Deborah Camp (25 page)

“And this note is due next month. Why didn’t you make it come due after the crop was in, when you’d logically have more money?”

“The judge wanted it this way, and I figured I could pay him back by then anyway.”

“Can you?”

He shook his head. “We had monstrous rains last spring that flooded the fields. I had to replant. The cotton I finally raised wasn’t of good quality, and
I didn’t get top dollar. I barely made enough to pay for this year’s planting.”

“Oh, Blade. This is disastrous!” She rested her forehead in her hands as the dire possibilities circled in her brain.

“Doesn’t have to be. I think I can talk the judge into extending the due date.”

“You do?” She studied his face, looking for a crack in his optimism.

“There’s a chance.”

Not wanting to call him a liar, Elise decided to take another tack. “I don’t quite understand, Blade.” She stood and paced, restless with the futility boiling in her. “Julia was a teacher. She was surrounded by children all day. Why was it so important to her to have one, even at the expense of her home here?”

He shrugged. “She loved children.”

“Yes. I’ve read that inscription on her gravestone. I love children, too, but … that!” She pointed at the document. “To sacrifice so much!”

“It wasn’t just Julia’s doing. She married to be not only a wife but a mother, too. Being a mother was very important to her. I couldn’t stand to see the joy and hope dying inside her. I had to do something. When we heard about the orphan train, we knew it was our last chance, but we didn’t have enough money to send to the Society.”

“So you gambled everything … for Julia.” Elise stared at the bare third finger of her left hand and felt bereft. He would never make such a sacrifice for her, she thought. He hadn’t even purchased a wedding band for her or asked if she wanted children someday. But for Julia, he had been willing to move mountains, lasso the sun and sign over his life to a man he despised.

“It didn’t seem like a gamble then. It was a solution. An answer to our prayers.”

“But you must have realized how impossible it would be to defer to the likes of Judge Mott!”

A shadow seemed to pass over his face. “He and Julia got along well.”

Elise stopped pacing as she tried to imagine this. “How could anyone get along well with that man?”

“They shared a love of books and such. I’m not a worldly man, but the judge is, and Julia needed someone to talk to about the finer things. He would come by every so often for supper. Afterward they would sit and talk. She enjoyed hearing his views.”

Elise suppressed a shudder. “I wish I could understand, but so much of what I’ve heard about Julia baffles and confuses me.”

“Such as?” Blade sorted through the other envelopes, then held up one. “Our marriage license.”

“Which marriage?”

A ruddy color stained his neck and ears. “To Julia.”

“Naturally.” She chopped off the rest of what she’d like to say in retort. She would like to ask if he had ever thought to buy Julia a ring and if he had ever made love to her in the middle of the floor.

“You’re not jealous, are you?”

Elise whipped around, not finding his suggestion the least bit funny. His smile spiked her anger.

“Jealous of a dead woman?” he goaded, his lopsided smile growing.

“No, I’m not! But I am angry that you waited until Airy let the cat out of the bag to tell me about this. You won’t be the only one without a home if you can’t pay that debt, you know.”

His smile faded. “I know.”

“But you don’t think of me as family.” She gave a derisive laugh. “You don’t think of me at all!”

“That’s a damn lie and you know it.” He rose from the chair, hands bunched into dangerous fists, mouth tensed into a grim line. “I thought of you last night, didn’t I?”

“Oh, yes. When you’re hard and aching, you think of me. I guess I should be flattered.”

“You’re complaining? You’re saying you didn’t enjoy last night and this morning?”

Drawing on her courage and nerve, Elise confronted him. “Blade, did Julia make you happy? I ask only because I sense that you haven’t been happy for a long time. Maybe even before Julia died.”

“What difference does that make, whether I was happy?” He laughed scornfully at her. “You can’t understand that happiness isn’t the golden nugget for most of us. You were brought up to think that being happy is your birthright, but I was brought up differently. Putting food on the table, having a roof over your head, making a living for yourself, raising a family—these are the important things in life. If they bring moments of happiness, then those moments are unexpected gifts.”

