Nora (17 page)

“Oh, Mr. Langhorn, you must…!”

“Come out of there,” he muttered, lifting his arms to drag her from the carriage and stand her beside him on the ground.

“The horse will run away,” she said quickly.

The horse had, in fact, no breath to run anywhere. He was still breathing heavily and had suddenly discovered some water standing in a track and some tall grass beside it.

Langhorn's steely hands had her face in them, and he was trying to see it through the dimness. “You haunt me,” he said unsteadily, “with your big brown eyes and
your virginal body and that long, beautiful dark hair that I want to wind around my chest….”

His mouth hit hers with the force of a thunderbolt. She gasped at its impact, shocked, because she had never been kissed in such a way. The shy pecks of boys her own age were suddenly forgotten in the heat and insistence of an adult man's headlong passion.

His arms dragged her against the length of his lean body, making her aware of his steely strength as well as the growing desire that was blatant against her hips.

Frightened, she tried to pull away, but his head was spinning from the taste and feel of her mouth, and he wouldn't let go.

She felt his hands in her hair, dragging out the pins to let the glorious length of it fall in heavy waves down to her waist. And all the while his demanding mouth never left hers for a second, never let up its fury.

“Stiff,” he murmured roughly against her lips while his hands twisted sensuously in her long hair. “Stiff as a board against me, like a piece of wood.” He bit her lower lip, making her gasp. “You're no more than a child,” he said with disgust, pausing to catch his breath. “You don't know how to kiss, you're afraid of passion, you're of no use whatsoever to a man!”

She swallowed and then swallowed again. Her knees were weak and her mouth trembled, sore where his teeth had bruised the lower lip. She put her fingertips to it. “I want to go home,” she choked.

“Sure, why not?” he asked angrily. “You cowering
little girl! Now do you see what you were asking for? You can't even pretend that you like it!”

She tried to move away again, but his arms enveloped her once more.

“And now you're going to cry, aren't you?” he taunted.

She rested her forehead against his broad chest, letting the hot tears wash down her cheeks. She didn't make a sound, and her clenched fists stayed right at his shirt collar, not moving.

He felt her tremble. The whiskey he'd consumed had stolen his reason. He hadn't meant to frighten her. A man could only stand so much, and she'd tormented him for months.

His lean hands smoothed her long, silky hair with rapt appreciation, enjoying the feel of it through his fingers. “Hair like an angel,” he remarked quietly. “So soft. Like dark corn silk.”

“You are going to marry the widow Terrell,” she said gruffly. “You have no right—no right!—to lay hands on me!”

“I know,” he said heavily. His lips touched her dark hair, her forehead. “Don't cry.”

She wiped at the tears with her fists. It should have been laughable, to stand by the dark, deserted road with the man she loved more than life and beg to be let go. But his opinion of her made his position clear. He hated her silent adoration. He hated her youth and innocence. He wanted nothing from her. So why, she wondered, shaken, would he not release her?

His hands were in her hair again, as if it fascinated him. He wrapped it around his fingers and took it to his lips.

“Mr. Langhorn,” she began stiffly.

His lips touched her eyes, closing them. His breath, whiskey-scented, was warm against the chill of the evening. “I have a first name.”

“Which I do not intend to use,” she said, choking on her pride. He was making her knees go weak again with that sorcerer's touch. The silent tracing of his lips on her face made her feel funny all over, especially when his tongue came out and slid softly over her long eyelashes.

The hands tangling in her hair were moving, sliding down its length. They were over the ruffled bodice of her shirtwaist dress now, the knuckles accidentally brushing the taut rise of her body in a way that made her actually want to lean into them.

There was a swelling in her lower body, an odd ache that seemed to throb harder with every touch of his lips, every brush of his knuckles over her breasts. Their touch on her nipples produced a sudden hardness that she felt.

She should protest. She thought to, when his lips moved down to fit themselves softly to hers. Not quite touching, then touching, then lifting and brushing, then touching again, harder and harder…

And while they touched, his hand turned and his thumb and forefinger actually caught her nipple and pressed it between them. She felt fire shooting through
her, saw blinding lights behind her closed eyelids. She made a sound—a sort of choked cry—and her lips opened under his.

He whispered something. His hand caught in the thick hair at her nape and pulled her head back just enough to give him total access to her mouth. His tongue worked at her lips and teeth until he teased his way into the sweet, trembling darkness past them. He stabbed into her mouth and she cried out against it; at the same time his lean hand went completely over her breast and swallowed it up.

Afterward, she could never remember who pulled away first. She felt swollen all over, and she could barely speak for the thickness of her tongue. Her whole body felt that way, thick and sluggish and throbbing with some need she didn't understand.

