A Touch of Flame

by Jo Goodman

  “Oh, but—”

  “The car is compliments of Thaddeus and Fiona. Remington and Phoebe are giving us two nights in the city. We can be gone that long. Hitch will see that peace in the town is not compromised, and Mary Cherry will do the same for the health of your patients.”

  Ridley didn’t know what to say except that he had thought of everything.

  “I knew you wouldn’t want to be away too long, and frankly, neither did I. C’mon.” He escorted her up the hotel steps and signed the register at the front desk.

  She stared at what he wrote. “Mr. Ben Madison and Dr. Easter Ridley Woodhouse Madison. It’s a mouthful, isn’t it? And it took up two lines.”

  Ben picked up the pen and drew a line through “aster” so it now read, “Mr. Ben Madison and Dr. E Ridley Woodhouse Madison.” “Better?”

  She smirked, nodded, and this time she escorted him up the stairs.

  The suite was on the third floor, and when Ridley stepped inside, it was clear to her that somebody—more likely somebodies—had been very busy. A lace-trimmed diaphanous nightgown lay draped across the bed, and a pair of ice blue kid slippers sat on the floor below it. The bedcovers were turned back, the pillows plumped, and on the nightstand were two empty glasses beside a champagne bucket.

  Ridley turned to Ben. “Was this you?”

  “You don’t know how badly I want to lie, but no, not even my idea.”

  She kissed his cheek so she wouldn’t laugh at his forlorn expression. “It’s all right. I wouldn’t have thought of it either. The wedding elves left you a new nightshirt on the wing chair. Look, your slippers are there. They didn’t forget anything.” She looked around, saw that small trunks had been packed for each of them, their train tickets resting on top. “What’s in there?” she asked, pointing to an adjoining room whose door was a few inches ajar. “Is it—” She stopped because she didn’t want excitement to take her away and disappointment to bring her back. She grabbed his hand and pulled him along but stopped short of pushing open the door. “You do it,” she said.

  Ben did, and they stepped inside together.

  “It’s a bathtub,” said Ridley.

  “It’s a trough,” said Ben. “This must be how Abe is modernizing.”

  Nodding, Ridley pointed to the taps. “Do you think they work yet? It seems impossible they could have managed the renovation so quickly.” She caught Ben giving her a jaundiced look. “Oh, right, your mother.”

  “Uh-huh. Why don’t you try them out? It’s the only way to know for sure.”

  The sensuously curved porcelain bathtub rested on large claw feet. The double-handled faucet was polished brass and was mounted to the wall equidistant from both ends of the tub. Just taking in the whole of it made her sigh.

  Ben nudged her. “Stop admiring it and see if it works.”

  She bent over the tub and twisted one of the handles. The gush of water was so powerful that she leapt back. “Oh, my.”

  “Well, there we go.” Ben adjusted the tap, turned on the hot water, and then removed towels from the linen cupboard and soap and sponges from under the washstand. He set everything on a footstool and pushed it within easy reach of the tub. Ridley was still standing over the porcelain behemoth when he was done. “Aren’t you going to take off your clothes?”

  “Don’t you want to do that?”

  That made him laugh because she was so rarely patient enough to allow him the pleasure. In the end this evening was no different although it started well enough. He untied her train, unfastened the silk-covered buttons at her back that she could not have possibly managed on her own, and loosened the laces of her corset before she shooed him away. It was not the worst thing that had ever happened to him to straddle the ladder-back chair and watch her remove her shoes, peel away her stockings and garters, then shimmy out of her gown, her corset, three petticoats, a bustle, and finally a camisole and drawers every bit as delicate as the nightgown waiting for her on the bed. The tub was halfway filled when she finally stepped in. Her smile was beatific as she lowered herself into the water and she had the most delicious little shiver for him that was like a siren’s call.

  Ben almost tipped the chair over as he scrambled to his feet. He shucked his clothes with careless disregard for the sharp creases and stiff collar. If something fell over the back of the chair, that was fine, but if it landed on the floor, he didn’t pick it up. He would have worn his shirt into the tub if she hadn’t pointed it out. He yanked it over his head, whipped it around like a lasso, and captured the hat tree in the corner.

