Loving Katherine

by Carolyn Davidson

  “Why the hell didn’t you ever get a dog?” he asked bluntly, sinking into the softness of the feather tick, the double weight of two bodies taking them to the wooden base.

  “A dog?” She felt enveloped in the bed, drawn against his hard body, the billowing mattress surrounding them. “Why would I get a dog?”

  “He mighta taken a chunk outa old Evan last night and saved you a whole lot of misery, lady.” His feet rose from the floor, and turning, he shifted them both into a supine position, leaning against the headboard.

  Struggling against the strength of his hold, she sought a new angle, only to find his face mere inches from her own. His grin served to multiply her frustration, and wiggling, she managed to free one arm, waving it about in silent threat.

  “You gonna hit me, Katherine?” he challenged.

  Her eyes flashed fire, the tears drying as if a good west wind had borne every trace of sadness with it as it passed her way. “You know I’m not,” she snapped.

  “You done cryin’? I carried you all the way in here to give you a little comfort, and all you do is fight me every inch of the way.”

  “We’re on my bed, Mr. Devereaux,” she told him unbelievingly. “Let me go, and leave my bedroom.”

  “I been here before, Kate,” he reminded her, tightening his grip.

  She stilled, her legs relaxing, her hand falling to rest on his shoulder, her head drooping against his chest once more. “I remember,” she whispered bitterly. “But it was kind of you to remind me.”

  “I don’t mean to hurt you,” he said quietly. “In fact, I suspect you know I’m the last man on earth lookin’ to give you a hard time.”

  She lowered her head, exposing the slender, vulnerable nape of her neck, the heavy rope of hair falling across her breast and coiling in her lap.

  It was more temptation than he could resist. Lured by the pale vulnerability of that exposed skin, he inhaled deeply, allowing her scent to fill his lungs.

  “Don’t, Roan,” she told him. “You’re breathing on my neck, and I’ve got chill bumps—I don’t want you doing that!”

  He straightened, his body heating beneath her, his loins heavy with the arousal he strove to deny. Not now, he prayed desperately. Not here, not with Katherine. All he needed was to frighten her again. Here on the bed where Evan Gardner had grasped with greedy intent at her tender flesh last night. Where he’d rooted about like a boar hog in rut between her legs, bruising her and scaring her half to death.

  Shifting her about, Roan loosened his hold, rubbing his face on the top of her head, freeing the wispy strands of hair she’d so carefully scraped into place earlier.

  “You done cryin’ now?” he asked again.

  “I never cry,” she told him harshly.

  “Yeah, I noticed that about you. You just hold every blamed thing inside that starchy little body of yours and glare like a banty rooster, your feathers all ruffled and your neck stuck out.”

  “Well, thank you, Mr. Devereaux. I’ve never been described in more glowing terms, I’m sure,” she said with mock delight. Lifting herself with deliberate care, she sat upright on his lap, no small feat, given the angle of their posture. Unfortunately, she managed to park her bottom in the exact spot he had been striving to keep from her notice.

  Her eyes widened and her lips pressed together tightly as she became aware of the significance of his sudden gasp.

  “If you don’t mind, Katherine,” he said tightly, lifting her with alacrity and rising with her. He held her with one arm about her middle, her feet dangling above the floor and their eyes on a level.

  Her cheeks were flushed, at least the unbruised one, the other already so suffused with blood it made his stomach hurt to look at it. Her eyes were bright, shining with an element of surprise that tickled his fancy, and he chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked breathlessly, her lungs squeezed against his chest.

  “Nothing,” he told her cheerfully. “I’m just tryin’ to decide how to tell you what’s gonna happen now.”

  “I can solve that problem for you,” she said tartly. “You’re going to release me, and I’m going to gather the eggs and get ready to churn butter before I go work my yearlings.”

  He shook his head slowly, her eyes following the movement. With each back-and-forth motion, she bit at her lip, flaring her nostrils and frowning her finest.

  “The eggs can sit out there and rot for all I care, Katherine. We’re gonna have this out, here and now,” he told her firmly, the facade of cheerfulness gone by the wayside.

