Fancy looked up at Rafe, whose overall-clad frame loomed against the sky, blocking out the sun. “How dare you?” she hissed, furious beyond all good sense. She rose to her feet and advanced, and Rafe actually retreated a step. “Apologize this minute, you hulking beast!”
Rafe stopped. The realization that he was being backed down by a tiny woman, and in front of all his friends, to boot, dawned ominously in his face. He reddened and his bright little eyes narrowed. “No goddamned tramp travelin’ with a freak show tells me what to do!” he spat.
“Rafe—” ventured some tentative peacemaker, from the gaping crowd.
Fancy had never been more frightened in her life, but she was prepared to fight if she had to. She crossed her arms over her bosom and waited.
Rafe bent toward her and she felt his fetid breath in her face, smelled it, even tasted it. Her stomach turned within her, but she stood her ground.
“What else do you do for a penny?” drawled the brute, smirking now. “Whatever it is, maybe you’ll do it for me—in them bushes over there.”
Fancy drew back her foot to kick him—the distance between them allowed her a target other than his thick shins—but before she could make contact at all, Rafe was spinning around, a surprised expression on his face. Peering around him, Fancy saw Jeff, and the look of white-hot rage in his eyes scared her more than Rafe ever could have.
“Would you mind repeating that?” Jeff drawled, in a cold voice. A muscle leaped in the line of his jaw and was still again.
Rafe had had a moment to recover, and he squared his mule-strong shoulders in preparation for battle. Still, there was a tremor in his voice when he answered. “I just wanted her to sing.”
Phineas had gotten back to his feet, and he caught Fancy’s upper arms in both hands and pulled her backward, out of range. The crowd, silent now, drew back, too, making a thick circle around the two men.
Blood pounded in Fancy’s ears and her heart nestled into her throat, fat and almost impossible to breathe around. God in heaven, did Jeff actually mean to fight with that monster of a man? That giant?
He did. Tired of waiting, he drew back one fist and then lodged it squarely in Rafe’s fleshy middle. It made a thudding sound and the farmer’s breath left his lungs in an angry whoosh.
With the hulking movements of a trained bear, Rafe swung one huge hand toward Jeff’s head. Despite his own impressive size, Jeff was smaller than his adversary and Fancy closed her eyes, unable to watch.
The terrible sounds went on for an eternity, it seemed to Fancy, and she flinched at each grunt of pain, each muttered swearword, each thud of fist against flesh.
“Sweet Lord in heaven,” marveled Phineas in an undertone, his hands still holding Fancy fast.
She opened her eyes at this and was surprised to see Rafe kneeling on the ground, blood trickling from his nostrils and making crimson patches in the dirt. His shoulders heaved with the effort to breathe and Jeff stood over him like an avenging angel, magnificent in his fury, unscathed except for a slight cut above his right eye.
Almost idly, he lifted one booted foot and placed it in the middle of Rafe’s chest. With a desultory motion of his leg, he sent the farmer toppling backward to lie curled up on the ground.
Looking shame-faced and apologetic, several of Rafe’s friends came to gather him up and lead him, stumbling, away. Jeff’s furious indigo eyes sliced to Fancy and held, and the ferocity in their depths stunned her so profoundly that she couldn’t move or speak. Why was he angry with her, she wondered wildly.
Phineas stepped around her rigid little frame to offer a congratulatory hand to Jeff. Some of the fury faded from Jeff’s eyes as he hesitated and then accepted Phineas’s handshake.
Throughout this brief exchange, Fancy stood still, hurting and defiant and wildly confused. She had done nothing wrong, nothing but try to defend her friend, and yet Jeff was clearly outraged. The look he flung in her direction as he listened to Phineas’s raving skewered her with the piercing impact of a lance.
When Phineas wandered away to attend his balloon, Jeff approached her. Fancy averted her eyes, gnawing at her lower lip.
“What was that all about?” Jeff demanded coldly, standing so close that she could feel the power and strength of him in every fiber of her being.
Fancy lifted defiant eyes to his white, taut-jawed face. “The farmer started it all,” she said.
