Nora (5 page)

His lean hand came to her cheek and his thumb pressed suddenly, hard over her mouth, bruising the soft tissues. His glittery eyes looked straight into hers. “I know what you're thinking,” he whispered roughly. “Shall I put it into words, or is it enough that I know?”

She was too far gone to register the words at all. His thumb played with her mouth and she let it, standing hypnotized by his gaze, his closeness. He pushed her lips against her teeth in his fervor, and she looked up into his eyes with desire plain in her own. For an instant, time ceased to exist….

She realized quite suddenly what was happening to her, and it was frightening. With a tiny sound, she jerked away from him and ran into the house without a backward glance, her lips still stinging from the tender abrasion of his thumb.

She swept into the house red-faced, met by her amused aunt.

“Mr. Barton is in pursuit again, I presume?” the older woman murmured dryly.

Nora's eyes were very eloquent, even without her hectic flush. “He is…disturbing.”

“He is the soul of courtesy with women, but never have I seen him so attentive,” her aunt replied softly. “He is a personable young man, and very intelligent,
especially about ranch management. Chester could not operate so large a property without his help. He was very somber and businesslike before, but I have to admit that he has changed since you came.” She hesitated then, as if it disturbed her to have to speak when she added, “Of course, there is no question of him becoming a serious suitor, you understand.”

Nora didn't, at first. She frowned, slightly.

“He is a fine young man, but so far beneath you socially, Nora,” her aunt continued gently. “You must not become involved with a man in such a low social station. Your mother would never forgive me if I did not advise you thus. It is amusing that Mr. Barton finds you irresistible, but he is not suitable in any way as a contender for your hand.”

Nora was shocked. She should have realized how her aunt, as much a descendant of European royalty as her own mother, would feel about Cal Barton paying her so much attention. And they were right. A dirty cowboy was hardly a match for a socialite with a wealthy background.

“Oh, I have no interest in Mr. Barton in that respect,” she said quickly, laughing to cover her shock. “But I have noticed that the cowboys respect him. Mr. Barton has had to calm his men down every night.”

“They are high-strung,” her aunt said with a smile. “And surely you've become used to noise in your travels.”

“Not really,” Nora recalled as she stood by the window and gazed out over the flat horizon. “I was
protected from anything really upsetting, even from the smells and sounds of camp life. And I was always among relatives of one sort or another.”

“Relatives?” her aunt asked pointedly. “And not suitors?”

Nora sighed, and a slight frown marred her lovely face. “I fear that I am…unusual in that respect. I do not encourage the advances of men, although I like them very well as friends.”

“But, my dear, you are lovely,” she said. “Surely you will want to marry one day, and have children….”

Nora's face closed up. She turned jerkily. “Melly and I have planned to picnic by the river tomorrow.” She glanced at her aunt. “I have a…fear of rivers, but Melly says that this one is shallow and not very fearful.”

“And she is right,” Aunt Helen said, curious about the wording of Nora's remark. “It will be pleasant for you both, and as it is near the house, it is quite safe to go there unescorted. The heat and dust are terrible this time of year, but it is cool beside the river. Except for the mosquitoes,” she added with a grimace.

Mosquitoes. Nora felt queasy.

“There, now, the mosquitoes are worst in late afternoon,” her aunt said soothingly. “Do not worry.”

Nora turned and then she knew that her mother had told Aunt Helen everything. It was almost a relief to have someone know the truth. She bit her lower lip. “It frightens me.”

Helen touched her shoulder gently. “You had a bad time of it. But you will be fine here. Do go with Melly
and enjoy yourself. It will be all right, my dear, truly it will. Why, doctors are often wrong. You must always keep hope. It is God who decides our fate, not the medical profession. Not always, at least.”

“I should have remembered that. Very well,” she said after a minute, and smiled. “I suppose there are worse things than insects,” she added solemnly as she walked out of the room.

M
ELLY HADN'T MENTIONED
that the picnic was going to involve other people. It was a church picnic. And it wasn't going to be on a river near the house; it was going to be beside a small stream. When Nora heard that, she relaxed noticeably.