  “Impressive.” Ridley closed her eyes, rested her head against the lip of the tub. The water rose almost to her shoulders as Ben eased himself down. “I’m never getting out,” she told him.

  Ben turned off the water and leaned back. “Neither am I.”

  But they did . . . eventually. They dried hastily, picking their way around their scattered clothes, and fell into bed in a tangle of arms and legs and towels. Ridley was barely able to sweep her wedding nightgown out of the way before they rolled over it.

  Slippery with soap and water, they made love with mad frenzied abandon. For a while laughter ruled, and when it didn’t, it was because it was replaced by words, some of them naughty, some of them nice, all of them spoken with a gravity that made them imperative.

  “We’re not under the blankets,” Ridley said when she’d recovered her breath. It seemed perfectly reasonable to point that out.

  “Our heads are at the footboard. That might have something to do with it.”

  Ridley reached under her, found a towel, and pulled it across her.

  “That’s damp.” He dragged it off her and used it to cover himself. “You’ll catch your death.”

  “So will you.”

  “No, because I’ll have you to tend me.”

  Snorting, Ridley turned on her side and backed into him. He cradled her butt against his groin. There was plenty of heat there. She fisted some of the blankets that she was lying on and pulled them over her. He got rid of the towel and arranged the blankets so they were both covered.

  Ridley snuggled, spoke softly. “I thought it would be different somehow, making love to you, I mean, now that we’re married, and it was but in a good way. In a very good way. It felt complete, as if I was embracing all of you, touching you more deeply than I’ve ever done.”

  He said nothing for a time, then, “That’s the way I recall it.”

  She tried to turn her head to see if he was amused by her confession, but he tapped her cheek and turned her back. He wasn’t amused at all, she realized, he was moved, and that’s why she decided to make a second confession. “It was supposed to be Esther.”

  “Pardon?”

  She could imagine he was frowning slightly as he tried to follow the shift in subjects. “Esther. Not Easter. It was misspelled on my birth certificate and again in the family Bible. My father thinks it was my mother’s mother who was at fault. My mother thinks it was my father.”

  “Does someone have to be blamed? It’s a lovely name.”

  “You say it.”

  “Easter.”

  “Yes, it’s lovely when you say it.”

  Ben said it again, this time against her hair, parting strands of it with his breath. It wasn’t long before he realized she had fallen asleep. It made him smile that it came to her so easily. Someday he would ask her how she did it, but tonight he was content to drift off as he often did, whispering each name as it occurred to him. “Eudora. Esmeralda. Eve. Evangeline. Eos. Elspeth. Eris. Emma . . . Eleanor . . . Evelyn . . . Esther . . . Easter . . .”

  Ridley made him love them all.

  Turn the page for a preview of Jo Goodman’s

  A Touch of Frost

  Available now from Berkley

  Frost Falls, Colorado

  April 1892

  “He’s
got eyes for you. I know about these things, and I’m not wrong about this. Just see if he doesn’t.”

  Belatedly, Phoebe Apple’s attention was drawn from the window where the landscape passed at a measured, hypnotic speed, to the fellow traveler on her left. “Pardon?” she asked, turning slightly in her seat to address the older woman. There had been precious few words exchanged since they had boarded together in Denver, and Phoebe had a desire to keep it that way. As a rule, she favored conversation, but found it more comfortable when it was going on around her.

  She offered an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. Woolgathering. I didn’t hear what you said.”

  “I see that plain enough. You’ve had your nose pressed to that window for the better part of the last hour. Like a beggar at the bake shop.” She presented this with a hint of amusement, no reproof. “Deep thoughts, I take it.”

  Phoebe presented a light shrug but made no comment about the depth of her thoughts. She required a moment to recall the woman’s name. There had been introductions at the point of taking their seats, but Phoebe found herself struggling to bring forth a name.

  “Amanda Tyler,” the woman said. “Mrs. Jacob C. Tyler.”

  “Of course.” Having been caught out, Phoebe felt herself flushing. “Phoebe Apple.”

