Why hadn’t Buck come? She needed to see him, wanted desperately to tell him she was ready to live anywhere he wanted. Anything was better than this separation. She had thought of asking Kase to take her back into the mountains to search for him and Blue Creek, but they couldn’t go until Rose had her baby and had safely recovered. Besides, given the way he felt about Buck Scott, she knew it would be ridiculous to even ask. If she told him the truth, she was afraid he really would want to have Zach lock Buck up and throw away the key.
She tried to put herself in Buck’s place. Would he believe she could never leave him so abruptly on her own, or would he see it as an escape? He had suspected her of trying to escape the day she had packed the picnic, but after the tender way he had made love to her that night, after the way she had responded so openly, she didn’t know how he could doubt her feelings.
Now that she had been forced to be without him for a month, she realized it didn’t matter where he wanted to live. She needed him more than she needed anyone else in her life. The thought of returning to Boston without him brought tears to her eyes. Even the idea of staying on here in Wyoming was no consolation without Buck in her life.
The wind had picked up. It blew constantly, so much so that she was growing used to it, but now, as dust swirled across the corral, she decided she’d had enough. Head down in thought, she crossed the barnyard. Her skirt swirled around her ankles, the hem swaying evenly, barely dusting the ground.
She looked up at the gaily painted house with its creamy yellow exterior the color of rich, fresh butter. The trim was a brilliant white enamel, every spool, every spoke, carefully painted. For a moment she envied her brother and his wife. Like her parents’, theirs was a love that was so apparent, so alive, that the two seemed as one whenever they were in a room together.
It was hard to imagine she and Buck working together as man and wife. They had such a strange beginning, their worlds were so opposite, that she wondered if she were insane to even pursue a reunion.
Reunion? She chided herself. He didn’t even care enough to come and take her back. Maybe, she thought, just maybe he’d gotten what he wanted. He had used her in bed, found a convenient way to see Baby Buttons safely out of his life, and was now free to live exactly as he wanted—alone and free. He had told her himself he didn’t really want a wife, that he had only written to Alice Soams so that he might have a nursemaid for Baby. Why should he have changed his mind just because she had fallen so willingly into his arms?
As she stepped up on the back veranda and opened the door, she wanted to cover her face in shame. Dear God, to think that she had almost attacked him that first time—and had made love on the table, no less.
“There you are,” Rose called out, startling Annika so that she almost jumped.
Annika’s eyes were riveted on the kitchen table for a moment, then, with her face flaming at the memories of another table and another time, she guiltily eyed her sister-in-law. “I was out looking at the buffalo.”
Rose smiled. “Like your brother. The buffalo have something for you and not for me. I see them and I see only the dirt and the flies. But”—she shrugged—“Kase gets joy from them and so I do not care.”
Stepping up beside the woman who was at least a head shorter, Annika watched as Rose rolled out a perfect slab of pie dough. “Where’s Buttons? Has she been bothering you?”
“Never. She is the perfect bambina. For now, she naps.”
Annika shook her head, but smiled nonetheless. “She can be quite a little imp. You didn’t carry her upstairs, did you?”
Rose shook her head and lifted the dough. Carefully, she laid it in the pie pan, pressed it down, and then picked up another ball of dough. Every movement seemed instinctive. Rose talked as she worked while Annika marveled at her skill. An earthenware bowl full of peaches tossed in sugar—and from the mouth-watering scent, they’d also been mixed with cinnamon—sat ready to go into the pie shell. Annika couldn’t help but sneak a peach slice.
“Again, like your brother. I tell him not to steal the fruit before the pie she is finished.”
Rose looked at Annika over her shoulder, studying her intently, her hands still for the first time. Annika leaned against the kitchen cabinet and waited. She had come to love and trust her sister-in-law. Perhaps if she told her all that lay so heavily on her mind she would come to some conclusions. Finally, since Rose seemed to be waiting for her to speak, Annika asked, “What is it?”