“You could have been hurt!” Jeff retorted in a tight voice, and it was then that Fancy realized that he wasn’t angry at all. He was frightened.
“I wasn’t, thanks to you,” she said lightly.
“Does that happen often?”
Fancy nodded reluctantly. “I’m afraid so,” she admitted. “But it doesn’t matter now, does it? It’s all over.”
His hands closed over her shoulders and he drew her close in a swift, almost desperate movement. She could feel just the hint of a tremor in his muscular frame. “Suppose I hadn’t gotten here in time—”
Fancy laughed nervously, surprised that there were tears brimming in her eyes. “I would have started singing,” she answered. She had never been rescued before, and it was a nice feeling, a touching feeling.
Jeff chuckled and caught her chin on the curve of his fingers, lifting. He kissed the tip of her nose and then held her close again, as though he feared to let her go. “What have I done?” he mourned, in an almost inaudible voice.
The magic of the moment was broken, as far as Fancy was concerned. The brutal fact was that, married to this man or not, she was still essentially on her own. Already he was regretting his association with her; the words he’d just uttered made that clear. “I told you that you shouldn’t have married me,” she said, hiding the sorrow she felt behind a thin wall of defiance.
His strong hands slid down from her waist to her round bottom, pressing her close. “Did you, now?” he teased, arching one golden eyebrow.
“Stop it—people will see!”
“I don’t care,” he replied, mischief dancing a weary jig in the depths of his navy blue eyes.
“Well, I do!” muttered Fancy, blushing. Though she’d thought otherwise, the things Rafe had implied about her morals smarted terribly in retrospect. She ached to be respectable.
Jeff gave her one more impudent squeeze and then let her go. “Shall I tell you what I plan to do to you when we’re alone?” he drawled.
“No!” shouted Fancy, folding her arms across her breasts in an unconscious effort to keep him at bay.
He reached out and traced the outline of her jaw with one finger. “First,” he said, as though she hadn’t spoken at all, “I’m going to—”
Fancy whirled and stormed back to her table, Jeff’s laughter ringing in her ears. When she looked back, though, he was gone and her moral outrage was all for naught. Considering some of the things he might be planning for when they were alone, she blushed hotly.
Mercifully, a new crowd was gathering in front of her table. She began her performance and only occasionally looked in the direction of Phineas’s balloon.
Telling herself that it was stupid to be jealous of an inanimate object, Fancy wished devoutly that the damned thing would pop.
When nightfall finally came, Fancy was exhausted and petulant. She flounced and muttered as she tended to Hershel and repaid Jeff’s amused perusal with a scowl.
He was sitting cross-legged in the grass, talking quietly with Phineas. Occasionally the two men laughed at some joke that Fancy couldn’t quite catch, and that made her even angrier.
By the time Jeff produced the cold ham, biscuits, and cider that he’d brought back from town, she was ready to scratch his eyes out. She was hungry, though, having eaten nothing since the oatmeal at breakfast, so she sat down to share in the meal.
Looking a little less wan than he had that morning, Phineas was clearly enjoying the food. It occurred to Fancy that his cider and Jeff’s contained some element that hers lacked, but she dismissed the thought. She was just feeling fitfu
l, that was all—it had been a hard, confusing day.
Still, Jeff and Phineas seemed to get merrier with every cupful of cider they drank. They laughed uproariously and Phineas told outrageous stories about his travels in that cursed balloon.
“Can’t we talk about something else?” Fancy snapped, feeling left out.
Jeff slanted an unreadable look at her and asked Phineas an involved question about air currents. Phineas replied with a lengthy discourse and Fancy felt as though she’d been slapped. She set her plate down and scrambled to her feet, marching off toward the balloon.
Its hugeness shifted and whispered against the twilight skies, as if to taunt her. Drawing back one foot, she muttered an oath and kicked the wicker gondola soundly.
“You’re acting like a child,” observed a familiar voice from behind her.
Fancy whirled, the unaccountable tears that had been pressing toward the surface all day stinging in her eyes. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!” she cried.
