“I want to take Cricket with me to New Orleans, but the way she’s been raised, she’s going to end up butting heads with the New Orleans ladies. That’s where you come in, Amy. I was hoping you’d be willing to give Cricket some lessons in feminine deportment that would help her get by, along with a few hints about whatever it is ladies do to keep themselves busy when there are no men around.”
Amy’s eyes teared with sympathy for Cricket’s plight. “Why, Jarrett Creed, of course I’ll be willing to help in any way I can. That poor, dear girl. Imagine being raised without a mother.”
“Where will you be staying in New Orleans?” Tom asked.
“With the American chargé, Beaufort LeFevre.”
“Angelique’s father?” Tom asked.
“Yes.”
Tom whistled, long and low. “What’s Angelique going to say when she finds out you’re married? Isn’t that going to be a little awkward?”
“I never made any promises to Angelique. In fact, quite the opposite is true.”
“Still, the woman was in love with you.”
“It’s important I stay with LeFevre. I’ll have to deal with Angelique the best I can.”
“Good luck,” Tom said, shaking his head.
“I’ll get started tomorrow teaching Cricket a few things that should make her more comfortable when she gets to New Orleans,” Amy promised.
“Thanks, Amy. I’d appreciate that,” Creed said. “And Tom, I’ll need you to keep an eye on your whiskey.”
“Why’s that?”
“Cricket doesn’t know that ladies aren’t supposed to drink that hell-broth. I want to make sure she gets out of the habit before we get to New Orleans.”
Creed watched Tom struggle to hide his shock before he replied as though it were the kind of request he got every day. “Sure. No problem.”
Creed clasped his hands in front of him. “It means a lot to me to know you’re willing to help,” he admitted to the couple.
“What’s family for?” Tom said. “Don’t worry about it. Cricket will do you proud. It’s plain to see from the way she looks at you that she loves you.”
“Yes, well, I love her, too,” Creed said, uncomfortable with lying and finding himself doing it again. “Guess I’ll turn in now. Thanks again.”
Creed took the stairs back up to his bedroom, where he found Cricket restlessly pacing the room from wall to wall in nothing but her chemise and pantalettes.
“Where have you been?” she demanded. “Belle took my buckskins when I wasn’t looking and didn’t leave me anything else to wear.”
As angry as Cricket was, her breasts heaved in agitation under the chemise, and her long-legged stride stretched the pantalettes over her buttocks with each step she took.
Creed’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Lord, his body was on fire for her! On her next pass by him he reached out and grabbed her by the arm, stopping her in front of him.
Cricket folded her arms across her chest, pushing her breasts up and out of the chemise. “Well? Now what?”
Creed kept his eyes on her face, reminding himself she was still a virgin, knowing he was lost if he let his gaze wander as it wished. “I spoke with Tom and Amy. I told them you needed their help learning how to act like a lady and—”
“You what?” Cricket had never been so humiliated. Her face flushed with anger as her hands bunched into white-knuckled fists which whipped down to balance on her hips. “How could you?”
“Look, Brava,” Creed reasoned, “what choice did I have? In a few weeks we’ll be heading for New Orleans. I’m going there to argue to the American chargé that Texas is full of civilized folk who form a civilized sovereign nation worthy of receiving trade considerations from the United States. How convincing am I going to be if I show up with a wife in buckskins with barnyard manners?”
“Barnyard manners?”
“Well, maybe that is an exaggeration,” Creed conceded in response to Cricket’s scowling features. “But you have to admit you haven’t shown much inclination to the feminine role since I’ve known you.”
“It’s not who I am,” Cricket railed.
“No, not yet. But it’s what you’ll have to become.”
“I can’t.”
“You can, and you will. You don’t have any choice. It can’t be any more difficult than wrestling or bronc riding or any of the other skills you’ve mastered. If you can learn to do those things, you can learn to be a woman.”
Cricket hugged herself with her arms in an attempt to curb the shivers of fury wracking her body.
“I hate you for this, Creed. I hate you so bad I can taste it.”