“I am just thinking that perhaps there is something you want to tell to me. You are worried, no?”
Sighing, Annika looked down at the dusty toe of her shoe. “I need to talk to someone.”
“But you cannot talk to your brother?”
With a shake of her head, Annika admitted quietly, “Not about this.”
“It is the man, yes? The one that took you away?”
Annika nodded.
“Ah. I know so. Tell me.”
“You won’t tell Kase?”
“If you say no, I don’t tell.”
“Please don’t then. I’m afraid I’ll eventually have to tell him, but I can’t yet. He’s still too angry, and you know how he is when he gets angry.”
Rose rolled her eyes and began spooning peaches into the bottom crust “Oh, I think he is not so bad as he is when I first come to Busted Heel. He is not so angry all the time as before.”
Annika knew her brother had come to terms with his heritage, most of which was unknown to her. With her own problems and his anger at Buck, she had hesitated to ask him about the rift with their parents that had forced him to move to Wyoming five years ago.
“I couldn’t tell Kase everything—I couldn’t tell anyone—but now I don’t know what to do and it’s driving me crazy, Rose.”
“Start from the front.”
“Well, at first I hated Buck Scott, mostly because I was so afraid, and then I think it might have been because no one had ever treated me unkindly before. He wouldn’t listen to reason when he carried me off like that, just kept insisting I was the woman he’d sent for and then, by the time he knew he’d made a mistake, we were snowed in.”
“This much of the story I know. Tell me what you have in your heart for him.”
Annika looked up, startled. “My heart?”
“I can see your heart is in the eyes when you are thinking of him. I can see that you wait, always watching, always listening. When a horse or wagon comes to the house, you jump and run to the door. Your brother thinks you are afraid for man has come back, but I think you are waiting for him.”
As if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders, Annika turned to face Rose. Her sister-in-law wiped her hands on her apron, left the pie forgotten on the cabinet, and with her hand on Annika’s elbow, drew her over to the table. “Sit. It is better to talk if you sit down.” Rose kept hold of her hand and Annika wondered why until she realized tears were plopping on the front of her white shirtwaist.
“Oh, God, Rose, I didn’t mean to cry like this, but I’ve had to keep this inside for a month now and...”
“Is all right. Talk.” Rose glanced at the door.
Annika wiped her eyes, afraid for her brother to see her like this. He would force her to explain.
“Buck wasn’t what I thought in the beginning. Oh, he was rough, he’s poor, but in a sense he’s richer than some people will ever be. He lives in the mountains where the sky is so close you can almost reach out and touch it. The air is clear and always scented with a hint of pine. He’s far from uncivilized; I guess you’d say he has his own code of ethics. He would never have touched me if... if I hadn’t wanted it.”
Rose was visibly relieved. “Kase, he thinks the man rapes you. He worries that this is why you are so afraid, and that you don’t eat. He can only think of what happened before—” As if she had said too much, Rose was suddenly silent
Annika had heard her last words and frowned. “Before? What happened before?”
“Just as you ask that I
do not say what you tell me to Kase, I cannot tell his story to you.”
“But, Rose, rape? Dear God, Kase didn’t rape anyone, did he? I never knew why he left Boston so suddenly, but...”
Her face darkened instantly with anger. “Never would your brother do such a thing. Never forget this.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry I even said it, but—”
“That is for him to tell you about. Now, this man, this Scott—”
Annika balled her hands in her lap and said softly, “I fell in love with him.”
“And then the men who wanted the money took you away,” Rose concluded.
“That’s right. And I thought Buck would come after Buttons and me as soon as he found us gone, but he hasn’t, and now I’m afraid he didn’t really love me. He just wanted someone to take Buttons for him.” She looked up at Rose again and felt another tear slide down her cheek. “I’m afraid he used me.”
“So you have been with him, as a woman is with a man?”
Annika nodded. “We made love. Now I’m so ashamed. I initiated it. I’m the one that broke through his reserve.”
