A Lady of the West

by Linda Howard

  “But they make life more comfortable.”

  “Comfortable? Comfortable? We’re freezing our asses off in the river instead of taking a bath in a warm tub the way we’d planned because you didn’t want to upset your wife by tracking mud upstairs, and you call it comfortable? You’ve lost your mind.”

  “We have clean clothes, good food, and fresh sheets on our real beds every night; they smell sweet instead of like cheap perfume and stale whiskey, and they wait on us hand and foot. When was the last time you had to fill your own plate at dinner?”

  “We have to watch what we say,” Ben pointed out.

  “As soon as we lose a button, it’s sewn back on.” Jake’s green eyes glinted with wicked amusement. “Your problem is Emma.”

  “Ah, goddamn,” Ben said in disgust. “That’s another thing that’s wrong with ladies. A whore rolls over easy, but a lady thinks the world will end if she lets a man in her bed.”

  “A whore lets any man who has the price get between her legs. Is that what you think Emma should do?”

  Ben snarled in bad temper and splashed out of the river to stand on the bank. He rubbed a towel over his muscled body, his hazel eyes stormy. Finally he said, “No, I don’t want her to do that.”

  Jake followed him, the crystal clear water sluicing down his body. He knew how frustrated Ben was feeling, because he remembered how he’d felt every time he had crashed against Victoria’s rigid ideas of what was proper and what wasn’t. Ladies were far more complicated than whores. A lady demanded more from a man than he wanted to give, but what they offered in return was a whole new way of life. They offered physical comfort, a warm sense of security, a sweet body in the bed all night, every night. Marriage was a high price to pay to get all that, but it was worth it. Even without the ranch he would have married Victoria, he thought, and looked up at the lavender twilight sky with a sense of shock.

  After a minute he looked at his brother. “You could marry her,” he said.

  Ben pulled on his pants. “I’m not a marrying man, Jake. That hasn’t changed.”

  “Then if it’s just fucking you want, go to Angelina.”

  “I don’t want Angelina,” Ben replied curtly. “Hell, she’s been had so many ways she can’t tell the difference anymore.”

  “Exactly.”

  Ben scowled at him, then finished dressing without saying anything else. He wanted Emma, but not enough to offer marriage and that looked like the only way he’d ever get her. In a way it had been easier when he and Jake had just been drifting around, rootless, planning nothing but killing McLain and taking their ranch back. Well, now they had the ranch and there was no more riding out whenever they got tired of a place. They had a home and responsibilities. Ben wasn’t sure he liked the sensation. It wasn’t the ranch or the work of it; getting the ranch back had eased something inside him. It was the domesticity that was irritating him, the feeling of being hemmed in by rules. He wanted Emma, but he couldn’t have her because of all those damned rules that governed respectable people. Ben realized that he wasn’t quite respectable and never would be, any more than Jake would ever be just a rancher. They had lived too many years by the law of the gun. Under the surface the old instincts still ran strong. He just didn’t know what to do with them any more.

  Supper was ready by the time they got back to the house, and Victoria forced herself to be patient. Another couple of hours wouldn’t make any difference; she would find the privacy she needed when they went to bed. She tried to imagine what he would say, how he would react, and found that she couldn’t. They had never discussed having children. She felt a twinge of fear and gave him a guarded look, only to look away quickly again when she found him watching her.

  She couldn’t read him at all. He’d had too many years hiding his thoughts behind his hard face and expressionless eyes. She could see only what he allowed her to see. Sometimes she thought that open enmity would be less nerve-racking than passion from a man she loved but didn’t know.

  It was still early when he got up from the table and held his hand out to her. She felt the color rush to her face as she allowed him to help her up, and she didn’t look at anyone as they walked out of the room. “Good night,” Jake said, and Ben, Emma, and Celia each replied as his heavy hand on her waist ushered her up the stairs.

  Emma watched them leave and bit her lip at the longing welling up in her. It wasn’t just physical need that tormented her, but the need for what Victoria had found with Jake, the belonging expressed in the way he put his arm around her to escort her to their room. She wanted to feel that closeness, the partnership of marriage and a shared life. She turned her head and looked at Ben, at the hard, chiseled features.