  “Let me down.” Chin uptilted, she was defying him.

  “Not till you listen.”

  “I’m listening.” Her teeth gritted against one another, and she clenched her jaw tightly as she shot the words at him.

  “We’re gonna leave here together, Katherine. I’m not leavin’ you alone again. We’ll figure out some way of takin’ care of your stock, and if we have to, we’ll take the blamed horses with us. But I’m tellin’ you for the last time, I won’t leave you here alone.”

  “Just where do you think you’re going to take me? Me and a whole herd of horses! That’ll be the day, Roan Devereaux!” Her eyes snapping smartly, she twisted in his grasp and her lower lip stuck out in a determined pout. Her hands shoved against his chest as she stretched her legs to the floor, her toes barely touching the bare wood. Her mind searching for an out, she settled on the obvious.

  “Well, maybe I’ll just marry up with old Evan and save you the trouble of worrying about me,” she spouted shrilly.

  “The hell you will!” He glared from dark eyes into the stubborn blue ones that flashed fire in his direction.

  “You can’t tell me what to do,” she said.

  “I owe your daddy, and he’d turn over in that grave up on the hill if he knew I’d walked away from you yesterday.”

  “Well, you don’t owe me!” And then her eyes softened and she leaned her head back to fill her vision with the rough outline of his face, the squared jaw and hawkish nose that denied him beauty.

  “What do you owe my daddy?” she asked in a hushed tone, aware she was in the dark on this subject. All she’d heard about when it came to Roan Devereaux was the story of his valiant effort to save Charlie Cassidy’s life. About his care of the man, his strength and his stubborn determination that Charlie should live to return home.

  “If it hadn’t been for your daddy, I’d be wearin’ a pair of crutches, lady. He stood off an army surgeon with his rifle when they wanted to cut off my leg. Old Charlie pointed that gun and told that doctor to patch it up long enough for me to get to a hospital. They dumped enough carbolic acid on that wound to kill every bit of poison the bullet left behind. Charlie made ‘em wrap it up and splint it tight, and then he put me in a wagon and headed out.”

  “Where’d he take you?” Somehow she was aware of his hands loosening their grip, allowing her to slide down the front of him till her feet were flat on the floor, enabling her to step back a bit, her eyes never leaving his face.

  “All the way to Philadelphia, changin’ the dressing on my leg twice a day and feedin’ me soup from every farmhouse we passed. Well, pret’ near, anyway,” he amended. “The doctor in the hospital there just shook his head when he saw me. Guess I was a sight to behold, all skin and bones and my leg all stove up.”

  “But he patched you up?” she prodded.

  “Yeah. Charlie waved goodbye, like he’d done ‘bout all he could. By then the war was over, and he headed home. That doctor took me on like a personal challenge.” Roan grinned, obviously remembering. “I owe your daddy,” he repeated. “If I have to lug you all the way to Louisiana and back, I will.”

  “You don’t have much of a limp,” she said, ignoring his command.

  “He was some bang-up doctor,” Roan answered agreeably.

  “You still don’t owe me anything, Roan,” she repeated. “I’ll be fine here.”

  “Sure you will, and I’ll be a suck-egg mule if I
walk away from you.”

  Her nose wrinkled in distaste. “I’m not sure what that is and I don’t think I want to know. But you’d better know something. My daddy would do cartwheels from that grave if he thought I was trotting across the country with a man.”

  “What if that man was your husband?”

  “I don’t…have a husband. The only offer I’ve had lately was from Evan Gardner, and we both know what I thought about that one.” Remembering her threat, she cast him a quick look of chagrin.

  “I’m not offerin’. I’m tellin’ you what’s gonna be.” The strength that carried Charlie up that hill was on display as he placed hard fingers about her shoulders, giving her no leeway, holding her firmly in place as his words made their impact.

  She shook her head. “I can’t do that.”

  “What can’t you do?” he asked quietly.

  “The dragging all the way to Louisiana and back, for one. And the married part,” she blurted.

  “You let me cuddle you a while ago. I even kissed you once.”

  “Twice,” she corrected him.