“This is not so bad. No one will know if you do not tell them,” Rose reminded her.
Annika leaned forward and put her head in her hands. “That’s not the worst of it, Rose. I’m afraid I might be carrying his child.”
Rose was silent for so long, Annika was forced to meet her gaze. The other woman had leaned back in her chair, one hand lying upon her abdomen. “What will you do?”
Annika wanted to laugh. She had hoped Rose would give her advice. So she shrugged and said honestly, “I have no idea. My mother will never forgive me. She always had such plans for me, for my future in Boston. Ever since I was a little girl, she has told me how my wedding would be, how I would wear a white gown and walk down the staircase on Caleb’s arm and marry a kind man, a wonderful man like Caleb and live in a fine home in Boston. It was all she ever wanted for me, to be happy just the way she is with my father. You would think it would have been easy enough to do that much, to live up to her dreams for me. Now I’m so ashamed.”
“Ashamed of this Buck you love?”
“Never. Never ashamed of him. I’m ashamed of what I’ve done, especially now, when it’s clear he didn’t really want me.”
“You must try to find him, then. To let him know when you are certain, if it is true that you will have a child. Kase will take you. He will help.”
Annika grabbed Rose’s hand. “Oh, please, don’t tell him, Rose. Please don’t say anything.”
They both started when they heard a soft footfall from the front hallway. Annika’s worst nightmare stood in the kitchen doorway in the form of her six-foot-four brother.
“Tell me what?” he said.
21
THERE was no doubt that Kase was beginning to simmer. “Tell me what?” he demanded as he stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall, alternately watching Annika and then Rose.
While Annika debated whether to give in to her cowardice and run out the back door or have everything out in the open once and for all, Rose stood up to confront him. Annika watched in amazement as the petite woman stared up at Kase with her hands on her hips and actually began to bully him.
“Your sister, she needs to talk but I say no if you say you will yell.”
Kase glared down at his wife. “She’ll tell me the truth whether she wants to or not.”
Rose folded her arms beneath her breasts where they rested atop the mound that was his child. Annika saw her brother soften immediately.
“You must listen and not yell,” Rose warned him.
“Can you hear yourself, Rose? You’re yelling right now.”
Rose reached out and poked him in the chest as she said, “Be nice to your sister.”
Kase looked down at Annika without promising anything. “Let’s go in the parlor.”
She stood up, feeling like a prisoner with a noose around her neck sitting on a nervous horse. Kase took hold of her upper arm and dragged her along the hall to the parlor. Rose was trailing behind them, but as they entered the room, Kase closed the door and left his wife out in the hall.
“I don’t need both of your pestering me,” he told Annika. “Now, talk.”
He reminded her of Caleb as he leaned against the fireplace, waiting for an explanation. His clothes were perfectly tailored to fit his large frame; his hair, though longer than was fashionable, was brushed to a high shine and tied at his nape with a beaded ornament. His shirt was made of the finest linen and was black, like his pants. The open vest he wore was made of expensive calfskin. If fate hadn’t made him her brother, Annika knew she might have fallen in love with him. How then, she wondered, had she ever fallen for Buck Scott? True, he was as tall as Kase, if not taller, but where Kase was dark, Buck was light. Kase was polished, stylish, well educated. Buck was rough edged and unkempt, knowledgeable about his surroundings, a diamond in the rough. Buck was—
“I said start talking.”
She nearly jumped at the sound of his voice. Annika wished she had braided her hair; blown by the wind, it hung tangled and unmanageable. She shoved it back over her shoulders, but it refused to stay and kept falling into her eyes. She pushed it back one last time before she began to pace the room. “You said you thought there was more to my abduction and there is.”
“I knew it!” He sounded so pompous, so smug, that he was almost gloating.
“But it’s not what you think.”
“What is it you think I think?”