His arms supported her, because she couldn't quite stand up. She clutched at them, leaning her head against the rough thunder of his heart.

He was breathing like a wild thing and his fingers bit into her upper arm hard enough to hurt. He sucked in air like a man trying to breathe sanity.

“You should not have…done that,” she managed in a raw whisper.

His cheek nuzzled against her hair. “Shhhh.”

“Mr. Langhorn…”

He laughed shakily. “Are we not past that? My name is Jacob.”

“Jacob,” she whispered. Her eyes closed and she shivered with overwrought feelings.

He held her gently, without demands, his hands smoothing up and down her back until she began to calm.

She pulled against him finally and he let go, watching her move away so that an arm's length stretched between them.

He pulled cigarette papers out of his shirt pocket, extracted one, replaced the pack and tugged out his Bull Durham tobacco pouch. He seemed in no hurry to leave while his horse and her buggy horse grazed in the semidarkness. He rolled himself a cigarette, produced a match and lit it.

He let out a long breath of smoke. One lean hand went into his jeans pocket and he stood and just looked at her. Her hair was down around her shoulders, a dark, wavy cloud against the dark pattern of her dress. It was a silky fabric. He remembered its softness when she had permitted him to caress her breast.

The memory made his body tauten. He laughed softly at his own folly. Two neat whiskeys and a wild ride through the darkness, to upset both their lives. Because that was what he had accomplished. Neither of them would ever be able to forget how it felt to kiss each other.

“I am going home now,” she said.

“A wise idea. There might be bad men on the road at night.”

“Worse than you?” she chided.

He chuckled. “Perhaps. Did I…bruise you?” he asked delicately, remembering the fervent caress of
his hand on that softness. His eyes fell to her dress to punctuate the question.

She folded her arms across her breasts. “Sir!”

He sighed wistfully. “How did it feel, Melly?” he mused. “You've wanted me for years. How did it feel to have my mouth on yours, to feel my hands on that soft body?”

She turned away toward the buggy with dark, miserable eyes.

He stopped her at the wheel with a lean hand that snaked around her waist and brought her roughly back against his body.

“I'll be along tomorrow,” he said at her ear. “Both of us need to have a long talk with your parents.”

“About what?” she asked, aghast. Surely he did not mean to tell them what had happened here!

“About us,” he said solemnly. “Do you really think either of us will be able to stop, now that we've had a taste of each other?”

M
ELLY TURNED AROUND, HER
big brown eyes shocked and unguarded as they sought his. “What…?”

He touched her mouth with a long forefinger. “I want you, to put it bluntly,” he said. “And I'm going to make you want me.”

“Jacob!” she cried out.

He chuckled. “Bruce adores you,” he said. His voice softened. “So do I.”

“But…the widow Terrell,” she protested blankly,

“A blind, nothing more. I am too old for you, Melly,” he said seriously. “Or you are too young for me. But I can't fight it any longer. It took the heart out of me to say what I did to you at the Women's Club dance. I can't hurt you again, even if it is for noble motives. The widow Terrell has been a friend. Only a friend,” he emphasized. “There has not been the slightest impropriety.”

“You said…we will talk to my parents?”

“Yes. Somehow—” he sighed “—we must convince them to give me permission to court you.”

Her ears didn't register that. Surely she wasn't hearing him properly. She turned around to look at him directly.

“Melly,” he said gently, “I want to marry you.”

Happiness washed over her in such a wave that she trembled. Her eyes brightened, brimmed over.

He drew her to him hungrily and held her. “What did you think I meant?” he growled at her ear. “Regardless of what some of you seem to think about me, I am not without morals.”

“I know that. I'm so happy.” She clung closer. “I thought you hated me.”

He sighed. “I tried to stop this from happening, to protect you. Melly, you're only eighteen years old. You haven't even lived.”

“I never would, if you had married the widow. Without you, I would never have loved again. Never have married or had children.”

His arm tightened. “Do you like children? You must, because Bruce thinks you're swell.”

“I love children,” she replied.

“Then we might have one or two of our own,” he mused. “I fancy a little girl with hair like yours.”

“Oh, Jacob!” she cried, so close to heaven that she felt as if she could float.

He chuckled and bent to kiss her. “But for the moment, I think we might go our separate ways. I
am tired to death and I had a neat whiskey to help me relax—not the most intelligent of combinations for clear thinking.”

She looked worried, and he laughed again. “I assure you,” he said, “that I am competent to know what I've said. But I need to look it when we confront your parents.”

“Tomorrow?” she asked.

He nodded. He looked momentarily worried. “They do not approve of me, I know. And when their own daughter is involved…I hope that it will go well.”

“And if it does not?” she asked.

He smiled wistfully. “Your cousin Nora seemed to find her own solution to the disapproval she faced.”