  “Oh, I remember.” Mrs. Jacob C. Tyler leaned a few degrees toward Phoebe and whispered in confidential tones, “Don’t look now, but he’s glancing your way again.”

  Startled, Phoebe’s chin came up a fraction and she cast her eyes in every direction except behind her. It was the hand suddenly covering one of hers and squeezing gently that grounded her. She dropped her head and stared at her lap, aware now of the softness of Mrs. Tyler’s palm, the pressure of plump fingers, and that comfort and admonishment were being offered simultaneously.

  Under her breath, Phoebe asked, “Who is watching me?”

  “I didn’t exactly say he’s watching you. More like he’s got an interest.”

  “Why would he be interested in me?”

  Mrs. Tyler sat back again and released Phoebe’s hand in order to give it a few light taps. “You have a passing acquaintance with a mirror, don’t you?”

  Phoebe turned fully sideways to regard Mrs. Tyler and was confronted by the woman’s clearly entertained expression. “I know what I see in the mirror, Mrs. Tyler, but that is neither here nor there.” She wiggled the fingers of her left hand, drawing attention to the gold wedding band. “I am married.” She widened the opening of the pale gray cape she was wearing, modestly exposing her rounded belly. “And then there is this.” She splayed her fingers across her abdomen. “There is every possibility that I will give birth before I reach Frost Falls. It is that imminent.”

  Mrs. Tyler chuckled appreciatively. Creases radiated from the corner of her eyes like rays of sunshine, adding lines to what was otherwise a seamless face. Her smoothly rounded countenance made her a woman of indeterminate age, certainly north of forty given that there were silver threads in her sandy-colored hair, but how far north was impossible to know.

  “He entered this car after we were seated,” she said. “I can’t imagine that he saw your ring or took note of your condition. The way he looks at you suggests to me that neither would be an impediment. I have the sense that he’s a man who enjoys looking.”

  Phoebe frowned, troubled. It was difficult not to seek out the man.

  Mrs. Tyler’s smile faded along with the lines at the corner of her eyes. Two small vertical creases appeared between her eyebrows. “Oh, I see that I’ve done harm. Nothing I said was meant to worry you. I thought you would be flattered or at least diverted. It seemed to me you were in need of a bit of diversion, but clearly I mistook the matter.” She twisted the brilliant cut pear shape diamond ring on her finger. “My husband will tell you that I frequently say what’s on my mind with no sense that my observations might not be well received. I do apologize.”

  “There’s no need that you should.” Force of habit had Phoebe responding quickly, too quickly perhaps to give her words the weight of sincerity. “Truly. You aren’t wrong that I am in need of a bit of diversion.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.” Mrs. Tyler said the words uncertainly, but she did not wait for confirmation before she plunged ahead. “Four seats in front on the left. He is in a seat facing this way, though how he can ride backwards on the train is something I will never understand. He’s wearing a black duster and a black, silver-banded hat. Quick. Look now.”

  Phoebe did. It was only possible to glimpse him in profile before his head began to swivel back in her direction. She could not be sure that he meant to look at her again—if Mrs. Tyler’s observation could be trusted—but she did not want to take the chance that she would be spied studying him. The wide brim of his hat shaded his face, making it difficult to see much more than sharply carved features set in a fashion that could most kindly be described as grim. She had the impression of dark, unkempt hair, overlong so that it curled at the collar of his duster, and at least a day’s growth of stubble defined his jaw.

  Oddly, neither his hard, forbidding expression nor his lack of interest in barbers diminished Phoebe’s sense that here was an attractive man.

  “Do you know him?” asked Phoebe, speaking out of the side of her mouth.

  “No. Never saw him before, but then maybe you don’t recall that I told you right off that I’m not from these parts. Saint Louis born and raised.”

  “Yes. I remember now. You’re going to Liberty Junction. That’s farther along the line than Frost Falls.”

  “That’s right. My son and daughter-in-law just settled there. He’s managing the hotel and gambling house.”

  “Hmm.”