Aunt Helen laughed when Melly reminded her that it was the church picnic.

“Oh, how could I have forgotten!” Helen said with a rueful glance at Nora. “My mind is not on the present. I do beg your pardon, Nora, I misled you. I know that you shall enjoy this gathering. There are several eligible and well-to-do young men among the congregation.”

“Including Mr. Langhorn,” Melly added with a strange expression on her face. “He and his son, Bruce, will probably accompany us, since it is Saturday, but perhaps he will be less…antagonistic than usual. And
with luck, Bruce will behave better than he normally does.”

Nora wondered a lot about her cousin's peculiar way of referring to Mr. Langhorn. She hoped that Melly would confide in her one day.

After Helen left to talk to the cook, the two women went outside to sit on the porch. Nora tidied the bow under her jaunty sailor collar. “Will any of the men from the ranch be going?” she asked hesitantly.

Melly grinned. “Not Mr. Barton, if that's what you meant. He goes to Beaumont this afternoon.”

“Oh. Oh, I see.” She colored a little and lifted disappointed eyes. “Does he have family there?”

“No one knows. He never speaks of the visits except in a desultory way. He is very mysterious, our Mr. Barton.”

“Yes, so I see.”

Melly noticed Nora's distraction and touched her arm gently. “Mama is so old-fashioned. Do not let her interfere too much. Mr. Barton is a fine man, Nora. Social status is not everything.”

“Alas, Melly,” her cousin said heavily, “for me it is. My mother is exactly like yours. None of my family would countenance Mr. Barton as a suitor for me.” She gnawed her lower lip. “Oh, why must I be so conventional? I feel like a sheep, following the herd. But it is so hard to break away from the past, to stand up to social absolutes.”

“If you love someone, that becomes imperative sometimes,” Melly said sadly.

Nora looked at her. “Does it? I cannot imagine a love strong enough to send me into battle with my peers.”

Melly didn't reply. There was a very faraway look in her eyes.

 

N
ORA BROODED
on her predicament for the rest of the day, and finally decided that she could say goodbye to Cal if she wanted to. There was nothing so unspeakable about that. She went looking for him late that afternoon when it was nearing sundown. He was in the barn with his saddlebags packed on his horse, a big bay gelding with a spirited look.

“Is that your horse?” Nora asked from the door of the barn, which was deserted momentarily except for Cal.

He glanced at her and smiled. “Yes. I call him King, because he reminds me of a man I know—one who's just as impatient and every bit as unpleasant when he's upset.” He didn't add that the nickname originally belonged to his eldest brother.

“He's very…tall.”

“So am I. I require a tall horse.” He finished his tasks with the horse and turned to move toward Nora. For once, he was cleaned up. He was freshly shaven and smelled of cologne and soap. His hair was clean, neatly parted. His clothes were like new, from his long-sleeved shirt to the neat cord trousers he wore with polished black boots. He looked very masculine, and the intensity of his gaze made her nervous. He paused just in front of her, admiring her trim figure behind the
china blue bow that hung below the sailor collar of the white blouse. The bow matched her eyes.

“Shall you be gone long?” she asked, trying to sound unconcerned.

“Only over the weekend, perhaps for a day or so beyond, depending on the train schedules,” he said noncommittally. “Will you miss me?” he teased.

She grimaced. “Sir, we hardly know each other.”

“A situation which can quickly be remedied.” He bent suddenly, lifted her clear off the ground in his arms like a baby and carried her behind the open door of the barn, out of sight.

Her mouth was open to protest this shocking treatment when his lips pressed softly over it, teasing the tender flesh until it admitted him. Behind her head, she felt the muscles cord in his arm as he brought her closer so that he could advance the kiss. Her breasts flattened softly over the hard muscles of his broad chest, and she felt her heart beating against them.

