One Wore Blue (14 page)

She was a Virginia lady, she had told herself, gazing at her reflection in the glass that morning. She was delicate and protected and tender, and she wasn’t supposed to be exposed to anything evil.

But she knew that she was anything but delicate, and she had never allowed herself to be overprotected. What had happened was simply horrible, and she didn’t want to see more.

She was sitting in the parlor, reading a newspaper from a nearby Maryland press, when she heard a tumultuous pounding on the rear door. She started, alert and wary for a moment. The attempt to kidnap her and take her hostage remained with her, and she wasn’t immune to a sense of unease if anything resembling danger threatened.

But kidnappers did not knock at a door, certainly not so violently. Lacey had ventured out, when all was well, to hear the latest on what was happening at the hotel.

Kiernan rose and hurried to the door, throwing it open quickly since the pounding threatened to tear it from its hinges.

Jesse stood before her. His plumed hat was pulled at a rakish angle over his forehead. He was in uniform, a shoulder-skirted regulation cape around his shoulders.

“Jesse!” she murmured, and stepped back. She could barely see his eyes, shadowed as they were by the brim of his hat. She sensed a deep tension about him, an energy even greater than that which he usually exuded. “I wasn’t expecting you or Daniel yet. I’ve nothing ready. Oh, but come in—I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m sure there’s something to drink, and—”

He moved through the doorway, his presence powerful. He swept his plumed hat from his head, and she saw his eyes at last. They were dark and seemed filled with a whirlwind emotion.

“I don’t need anything to drink,” he told her.

“Then—”

“Ride with me,” he said briefly.

Kiernan stared at him. He was in a dangerous mood, she sensed. She shook her head uncertainly. “Jesse, Lacey isn’t here. She’s gone down—”

“Leave her a note,” he commanded.

She should have told him right where to go for so commanding her. No lady would ever do such a thing, but she had never pretended to be the perfect lady around Jesse.

“Jesse, I should tell you to go straight to hell!” she whispered softly to him.

He set a hand against the doorframe and moved closer against her. His face was just inches away. “But you’re not going to, are you?”

Despite his arrogance, there was something almost desperate about his words.

For the first time, she realized, Jesse needed her, really needed her, as an adult.

As a woman.

She lifted her chin. “I’ll come with you, Jesse,” she said. “This time.”

He didn’t smile, didn’t even seem to note her taunt. He took it fully for granted that she would come with him. But she realized that, equally, she needed to be with him.

“I’ll be right with you,” she murmured. In the kitchen she wrote Lacey a note, saying only that she was with Jesse. She ran up to her room for a cape and hurried back down.

Jesse was still by the rear door, pacing the small area of the rear entry like a caged lion. Kiernan felt a fierce shiver seize hold of her. He ceased moving at last, not realizing that she had returned, and stared out into the small rear yard at the golds and grays of the autumn afternoon. A lowering sun cast its gentle rays upon the rock and shale of the mountain cliffs. He stared, she thought, but he didn’t see.

“Jesse,” she said softly.

His dark blue gaze shot quickly to her. He opened the door for her, and his eyes followed her as she left the house. He didn’t speak.

His sleek roan stood waiting in the yard. Jesse lifted her up onto the horse, then mounted behind her with smooth agility. She thought that in his present mood they would race again, but he walked the horse from the yard, then reined in.

“What is it, Jesse?” she asked him.

“I don’t know where to go,” he admitted, an edge of raw frustration to his voice.

Kiernan should remain silent, she knew, absolutely silent. Jesse’s present state of mind couldn’t be good for either of them.

But something of his wild, reckless, and even tormented mood was entering into her heart and, like the dark winds of a storm, into her soul and body. “Head west along the river,” she told him.

They passed quietly out of town and headed down the pike that lined the water. They passed the old mill and kept riding until they were several miles out of town. They could hear the rush of the white water passing over the rapids, but they couldn’t see it through the abundance of foliage and
trees growing on the strip of land between the road and the river.

“Turn here,” Kiernan advised him.

Jesse might have missed the narrow, overgrown trail heading toward the water if Kiernan hadn’t pointed it out. But he didn’t question her wisdom in taking it. He knew they were near Montemarte, the Millers’ estate.

A small wooden fishing shack sat almost on the water with a dock that stretched out; over the rocks. In the dim twilight, the shack was almost invisible.

Kiernan felt Jesse hesitate, felt a greater heat building inside him. “Anthony’s?” he inquired dryly.

“His father’s,” she replied flatly. He’d come to her for a place to go, and she had been generous enough to offer this quiet haven.

He nudged the horse forward. At the shack he dismounted and reached up to her. She slipped down into his arms, but he released her quickly and walked down to the water by the shack. The water was low. He set one shiny black boot upon a rock and stared out at the ever-moving water.

Kiernan ignored him and hurried into the shack. There wasn’t much there. It was rebuilt every summer after the waters of the river rose and receded. There was a fireplace and a pot for making coffee and a skillet for frying whatever fish might be caught. There was a rough-hewn table and four chairs, and one sleigh bed shoved into the far corner of the room. There was a ledge with a handy supply of whiskey and tobacco and a few glasses.

