Never Look Back

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘I’m so wet,’ was the only thing she could manage to gasp out as she leaned back against the tree to catch her breath. She could hardly believe she’d been so abandoned, or so careless about being spotted by a passer-by.

  ‘Wet maybe, but never more beautiful,’ he replied, showering her face with kisses as he tried to fasten her gown again. ‘But I must get you home before you catch a chill.’

  They stood looking at each other for a moment, strangely nervous now, knowing they’d passed the point of no return. Matilda reached up and ran her fingers down the line of his cheek-bones. ‘We’re probably going to regret this tomorrow,’ she whispered. ‘But I don’t regret it now.’

  ‘Nor me,’ he said, and she knew he was smiling. ‘But come now, up on my horse, and home. I will regret it if you end up with a fever.’

  He lifted her bodily into the saddle, then mounted behind her, his slim hips sliding in so close to her buttocks that it felt as if they were one. With his arms around her, his chin on her shoulder, and his moustache tickling her cheek, the dark ride home wasn’t frightening any longer, or even cold.

  He told her about the posting in Benicia. It was a military post around thirty miles or so away, south-east of San Francisco. Its situation was convenient should any trouble occur here, in Stockton or Sacramento. Matilda couldn’t ask if his wife would be joining him there, to bring her name up now would only spoil the moment. Maybe tomorrow they could talk of such things. As they jogged along he rubbed his cheek against hers, and told her that not a day had passed when he didn’t think of her, and that he’d begun to believe she’d cast a spell over him.

  ‘My little English witch,’ he chuckled as the lights of the town came into view. ‘But if this is a magic spell, I sure don’t want anyone breaking it.’

  James secured his horse to the rail outside London Lil’s. Through the windows they could see only a handful of customers, for it was early yet, and the heavy rain would probably deter all but the most determined drinkers tonight.

  As they walked in, both sopping wet, Sidney rushed out from behind the bar. ‘Where have you been, Matty?’ he exclaimed, his usually jolly face etched with anxiety. ‘Are you hurt? What happened? Who is this?’

  Matilda quickly explained where she was when the rain started and how the Captain and his men had come by and rescued her.

  ‘You will remember me speaking of Captain Russell,’ she went on. ‘You know, the captain who was in charge of my wagon train. Wasn’t it strange that it was he who came along? I thought I’d never see him again.’

  Even as she made this explanation, she knew it must sound entirely improbable. As a young lad Sidney had loved to hear about this man. Under any other circumstances he would have greeted James with wild enthusiasm. But he was a man now, he saw himself as Matilda’s protector. He had almost certainly overheard her talking about James to Cissie on her last visit to Oregon, and who could blame him for thinking this meeting was planned?

  ‘Have you been posted here, sir?’ he asked with a touch of starch in his voice.

  ‘No. I’m on my way to Benicia,’ James replied. He glanced down at the ever-growing puddles around both their feet. ‘But let’s talk later, Sidney, Matty will get a chill if she doesn’t get into a hot bath quickly, she’d been out in the rain for a long time before I came along.’

  ‘Of course,’ Sidney said quickly, taking Matty’s dripping hat and cape from her. ‘Dolores is still holding our supper,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t eat, I was so worried. You should have said where you were going. I didn’t even know in which direction to look for you. I sent one of the boys up to Mr Slocum’s place thinking you might be there.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Matilda said, blushing under Sidney’s close scrutiny. She didn’t think he was mature enough to know her burning cheeks were the result of passion rather than the wind and rain, but just the same she was anxious to get away from him. ‘Now, do you think you can rustle up some dry clothes for the Captain? After rescuing me the least we can do is dry him off too, and feed him.’

  Sidney led James off to the wash-room at the back of the saloon, and Matilda went on upstairs, her wet skirts leaving a trail behind her.

  ‘Oh my Lord!’ Dolores exclaimed as Matilda came in.

  ‘I’m fine, only wet,’ Matilda said firmly, anxious not to get a long lecture from her maid, however kindly meant. She explained how she’d been caught in the rain, and that the Captain had brought her back. ‘I’ll just have a bath and get changed,’ she said. ‘Sidney’s seeing to the Captain. Is there enough supper for him too?’