Before she could stop him, Creed enfolded her in his arms. His head swooped down, and his lips touched hers for the first time in gentleness. His tongue teased the edge of her lips, urging them to open. Shocked by his boldness, Cricket jerked her head aside and struggled to be free.
Creed released her immediately and stepped back, his heart pounding, his breathing unsteady. In a voice husky with emotion he rasped, “I only wanted to see what your hate tastes like, Brava.”
She could feel the intensity of his gaze and snapped hers up to meet his, daring him to try touching her again.
“Hate me if you will,” he said. “But make no mistake. You are my wife. I will kiss you and touch you as I please, and you will do nothing to stop me.”
“I agreed to be your wife for one purpose only—and it had nothing to do with kissing or touching. Lay one hand on me, and you’ll find it chopped off.”
“Come here to me, Brava.”
“When pigs fly!”
“Then stay where you are. I’ll come to you.”
How could she have fallen for the same trick twice? If she moved, she’d be admitting she was afraid of him; if she stayed, he’d have her in his arms in an instant. And where could she run in her chemise and pantalettes?
“Go ahead and touch me,” she dared at last, her lip curling in disdain. “Little good it will do you.”
Cricket remained rigid as a corpse when Creed enfolded her in his arms. She ground her teeth to avoid flinching when he gently stroked her cheek with the knuckles of his hand. She wasn’t going to let him get away with this again. Jarrett Creed had cornered her for the very last time.
Creed could feel Cricket trembling in his arms like a wild thing caught in a trap. His brava would never make a docile wife. But she could learn to control her unbridled impulses, and to more closely fit the feminine mold.
He was counting on it.
Chapter 13
WITH CRICKET AND CREED AT LOGGERHEADS, the next evening might have become a disaster had it not been for Seth. When Cricket arrived downstairs for dinner, clothed in Amy’s rose-bordered muslin dress, she found her arms filled immediately with the wriggling two-year-old boy.
“I don’t know how to hold a baby,” Cricket protested.
“There’s nothing to it,” Amy replied. “Just hang on to whatever’s convenient.”
At first Cricket felt awkward, and the more Seth wiggled the more fearful she became that she’d drop him. Finally, she managed to wrap one arm around Seth’s waist and slip the other under his bottom. She pulled him snug against her, as she had her wolf pups, so he wouldn’t fall.
To her surprise, as soon as Seth was close enough, his legs gripped her around the waist, and he settled his rump comfortably on her hip. He leaned his head on her shoulder and gazed up trustingly at her from under long, golden lashes with eyes the clear blue of a summer sky. His thumb found its way to his mouth, and he sucked contentedly, unaware of the impact he was having on the young woman who held him. Cricket looked down at Seth and promptly lost her heart.
“Men can’t do that, you know,” Amy confided.
“Do what?”
“Set a child on their hips. They don’t have hips,” Amy continued with a friendly laugh as she crossed to Tom. “Whenever Tom tries it, Seth just slides on down.” She let her hands skim from Tom’s ribs
to his hips to make her point.
“Goes to show why women have charge of the kids.” Tom grabbed Amy and pulled her close, linking his arms around her waist. Amy put her hands on either side of Tom’s face and held him still while she kissed him quickly on the lips.
Cricket was distracted from the playful scene between Tom and Amy by the softness of the child settled against her. She admired the perfect little being she held in her arms. She took Seth’s hefty weight in her left arm while the right came up to brush his blond hair away from his brow.
Seth had Amy’s blue eyes and blond hair, but his chin jutted like Tom’s, and he’d inherited the Creed men’s high, angled cheekbones, although his were well camouflaged in baby fat. His nose and mouth were fairly well hidden by his fist and thumb, but she imagined a blade of nose like Tom’s, and a lush, full mouth like Amy’s.
For the first time in her life, Cricket wondered what it would be like to have a child of her own. It was not so far-fetched an idea. She’d dismissed Creed’s suggestion she might be carrying his babe, but she wouldn’t know for sure for at least two more weeks. What if she were pregnant with Creed’s child right now?
