“Don’t, Sherrod. Don't say these things. They only make it more difficult.”
He pulled her into his arms. “They’ve got to be said. I'll know no peace until I do tell you. You’re real, Catherine. A woman with depth and feeling and substance. And strength."
She put her hands against his shoulders and pushed him away. Never had she thought she would be pushing men away. But one was married and the other a reprobate. “Strength?” Her laugh was harsh. "I’m weak, Sherrod! Why do you think I came west? I'm running, running from myself.” She passed her hand across her eyes. "I don’t know what it is about this primitive land, but already . . . already I’ve done things I never thought I’d do.”
She raised her gaze to meet Sherrod’s and saw the passion flaming in the eyes that were as blue-hot as a fire's core. She saw that he wanted to hold her, to reach out for her, that he was drowning as she was drowning. “Sherrod,” she whispered, “I’ve always dreamed of having a man like you in love with me. But one thing I won’t sink to is adultery. Isn't that what we’re talking about?”
She had thought to shock him, but his eyes searched her face. "What I feel for you is more than just desire, lust, whatever my Bible-thumping mother would call it!”
“But it'd still be adultery in the final analysis, wouldn’t it?” she demanded softly. “I can’t let that happen, Sherrod. It’d destroy me, and it’d destroy Lucy and you. Don’t do this to me. Don’t do it to us.”
He laughed then, laughter that held the hint of painful disappointment. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to become a Mormon, to be a second wife? No, don’t bother to look at me like that. I wouldn’t let you do it if you wanted to, Catherine. I saw the hell it brought to my father and my mother. And Law and myself. I swore I’d never do that to my family. And certainly not to you. I love you too much. As badly as I want you, I’ll say no more.”
He released her hands, and she fled to the safety of her room, but even it could not protect her heart.
CHAPTER 11
The wind in her hair, the sun on her face! Oh, it felt so good to be alive! The bay carried Catherine on fleet hooves past the Cienega’s tall poplars that waved like gigantic plumes, beyond the rancheria to where the grass thinned out and the high desert rose up to embrace her. It was the desert and the Huachuca’s rocky foothills she loved most of all—the landscape’s clean, pure lines, its clarity—clarifying even her mind.
Out there, galloping over ancient lava beds and alkaline terrains, she was able to think more clearly . . . to see that the warm feelings she had for Sherrod, the desire she felt for Law, only threatened her true happiness—the permanent lasting happiness of a family. She had only to put the two brothers from her mind for another six months, and she would be at last relieved of her torment.
But always there rose up to mock her the sight of a Joshua tree. It was as if Law, as elemental as the mountains he prospected in, were haunting her ... so that now the image of those laughing eyes, the softly teasing mouth beneath the sensuous flaring of the aristocratic nose, crowded everything out of her mind, even Sherrod.
There existed only Law. And the ache inside her.
Above the Huachuca Mountains, Stygian clouds burgeoned in seething masses of violent impatience. The hot wind carried the musty scent of oncoming rain. She guided her mount up out of the flatlands where the mountain runoffs could tumble without warning through the parched washes. On the higher ground she would avoid the threat of the flash floods.
Only as her horse picked its way along a barranca’s edge did Catherine become aware of the direction she was headed . . . the spot where she had last met Law. Oh, he really would not be there. He was no spirit that could appear at the moment she summoned him. It was just the mystical allure of the landscape. And that damned Joshua tree. That aimless Lorenzo Davalos was as full of guile and glib of tongue as old Marta of the rancheria, the washwoman who some claimed was a bruja, a witch.
Catherine saw the uplifted arms of the Joshua tree before she saw him. He was there. Sitting like some phantom on the gotch-eared sorrel, he loomed tall and forbidding. His soft laughter reached across the yards of sand and rock to stroke her.
For a long minute she held back on the reins of her prancing mount. She still had time to turn back. A war raged inside her. Her brain sent out signals to her hands, and yet those appendages remained lifeless, unresponsive. And she sat there helplessly watching as Law kneed his sorrel and slowly moved across the distance that separated them.