Outside, she heard the wind rise, and the metallic sound of the windmill as its arms began to spin. There was a rumble up in the darkening clouds. But she was locked fast in Cal's arms and floating blissfully in feelings she had never experienced. His mouth was warm and hard and insistent. She had no inclination to fight or protest. He must have known it, because he was gentle, almost tender with her. When he finally lifted his mouth, she was dazed, fascinated. Her wide blue eyes searched his in a silence broken only by the soft movements of the horse nearby.

His silver-gray eyes glittered as they traced her mouth and then met her shocked eyes. “You're very docile for an adventuress,” he whispered deeply. “Do you like lying in my arms?”

She hadn't realized that she was. He still had her clear of the floor. Her arms were around his neck, holding on, and she never wanted to move. It was a surprise to discover that it felt natural to let him kiss her.

“You're dazed, aren't you?” he murmured with faint, tender amusement as he studied her face. “You flatter me.”

“You must…put me down,” she faltered.

He shook his head, very slowly. “Not until I've kissed you again.” His lips touched hers, teased, tempted. He nibbled on her lower lip and heard her gasp. “You taste of whipping cream,” he whispered, nudging at her upper lip with the tip of his tongue. “You make me hungry, Nora, for things no gentleman should admit to a lady….”

His mouth crushed down over hers, opening it to the most intimate kiss she'd ever experienced in her life. She cried out and pushed at him, frightened not only by the intimacy of it, but by the sensations it made her feel.

He lifted his head, laughing softly as he saw her eyes. “I thought you were sophisticated,” he chided.

She colored. “Do put me down!” she murmured, struggling and flustered.

He did, holding her until she righted herself and
steadied. She pushed at her disheveled hairdo and moved jerkily away from him. He had never seemed taller, more menacing, than he did then.

For himself, Cal was pleased with her reactions. She wasn't so haughty now, and he liked very much seeing her at a disadvantage. It was going to be fun to bring the so-superior Miss Marlowe down to the level of an ordinary woman. She might even enjoy being human for a change.

He touched her nose with the tip of his finger and laughed again as she looked worriedly around them.

“No one saw us,” he said gently. “Our secret is safe.”

She chewed on her lower lip and tasted him there. Her eyes sought his, full of unvoiced fears.

“What shall I bring you from Beaumont?” he asked.

“I… I need nothing.”

His eyebrows arched. “It's my experience that women love little presents. Come, isn't there something your heart desires?”

She was afraid. The way he was looking at her made her knees wobbly, and his kisses had kindled something frightening inside her. She made a helpless gesture with her hands.

“No, there is…there is nothing I want. I…must go inside. Do have a safe trip,” she said.

He just looked at her, aware of new feelings, new curiosities, all of which involved the woman before him. “I shall think of you while I'm away,” he said, his voice
deep and slow. “When I look up at the stars tonight, I shall imagine you looking at them, and thinking of me as well.”

She flushed. “You must not!”

“Why?” he asked reasonably, and smiled. “You have no beau. I have no sweetheart. Why should we not be interested in each other?”

“I do not want that,” she blurted out.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Because I'm a poor, dirty cowboy?” he chided. “Am I not good enough for a Marlowe of Virginia?”

She grimaced and he read the truth in her face. No, a poor cowhand would hardly be a suitable match for a wealthy woman from back East. It rankled that she should think that way, that she should be so bound by convention when she was modern and well traveled and outspoken.

She was an adventuress, she said, but she was certainly very conventional in her private life. She gave lip service to the modern ideals, but she did not practice them. She was just one more prisoner of the social conventions of her set. He was oddly disappointed in her. His mother was a frontier woman, a good and decent woman, but one who lived to please her own sense of morality, not flat rules set down by other people. He had thought at first that Nora had spirit and felt the lure of adventure, that she had come West to test her courage and challenge the unknown. But in fact, she was just another bored rich society woman who toyed
with men to get her thrills. He mustn't forget poor Greely.

“Please,” she said nervously. “I must go.”

His face was shuttered, hard. “Go, then,” he said curtly. “It would not be seemly for you to be seen with someone beneath your social station.”