  ‘Sure, I made a whole mess of fried chicken,’ Dolores said, putting both her big hands on Matilda’s shoulders and nudging her into her bedroom, where she grabbed a blanket from the closet. ‘Now, off with those wet duds, and wrap yourself in this until the bath’s ready. I’ll make you some hot brandy to kill the chill.’

  Once Dolores had gone off to the kitchen for hot water, Matilda quickly stripped off her wet and muddy clothes. Once wrapped in the blanket, she looked at herself in the looking-glass and grinned at her bedraggled appearance. Her hair was plastered to her head, yet she had bright pink cheeks and sparkling eyes. She didn’t look or feel the least bit poorly, the apartment was so very warm, and the smell of the fried chicken was making her mouth water.

  ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ she whispered at her reflection. But she didn’t, she felt elated, giddy and fizzy inside. All she hoped was that over supper she and James would be able to act naturally and not give Sidney or Dolores any reason to suspect there was something going on.

  Even that made her smile. Dolores had spent her entire adult life in a parlour house and like Zandra she would be hard to fool. Yet all the same Matilda had a position to maintain, and so she must act with the utmost propriety. If one word of this got outside, women like Alicia Slocum would go into a feeding frenzy. She didn’t much care for herself, but there was James to consider, and her girls. She wanted to bring Amelia down here to live before long, and it wouldn’t do for her to hear that her mother had a lover.

  When Matilda went back into the parlour, bathed and dressed in a pink gown, her still damp hair tied back with a ribbon, James and Sidney were sitting by the fire waiting for her, chatting as if they’d known each other all their lives. James was wearing a red flannel shirt and a pair of worn work pants which belonged to Albert, one of the other waiters. He was wearing no shoes, only a pair of thick socks. His damp fair hair was steaming a little as it dried.

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’ Sidney asked, jumping to his feet.

  ‘Never better,’ she replied, trying hard not to catch James’s eyes. The hot brandy laced with honey and lemon that Dolores had dosed her with had gone straight to her head, making her feel even more giggly and girlish. ‘And what about you, James?’

  ‘Your maid is one bossy woman,’ he laughed. ‘She snatched my uniform to dry it, wouldn’t even let me have my boots back. Maybe she doesn’t know soldiers are used to wearing wet boots.’

  Matilda smiled. Normally she and Sidney ate their supper in the kitchen, but while she’d been bathing, Dolores had laid the table in here with the best lace cloth and Zandra’s silver. While this could be purely because of James’s rank and class, she thought not, it was far more likely her maid knew perfectly well this was the man she’d been mooning over for so long, and had decided for herself that she was going to encourage him.

  ‘I got Albert to rub the Captain’s horse down, give him some oats and put him in the shed out the back,’ Sidney said. ‘The rain’s so heavy he’d best stay here tonight. I reckon parts of the town will be flooded by now.’

  At that Dolores pushed open the door and came in with a large tray piled high with food.

  ‘You all sit right down at the table now,’ she said.

  None of them needed prompting. The dishes of fried chicken, roasted potatoes and several different vegetables all looked and smelled delicious and they were all very hungry.r />
  ‘This fried chicken is the best I’ve ever eaten,’ James said, smiling up at Dolores as she came back into the room later with more potatoes. ‘It puts me in mind of the meals back home.’

  Dolores didn’t acknowledge this compliment but added another piece of chicken to his plate, then quickly left the room.

  ‘Did I say something wrong?’ James asked, looking at Matilda.

  ‘Not at all,’ she said with a smile. ‘Dolores is a woman of few words, giving you another piece of chicken is her way of showing her appreciation. I’ve got used to her now, but when she first came here with Zandra I found her quite intimidating.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ he said. ‘I heard the Contessa brought her from New Orleans, was she a slave?’

  ‘Not Zandra’s, she was appalled by slavery,’ Matilda said, then went on to tell the story.

  ‘I suppose if Dolores had been less plain she would have pressed her into some other kind of service!’ he replied with some sarcasm.