  He met her gaze and lifted his eyebrows in silent invitation. All she had to do to accept was to get up and walk upstairs. He would surely follow. Heat ran through her, and if he’d been offering more than a night or two, if it had been for forever, she would have gone and forgotten about marriage and propriety. But Ben wanted no claim on him, legal or otherwise. Her chest ached with the pain of having to deny both him and herself. She turned her head away and didn’t move from her chair.

  “Jake, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  Her tone was troubled and Jake froze, his hands on the tiny buttons that marched down her back. He sensed that whatever it was she had been hiding, she finally trusted him enough to tell him about it, and suddenly he didn’t want to know. She loved him; that was enough. He didn’t want to hear about anything McLain might have done to her. McLain was dead, damn his soul. How could he hurt them now?

  “I don’t want to know,” he said quietly, and pulled the pins from her hair to let it stream down over his hands in a warm flood.

  She whirled to face him. She was pale, her eyes as huge as they had been the night he’d first come to her. “You have to know.” She managed a shaky smile, one that faded as quickly as it had formed. “It isn’t something I can hide or that will go away.”

  His stomach knotted. Suddenly Jake saw hell opening up at his feet. A flash of intuition told him what it was, and it made him sick. So that was why she had been so sad and withdrawn, why she had watched him so anxiously at times, why he’d sensed she was hiding something from him. God, why hadn’t he thought of this? And how was he supposed to stand it? He couldn’t.

  Victoria began shaking as she met his hard gaze. “I’m pregnant,” she said before she lost the courage to tell him. “I’m having your baby.”

  The bottom dropped out of his stomach and he stared at her, unable to believe what he’d heard her say. He felt empty, as if his heart and lungs and guts had all been torn out. And then in a rush he was filled with a bitter rage even stronger than what he had felt twenty years before, when he had watched his mother die.

  Victoria’s betrayal cut at him like a knife in the gut. How could she have said that, how could she have the gall to expect to pass McLain’s child off as his? Did she think he was stupid? That he didn’t know McLain had used her as his wife? She hadn’t been a virgin the first time Jake had had her, and that was only three weeks ago. If she were pregnant now, the child could only be McLain’s. Did she think he didn’t know that? It was bad enough that she was carrying that son of a bitch’s whelp, but if she thought he would let the little bastard have the Sarratt name, the name of the family its father had murdered—

  Black fog clouded the edges of his vision. A dull roaring filled his ears. He saw her pale face, the soft lips that had just voiced a lie so monstrous he couldn’t believe it, and without planning, without knowing he was going to do it, he struck her.

  The full force of his arm was behind the blow. If he had used his fist instead of his open hand, it would have broken her jaw. Victoria saw it coming, had a split second of comprehension, but that wasn’t enough to give her time to move. His hand crashed into her face, slamming her around and to the side. She thudded against the wall and slid to the floor like a broken doll.

  He stood over her
, his fists clenched and his eyes like green ice. The fires of hell would look like his eyes, she thought dazedly, seeing him through a fog. He was going to kill her, and she was still too numb to protect herself.

  “Goddamn you,” he said in a hoarse, violent tone. “There’s no way in hell I’ll let McLain’s bastard have my name.”

  She let her eyes close as she gave in to the grayness rising in her. She wanted to let that blank world claim her; it would be much easier than facing what had just happened. Then comprehension of his words sank in, and she forced her eyes to open again.

  She wet her lips and tasted blood. Her tongue felt thick and unwieldy, her lips puffy and numb. It was difficult to form the words but desperation drove her; how could he have drawn such a horrible misconclusion? No matter how hurt she was, she couldn’t let him think that, ever. She tried to push herself into a sitting position. “No,” she croaked. “Not his baby. Yours.”

  The rage flared up hotly, but he didn’t move or speak. He’d never struck a woman before and part of his brain was horrified at what he’d done; when she had slammed into the wall he’d known an instant of sheer terror that he might have killed her. But how could she keep saying it was his baby? If she was far enough along to know she was pregnant, then it had to be McLain’s.