When he drew near, so that she saw the golden heat coloring his eyes, she at last bestirred herself. “You know, I don’t even like you.”
He hooked a smile. His slight uneven teeth gleamed white below the tawny mustache. “That doesn’t have anything to do with your gut feelings . . . with what your body wants, does it?”
He slung his leg over the saddle and slid off the horse. His gaze held her immobile as his hands took the reins from her unresisting fingers. And still she could not move when his hands encircled her waist and lifted her from the sidesaddle as easily as if she were Abigail's size.
She did not even struggle as he carried her to the tree but gave into the mouth that claimed hers. The kiss that seared her, reaching down to relieve the torment twisting inside her—this was what she had been waiting for, wanting.
Law withdrew his mouth. A wry smile curved his lips as he set her on her feet. He shrugged out of the duster he wore and spread it beneath the Joshua’s scant shade. “You never asked me my wish, Cate.”
Run, get away, a voice inside her cried out. Yet she stood rigidly before the kneeling man. "I don't want to hear anything you have to say.”
He rose to stand over her with that quiet, knowing smile. “You just want to kiss?”
She ground her eyes shut. “Yes.” Was that her voice that sounded like a croak?
He took her shoulders and shook her lightly. “Then let me hear you say it. Say it—say that you want me, that you couldn’t forget my kisses.”
Her eyes blazed open. “Yes! But I don’t love you!” Her nose wrinkled with distaste. “Your kind—”
He laughed, loud and full. "Did I say anything about love? I know, I know—your kind is my fastidious stepbrother. But he’s already taken, isn’t he? So the proper Miss Catherine Howard will have to quench her desire with the loathsome greaser.”
His hands settled on her shoulders, and he pressed her down until her knees gave way and she collapsed on the spread duster. Her top hat fell away. She lay there, half reclining, supported by her forearms, as she watched him crouch over her on all fours like some predatory cat.
"You’d think I’d have too much pride to take second place, but, damm it, Cate, I don’t care. I want you. Lying out under the stars I’ve pictured you a hundred times. Those haughty eyes and your mouth—do you know you're a damned beautiful woman when you smile? Then I’d get to thinking about what you must look like—without all that fooferaw, not all gussied up as you are now. And I decided that’d have to be half the fun.” His fingers touched the ruffled stock at her neck. “Taking off all these ladylike frills. Like unwrapping a Christmas present.”
The indolent voice held a hypnotic quality. The sensuous steady tempo of the words drummed into Catherine so that she was at first only vaguely aware of the thunder that reverberated through the canyon walls with dark Wagnerian intensity. Wind-whipped clouds boiled over the mountains and raced down to shadow the land. White-hot lightning snaked across the heavens, unleashing its fury over the couple below.
She felt a sense of foreboding, that by giving herself to Law, she was dooming her soul forever; yet she could no more alter her decision than she could alter the long, too-slim legs that he revealed as he hitched her skirt up past her riding boots.
She squeezed shut her eyes when she felt his long body stretch out half over hers. Her knuckles went white as her fingers dug into the duster’s rough cloth. “Just get it over with,’’ she gritted. So my wanting will be over with. So I'l
l be at peace with myself.
“Oh, no, my girl. This isn’t something that we go about like two rutting animals. There’s more to it than that.”
His forefinger traced the high curvature of her cheekbone, slipped down into its hollow, and came to rest at the comer of her lips. “When it’s all over, I mean to have known you, Cate ... all of you. From that widow’s peak—a sign of stubbornness, my momma used to say about hers-—to the fine light hairs on your legs.”
She gasped, horrified. To even hear her limbs spoken of in such a crude term was almost as shocking as actually feeling his fingers moving along the inside curve of one thigh. She tried to push her skirt down, but Law was adamant, as his fingers worked at the snaps of her riding boots.
And just as surely, as deftly, he removed her black jacket, then her corsage habit-shirt that buttoned down the front. She lay there, looking up at the man who labored over her. His face was intense with desire yet tempered by a patient, almost gentle look, and she wondered both how she could go through with it and how she could wait what seemed interminable moments until she felt those demanding lips over hers and the heat and weight of his body atop her.