Startled by the thought, Cricket’s eyes sought out Creed, only to find him staring back at her. What would a baby of theirs look like? It would have black hair, of course, but would it have gold eyes, or gray? Would the Creed family nose and angled cheekbones breed true? How would those features look on a daughter, rather than a son?
“Seth’s a beautiful child,” she said to Amy and Tom. “And so . . . cuddly.”
“Just like his mother,” Tom said as he turned Amy in his arms. His hands slipped down to cover his wife’s abdomen, and Amy put her hands over his. They looked comfortable and happy standing together like that. Cricket remembered the morning in Rip’s office when Creed’s hands had been on her the same way and felt a fluttering in her belly.
“Seth’s been a wonderful child,” Amy agreed, “and now he’s going to have a brother or sister in the fall.”
Creed grinned and crossed the parlor to his brother and sister-in-law. “That’s great!” He gave Amy a quick kiss on the cheek and slapped Tom on the back. “I’m going to be an uncle again.”
“Maybe you’ll have one of your own soon,” Amy said.
“Maybe,” Creed replied as his eyes met Cricket’s.
Cricket was surprised when the same spiraling sensation occurred which she’d felt in Creed’s arms. Only this time, he was nowhere near her. She didn’t realize until Amy spoke that she was staring at Creed.
“Let me take Seth to Belle, and we can go in to dinner.”
Creed crooked an elbow and offered his arm to Cricket. Uncomfortable, uncertain of how she should act, Cricket walked over and rested her hand on his sleeve. As awkward as that moment was for her, it merely provided a hint of the barrage of etiquette that would assail her in the days that followed.
Amy set numerous pieces of silverware at each place, so Cricket spent most of each meal trying to find the right one to use. Then there was the custom of seating ladies—and helping them from their chairs when the meal was finished. It did no good to protest she wasn’t a cripple. She had to stay seated until Creed came to stand behind her and help her rise.
When Cricket had reached between her legs at that first dinner and grabbed the back of her skirt, pulling it up and tucking it in at the ribboned waist in front, effectively making trousers out of it, she’d thought Amy was going to faint. But how else was she supposed to straddle her chair? Otherwise the blamed skirt scattered everywhere when she tried to sit down.
Amy had been appalled to learn Cricket could neither cook nor sew and hadn’t been impressed by her argument that she’d done very well without either of those skills and “never starved or gone naked as a result.” Amy had begun her campaign to teach Cricket to cook by rousting her one morning to help make the biscuits for breakfast.
Cricket and the kitchen got dusted with flour, but her biscuits weren’t fluffy and soft like Amy’s. They had a decidedly more chewy texture. The recipe had called for “a dop of lard” and, not knowing the proper measure, Cricket had dopped in a little more lard than she needed. She’d bristled when Creed laughed, but had to admit they were bad. Even Rogue wouldn’t eat them.
Then Amy taught her how to salt butter using salt and loaf sugar so it would last for ten years and taste as good as butter newly made. Of course she’d proudly served some to Creed for supper, not realizing the mixture took a full month to cure before it was edible.
The only reason Cricket agreed to try making soap was because Amy’s recipe was so simple there was no way she could make a mistake. But after she’d boiled the concoction for a while, it began to thicken much more than Amy said was usual. That was when Cricket realized she’d added ten pounds of pulverized resin and two pounds of potash dissolved in twenty-eight gallons of water to the twenty-five pounds of grease, instead of the other way around.
Cricket was decidedly leery when Amy suggested she learn to make a linament for sprains and spavins, and the only reason she gave in was because she thought she might be able to use it on Valor someday. After they’d added the concoction of oil of oraganum, oil of savis, oil of cloves, and tincture of opium to a quart of alcohol, and Amy assured her it was made correctly, nothing would do but Cricket had to try it on herself. She rubbed it on her arms. She rubbed it on her legs. She rubbed it on her stomach. She even had Amy rub some on her back. And it worked! Cricket spent the rest of the day in bed, too relaxed to move.