  Mrs. Tyler surreptitiously nudged Phoebe with her elbow. “I take it you don’t know him. The man watching you, I mean. Not my son.”

  Phoebe shook her head. “I think I might have seen him at the station in Saint Louis, but I don’t know him.”

  “Don’t know as you could have any question one way or the other, so it probably wasn’t him. His good looks stick in my mind the way hot porridge sticks to my ribs.”

  “I suppose.”

  Mrs. Tyler shrugged. “Maybe it’s different for you. Maybe you only have eyes for your husband, which is nice on the face of it. You’re young. Time yet to discover that there’s no harm in looking or being looked at.”

  Phoebe risked another glance four rows up and on the left. The gentleman—and Phoebe was resolute in naming him as such—had reclined in his seat as much as space would allow. He had shifted his long legs into the aisle and rested one boot across the other. His arms were folded against his chest and his head was bowed. She imagined that beneath the brim that obscured his face, his eyes were closed. Phoebe felt completely at ease studying him until she noticed the bulge under the duster at his right hip.

  “He’s carrying a gun,” she said.

  Mrs. Tyler nodded and amusement crept into her features again. “I do believe you’re right, but I hardly imagine he is alone. Surely you’ve read some of the popular dime novels. Nat Church is a favorite of mine, and I don’t mind saying so.”

  “Mine also, but I believe the tales of gunfights and entanglements at high noon are exaggerated for dramatic effect.”

  “Perhaps.” One of Mrs. Tyler’s eyebrows arched in its own dramatic effect. “And perhaps not.”

  Phoebe’s quiet laughter changed the shape of her mouth, lifting the corners, revealing a ridge of white teeth resting on her full lower lip. Her eyes darted to the beaded bag wedged between her hip and the side of the train car. She slipped a hand through the reticule’s strings and pulled it onto her lap.

  “That’s a beautiful bag,” said Mrs. Tyler. “May I?”

  Phoebe held it up for the woman to examine more closely but she did not release it. “Seed pearls and jet beads. It was a gift.”

 
Mrs. Tyler tentatively ran her fingertips across the beadwork. “It’s exquisite. Wherever did you find it?”

  “Paris. But I didn’t find it. As I said, it was a gift.” Phoebe regarded the bag with more careful study than it deserved and said in a low voice, “He’s looking this way again, isn’t he?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Perhaps he’s admiring the bag,” she said.

  “Lord, I hope not. It would be so disappointing.”

  That made Phoebe laugh again. She lowered the reticule and Mrs. Tyler withdrew her hand. She was still smiling, carefully avoiding eye contact with the stranger, when she felt a subtle change in the train’s rhythm. “Did you—” Her question remained unfinished because the next variation in the clackety-clack cadence was not at all subtle. Engine No. 486, a powerful workhorse of Northeast Rail, regularly carrying passengers, mail, and cargo from New York to points west by way of Chicago, Saint Louis, and Denver, jerked, juddered, stuttered, and squealed, and began to slow at a rate that threw people forward or pushed them back into their seats.

  Mrs. Tyler threw an arm sideways in aid of protecting Phoebe and Phoebe’s swollen belly. It was of marginal helpfulness, keeping Phoebe from becoming a projectile that would have landed her with considerable force against the empty bench seat across the way, but not keeping either of them in place. They both dropped to the space between the forward and rear seats, banging their knees and landing in an awkward brace of limbs. Mrs. Tyler’s arm was squeezed between the lip of the forward seat and Phoebe’s abdomen. There was time enough for her to give Phoebe a curious look before the train bucked and buckled and they were thrown sideways into the aisle. Mrs. Tyler took the brunt of the fall, supporting Phoebe’s slighter weight in the cushion of her plump bosom, arms, and thighs.

  “Don’t try to move yet, dear,” Mrs. Jacob C. Tyler said. “I’m fine. You’re fine. No sense—” She stopped because men were shouting, a woman was weeping, and at least two children were caterwauling in a forward car. There was no point in talking when action was what was called for. She held Phoebe close, keeping her still until she realized that Phoebe was not moving. “We need some help here!” she shouted. “Help here!”