  Matilda bristled. ‘Don’t you ever make those kind of remarks about Zandra,’ she snapped. ‘She never “pressed” anyone into service, as you like to call it. Just the fact that Dolores chose to stay looking after her when she was old and frail proves the high esteem she had for her. Zandra left her five hundred dollars in her will, so she clearly cared for her too.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking a little sheepish. ‘I guess I’m just like everyone else, and find it difficult to imagine a woman owning a parlour house having a heart.’

  ‘It was a pity to you didn’t get to meet her,’ Sidney piped up, wanting to smooth the waters. ‘She was one lovely lady, Captain Russell, you’d have liked her the way we did, but tell us about your new posting.’

  James repeated what he’d already told Matilda. ‘Benicia is one of the better postings because it’s a newly built fort. Unfortunately, the temptation for some of the enlisted men to desert will be even greater here, so close to this city of sin and gold, than anywhere else,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Especially as for the most part there will nothing to do all day but drill.’

  ‘Won’t you be fighting Indians?’ Sidney asked.

  James smiled at the naive view that this was all soldiers did, and shook his head. ‘We’re only here to keep law and order in the gold-mining towns,’ he said. ‘Trouble can brew up like a spark in dry straw, our job is just to quell it.’

  After asking a few questions about army life, Sidney reluctantly went back down to the saloon. Matilda and James moved back to the couch in front of the fire while Dolores cleared the table.

  ‘Don’t you have to go downstairs tonight?’ he asked once Dolores had left the room and Matilda handed him a brandy.

  ‘I should, but I won’t,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to leave you alone up here and you can’t come down with me without any boots.’

  ‘I don’t mind being alone,’ he said, stroking her cheek with one finger. ‘By rights I should be up at the fort with my men, not lying around here in comfort. I’ll have to get back very early in the morning to lead them to Benicia.’

  Matilda hadn’t realized he was moving on so quickly. ‘I thought you’d have a couple of days here,’ she said sadly.

  He drew her into his arms. ‘I guess this is as good a time as any to talk about how things are,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where we can go from here, Matty. Evelyn’s joining me soon in Benicia.’

  Matilda’s heart plummeted. While his wife was right over the other side of America in Virginia she imagined she could forget about her. ‘Are you trying to tell me that this is all we get?’ she asked softly.

  He tilted her face up to his and looked into her eyes. ‘How can I say that, Matty? I wish I could say it was a terrible mistake and this is where it has to end, but I can’t. It sure doesn’t feel like a mistake, it feels like the rightest thing I’ve ever done.’

  ‘But how can we have anything more, James?’ she asked gently, suddenly so very aware of how precarious this love affair would be. ‘How can I be in your life when Evelyn is with you at the fort? Maybe I could bear you having a wife if she was far away. But not here, so close.’

  He said nothing for a little while. She could see a tic twitching under his eye, and knew he had something he wanted to share with her, but felt he couldn’t say.

  ‘What is it? Come on tell me, we can’t have secrets now.’

  ‘She doesn’t want to come,’ he blurted out suddenly. ‘It was her father who insisted she must.’

  Matty frowned. ‘But why doesn’t she? Surely every wife wants to be with her husband.’

  He hung his head, she thought he looked embarrassed.

  ‘The truth of the matter is that Evelyn expected that her father would immediately push me up through the ranks once we were married,’ he said in a rush. ‘She thought I’d get a posting in Washington and saw herself in a smart house, entertaining fellow officers and their wives. She was shocked when her father packed her off to join me in New Mexico, her plan was to stay at home in Virginia.’ James paused and leaned forward to give the fire a poke. ‘The sad thing about this is that Evelyn was as mistaken about her father as she was about me. He’s of the old school, like me, believes in real soldiering, not sitting behind a desk somewhere. He knew my real talents lay in training raw recruits. He also believes a woman who marries a soldier should take what comes with the job.’

  ‘Well, so she should,’ Matilda said stoutly.