  He leaned down and jerked her to her feet. The pain made her gasp and try to pull away from him. He realized he was far from being in control and dropped his hands. She began to crumple and he grabbed her.

  She took a deep breath, steadying herself, straightening her spine with the characteristic motion that wrenched at him. Carefully she stepped back out of his grasp.

  He found his own control, but it in no way lessened his rage; it was in his eyes, in the rigid muscles of his face, in the harsh menace of his voice. “I’m not a fool, Victoria. I can count, and there’s no way you could know yet if the baby were mine. We’ve only been married three weeks, not three months.”

  She was still so dazed that she couldn’t formulate the words to tell him, couldn’t explain that her menses were a week late and she’d never been late before, not even by a day, couldn’t think of all the ways to convince him that the baby was his. The numbness was rapidly leaving her face and behind it came pain. Her cheek was burning like fire. Blood from her split lip dripped down her chin and she wiped it away, then stared in confusion at the red smear on her fingers.

  “How far along are you? God, I knew you were hiding something,” he said harshly, shaking his head at his own stupidity. “I just never thought you’d try to pass McLain’s bastard off as mine.” Abruptly his eyes narrowed as suspicion crossed his face. “Or did you plan it all along? Maybe that’s why you didn’t kick up a fuss about marrying me. Too bad you weren’t smart enough to keep this news to yourself for another month or so; I probably would have believed it was mine, then, at least until it came early. Or are you so far along you were afraid you’d begin showing before another month was up? That’s it, isn’t it?”

  She could only wag her head back and forth, dumb with shock and disbelief at what had happened, what he was saying.

  Jake watched her, waiting for an explanation or a denial. He felt caught in a nightmare, once again living through the destruction of his safe and comfortable life, and he desperately needed for her to give him some explanation that would help him understand what she had done. But she just stood there, the imprint of his hand turning from white to red to purple as the bruising on her face began to show, and her bloody lower lip puffing up. The visual evidence of the damage he’d done made his stomach suddenly twist with nausea.

  But still she stood silent and frail. Her hair was straggling across her face and shoulders, her dress hanging half off. Despite himself, he reached out to push her hair away from her face. She flinched from his hand and he let it drop to his side. The heaviness of defeat was beginning to drag at his rage, sapping it away, but there was no way he could let her do what she’d planned.

  “It can’t live here,” he said. “No brat of McLain’s is going to be raised on this ranch or bear my name. When it’s born, I’ll send it back East somewhere. You’ve got until it’s born to decide if you’re going to stay here or go with it.”

  Except for the imprint of his hand, her face was paper white. She shuddered and tried to pull herself together. “You’re wrong,” she whispered. The words sounded mushy because of her thickened lip, and moving her jaw sent pain shooting along her skull. “You’re the father.”

  “Don’t lie to me!” he roared, the anger rushing back. “There’s no way you could know you’re pregnant if the baby were mine.”

  She twisted her hands together, racked with pain, at a loss as to how to make him believe her. “I—I’m not certain yet! It’s just that… I think I am. My m-monthly time is late, and I’ve never been late before.”

  His eyes were like ice. “You’re backtracking, and it isn’t working. What you said was, ‘I’m pregnant, I’m having your baby.’ You sounded pretty certain to me, so don’t try to change your mind now.

  “But it couldn’t be the Major’s baby!” she cried. “We didn’t… he couldn’t—” She couldn’t finish for the tears clogging her throat.

  He stared at her incredulously for a moment, his eyes so cold she felt a chill run down her spine. “McLain humped every woman who’d stand still for him and some who didn’t. You can’t pretend he wasn’t more than capable of doing the same to you. And if he ‘couldn’t,’ why the hell weren’t you a virgin the first time I made love to you? Maybe you didn’t know a man can tell the difference, but we can. Don’t tell me that he ‘couldn’t,’ damn you.”

