A Lady of the West

by Linda Howard

  Deliberately he looked at the little sister. She was undeniably lovely, and the expression in her dark blue eyes was both sweet and happy, though there was an elusive quality about her he didn’t understand. Maybe she was simpleminded. Not stupid, just simple. She was just a beautiful child.

  But looking for a distraction didn’t help. He turned back to McLain’s wife, and the images of hate rose up again in his mind, though he kept his face carefully blank. McLain, murdering his father. McLain, raping his mother and then putting a bullet in her brain. McLain, stealing the land that had been in his mother’s family for over a hundred years. McLain, sending the young killer, Garnet, out to hunt down and kill two boys, and damn near succeeding. McLain, living in the cool, gracious house where Roper had been born, back when this whole valley had been called Sarratt’s Kingdom.

  Jacob Roper Sarratt had returned. He’d come to kill McLain and take back the valley. Until today, that was all he wanted.

  Now he wanted McLain’s wife, too.

  Victoria sat propped against the pillows, clad in her long-sleeved, high-necked white nightgown. She was cold, deathly cold, all the way down to her bones, but she couldn’t shiver. Her body felt heavy, incapable of even that tiny movement. Her heart was beating in a slow, ponderous rhythm that threatened to choke her.

  Emma had wanted her to leave her hair down, but Victoria had insisted on braiding it as usual, explaining that the tangles were horrendous if she left it loose. The truth was, Victoria didn’t want to look too attractive to the Major. It was a small defense, but one she felt would help her in spirit if not in fact.

  The bedcurtains were drawn back and tied to the four posters. The room was illuminated by three candles set in the graceful silver candelabra on the dresser, and Victoria wondered why the room was lit with candles instead of an oil lamp, which gave off more light. There had been lamps downstairs. She would ask Carmita tomorrow.

  Tonight, though, perhaps it was best that the room wasn’t brightly lit. Perhaps she should even snuff the candles. She considered it, and was about to throw the covers back when the connecting door opened and the Major entered her room.

  She froze. He was wearing a dark robe, but below the hem his legs were hairy and bare. His bull neck and thick shoulders looked even more odd in contrast to the spindly size of his calves.

  But it was his face that most terrified her. He wore such an open expression of gloating anticipation that she wanted to die. Dear God, what was he going to do to her?

  He walked to the side of the bed and removed his robe, exposing a white nightshirt that came down to his knees.

  “Well, girl, are you ready?” Again, his voice had that leering tone.

  She managed to make an assenting noise, but it was a lie. She would never be ready.

  “Lie down, then. Did you expect to do it sitting up?” He laughed.

  She could barely move, but managed to shift her position so that she was lying flat on the mattress. He got into the bed beside her and leaned up on one elbow. Victoria’s muscles tightened even more. He had brown eyes, she noticed. His heavy jaw was darkened by a shadow of beard, and she could smell a sweet, cloying scent about him. Lying this close to him, she was overwhelmed by the mixture of cologne and sweat, so much so that she had to struggle to prevent herself from gagging. Desperately she tried to remind herself that he seemed clean enough, he was just a rather heavy man and naturally sweated.

  He bent and pressed his mouth to hers. She could feel the clammy sweat on his upper lip. Revolted, she tried to press her head deeper into the pillow to escape him.

  Oddly, the kiss seemed to excite him. He began breathing faster, and his beefy hands jerked at her nightgown. Victoria clenched her fists and tried to prepare for the exposure. At least they were still under the sheet.

  But when the nightgown was about her waist he kicked the thin sheet away and rose up on his knees. Victoria closed her eyes, so humiliated she could barely think. He was looking at her there, something she couldn’t remember anyone ever doing before. It was shocking enough that he should see her bare legs, but for him actually to look at her triangle of hair was horrible.

  The sound of his heavy breathing was the only noise in the room. He put his hand on her bare leg and she jumped. “Feels good, does it?” he panted. “Just wait, there’s more.”

  She couldn’t bear more. It couldn’t get worse than this. He pulled her legs apart, and nausea churned her stomach. Dear God, he was actually looking between her legs. In all her nightmares she had never imagined this.