  James gave a mirthless little laugh. ‘Can you begin to imagine, Matty, what it’s like to have a wife with you who is determined to hate everything sight unseen? She was a spoiled, pampered child, Matty, she has no spirit of adventure, no desire to broaden her horizons, and she has never learnt that sometimes life has to be a compromise.’

  Matilda noted that James had carefully chosen every word he’d said about her, he was too gallant to be openly disloyal. She thought the plain truth was that Evelyn had married James believing she could manipulate him and her father to get exactly what she wanted, and that real love had never come into it.

  If this was true, then she need have no guilty conscience about taking Evelyn’s husband as a lover. It still meant that they had no real future together. It would always be an illicit relationship which they would have to hide. But however painful and difficult that might be, it had to be far less agonizing than cutting him out of her life.

  ‘I can’t say goodbye,’ she said, leaning into his chest. ‘So there’s nothing for it but for us to be lovers in secret. That is, if you can find a way to come and see me now and then?’

  ‘I can find a hundred and one excuses to come into San Francisco, if you still want me/he said, with a voice husky with emotion. ‘Maybe you could even organize regular riots so I’ve got good reasons.’

  Matilda giggled. ‘There will be a riot if you don’t come.’

  A little while later Dolores knocked on the door to say she had made up the bed for the Captain in Zandra’s old room and asked if they needed anything more this evening.

  Matilda thanked her and said there was nothing more they needed. James smirked as the door closed behind the maid but made no comment.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be entirely comfortable with having a servant,’ Matilda said thoughtfully. ‘You see, I was a very nosy one, and knew absolutely everything about the Milsons. I don’t like the idea that Dolores knows everything about me.’

  ‘I’ve never thought about it in that way,’ he replied with a smile. ‘But then I was surrounded by servants right from birth. The way Dolores fussed about my wet clothes was almost like going home again.’

  ‘And they must have been slaves?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, a shadow flitting across his face. ‘Of course I didn’t understand the significance of that until I was about eleven. My father stopped me playing with the children around that time. Up till then I thought we were just one big family, black or white. Indeed, I much preferred the black people, they were far nicer to me than my own folks.�
�� He paused for a moment, a troubled look in his eyes. ‘That’s another cloud on the horizon,’ he said after a few moments. ‘If the Southern States are ever to join the Union they will have to agree to abolish slavery. But I can’t see them doing that, and I can only see it ending in civil war.’

  Matilda didn’t see why this should trouble him unduly, and said so.

  ‘You are forgetting I am a Southerner,’ he said with a sigh. ‘How could I lead my men against my own people?’

  Any further deep conversation was halted as the band struck up downstairs. James jumped as the lamps began to tinkle with the vibration, and Matilda laughed. ‘Our peace is over now,’ she said. ‘In an hour or two we won’t even be able to hear ourselves speak.’

  ‘Then kiss me again instead,’ he said.

  The kisses earlier had been savage, a thirst that had to be quenched, the whole act had been a primitive urge which had no finesse or delicacy. But now it was time to tease, please and explore each other. James made a nest of cushions in front of the fire and laid her down on it, pulling the ribbon from her hair and running his fingers through it. He whispered endearments, his eyes full of tenderness, he said again that fate must have planned for them to be together. Between kisses, garments were removed slowly, piece by piece, and tossed aside.

  Matilda looked down at him as he hooked her breasts out from the confines of her chemise to suck at them, and she trembled with pleasure. As his shirt came off and that hard golden-brown chest which she’d so often admired on the trail touched her nipples for the first time, it was so erotic she felt faint with desire.

  It was she who removed his pants, running her hands down his muscular thighs, stroking his hard buttocks, delighting in the soft gold hair on his legs. His penis was far bigger than either Flynn’s or Giles’s, as upright as a sabre, yet so warm and smooth to the touch.

  James stroked her body as if tuning a musical instrument, waiting for the moment when the pitch and tone were perfect. Every kiss heightened the sensuality of his probing fingers, he licked and sucked at her naked flesh as if he was feasting on her, and when he finally entered her, Matilda’s senses were already spiralling out of control, lost in the wonder of loving and being loved.