She lay clad now only in her riding skirt and the fine lace camisole over the whalebone corset. "Dios mio," Law swore softly, “whatever are you about, Cate—wearing this contraption when you’re so slim I could break you between my two hands?”
Her hands clutched at his, stopping the fingers that worked at the corset’s laces. Soon her full breasts would be free of their restriction, free for Law’s taking, and whatever hope she had left would be vanquished. She forced her lids to rise to meet his fierce gaze. Her voice was almost inaudible under the crackling of the lightning about them. “You’ll break me, if you take me, Law.”
He rocked back on his heels. “Dammit, dammit, dammit! This makes twice now, Cate. It’s enough to make a man impotent! Get out of here! Get!
“And if you come near me again,” he grated as she rapidly gathered up her clothing, “I will take you and break you! I’ll make a loving whore out of you, Cate Howard!” He came to his feet with a swearing grunt and stalked off, leaving her to ride back alone to the Stronghold, inviolate with the droplets of rain prophesizing the storm to come.
CHAPTER 12
“Miss Howard,” Elizabeth interrupted in her cold, starchy voice.
Brigham halted in midsentence the old edition of the Arizona Miner Catherine was having him read aloud from, while Abigail’s pen paused in the middle of copying a paragraph from Swinton’s A Complete Course in Geography.
Catherine rose from behind the dining-room table, where class was held now that the late-summer rains cascaded over the thirsty earth. “Yes, Mrs. Godwin?”
The woman clasped her dry hands, the fingers folded as tightly as her thin lips. “I’d like to talk to you—alone.” Catherine nodded to the children. “Why don’t you two have Loco fix you an early lunch, and then you can play awhile before we go back to work.”
Delighted at the reprieve, the children scrambled from the room, and Catherine was left alone with Elizabeth.
“I shall get right to the point, Miss Howard. I know you are trying to seduce my son. Oh, don’t bother to act surprised,” she continued, her voice cracking with anger. “I overheard you and Sherrod in the courtyard the night before last.”
Catherine's hands clenched the table’s edge. “Mrs. Godwin, I resent both your prying and your accusation.”
“And I resent you because you are jeopardizing Sherrod’s future.”
Elizabeth's blazing eyes met Catherine’s in a battle of wills as the Mormon woman recalled facing another young woman years before—a young woman who would have taken her husband from her; no, who did take Frank for a while. But fate had intervened, and the other woman had died, leaving Elizabeth her husband once more . . . and Cristo Rey.
“I don’t care to continue this conversation,” Catherine said.
“But you will,” Elizabeth said, moving a step closer. “And what’s more, you will leave Cristo Rey. I don’t care what reason you give the others. But I want you to leave.”
“And if I should refuse?”
“I'm giving you credit for intelligence, Miss Howard. I don’t think you'd willingly become a Mormon in order to marry Sherrod and be a second wife. I know what it’s like to share your husband, and I don't think your type of woman would like it. And I won’t permit Sherrod to divorce Lucy and marry you.”
The woman's wrinkled lids narrowed over stonelike pupils. “You see, in my husband's old age he has remembered his duties to the Church, and he would most certainly disown Sherrod if he divorced Lucy. Sherrod might give up Lucy for you, but I'd never let him give up Cristo Rey for you ... or any other woman. So, Miss Howard, I want you to leave now before this affair goes any further."
“Sherrod has a mind of his own, Mrs. Godwin.”
Elizabeth smiled, a sneer really. “Do you think my son or my husband would permit you to stay if they knew you were having an affair with Law? Fornicating beneath the very eyes of the children!”