Jeff smiled evilly and folded his arms across his broad chest. “You know what you need, Mrs. Corbin? A good, sound spanking.”
Fancy turned her back on him, too angry to speak. Then, after one look up at the balloon, with its mysterious valves and ropes, she kicked the gondola again.
Steel arms immediately closed around her waist, startling her and then stinging her to fury. Jeff lifted her off the ground and carried her against one hip, as though she were no heavier than a valise.
Outraged and wildly embarrassed, she kicked and struggled against him. “You put me down—don’t you dare—”
He strode on, chuckling. “It’s time we had a little talk about who runs this family—darling.”
Fancy squirmed as the woods bounced nearer and nearer. She could hear a nightowl calling, hear the silky rustle of the stream. If he really chose to spank her, there wouldn’t be one wretched thing she could do about it, and the thought made her dizzy with fury. “If you lay one hand on me,” she warned, in jerky tones, “I’ll cut your liver out and feed it to Hershel!”
“Now, now, dearest,” Jeff chimed in retort, “don’t be vulgar.”
Vulgar! Fancy was screaming mad now—what right had he to call her vulgar! He was the one that was making a scene! “You b–bastard—”
Jeff walked faster, deliberately making Fancy’s unwilling ride that much rougher. Bushes snatched at her hair and clothes as they went closer to the stream. “I can see I’m going to have to take a firm hand with you,” he said, with mock ruefulness. “I like spirit in a woman, but disrespect is another matter entirely.”
He wasn’t even winded, damn him, and Fancy could barely catch her breath. She gave a strangled cry of helpless rage and then was summarily flung down onto the blankets where they had loved so ferociously the night before.
Jeff dropped to his haunches and uttered a thoughtful “Hmmm,” rubbing his chin with one hand.
Fancy half sat and half lay on the blankets, her breath tearing its way in and out of her lungs, scalded in her own fury. Had she the necessary power, she would have attacked him with both feet and both fists, but she was too undone even to move.
Meanwhile, Jeff went on considering her punishment. “I could give you a paddling you’d never forget,” he speculated, his eyes on the trees and the pale, waning moon. Even though he was addressing his words to Fancy, she felt as though she’d suddenly become invisible. “Yes,” he ruminated, “I could sit down on that stump over there, throw up your skirts and pull down your drawers and give you to understand who is the husband around here—”
Fancy’s rage was settling into a heavy, delicious sort of terror. For all her brave words, she knew that his threat was not an idle one. “You w–wouldn’t—” she struggled to say.
The indigo eyes met hers with cordial warning. “Oh, but I would. It runs in my family, you know. And I’ve done it for much less reason than you just gave me.”
Fancy’s eyes rounded. “You have?”
“Oh, yes. Of course, I was never actually married to the women concerned, and that sheds a new light on the situation.”
Fancy hoped that light was merciful. “It does?” she choked out.
“It certainly does.”
“Oh,” said Fancy.
And suddenly he laughed.
Fancy knew then that he’d never intended to strike her, that he’d been teasing her all along, deliberately trying to scare her. The fact that he’d succeeded made her angrier than the threat itself. With a strength she’d never suspected she possessed, she bolted to her knees and thrust both her hands into Jeff’s chest, catching him off guard and sending him rolling down the bank and into the stream. Of course the water wasn’t very deep there, but he came up sputtering and wet all the same.
Fancy inched backward on the blankets as he strode toward her, his face hidden in the lavender shadows of deepening twilight.
“On second thought—” he rumbled, capturing her shoulders and halting her crablike escape in virtually one motion.
“No!” Fancy howled.
But Jeff wrenched her to her feet and in a twinkling, it seemed, he was sitting on the aforementioned stump and hauling a stunned Fancy across his lap. She felt a chilly breeze as he flung up her skirts, an aching vulnerability as her drawers came down.
“No,” she said again, whimpering this time and squeezing her eyes shut in preparation.
But the stinging blow she’d expected never came. Instead, Jeff closed his hands around her waist and stood her upright. She stared at him for a moment and then reached down to pull up her drawers, her face flaming.