He stood firm, his arms crossed over his chest. Annika couldn’t stand still. She passed in front of the crushed velvet settee, passed the pedestal table, spun, and walked back. “You think that Buck raped me,” she said.
“Didn’t he?”
She paused and looked him straight in the eye so there’d be no mistaking her words. “He didn’t have to.”
She’d never seen a man get the wind kicked out of him before, but she had seen sails on a sailboat when the wind suddenly died. Kase had that same deflated look about him. She paused, standing not a foot away from him. His face mirrored his disbelief.
His voice was low. His words slow but audible. “Exactly what are you saying?”
“I let him make love to me,” she whispered.
Kase burst out, “Make love? Ha! I doubt if a buffalo skinner knows how to make love! You’re sure you let him, Annika? Or is there some perverse reason you feel you have to protect him—because if he raped you, so help me God, I’ll—”
She grabbed his arm and shook it, hoping to stop his tirade. In an even, measured tone she said, “I begged him for it.”
He slapped her without warning.
Annika sank to the wing chair drawn up before the fireplace as Rose came sailing through the door, her dark eyes blazing. “Basta! Kase, stop!”
With a look of shock, Kase immediately sank to his knee beside her chair. He tried to take Annika’s hand, but she pulled it away. She refused to touch him or the stinging red mark across her cheek.
“Oh, hell, I’m so sorry, Annemeke,” he said humbly.
“Maybe I deserve it,” she whispered, suddenly more forlorn than she had ever been in her life. Her brother hated her now, her parents would never speak to her again, and for what? She had lost Buck anyway.
Kase put his arm around her. Rose quietly left them alone again when Annika laid her head on his shoulder and sobbed.
“I shouldn’t have slapped you,” he said, apologizing again. “I just can’t believe this is happening.”
Sniffing, she wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. “It’s all true.”
Kase sighed. Now that she had calmed somewhat, he released her. “Now what?”
With a catch in her breath she said, “I don’t know.”
“You love him?”
“Yes. I thought he loved me, too, but he hasn’t come for me.”
“What about Buttons?”
Briefly she explained how Buck
had wanted her to stay with him, how she had wanted to marry him but had refused to live up in the mountains, and how he had tried to persuade her to find Buttons a home. “I thought I could eventually convince him to move into town. He would make a wonderful doctor....” When Kase looked skeptical, she said, “He would. But then those other men came and so very kindly rescued me. Now I don’t know if Buck ever loved me or not. Why hasn’t he come to get me? How can I go back to Mama and Papa now?”
“Rose and I can keep Buttons,” he said without hesitation. “You can go back and no one ever needs to know what happened.”
“It’s not that simple.” She took a deep breath and steeled herself for another onslaught of his temper. “I think I may be pregnant, Kase.”
He stood up, walked to the mantel again, and picked up an ebony vase detailed in gold. For a minute she was afraid he was going to throw it against the fireplace, but then he surprised her by gently setting it down. With his eyes averted he asked, “Would you marry him?”
“Yes.”
He walked back and hunkered down in front of her chair. Kase squeezed her limp hand. Like a father promising his child a gumdrop, he said, “Then we’ll just have to find Mr. Scott, give him the happy news, and help him settle down.”
A warning went off inside her. “You can’t force him, Kase. That’s not what I want.” She waved a hand toward the window. “Buck’s like your buffalo out there—he doesn’t be-long in a pen. He’s the last of his breed and he values his freedom. Besides, if he doesn’t come to the conclusion that he wants to marry me all by himself, well... I won’t force him.” She quickly added, “And neither will you.”
Kase took a deep breath as if the issue were settled. He stood up and said, “Why don’t we make sure you really are pregnant before we jump into this, all right?”
She stood up and smiled through tears. “Thank you, Kase.”
He reached out and with his forefinger beneath her chin tilted her face until she was forced to meet him eye to eye. He examined the fading mark on her cheek. “I’m sorry I hit you. I’ve never hit a woman before.”
Come Spring Page 30