“Yes, she and Cal married in secret.” Her eyes brightened. “Would we?”

“Only as a last resort,” he said. He touched her mouth gently. “So don't worry. All right?”

She smiled and nodded. He put her in the buggy and swung up on his own mount, bareback.

“So that is how you got here so quickly!” she exclaimed, not having noticed before that his horse wasn't saddled.

He chuckled. “I ride quite as well without a saddle, as it happens,” he told her. “I will follow you home. Not closely enough to be seen,” he added when she looked worried.

 

I
T DIDN'T TAKE LONG
at all to get there, and when she reached home, it was to find that no one took any
notice of her late arrival. The whole household was in turmoil, and her mother was in tears.

“Why…what has happened?” Melly burst out.

“It's Nora,” Helen sobbed. “Oh, Melly, she is in the throes of the most terrible attack of fever. And worse, she has lost her baby.”

“Oh, no!” Melly exclaimed. “Poor Nora! And Cal…”

“Cal has gone for the weekend. We have no idea how to contact him,” her mother replied miserably. “He will not return until Monday at the earliest, and she is so ill. So very ill.” She said no more, but Melly understood.

They went into the guest bedroom where Nora had been brought when Helen found her raving with sickness earlier in the afternoon. Feverish and drowning in sweat, she was being tended by the solemn, weary doctor. He had been summoned long before supper and had had no time even for a cup of tea.

“Can we get you something, doctor?” Helen asked gently.

“I would be glad of a cup of coffee and some biscuits,” he said gratefully. “She needs more cool water, and her sheets will have to be changed, as well as her gown.” He shook his head. “In all my long years, I have never seen a fever quite so bad. Hasn't she been resting, as I warned her to when she came to see me last?”

This was news to Helen and Melly, who exchanged shocked glances.

“I see,” the doctor murmured coldly. “She told no one, I gather, not even her errant husband. I warned her that any lifting would be dangerous, that she should not exert herself. Did no one realize that she had the beginnings of a cold, and that it, added with her weakened condition, almost guaranteed a bout of the fever?”

“We didn't know,” Helen said sadly. “She has been healthy as far as we knew, but since her marriage, she has kept to herself. We have hardly seen her these past few days, except when Melly carried her things to tempt her appetite. She has been trying to learn to cook….”

“At a most inopportune time, I assure you,” the doctor said irritably. They looked so guilty that he relented. “Nothing would have spared the child, I fear. But the fever…” He shook his head.

“Will she die?” Melly asked tentatively.

“I cannot say. It is a very bad case.”

“What can we do?” Helen asked anxiously.

The doctor looked up at her over his glasses. “Pray.”

 

T
HEY DID, PROFUSELY
, for the next two days. Nora was in pain at first and she cried out when they moved her, to sponge her down and help keep the high fever at bay. It exhausted everyone, including Melly, and there was no question of Jacob speaking to her parents. Melly sent word to him about what was happening and went back to her vigil at Nora's side, her own problems temporarily forgotten.

Monday came, and still the fever raged.

 

A
WEARY
C
AL
B
ARTON
climbed off the train and hired a carriage at the livery stable to take him out to the ranch. He and Pike had hit a dry hole, the second since he'd started looking for oil. They had one last tract, in a different location, and Pike was sinking the first part of the shaft today.

Cal had wanted to stay, to wait, to see if this last effort would pay dividends. Everything was riding on it. He had never been a gambling man, and he was gambling everything on one tract of land and his instincts and a geologist's certainty of success. But despite that worry, his argument with Nora played on his mind until it was all he could think about. Somehow they had to reconcile their differences, for the sake of the forthcoming child. If only he knew how.

When he arrived at the ranch and went to their cabin, it was to find it empty. His first thought was that Nora had gone back to Virginia. It was what he had invited her to do, although God knew he hadn't really meant it. He was upset at what Helen had said to him. But he wished he could take back every word he'd said.

His face tight with misery, he walked into the bedroom, expecting to see her cases packed. But there they were. He opened the chifforobe with shaking hands, and her clothes were there. He closed his eyes and thanked God. She must be visiting her aunt and cousin at the big house. And he'd thought she'd deserted him!

With a relieved smile, he went back into the living room and sat down heavily in his rocking chair. He
leaned back wearily, wishing the past few weeks undone. If Nora had gone, he would be totally alone. He hadn't realized how much he would miss burned meat and hard biscuits and ruined shirts while he was away, but he had. Now he smiled wistfully at the memory of how hard she'd tried to make a go of the housework. During his absence he'd had plenty of time to consider the difficulty she would have faced, a woman with her monied background trying to live like a field hand. It hadn't been fair of him to put her in this position. He'd decided before he boarded the train for Tyler Junction that he must make amends and forget his stupid ideas of trying to change her. Remembering the painful things he'd said to her, he knew it wasn't going to be easy to make up for them.