Jeff laughed at the inelegant little dance of the effort, and it was all she could do not to pull his hair out of his head. Only the realization that he might reconsider and spank her after all stayed her from doing just that.
She was tying her drawer strings in angry, jerking motions when his hands reached out to close over hers and stopped them.
“You didn’t think you were going to get off as lightly as that, did you?” he asked.
Fancy dropped her hands to her sides in a defiant sort of obedience, oddly powerless to do otherwise. She shivered helplessly as he undid the frayed strings again and slowly slid her drawers down over her hips and thighs. They came to rest around her ankles; Jeff ordered her to step out of them and she did.
One of his hands bunched her skirts at her waist, while the other stroked the inside of her thigh. “Spread your legs, Fancy,” he commanded gruffly.
“I—oh—”
Jeff chuckled and his fingers parted her. The pad of his thumb was administering a sweet punishment, making her heart leap inside her while her groin ached in grinding submission. “I am the husband,” he reminded her, and she could feel the warmth of his breath as well as his marauding thumb. “And you are …?”
Fancy shuddered and a whimpering sound rattled its way out of her constricted throat.
He nipped at her, sending rivers of fire raging through every part, every hidden place. “Fancy,” he prompted.
“The w–wife!” she managed, in splendid defeat.
Jeff burrowed deeper into her moistness and warmth, groaning softly as he plundered her. And between forays calculated to drive her insane, he lectured her.
She tangled her hands in his hair and whimpered as the breathless climb began. His name came repeatedly from her lips, making pleas, confessing defeat, vowing rebellion. He chuckled and punished her with a series of soft kisses. As he rolled the captured treasure between his tongue and his teeth, Fancy’s control shattered.
Suddenly, she was caught in an inner inferno, battered and shaken by its burning force. She shuddered and cried out in throaty, glorious despair.
Jeff stroked the bare, glowing flesh of her bottom until she was inside herself again. When she was, he gave her a patronizing pat and pushed her gently away, as though she were a good meal and he’d had his fill.
“I brought you some things from town,” he said, indicating a parcel
resting a few feet away, on their blanket-bed.
Fancy was still trembling, and her eyes were wide and questioning as she watched him run one hand through his hair and glance in the direction of the camp. Wasn’t he going to stay? Wasn’t he going to make love to her, to finish what he’d started?
“Sleep well,” he said affably, dashing all her hopes.
“Wh–where are you going?” Fancy managed, hating herself for letting him know she cared.
The powerful shoulders lifted and fell again in an off-handed shrug. “Just go to sleep,” he said, in a dismissive tone.
Fancy felt a flood of crimson pass her erect nipples and flow into her face. “Sleep?” she echoed in a small and stricken voice.
He was leaving her, actually walking away. “Good night, Fancy,” he said.
Fancy boiled and then went chill. She wanted to lunge after him, wanted to batter him with her fists. This urge was rivaled by yet another—the impulse to plead for the fulfillment he was withholding.
She hugged herself and bit down hard on her lower lip to keep from doing any of those things. When he was completely out of sight, however, she stumbled back to the blankets, fell down on them, and alternately cursed and cried until she slept.
Jeff did not return at all that night and, when Fancy woke up, she scowled at the still-wrapped parcel he’d mentioned the night before and kicked it away with one bare foot.
Still, her eyes went back to the packet several times as she dressed and groomed herself for another day. She hadn’t had a gift since she was a child, and resisting that one was almost more than she could manage.
All the same, Fancy did not tear away the brown paper and the tightly drawn string, even though her fingers ached to do it. He could keep his geegaws and his—well, he could just keep everything.
The first thing Fancy noticed when she reached the carnival camp was that hateful balloon. It was aloft, doing its colorful sky dance, straining arrogantly at its ropes.
And inside the gondola was Jeff, one arm draped reassuringly around the shoulders of a buxom farm girl. She was laughing up at him, that trollop, and even from the ground Fancy could see the glow in her plump cheeks. No doubt there was a corresponding invitation in her eyes.
Corbin's Fancy Page 9