She and Anthony had last been there, Kiernan thought, at the end of summer, not long ago. In a pleasant twilight, the other men had debated politics, but Anthony had dropped out to teach her the proper way to fish.

It had been nice. Not exciting, just a pleasant twilight to while away …

She dragged a chair over to stand upon to reach up for the whiskey. Jesse might well want a drink once he came into the shack.

But as she stood upon the chair, the door burst open.

Jesse stood in the doorway. The dying orange glow of the afternoon framed him with his low-brimmed plumed hat and his shoulder-skirted navy cape.

In the coming twilight, with the hectic rush of the water tearing over the rapids behind him, she felt his recklessness, his energy, his tempest, more certainly than she had ever felt it before.

She stopped reaching for the glasses and rubbed her palms over her skirt, watching him, sensing the passion and heat and need within him. Her mouth was dry. Her heart pounded. Her blood seemed to race through her system as swiftly and wildly as the water rushed over and around the ancient rocks.

Jesse didn’t want a drink, she realized.

Jesse wanted her.

Six

Suddenly, he slammed the door shut behind him and advanced upon her, his long strides bringing him to stand before the chair. She was silent, staring down into the cobalt depths of his eyes.

She’d thought that he’d have so much to say, that he would speak and she would listen, that she would soothe the anguish that swept his soul. She’d thought there would be many words to share.

But there were no words. He reached out to her, wrapping his arms around her. The tempest and the passion and the heat in his arms were so great that she instinctively wound her own arms around him, and for a long moment, his head lay against her breast. Indeed, she thought, she soothed him.

But his was a wildness that did not seek to be soothed.

His hands wound around her waist, and he lifted her from the chair. She slid slowly, evocatively, against the length of his body. She felt again all the things that she had felt in that previous touch.

Felt his body, the hot corded tension. Felt the deep power of his chest, the hardness of his thighs. Felt the taut demand of his hips and the unyielding strength of that which lay within his loins.

His lips touched hers hungrily. He did not seek to slowly seduce—there was nothing leisurely about his kiss. His lips
took and consumed hers, ravaged them. He did not seek a subtle entry to her mouth. Instead, his tongue plunged between her lips and teeth and demanded the sweetness of her mouth.

His arms held her with magic, with fire and fervor and tempest, with something that entered deep into her body and demanded a response.

He broke away and stared down at her in the shadows cast by the dying sun. For a long, long moment she didn’t move. They stared at each other, caught up in the heedless, swirling excitement that hurtled and slammed between them. Feelings raced through Kiernan, hungers and yearnings, and dark forbidden things.

She had imagined them before. She’d tasted hints of aching and wonder in his arms before.

He began to kiss her again.

She closed her eyes and swept her arms around his neck. She met his kiss as a new-found thirst and desire brought a trembling to her lips.

She was learning swiftly what to do with those lips.

An innate sensuality blossomed and grew within her, there in the wooden shack, in the late afternoon of a day that had been beset by blood as dark as the crimson of the dying sun.

Their lips met again and again, open-mouthed, in hungry, wet kisses, kisses that melded their lips and their bodies, that brought the searing heat from that sweet touch to burn deep into the heart of unleashed desire.

Kiernan knew what she was doing all the while. She knew before his lips trailed from hers to touch her earlobes and her cheeks, to slide provocatively along the narrow column of her throat, to rest against her pulse and travel onward along the length of her collarbone.

The touch of his fingers upon her shoulder sent her cape falling to the floor. And his lips fell against the naked flesh of her throat once again.

The things he did with his tongue …

She felt that she was falling, that his touch had already entered into her body. She trembled as her senses reeled.
The warmth was so sweet, entering, like nectar that caressed her inside and out. She concentrated so on the wonder of the sensation that she barely realized that Jesse had found the tiny hooks and buttons at the back of her gingham day gown, and that she was slowly losing it as he slipped it downward to her waist.

His fingers lifted the delicate strap of her chemise, and his mouth pressed against the spot where it had been. That same wet warmth was placed over the fine silk where it molded the very tip of her breast. He caressed and nurtured the flesh beneath the fabric, wet against the hardening bud of her nipple.

Like lightning it moved, the searing ecstasy of the sensation. It touched her breast, and like his kiss, it touched so much more. It spread like the summer rays of the sun, spiraling down to her stomach and beyond, entering low into intimate places between her thighs—shocking places.

“Oh, Jesse!”

She whispered his name at last—not with protest but with wonder. She discovered herself swept up into his arms, held tight against the rough fabric of his cavalry cape. As he carried her to the bed, she didn’t care.

She didn’t care about the dust that had settled upon the woolen blanket and down mattress. The room was surely cold, but she felt no chill. None of it mattered. She had mused and pondered and imagined, as any young woman might, this first time with flowery, chivalrous phrases, with soft candlelight and the scent of roses on the air.

But none of that mattered, none of it at all.

It didn’t even matter that no words of God’s blessing had made them man and wife.

She was with Jesse, and she trusted him as much as she desired him. Perhaps therein lay the beauty of this tryst in the cold and rugged cabin in the woods.

When he saw the dust, he set her upon her feet, swept his cape from his shoulders, and laid the garment with the soft lining upward upon the sleigh bed. Then he turned back to her, and again he paused, and she realized that he was trembling too.