  He shifted so that he was kneeling between her spread legs. She felt him touching her there, rubbing his fingers over her, and suddenly he pushed one thick finger into her. Her eyes flew open and she went rigid as pain tore through her body. She was dry, and his rough finger felt like sandpaper as it ripped apart the delicate tissues of her hymen. The pain and the idea of what he was doing were finally too much, and she dug her heels into the bed in taut rejection of that horrible penetration, her muscles locked.

  With his other hand he had pulled up his nightshirt and was rubbing and pulling at an ugly, veined thing. Victoria looked at him in horror as she suddenly realized what he was going to do. She hadn’t thought she could get any suffer, but she could feel her muscles pulling even tighter, her body going as rigid as a board. He was cursing for some reason as the ugly little sausage rolled limply in his hand.

  Abruptly he let himself down and pushed it against her, and Victoria gagged.

  McLain barely noticed her stiffness. It was what he expected; she was a lady, not a whore like Angelina. It was his own unresponsive flesh that held his attention, infuriating him. Dammit, he’d never had this trouble before! Despite his wound, he’d always been able to hump any woman he could get beneath him. But now his organ remained flaccid, no matter how vigorously he pulled at it. Frantically he pushed it against her, hoping that the feel of her would get him hard. He grew more panicked and furious with every passing second as nothing happened.

  And then he realized she was lying frozen beneath him, just like that Sarratt bitch Elena had done. The demon that had tormented him for twenty years, that lurked inside him always waiting for a chance to leap out, smiled evilly. Once again out of the recesses of his mind came the hellish memory of pulling out of Elena and the shining knife abruptly slashing at him. He remembered the terror, the sick helplessness he’d felt with his pants around his knees as he rolled on the floor, trying to escape that darting knife. And once again he felt the sharp pain and horror of steel cutting into him.

  He jerked away from Victoria, cursing and limp. Furious, humiliated, but above all else lost again in that remembered horror, he left the bed and stamped into his own room, slamming the door behind him.

  For a long time Victoria lay as he had left her, with her nightgown up around her waist and her body rigid. The only sound she could hear was her own rough, sobbing breaths. When she did move, it was to shove her fist against her mouth to stifle the hysterical sounds that welled in her throat.

  She couldn’t bear it. If this was what being married entailed, she simply couldn’t bear it. The wrenching loss of modesty, the pain … how could any woman ever endure this? She felt shattered by the intrusion into her body, and terrified because she knew he hadn’t finished it, though she didn’t know why. She only knew he had been trying to put that—thing—into her as he had put his finger. She had never dreamed her very body would be penetrated, never dreamed such things were possible or that men’s bodies were so different from women’s.

  Slowly, her movements stiff and jerky, she slid from the bed. She wanted to wash and she had to blow out the candles. She wanted to hide in the dark and pretend this had never happened, but she knew she couldn’t. Her hands were shaking as she wet a soft flannel in the cool water and drew her nightgown up again. She pressed the wet cloth between her legs to soothe the ache and was startled to find it came away stained with blood.

  She stood with her head bowed for a lo
ng time, trembling. If this was what her life was to be like, she must somehow find the strength to endure it. For Emma and Celia, she had to endure it. For her parents. This was the sort of bargain women had made for centuries, and she would find the strength to keep her end of it.

  Knowing that she was only one of many was little comfort, because she was appallingly alone. She couldn’t retreat and say, “No, I don’t like this, I’m going home.” She couldn’t run to Emma and sob out her fears like a child. There wasn’t even the security of her home, of familiar rooms and streets, familiar people. This huge, elegantly simple hacienda, so alien from her home in Augusta, was where she would live for the rest of her life. She hoped that in time it would become home. But now she knew she had no hope at all that she would ever become accustomed to the Major.

  At length she blew out the candles and felt her way across the dark room, to crawl between the sheets and lie for long hours, shivering and trying to muster her courage. She did eventually find some measure of control. If it wasn’t courage, perhaps it would do.