  His brow lowered as he searched his mind and found the brush of his mouth across her cheek when he’d agreed to rid the vermin under her cupboard. “That little peck doesn’t count as a kiss. One decent kiss is all you’ve ever gotten from me.”

  “I’m not afraid of that. It’s just the rest of it, the pawing and pushing and sweaty hands part I can’t tolerate.”

  “Whose sweaty hands touched you, Katherine? Besides Evan’s, I mean.”

  She ducked her head. “I don’t want to talk about it, Roan.” Her voice pleaded for understanding and he gave it, with immediate compliance.

  “All right, we won’t talk about it. I’ll just tell you here and now, I won’t be pawin’ at you. All right? Not unless I know it’s what you want,” he added quickly, leaving an open door.

  “I can’t leave here just like that.” Her mind spun as she attempted to digest the plan he proposed.

  “Charlie wouldn’t hold you to this place, if he knew,” he told her bluntly. “If you want to come back, we’ll head north in the spring, Katherine. We can decide then what to do with your place. In the meantime, let me take care of you, and you just worry about that string of horses out back.”

  Her look was doubtful. “Charlie bought this place for me. I can’t just walk away from it.”

  “I don’t expect you to. It’ll take a couple days to make arrangements. I’ll take you into town and we’ll see the banker. You have to deliver that filly anyway. You can’t get her any more trained than she is, Katherine. You’ve just been puttin’ it off and you know it.”

  “You’re rushing me!” she cried accusingly.

  “Damn right I am.”

  * * *

  It took three days. One longer than he’d allowed, but several shorter than she’d planned.

  The banker, Ross Green, had been more than obliging. Agreeing to sell off her hens and loaning her cow to a family near town too poor to own their own, the man had sliced through her arguments neatly. Ross Green would either keep an eye on her place or rent it out, whichever was likeliest, he said.

  The garden was about done anyway, Roan had reminded her, and the canned goods on her shelves would make a dandy present for the woman who’d been unbelieving when presented with the cow. Left in the pantry, they’d only freeze and burst in the first below-zero cold spell to hit. Even southern Illinois was guaranteed to be laid low at least once by a blast from the north this winter.

  She’d agreed, her mind swimming with details, trudging beside Roan as he went about town on her business, shielding her bruises from inquiring eyes.

  That had been the worst part. The speculation that followed her wherever she went in town. The whispers of sympathy that reached her ears as the townsfolk deduced the happenings at her farm.

  Evan Gardner was laid up with the gunshot wound in his leg, the bone shattered. And he wasn’t about to tell anyone how he’d gotten wounded, either, if the gossip was up to snuff.

  She’d held her head high in the church, though, knowing she had nothing to be ashamed of in the sight of God Almighty. Even the vows she spoke were loud and clear, echoed by the strong voice of the man who shared them.

  Three days. They’d left town with a string of yearlings and her black, three-year-old filly trailing behind, Roan’s stallion having fetched a good price from Thurston Wellman.

  “I can sell him twice over before sundown,” he’d assured Roan. “You’ll never find a better pack animal than old Sugarfoot here.” Slapping the rump of the nondescript gelding, Thurston had sent them on their way.

  “I’m sorry you felt you had to sell your stud,” Katherine said after several silent miles had been covered.

  Roan snorted impolitely. “If you could have seen him nudgin’ at this mare for a full day, you wouldn’t wonder why I traded him off.”

  “You didn’t make much on him.”

  “Didn’t pay much for him.”

  “Another case of earning a horse, Roan?” she asked slyly.

  He turned to glare at her. “No, in fact, it wasn’t. The man who’d owned him wasn’t goin’ anywhere, ever. His wife wanted to get rid of him and get a mare to pull her buggy, and I obliged her by takin’ the stud off her hands. She said she didn’t want any reminders of her husband around.”

  “He was dead?”

  “As a doornail. Lucky for me. I got the horse, and I’m assumin’ the lady got her mare. He carried me to Illinois, but he wasn’t the horse I wanted.”

  “You wanted one of Charlie’s mares.”

  “Yep. Got her, too,” he reminded her with a sidelong glance that spoke triumph.