“You’re wrong, Blade,” she said, rejecting his version of life. “Happiness is not a birthright, but it is a noble pursuit, especially in a marriage. You can’t convince me that you married Julia and didn’t expect to be happy with her.” Before he could answer, she stepped close to him. “You didn’t put your land in jeopardy for any other reason than to make your wife happy. You could have lived without a child, but she couldn’t—or wouldn’t.”

He stuffed his hands in his pant pockets and
moved away from her, out to the porch, where a pleasant breeze cut through the sun’s heat. “I’d never seen her so radiant as the day we were told that one of the orphans would be ours. A girl of eight, they said in their letter to us, and she’d be arriving in only a few weeks! But then Julia took ill. At first I thought—we all thought—she had eaten something bad, but the pains in her stomach got worse. The doctor examined her time and again, but he couldn’t do anything for her. He said a sickness had set in, probably after the last baby we lost.”

Elise walked out onto the porch. Blade stared straight ahead, but she sensed that he was looking at his past. She didn’t interrupt, believing he wanted to tell her about this painful time he had endured.

“She took medicine, but nothing helped. I even brought an Apache holy woman here and she did what she could, but she said the fever in Julia’s body had taken a firm hold and she couldn’t persuade it to let go.”

“And you promised Julia that you’d make a home for Penny, no matter what?”

He nodded, his features solemn. “I had failed Julia in a way, but I swore I would honor her last request to give the child a home.”

“How did you fail her, Blade?” Elise asked, sincerely confused.

“I wanted roots; someone to make this a home and not just a farm. I wanted a woman of my own, a wife to share my dreams and my triumphs and my challenges. Julia did all of that and more.” A smile, fleeting and bittersweet, visited his face. “She wanted children. She wanted a husband and then a father to her brood. She wanted to stop
teaching and devote herself to her own offspring. She wanted a man she could build a dream on. I failed her in all of this.”

Elise clutched his arm. “You are not wholly to blame for that, Blade. Some women are made to bear children and some aren’t.” She gripped his arm harder when he moved to pull away. “And did it ever occur to you that no man would have pleasured Julia? From what I’ve heard, I think she was frigid.” Elise blinked, stung by his snapping gaze. “I’m sorry, but that’s my opinion.”

“She was loving and giving and—”

“To children, yes, and to people in need and in all works of charity. But perhaps she had a puritan mind when it came to coupling, Blade. Did you ever talk to her about your problems in bed?”

“We didn’t have to talk about it.”

She let go of him and leaned back against the support post. “Julia didn’t know spit about making love and she wouldn’t talk about it,” Elise surmised. “I know you well enough to believe that you would have asked her what you could do to alleviate her discomfort.”

Agitation twitched his lips. “This is all dead and buried. Why talk about it now?” He went back inside for the packet of letters and replaced them in Julia’s room. “I have work to do,” he said, heading for the peg where he’d hung his hat.

He looked too good to let the fields have him, Elise thought with a grin. He smelled of soap from his morning wash and his jawline was as smooth as a baby’s backside. She’d watched him shave while she’d finished cooking breakfast. She’d almost burned the sausage.

Elise plucked his hat off the peg before he could reach it. She held it behind her back. “What will
we do if you can’t pay back the judge and he won’t extend the time for payment?”

Blade looked away, wincing as if stabbed by the thought. “I won’t lose it.”

“But you need to keep Mott from getting angry at you, right? That’s why you don’t want me to go to his place and interfere with Adam.”

“It’s best. At least until after some decision is made about our deal. Now, give me my hat.”

She grinned. “You want it? Take it.”

He tried to look vexed, but his eyes sparkled with mischief. “I don’t have time for games, Elise.” His gaze strayed from her face to her body. “You look pretty this morning.”

She knew he was thinking about last night. “Do I look like a wife?”

“Do you feel like one?” he parried.

Elise pondered the question. “Not really, but time will remedy that. Someday I hope you feel like a husband. My husband.”

“I already do.” He reached behind her and snatched his hat from her hands, but instead of placing it on his head, he sailed it sideways. It landed on the kitchen table. “Come here, you.”

He hooked an arm around her waist and hauled her into his embrace. His mouth seared hers. Elise gave a little squeak, his ardor taking her by surprise, but she recovered quickly and a moan of pleasure escaped when she parted her lips. His tongue played lazily with hers. Elise held his face between her hands and kissed every beloved feature of it.