  She got up early, having only dozed fitfully, and dressed in one of the simple skirts and shirtwaist blouses she had brought. After pinning up her braids, she slipped quietly from the room. She didn’t want to wake the Major. She hoped to find Carmita in the kitchen. Victoria had an urgent question that had been tormenting her all night, and Carmita would know the answer. It would be difficult to voice such a question, but she was learning that difficult didn’t mean impossible.

  As it happened, Carmita, Lola, and Juana were all in the kitchen, gossipping cozily. The friendly chatter of rapid Spanish halted when they noticed Victoria in the doorway.

  “Señora,” Carmita said, smiling broadly. They were all smiling at her. Belatedly Victoria realized they expected a blushing bride. She did blush, though not from happiness.

  She said, “Please, Carmita, may I talk with you for a moment?” Despite her efforts at control some of her despair must have shown for Carmita stopped smiling and rapidly came to her side.

  They walked out into the courtyard, so pretty with its multitude of yellow roses. Victoria pretended to look at the roses, fingering some of the velvet petals. She said, low, “If my questions embarrass you, please don’t feel you have to answer. It’s just—I don’t have anyone I can ask, except for you.”

  Carmita looked puzzled. “Of course, señora.”

  Victoria flushed again. “Carmita … when a man—that is, what does a man—how are babies made?” She was beet red by the time she finished, and felt utterly helpless.

  Carmita gaped at her. Victoria hurriedly turned away, but Carmita laughed and put her motherly arms around the tense young woman. Her brown eyes were warm. “No one thought to tell you the way of things? Poor señora! Yes, sit down, and I will tell you about men and babies.”

  She did, very succinctly, and Victoria heaved an inner sigh of relief. It was as she had thought, the man did enter a woman’s body and there emptied himself of his seed, which sometimes resulted in a baby, though not, Carmita said with heartfelt thanks, every time. The Major had not done that to her, so she would not be having his baby. At least, not yet. She didn’t know what had gone wrong last night, and she knew he could return to her bed at any time. They had a lifetime together for him to consummate the marriage. But for today, at least, she was safe.

  Another question occurred to her, and she said diffidently, “How does a woman know if she is to have a baby?” She knew they didn’t have to wait until they grew big, because she had known several women who had announced their expectancy long before there had been obvious evidence.

  Carmita patted her arm. “Your monthly bleeding won’t come, señora.”

  Victoria considered that. Her monthly cycle was so regular she always knew to the day when to expect the onset. It appeared she would have a reliable means of telling, if the worst happened.

  “You will also cry a lot, and sleep a lot, and feel so sick that no food stays down,” Carmita continued cheerfully. “When you do feel like eating, you will want strange things that, of course, Lola will not have, and someone will have to go to Santa Fe to buy it. That’s the way of it. When I carried my Juana, I felt as if I had to have oranges, every day. Señora, I don’t like oranges, but every day I ate them, five and six a day. Then Juana was born, and I didn’t like oranges anymore.”

  Victoria sat in the courtyard after Carmita had returned to the kitchen, enjoying the early-morning coolness and the bright sun, calming her frazzled nerves. She had survived the night, as horrible as it had been, and the new day was fresh and sunny. If the coming night brought a repeat of the horror, well, she would survive that, too.

  She thought about the things Carmita had told her and wondered why well-bred young women were kept so abysmally ignorant of such basic facts. She would far rather have known what was going to happen, as unpleasant as it had been, than to have suffered in the dread of the unknown, which had made it just that much worse. Her mother had known what she would face, yet had left her in ignorance. Victoria found that hard to forgive.

  She would tell Emma. Not about the Major’s failure, but the true facts of what men did to women in the marriage bed. She would tell her how babies were made and how a woman knew if she were pregnant. And later, if Celia were ever to think of getting married, Victoria would tell her, also.

  She thought of the way Garnet watched Celia, and bit her lower lip. Now she knew what he wanted, and she was more determined than ever to keep Celia away from him.

  Roper. He, too, had known what the Major would do to her.

