the indentations beneath Miss Emmeline’s collarbone.

  She felt her eyes widen. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s comforting you want, not lovemaking.”

  “They’re not the same?”

  “Not the way I intend to have you, they’re not.”

  Emmeline knew a delicious shiver of anticipation, followed by a surge of profound irritation. “You are taunting me, sir, and I do not appreciate it.”

  He took her chin into his hand, and although his grasp was not hurtful, neither was it gentle. “When I have you, Emmeline,” Gil said clearly, “there will be no petting and stroking and no pretty words. I’ve waited a long time, and when you offer yourself to me, and mean it, I’m likely to pull down your drawers and have you over a table or a sawhorse instead of a bed. And make no mistake, my love—practically everything I say and everything I do is calculated to make you want me as desperately as I want you.”

  She swallowed, overwhelmed. “You say shocking things, Mr. Hartwell,” she gasped. She did not add that she liked hearing them, though she hadn’t any modesty left. He’d made short work of that, just as he always had.

  “Yes,” Gil answered, so close to kissing her that she was already responding, already straining forward for his touch. Instead, he clasped her hand and pulled her out of the kitchen, away from the rear stairway, through the dining room, a
nd onto the screened porch where she sometimes slept when the heat was unbearable. It was a private place, sheltered by trellises of climbing flowers and by the gray gloom of the rain.

  Dimly, through the darkened screens, Emmeline glimpsed the colorful ghosts of her Chinese lanterns, dangling sodden and bright over the backyard like the stars of some strange planet.

  Between the two cots she and Izannah used, Gil pulled Emmeline into his arms and kissed her so deeply, so thoroughly, that she gave a little whimper and sagged against him.

  “You wanted comfort,” he whispered hoarsely when the kiss was over, “and you shall have it. But my restraint has a price, Emmeline. Don’t forget that.” With that, remarkably, he began unbuttoning her dress, and she allowed it, standing still and docile while Gil Hartwell stripped her naked.

  When he had done that, he removed his own clothes, and Emmeline saw plainly that he was ready for lovemaking and wondered how she could convince him that she desired to be taken, not just teased.

  “I want you,” she said tremulously. “I’m asking, like you said I’d have to do.”

  Gil pressed her gently onto one of the cots and lay down with her, partly covering her body with the solid, heated weight of his own. “No,” he said, though it was clear that the word had cost him dearly. “Not yet, Emmeline. Not yet.”

  She ran her hand over his back and felt the scar tissue—and knew instantly, letters or no letters, that everything he’d said was true. He had been shanghaied and spent years at sea, a slave to an obviously cruel captain. “Oh, Gil,” she whispered.

  Gil flinched slightly, and closed his eyes for a moment.

  Emmeline kissed his bare shoulder, wanting to soothe him in the only way she knew how. He pulled away from her, and in that moment Emmeline grasped another truth: She wasn’t the only one who wasn’t ready for the complete, utter, and explosive physical reunion. Gil was afraid, too.

  After gazing down at her for a few seconds in silence, his expression unreadable, Gil slid one hand from her hip to the sumptuous curve of her breast.

  Emmeline whimpered as his thumb coursed back and forth across the sensitive nipple, ever so slowly, over and over again. Too breathless to speak, she watched his face, and saw that he seemed wonder-struck by the breast, stricken by its splendor. He made a circle around the areola with the lightest touch of his index finger, causing Emmeline to moan again, and then traced the length of each of the tiny blue veins, barely visible under the pale, translucent flesh.

  A deep, primal shudder went through Emmeline when Gil finally bent his head over her and touched the aching nipple with the tip of his tongue. One arm was pinned against her side because of the narrowness of the cot, but her free hand went immediately to his hair and buried itself there, pressing him closer, urging him to devour what he had merely been sampling.

  But Gil took his time. Each time he tasted the morsel, or rolled it between his fingers, or simply blew on it as though to put out a candle, he paused afterward and watched the involuntary responses his touch had aroused.

  Emmeline grew quietly frantic and pleaded in soft, half-coherent words, but Gil would not appease her. He had apparently decided to seduce her by degrees, to focus his attentions on one part of her at a time, she surmised, remembering how he’d kissed her the first day, then stroked her ankles and feet the next. There was no telling when he’d reach the point he’d spoken of with such scandalous frankness in the kitchen, but Emmeline harbored a shameless and desperate hope that it would happen soon.

  “Let me touch you,” she said.

  Gil shifted so that Emmeline could move her arm, but he was suckling in earnest by that time, and he did not lift his head. When she found his rod and closed her hand tightly around it, she felt his groan move through the tissues of her breast, and he drew harder on the nipple, and harder still.

  Emmeline stroked him slowly, all the while writhing in a storm of pleasure. With a cry, Gil freed himself and pressed her beneath him before falling to her other breast with the same hunger. She entangled her fingers in his hair and began to chant his name under her breath, a rhythmic and disconsolate plea.

  He did not mount her, but instead reached down between their two bodies, enjoying her breasts all the while, to ply her with his fingers.

  Emmeline went wild, so great, so consuming was her need, and Gil left her nipple at last to cover her mouth with his own and muffle her hoarse groans with his kiss. His fingers went still, and he left her mouth to speak gruffly into her ear.