  The chill grew colder, and she felt as if the blood would congeal in her veins. She’d told him the truth and he didn’t believe her; moreover, there was nothing she could say to change his mind. There was no proof she was even pregnant; she just knew she was. And she certainly knew the child wasn’t the Major’s, but how could she convince Jake of that now? She felt the death knell of her hopes in the heavy beat of her heart against her rib cage; if he had ever known her at all, if he had ever felt anything for her, he would realize she could never betray him in such a despicable manner. But now, in the most awful way, she’d learned once and for all that he had never even come close to loving her.

  Her ears were ringing, her face burning. Shock and pain numbed her; she stared at him as if she didn’t recognize him, her eyes shadowed pools in a bloodless face. She moved back from him another step. “Count the days,” she finally said in a dull, even tone. “From the night you first came to me until this baby is borm, count them, damn you! Then tell me if you still think it came early. I’ve been yours for three weeks now. You say I couldn’t possibly know if I was carrying a child unless I was a couple of months along, so you think this baby must be the Major’s. But I can tell, and I do know. I’ve known that I’ve been with child for one week, not four! So you count the days, and you wait and see if this baby comes in less than nine full months. But, while you’re waiting, while you watch the sixth, and seventh, and eighth months go by, remember this: Even if it has your face so that you can’t deny it, I’ll take it away from you, because you don’t have anything except hate to give to a child!”

  She pulled her sagging dress up over her shoulders and lifted her skirts, sweeping by him just as she had in the beginning, as if she would be contaminated if she touched him. His jaw set, Jake watched her walk from the room. He wanted to go after her, to shake her and vent his rage at her for harboring McLain’s child in her body; her flesh that belonged to him, damn it! But there had been something in her eyes, a mixture of hurt and rage that gave him pause. Victoria had cursed at him; he’d never heard her swear before, never seen her so distraught. Uncertainty gnawed at him. Could she have been telling the truth?

  No. McLain had been capable, all right.

  But, somehow, Victoria had always seemed so innocent. The night he had first taken her, she’d been unmistakably shocked by the things he’d wanted to d
o, the things he’d done. All right, so she hadn’t liked it with the Major; he could understand that. But there was no way he could believe McLain hadn’t slept with her. The Major had been a lot of things, but impotent wasn’t one of them.

  Victoria went into one of the spare bedrooms and carefully locked the door, not because she thought Jake would try to enter but to insure that no one else did. What would she say if Emma or Celia came in? She was too shattered even to try to explain.

  There was no linen on the bed, no fresh cool water in which to soak a cloth to press to her burning cheek. But at least there was a lamp, which she lit. She felt as if she might vomit, but a quick search of the room yielded neither basin nor chamberpot. She sank onto the bare mattress, her teeth clenched together to hold back the surge of nausea. The pressure made her jaw ache, and she probed that side of her face with cautious fingers. Her cheek was puffy and sore, but she didn’t think anything was broken.

  She tried to think, tried to sort out her rioting emotions, but no order presented itself. Jake didn’t believe the baby was his. He had struck her. Moreover, he actually thought her capable of that sort of betrayal.

  This would unavoidably affect everyone else in the house, like waves rippling out from a stone tossed into a lake. She regretted that, both for their discomfort and her own humiliation. Still, she knew there was nothing she could do to hide their estrangement.

  She thought of packing in the morning and leaving immediately, and a harsh, bitter little laugh erupted into the silence. She was still in exactly the same situation she had been in as the Major’s wife; she had no money of her own, and no way of leaving without Jake’s permission and help. But while she had desperately yearned to be away from the Major, she didn’t want to run now. She wanted to stay.

  It grew slowly, a hard, bright little kernel of anger, as she realized she had meant every word she had said to Jake. She had asked why he had deliberately lied to her about his identity, but she hadn’t really berated him for it. She had accepted it, accommodated him in marriage to give him back the ranch that had been stolen from him, given herself heart and soul to him. He had taken all of this and returned only hate. His hatred for the Major was all-consuming; even now, after the man was dead and buried, it still colored everything Jake thought and did.