Cricket balked when Amy suggested she try sewing. But Amy was persistent, and Cricket felt guilty because Amy was taking so much time to teach her things she couldn’t seem to master, and surely she could learn how to do such a simple thing as running a needle back and forth through a piece of cloth. She was wrong. Because of the calluses on her fingertips, she couldn’t feel the needle until it stuck her. By the time Cricket had finished trying to embroider a quilt square, she’d gotten it so bloody from the needle pricks in her finger that it had to be thrown away. Amy discreetly gave up on sewing.
Amy wasn’t content teaching Cricket cooking and soap-making and household remedies. She also included the rules of etiquette on her daily agenda. Every time Cricket made a faux pas, Amy gently pointed it out to her and patiently showed her the correct behavior. What frustrated Cricket was the fact that she couldn’t seem to recognize when her actions were inappropriate. For instance, how was she supposed to know a lady never accepted a cigar with her brandy after dinner?
As the days flew by, Cricket failed at one feminine occupation after another. Creed’s gentle laughter when Amy lovingly recounted the day’s disastrous events sent her temper flaring. It was awful to fail and fail and fail, when her whole life had been a series of one success after another. Creed had said he was sure she could learn to do anything, but after two weeks of trying, Cricket was discouraged by her consistent inability to master even the most simple of wifely tasks.
It never occurred to Cricket that her disinterest caused her attention to stray when Amy was explaining the proper way to do things. She only knew that whatever she attempted invariably ended in ruin and calamity.
The only wifely chore she did with any confidence was holding Seth, playing with him, and dressing him, and she had to fight Belle for those opportunities.
However, Creed was not so easily discouraged. He could see positive changes in Cricket after only two weeks spent in the feminine role. She’d learned to consider her skirt when sitting and walking, no mean feat when he considered how she’d hiked it up to sit down to dinner that first evening. She’d almost mastered the intricacies of the silverware at the table, although her manners hadn’t been as godawful to start with as he’d feared they might be. And though her biscuits still weren’t as tasty as Amy’s, they were edible now. It was seeing Cricket with Seth that convinced him there were more facets to her than she was willing to let anyone see.
Cricket had proved with Seth that s
he was capable of giving as much love and doting adoration as any man could ever want. She was gentle. She was enchanting. She was funny. Creed found himself wishing she’d give him some of the same attention she gave Seth.
But coax as he might, Cricket couldn’t—or wouldn’t— transfer that openness with the boy to openness with him. He told himself he had to be patient, he had to be understanding, but he was only human. So, when he came home from a particularly tiring day spent with Tom at the cotton gin to find Cricket playing with Seth and ignoring him again, it set his teeth on edge.
“Isn’t it time for Seth to go upstairs now?” he asked.
Amy, who was more cognizant of Creed’s frustration than Cricket, quickly agreed. “Yes, it is. I’ll call Belle.”
Cricket relinquished her hold on Seth reluctantly when Belle came to take the small boy upstairs with her.
Creed wanted Cricket to touch him with the same freedom with which she touched the boy. But she never came near him unless she had to for appearance’s sake. And although she’d performed every task set for her by Amy over the past two weeks, she’d stubbornly slept on the floor, eschewing the comforts of the feather bed—and contact with him. He knew the floor wasn’t comfortable because each morning she awoke crankier than the last. He was fast running out of patience. So, when he crooked his arm and offered to escort Cricket to supper, and she rejected his help, his temper exploded.
“Take my arm, Cricket. That’s the way a gentleman escorts a lady to the table.”
“I’m no lady!” she snapped, and swished her skirt past him as she entered the dining room alone.
Cricket was also at the end of her patience. She was used to being capable and doing things right. She’d spent two weeks doing her best and being wrong. It had been an exercise in perseverance to take all Amy’s helpful hints in stride. The skirt was a hindrance. She hated the sight of biscuits. She’d pick cactus bare-handed before she’d try sewing again. And if she had to spend another night on the floor she wouldn’t be responsible for her actions. She was stewing for a fight, and it looked like Creed was going to give her one.
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