But hopefully it wasn't too late. He could take her home to Latigo, and she wouldn't have to suffer this deprivation anymore. The Tremayne ranch was as good as he could make it, and Chester was on the right road. Either he and Pike would strike oil or they wouldn't. If they didn't, Cal told himself, he had a strong back and a good brain. He would swallow his pride and go back to Latigo to work on his own family's ranch. If Nora loved him enough, she would adjust. The rest…well, the rest would fall into place somehow. The more he worked at the problem, the simpler it seemed to be to solve.

The light step on the front porch caught his attention. He stood up, smiling, his heart racing as he
waited for Nora to open the door and walk in. But the door didn't open. It was knocked on.

He went to answer it and found a worried Melly on the doorstep.

“I thought I heard you drive up,” she said. “You'd better come up to the house. While there's still time.”

Because of the look in her eyes when she added that last remark, he didn't waste time asking questions. Nora's absence and Melly's pale, worn face told a story he didn't want to hear. He quickened his stride with a heartbeat that threatened to shatter his ribs.

 

I
N THE GUEST BEDROOM
, Nora lay bathed in sweat with the doctor still at her side. He hadn't left the ranch since he was first called. He glared at Cal Barton.

“The errant husband, I presume?” he asked icily. “See your handiwork, sir!”

Cal's heart stopped in his chest. Nora looked almost dead. She was the color of the sheet and thin as a rail. Her stomach…

The doctor saw his look of horror and where it was placed. “She lost the baby two days ago. Now we're only concerned with saving her life. Didn't you know how dangerous it was to let her lift heavy pails of water and become fatigued in this condition, especially when it was complicated by a cold?”

“She said that you told her she was fine,” Cal said. His heart was racing with fear as he looked at Nora, so still and sick. “She sneezed, but she said it was the dust…!”

“She caught cold. That was enough, as worn as she was, to bring the fever back. I fear that this bout may well end in her death. I have never seen such a bad case of it.”

“Fever?” Cal moved to the side of the bed and looked down at his wife with wide, stunned eyes. His heart froze in his chest. “What fever?” he demanded hoarsely.

“What sort of marriage do you have?” the doctor demanded angrily. “She has had fever for over a year sporadically. Her own physician, although I do not concur with his prognosis, told her that it might one day prove fatal.”

That was a blow that hit Cal right where he lived. He took a steadying breath. “She never told me,” he managed.

“She never told anyone,” Helen said sadly, dabbing at her eyes. “She said that she would never be able to marry, to put that emotional and financial burden of illness on a man, because the fever was incurable. Oh, bother Summerville! If he had not made unwanted advances and torn her clothing, if the mosquitoes had not gotten to her skin in Africa, how different it might have been!”

“Summerville?” Cal leaned against the wall, staring blankly at Helen. “Summerville caused this?”

“Yes,” Helen said. Tears sprung anew. “I was so afraid when you brought her back that she would not be strong enough to bear up under being with child and learning a completely new manner of living. This
is a hard life for a woman, and she was so fragile. I thought you knew. I should have spoken. I should have said something…!”

Her voice broke and she turned away. Cal was just beginning to realize what he'd done to Nora. She was sick with fever and she had never told him. Obviously she hadn't wanted to burden a poor man with an incurable illness that would mean constant medical treatment, even if it didn't prove fatal. How tragically ironic that he had seen her hesitation about working in the cabin as contempt of her surroundings, when she had actually been taking a very slow pace only to protect her health. His eyes closed with pain.

If not for Summerville, he would probably never have known about the baby, ever. She'd never have cabled him and he'd never have been driven to marry her, bring her here instead of to luxurious Latigo. Instead, he'd subjected her to a rugged, rigorous life that hadn't been at all necessary. In his arrogance, he'd meant to teach her a lesson in humility. But he was the one getting the lesson. It had cost him his child already, and might yet cost him his wife.

“Oh, my dear,” he said under his breath, shaken to his very soul as he looked down at Nora's tortured body. His eyes lifted to the doctor's. “Will she live? Can nothing else be done? Man, you must save her!”

The doctor had already realized that Cal was not at fault. He relented. Compassion moved him, but its opposite often made a madman of him. He had no
patience with people who put their own interests before those of a sick person.

“I've done all I can,” the doctor said honestly. “Quinine, baths, bleeding, everything I could think of. If the fever breaks, she has a chance. Otherwise…” He spread his hands. “I have treated cases of malarial fever many times, but there is no cure. Further, she is weakened by the loss of her child and the cold, you see.”