  “The bargain wasn’t all that great. You got stuck with Charlie’s daughter, too,” she reminded him.

  He looked at her carefully, noting the pants he’d bought for her, threatening her with dire consequences if she didn’t don them in the storeroom behind the dry goods. They fit loosely about her middle, held up by a braided belt, but the fit across her fanny was snug, revealing the slender form she’d hidden for so long. She sat the horse well, her legs outlined by the denim.

  He looked away, aware of the direction his thoughts were taking and determined to curtail their wanderings. The shirt he’d tossed at her was flannel, made to fit a teenage boy, and it tucked nicely into her waistband, loose enough to almost conceal the womanly figure it covered. She’d traded her worn work shoes for a pair of boots that came halfway up her leg and caused her to grumble more than a little when she pulled at them, tugging to get them on the first time.

  “They’ll stretch a bit,” he’d assured her, admiring the trim form that stomped about the store, fitting her heels in place and bending to tuck the pant legs in smoothly, right in front of him. He’d glanced away, clearing his throat noisily and managing to catch the amused look riding the face of Orv Tucker.

  “They fit all right,” she’d said grudgingly.

  “Sure do,” Roan agreed, glaring at Tucker’s grin.

  They’d been some kind of sight to see, all right, leaving town. Her with her pants and boots, her herd of animals all strung out and tugging at the lead ropes.

  They’d settled down pretty well, he decided, glancing back at the prancing little filly who brought up the rear. She sure was feelin’ her oats, he thought, his eyes intent on the animal. He probably should check her out, noting the pretty face and swishing tail as the dainty creature trotted along. He wouldn’t be surprised if she was ready to breed.

  Katherine had a legacy some men would give a bundle to own. All he’d need to do was help her keep it.

  As if she read his mind, she nudged her mare forward to ride abreast with him. “Do we have to worry about outlaws?” she asked, her forehead wrinkled with concern.

  He shook his head. “Not along here, I wouldn’t think. After we cross the river at Cooneyville, we’ll be headin’ into Missouri for a while. Haven’t been through that part of the country. Hard tell
in’ what we’ll run up against.”

  “Where are we stopping for the night?” she was already aware of the tenderness in her lower parts.

  “It’s only the middle of the afternoon, Katherine! We’ve got miles to travel before we look for a place to stay.”

  “I sure hope there’ll be a nice hotel available,” she said wistfully, thinking of the soft bed awaiting her.

  “Hotel? Not likely, Mrs. Devereaux. More like a pair of blankets and a campfire under the stars.” He peered at the western horizon. “I don’t see any sign of rain, so I expect we’ll be high and dry tonight.”

  “Blankets? Why not a hotel as long as we’re still in civilized country?”

  “We’re not takin’ a detour to the east just to find you a fancy room for the night, sweetheart. The country we’re goin’ through oughta have some farms here and there, but the best you can hope for is a pile of hay in somebody’s barn.”

  “I’d settle for that,” she said meekly, seeking the lesser of two poor choices. “It’d beat the dickens out of laying on the ground.”

  He grinned. “We’ll see what we can do.”

  The farm they chose was less than prosperous. In fact, if Roan were to speculate, he’d say the young couple were struggling to keep their heads above water.

  “It’s almost too big a job for one man to handle,” the young farmer confided as he helped Roan unsaddle the horses and turn them loose in his corral, his eyes yearning as he watched the string of yearlings.

  “Can’t afford a hired hand?” Roan asked sympathetically.

  “No, maybe next year,” Joshua Stuart answered. “If my wife hadn’t come up in the family way, she’d be able to help more, but as it is, she’s still at the upchuckin’ stage, keepin’ company with the chamber pot every morning.”

  Roan grinned and began the task of rubbing down his mare. Beside him, the young farmer occupied himself grooming Katherine’s mare, his hands careful as he prodded gently at her belly. His eyebrows rose as he caught Roan’s eye. “She gonna drop a foal?”

  “Can you tell already?” Roan asked. “It won’t be till next year.”

  “I’ve got a good touch with horses, mister,” Joshua answered.