She glanced at him worriedly, guiltily. But she didn't deny it. That was what damned her in his eyes, what made him determined to show her that feelings were more important than conventions. He would, if it was the last thing he ever did. He would woo and win her as an itinerant cowboy. And when he was through, she would never judge another man by his clothes or his station in life. He would be the sword of vengeance for Greely and all the other men this spoiled young miss had hurt with her thoughtlessness.

He whirled angrily toward his horse, leaving Nora to walk slowly back toward the house with her heart in her throat. She had driven him away, and she should be sorry. But she had nothing to give him. If he thought that it was because of his station and not her own fears about her illness, then perhaps that was as well, too. Perhaps it would spare her any future wooing. The thought, which should have comforted her, was vaguely discouraging.

She had barely made it to the steps when she heard the horse's hooves sound close by, and then quickly move away. She turned in time to see Cal riding out the gate, tall against the darkening sky, looking as violent as the storm itself.

 

T
HE CHURCH PICNIC
was a surprise. Nora hadn't expected to enjoy it, but she was having a very good time. The only fly in the ointment was, as Melly had intimated, Mr. Langhorn's son, Bruce. The little boy was a holy terror, blond and slight and full of mischief. He'd barely arrived when he put a bullfrog down a girl's back and spilled lemonade on the preacher's trousers.

His dad just grinned and watched him, apparently approving his actions. Melly gave the whipcord-lean man with the dark hair and eyes a cold glare, but he ignored her. He was apparently taken with an older woman, a brunette with a plate of cake and a sweet smile.

“There he goes again, playing up to Mrs. Terrell,” Melly said irritably. “Not that I care, but she's at least five years older than he is, and she's got three kids of her own. She's a widow. A rich widow,” she added in a hiss.

As if he heard, Mr. Langhorn looked at her. He lifted an eyebrow, gave her a lazy, dismissing appraisal, and picked up a piece of the widow's cake. There was something almost spiteful about the way he looked right at Melly while he bit into it.

“Daring me to say something,” Melly muttered. “Look at him! He's a…a blackguard, an uncivilized boor! She deserves him!”

“But the poor widow is kind,” Nora argued.

“She is a black widow,” came the terse reply. “I despise her!”

Nora was surprised at the poisonous tones from her sweet cousin Melly. It was so out of character.

“He told me that I was too young to give him what a man needed from a woman,” Melly said shockingly. She flushed. “Mama would have a fit if she knew he had spoken to me in such a way. I pretended that it was another man, my best friend's new husband, who had broken my heart, but it wasn't. It was…him.” She sounded miserable. Her eyes followed the tall man with the widow Terrell, and she jerked them back around with a faint groan. “My parents would never have permitted anything to come of my regard for him, because he is divorced! What shall I do? It is killing me to see them together! He says that he shall probably marry her, because Bruce needs a mother so badly.” She clenched her hands together. “I love him. But he feels nothing for me, nothing at all. He has never touched me, not even to shake my hand….”

There was a wrenching sigh, and Nora felt so sorry for her cousin that she could have cried.

“I am sorry,” she said gently. “Life has its tragedies, doesn't it?” she added absently, thinking of Africa and the terrible changes it had brought to her life.

“Yours has been much different from mine, and certainly it has not been tragic,” her cousin argued. “You have wealth and position and you are traveled and sophisticated. You have everything.”

“Not everything,” Nora said tersely.

“You could have. Mr. Barton is sweet on you,” she
teased, forgetting her own problems momentarily.

“You might marry him.”

She couldn't forget the harsh, cold farewell she'd received from Mr. Barton. She tensed indignantly.

“Marry a cowboy!” Nora exclaimed haughtily.

Melly glared at her. “And what, pray tell, is wrong with a hardworking man? Being poor is no sin.”

“He has no ambition. He is dirty and disheveled. I find him…offensive,” she lied.

“Then why were you kissing him in the barn before he left?” Melly asked reasonably.