  “I will satisfy you, Emmeline,” he said, his voice no steadier than hers would have been, “but you must not cry out.”

  She nodded her assent—at that moment, she would have agreed to practically anything—and he rolled off the cot to kneel beside it, parting her legs with one hand, stroking the tender flesh of her inner thighs almost reverently.

  “Gil,” she whispered, arching her back.

  “You promised,” he scolded. Then he parted the silken delta between Emmeline’s legs, studied the treasure buried there for a few moments, and lowered his head and feasted.

  Emmeline let out a long, low cry, and Gil reached up to cup one hand over her mouth. She rocked under his tongue, her hips rising and falling as he led them to do, and he teased her without mercy. While he was engaged in a series of fleeting nibbles, Emmeline’s universe splintered into a many-petaled blossom of white light.

  When it was over—her back still slightly arched in an instinctive quest for pleasure, her flesh still quivering with satisfaction—she watched in silence as Gil rose to his feet, found his clothes, and began to put them on. When he bent to kiss her lightly on the mouth, she caught her own musky scent on his skin.

  “You’d better get dressed, Miss Emmeline,” he said. “That teakettle is probably boiling by now.”

  Emmeline sighed and stretched. For the moment, she was at ease, but she knew her body only too well, and the effect that Gil’s attentions had upon it. The benefits of his efforts would wear off soon enough and then, because he hadn’t put himself inside her, she’d want him more than ever. What he’d done to her there on the sunporch was not meant to satisfy, but to prime her for a true conquering.

  By the time Emmeline got back into her camisole and drawers, Gil was gone, and she had just reached the top of the stairs, carrying the rest of her clothes in her arms, when she heard Izannah call her name from the kitchen.

  Emmeline pretended not to hear, and fled into her room, where she splashed herself with tepid water from the basin and wept inconsolably.

  An hour later, when she’d collected herself enough to go downstairs and face her cousin, she found Izannah at the stove. Emmeline had put on a wrapper and nightgown, like a convalescent, while Izannah wore a flower-print poplin and was putting the finishing touches on a dinner of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn.

  “You let the teakettle boil dry,” Izannah accused, but there was no rancor in her voice. She was watching Emmeline with a speculative, worried expression in her usually mischievous eyes. “Are you sick, Emmeline?”

  There was coffee, and Emmeline got a cup and poured herself some. She would have preferred a stiff dose of the judge’s brandy, but it was Sunday afternoon and still light outside. Besides, she thought with a sniff, if she indulged, Reverend Bickham would probably find out somehow and preach a roof-raising sermon on the evils of strong drink.

  “No, pet,” she said gently. “I’m not sick, just tired.”

  “I stayed away as long as I could,” Izannah went on, carrying a steaming bowl of mashed potatoes to the table. When it was just the two of them, they always ate in the kitchen. “Since Mr. Hartwell followed you home and everything.”

  “That was thoughtful of you.” Emmeline turned, pretending to watch the rain through the small window over the sink, so Izannah wouldn’t see her face.

  “He gave me a dollar to spend the afternoon with Becky,” Izannah confessed, without a trace of repentance. “Some people would call that bribery, but t
o me it’s a new hair ribbon and that book I’ve been wanting.”

  Emmeline smiled a very small smile, but said nothing.

  A brief silence fell while Izannah carried the rest of the dinner to the table and Emmeline assembled her composure.

  “Come away from that window and eat your dinner,” Izannah said when the meal was ready.

  Vaguely amused at the turnabout—it was usually she who gave orders and cooked—Emmeline obeyed, taking her customary place at the table. Izannah even offered grace, which was a relief to Emmeline, who felt reticent just then about approaching the Lord for any reason.

  “I bet Mr. Hartwell would enjoy a meal like this,” Izannah said, buttering a slice of bread. “But of course he’s gone home already, hasn’t he?” She tried to be subtle as she eyed Emmeline’s disheveled hair, puffy eyes, and nightclothes, and failed.

  “Yes,” Emmeline replied evenly. “Mr. Hartwell has indeed gone home.” Picking up a fork, Emmeline forced herself to smile. “You really are quite a cook, Izannah. This chicken smells delicious.”

  “Thank you” was the girl’s response. “But I know flattery when I hear it. You’re only trying to change the subject, so I won’t ask why you’re in your nightclothes if you’re not even sick, or why Gil paid me to stay away from my own house all afternoon. As if I couldn’t guess.”

  Emmeline continued to eat, for she hadn’t had breakfast and the day, though only half over, had been a long and arduous one. “You must content yourself,” she said grudgingly, making no effort to sustain her smile, “with your own speculations. Why should you be different from the rest of the town?”

  “I don’t understand why you don’t just go and live with him, or ask him to move in here, with us,” Izannah pressed. Tenacity was one of her foremost qualities, a trait that would no doubt serve her very well in the wide world, but was nevertheless trying in Emmeline’s kitchen.

  “Even if the situation was that simple, which it most assuredly is not, I wouldn’t simply move out and leave you all alone in this house. As for asking Mr. Hartwell to live here, well, I don’t happen to want to, and besides, he wouldn’t come anyway. Not with that stiff-necked pride of his. No, he’d never leave his ranch.”