Catherine's eyes widened. “That’s not the way it—”
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s the truth or not. Sherrod’s own child saw Law kiss you the night of the fiesta. I myself overheard Abigail tell Brigham about it. And I saw you two returning from a ride together. Do you think Sherrod or my husband would believe your word against Abigail’s and mine?”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It could be worse, Catherine thought, as she swallowed the last of the after-dinner chocolate. By leaving, she was removing herself from Law’s tempting presence. Of course, there existed the problem of earning enough to support herself, and her mother and sister, if she taught in Tucson.
As badly as the territory needed teachers, no one but the very wealthy could afford one until the territorial legislature was able to pass a bill funding public schools. With the financial havoc wreaked by the Civil War, the possibility of that funding appeared dim for the near future.
Good Lord, a hundred lawyers in the territory and not one doctor or teacher! Still, she was one of the few white women in the Arizona Territory. Surely in Tucson she would be able to find a husband.
She wished now she had not chosen the time after dinner to tell the family of her decision to leave, for Law was there tonight—sitting opposite her, one booted foot crossed over his knee. He would think she was running from him. Was she?
She sat her empty cup aside, saying, “I feel this is the best time—since all the family is together—to tell you that, as much as I hate to, I am going to have to leave Cristo Rey.”
Audible gasps filled the room, and she rushed on. "I feel what I am doing, teaching, would have more impact if I taught as many children as possible. And, of course, there are so many children in Tucson alone who do not even know how to write their names.”
She looked now to Don Francisco. The old man, for all his age, was no less astute. She would have to sound convincing. “I know it will be an imposition for you, Don Francisco, after all the trouble you went to in order to bring me out here, but I feel Abigail and Brigham already know so much more than I would have hoped to accomplish with them in just six months. Lucy, if you’ll just make them practice . . .”
Her voice trailed off as Abigail and Brigham both jumped to their feet and ran to her side. “No,” Brigham said, grabbing at her forearm, “you can't leave!”
“Are you certain this is the best thing for you?” Sherrod asked.
Catherine colored. She was sure everyone in the room heard the torture in his voice and guessed he was in love with her. She glanced at Lucy, but Sherrod’s wife only looked bewildered and slightly distressed at the suggestion that the responsibility for her children would be hers again. Catherine’s gaze slid on over to Law—and, naturally, there was the cynical crook to one side of his mouth. Yes, he obviously guessed Sherrod’s secret.
Only Elizabeth wore a satisfied smile. “Of course she is certain what’s best fo
r her, son.”
“Cristo Rey needs you," Don Francisco said at last, “but I think it is important you do what you believe you have to. Miss Howard. It takes courage to make changes, and you have courage.”
"Thank you, Don Francisco,” Catherine said quietly. Her arms encircled the two children, who knelt on either side of her. She wished she could protect them from the future, from the apathetic mother and the domineering grandmother. But then she had been no more successful herself in holding her own against Elizabeth. Yet there was such a word as justice. Surely one day it would prevail against people like Elizabeth Godwin.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The change was much easier to accomplish than Catherine had foreseen. She had worried about finding a place in Tucson, for every available domicile was requisitioned by officers from the army supply depot at Camp Lowell, just outside the city walls.
Fortunately Sherrod remembered an old adobe—the roof was crumbling over in the kitchen, he warned her. The last occupant, a miner, had abandoned the place for more lucrative veins in Colorado the month before when Sherrod was last in Tucson. He was sure she could arrange to buy the adobe for a small sum from Sam Hughes, who rented it out. A note would be sent to Sam on the next freight wagon into Tucson, he promised.
He even volunteered to drive her into Tucson, when the time came for her to leave. She saw no harm in it, especially since she suggested that Lucy and the children accompany them. She would have thought Lucy would be delighted to visit Tucson, as provincial as the frontier outpost was. But Lucy pleaded a headache, and only Brigham and Abigail, excited at the prospect of staying overnight in Tucson, went along.
For a while Catherine and Sherrod talked about inconsequential things. He spoke of Tucson's desperate need for water and sewerage and the great potential the territory had if it could ever become a state. "Arizona has the five C’s,” he said in a forced attempt at lightheartedness. "Cattle, cotton, climate, copper, and citrus . . . but, like hell, it doesn't have water.”
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