  Stunned, she realized that every man knew all of this, that only women were kept ignorant. This was what men did to fast women, to prostitutes. The realization put a different slant on every memory she had. The dances and socials and picnics she had attended had all been a part of the ritual leading up to the marriage bed, and bared bodies, and all of her young beaus had known what would happen. How many of them had looked at her and imagined her with her nightgown rucked up to her waist?

  In retrospect she felt very indignant. The system of carefully perpetuated ignorance seemed to her rather like throwing lambs to wolves. She had been prepared for the indignity but not the total loss of modesty or the pain. She thought she would not have been so blindly terrified if she’d had a realistic idea of what to expect. But now, she thought with a wave of depression, she fully knew what her marriage to the Major would be like.

  Roper paused by the gate to the courtyard, his attention caught by the young woman sitting so still, with her hands folded in her lap. The bright morning sun glinted on her hair, picking up the gold in it. He realized that her hair was dark blond, not the brown it had appeared before.

  She sat staring at nothing, motionless. He knew she couldn’t have had a wonderful night, yet her pale face revealed none of it. She might have been a statue, except for the way the light breeze played in the loose tendrils of hair at her temples.

  His mother had sometimes sat in the courtyard, when she could find a spare minute in her busy days. Elena had been warm and vibrant, always ready to laugh with her sons and husband. The young woman who sat there now was cool and controlled, with a face as blank as marble.

  He felt faintly contemptuous of her for marrying McLain. He felt disgusted with himself for wanting a woman McLain had touched. But the sight of her made his chest tighten, and blood rushed to his loins. He knew her stillness masked her pain and fear, and he admired it. He wanted her for that cool control. He wanted to shatter it with warm passion, he wanted her naked and vibrant and alive with need for him, he wanted her to claw at his back and arch her hips against him. He wanted to snatch her up and take her far away from here, because she was so out of place around men like McLain and Garnet, even himself. Their lives were stained with blood and violence, and it would inevitably touch her. He didn’t see how he could prevent it.

  He had stared at her too long; she turned her head, sensing his presence, and their eyes met across the c
ourtyard. Without haste, every movement graceful, she rose from the bench and returned to the house. Roper clenched his fists at being dismissed by her, but too much was at stake for him to lose control now. His time would come.

  The Major came to her room again that night. Victoria made no sign of protest, but lay with her arms at her sides. Again, McLain expected her to behave no differently.

  He was desperately afraid of another failure, of again losing himself to those terrors of the past. McLain crouched between her opened legs and frantically tried to beat life into his unresponsive sex. The more afraid and humiliated he felt, the harder he tried, and nothing happened. All the while she lay there like a damned statue, reminding him of Elena, as if the woman had risen from the dead to torment and punish him.

  He swore and rolled off of the bed and returned, trembling, to his own room. Cold sweat trickled down his face and barrel chest. The damn bitch had emasculated him, finished the job that Elena and her bastard had started!

  His worst nightmare had become reality. God, he’d wanted her for so long, all of his life. Not her in particular, but someone like her, a lady to show the world he was someone important. She was perfect; a woman of impeccable bloodlines, manners, and breeding. She made Elena and that damned Sarratt look like white trash. She was finally his, and he couldn’t take her.

  He laughed soundlessly, a little insanely. He had his lady, all right, but he couldn’t do a thing about it.

  He thought of her white-skinned, perfect body and broke out in a sweat again at the thought of touching her and finding his manhood limp and useless.

  In a thousand nights during the past twenty years he had awakened to hear himself whimpering, and found his hands cupped protectively over his privates. A thousand nightmares had been filled with a scarlet-stained knife and a boy’s hate-twisted face. In his dreams he couldn’t escape and the knife finished its job. The reality had been bad enough; he’d walked spraddle-legged for weeks and his left testicle was drawn and withered. He’d lived in hell until he had recovered enough to find out if he was still capable of humping a woman, though he never let anyone know how desperate he’d been. After finding out that he was still capable, he took to bragging that he was more man with only one ball than most men were with two. But bragging hadn’t kept the nightmares away.