“You should never be jealous of Julia,” he whispered against her skin, his arms tightening around her. “I never found such pleasure with her as I found with you last night.”

His confession brought a lump to her throat. “I’ll be thinking of you all day. Shall I bring you a noonday meal?”

“I’ll come inside today. I’ll be working in the barn mostly.”

“I’ll ring the bell when it’s ready.”

“Too bad it’s Sunday. We could be alone …” His warm lips smoothed down the side of her neck. His teeth caught at her skin. “I’m hungry for you, not for food.”

“Blade!” She pushed his arms away from her, afraid that he might tempt her to make love to him again in the brightness of day. She shook her head and laughed. “You’d better go. I might forget I’m a lady and behave like a common tart.”

He chuckled and gave her backside a playful pat before he retrieved his hat from the table. “If Penny weren’t wandering around, I’d satisfy my hunger right here and now.”

“Blade!” She tried to act shocked.

He smiled, not believing her wide-eyed expression for a moment. “I’ll wait until tonight for another taste of you.” He strode outside, leaving Elise red-faced and light-headed.

The church’s Sunday night service was well attended. Blade had wanted to drop Elise and Penny off and pick them up later as he usually did, but Elise had insisted that he come in with them this time. He didn’t mind Sunday morning services, he’d told her time and time again, but he didn’t care for the more social gatherings on Sunday evenings.

The reason behind his acquiescence wasn’t lost on Elise. Since the wall had tumbled between them, they hated to be separated. She supposed all lovers
felt the same way, but surely, no other woman on earth felt exactly like her. After all, no other woman had Blade Lonewolf as her husband.

Glancing at him from the corner of her eye, she admired his stature and handsome profile. The choir director led the congregation in song, and Blade’s clear bass was easy for Elise to pick out from the others around her. He wore a fresh white shirt, black trousers and boots; his vest was cut from soft chamois. His hair was combed straight back and gleamed in the candlelight. He smelled of cedar and pine.

The voices faded with the last note of the spiritual. Reverend Casper stepped up to the pulpit.

“That was lovely. Don’t your hearts soar when singing the praises of our Lord?”

Murmurs lifted from the congregation. Penny fidgeted beside Elise. Reaching into her reticule, Elise produced a scrap of paper and a lead pencil. Penny accepted them with a big smile and began drawing a horse. Since Gwenie’s birth, Penny spent every free minute in the stables or the corral. Not even the new chicks or kittens could entice her from the prancing, playful filly.

“Before we leave tonight, I’d like to remind you that our roof can’t take another rainy spring.” The pastor glanced up with worry. “We must put a new roof on our chapel this summer. To that end, the ladies are planning a bake sale next Friday right outside under the birch tree. We need pies, cakes, cookies and bread to sell, ladies. Please sign up to make as much as you can. My wife will be stationed outside the door to receive your pledges. Let us pray.”

Elise bent her head, but heard little of the closing prayer. She replayed in her mind things she’d
heard about Julia’s importance to the community. Julia would have volunteered to make a whole table full of baked goods. The bake sale would be a good way for Elise to involve herself in the town and make inroads in changing people’s opinion of Blade and other Indians.

Wanting to race for the door, where Mrs. Casper sat at a small table with a sign-up sheet before her, Elise restrained herself.

“You and Penny go ahead,” she told Blade. “I’m going to pledge my share.”

Blade took Penny by the hand. “We’ll bring the wagon closer.”

Elise nodded and took her place in line behind three other townswomen. She was dismayed to see Mrs. Keizer standing to one side of Mrs. Casper. Elise heard a familiar voice and glanced behind her. It was all she could do not to scowl when she saw Sally Carpenter, Gladys Keizer’s friend in bigotry.

“Next?” Mrs. Casper said, and smiled at Elise. “What can you bring us Friday, dear?”

“Berry cobbler and oatmeal cookies,” Elise replied, naming her two best desserts. “I could bring a couple of loaves of honey-wheat bread, too.”

Before Mrs. Casper could respond, Mrs. Keizer reached past her and dragged Mrs. Carpenter closer.