Only Mine (5 page)

“Packing.”

Wolfe raised black eyebrows. “It’s easier if the trunk is right side up.”

“Bloody hell.”

Wolfe’s eyes followed Jessica’s long red braid to the point where it disappeared into the trunk. He started to say something, but was laughing too hard to speak.

Normally, the sound of his laughter made Jessica smile, but not this time. This time flags of anger and humiliation burned on her cheeks.

“Lord, if you could only see yourself, like a turtle in a net…” Laughter took Wolfe’s voice again.

Jessica lay on the floor and thought longingly of the case and the weapons inside. Unfortunately, they were as out of reach as the key to the padlock.

Snickering, Wolfe sheathed his knife before he reached for Jessica. He took her braid and pulled gently, then with more force. It made no difference. She was well and truly caught.

“The key,” she said distinctly, “is on the bedside table.”

“Don’t go away, elf. I’ll be right back.”

The thought of Jessica going anywhere on her short tether set off another spate of laughter in Wolfe. It seemed like a long time until he sat on his heels next to her and started fitting keys in the lock to find the right one. The fact that he kept laughing at unexpected intervals slowed down the process of freeing her quite a bit.

The third time Wolfe leaned against the trunk, all but helpless with laughter, Jessica snatched the keys from his fingers and opened the padlock herself. She still wasn’t free. She couldn’t open the trunk while it was upside-down. Nor could she right it. She could, however, push her laughing husband over.

And she did.

Still laughing, Wolfe caught himself with feline ease and came to his feet by the trunk. He righted the trunk, pried open the lid, and pulled out the length of red hair.

“Yours, I believe,” he murmured, handing Jessica the braid.

She grabbed it with fingers that shook, wishing the braid was Wolfe’s throat. The look in his eyes told her that he knew just what she was thinking.

“You’re welcome,” he said gravely.

Not trusting herself, Jessica turned and slammed the trunk lid down, locked it once more, and went to the sixth trunk. When she opened it, she saw that it was packed right to the top with curling irons, clothes brushes, flatirons, tissue paper, linens, toiletries…

“Oh, no,” Jessica breathed.

Wolfe took a breath that kept dissolving into laughter. “Problems?”

“I’m missing a trunk.”

He counted the trunks with a lazy, raking glance. Six. “They’re all here.”

“They can’t be.”

“Why?”

“I haven’t packed my riding clothes and all the trunks are full.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Somehow I’m not surprised. Hand me some of that tissue paper.”

“Why?”

“I’ll help you pack.”

“What does tissue paper have to do with packing?” she asked.

Wolfe shot a sideways glance at Jessica. “Tissue paper keeps out the wrinkles.”

“Wrinkles?”

“The things you take out of clothes with a flatiron.”

She blinked. “You do?”

“No.
You
do. Ironing is a wife’s duty. So is washing, drying, and folding the clothes.”

“What is the husband doing all the while the wife is at work?”

“Getting things dirty again.”

“A truly taxing duty,” she said sardonically.

Wolfe’s smile faded. “Any time you want to go back to being Lady Jessica Charteris, complete with maids and footmen to do your bidding, let me know.”

“Do hold your breath waiting, my lord. It will make the time so much more pleasant—for both of us!”

J
ESSICA
moved sleepily and burrowed closer to the warmth that held the cold dawn at bay.

“For God’s sake,” Wolfe muttered.

The weight of her against his usual morning arousal was altogether too hot. When small hands slid beneath his coat to reach the warmth of his body, his heartbeat speeded. Without waking, she tucked her face against his neck and sighed.

Wolfe closed his eyes, but it didn’t help. Nothing could shut out the memory of Jessica’s creamy, pink-tipped breasts rising from the ruins of her peignoir. Before that moment, he had never permitted himself to think of his redheaded elf as anything but a child.

Now Wolfe could think of little else but the womanly shape of her breasts.

He had suffered the torments of the damned every time Jessica dozed off on the endless stage ride. Invariably, the stage’s erratic motions would threaten to send her to the floor. Invariably, he caught her, supported her, then finally cradled her across his lap while she slept, her breath tangling softly with his. Invariably, he found himself wanting her with an urgency that infuriated him, for he
knew she didn’t want him in return.

And even if she had, he would not take her. She was the wrong wife for him. No amount of desire could change that.

Yet the warmth of Jessica’s breath against Wolfe’s mouth as he turned his face to her went to his head like wine. The softness of her breasts begged for his hands to cup and caress them. The sweet weight of her hips against his aroused flesh was a torment he both savored and prayed would end soon.

Jessica murmured and nuzzled against Wolfe sleepily, knowing only that he was warmth and the world was cold. The brush of her lips against his skin sent a painful shaft of need through his body.

“Wake up, damn it,” Wolfe said beneath his breath. “I’m not a feather bed for your ladyship’s convenience.”

When Jessica made a protesting sound and clung more tightly, Wolfe’s arms pulled her closer despite his better judgment. He searched her face, telling himself it was the gray dawn rather than exhaustion that had drained the radiance from Jessica’s skin and put shadows under her eyes.

But he knew it wasn’t simply a trick of the light. Stage travel was hard on grown men. For a young woman who was used to cossetting, travel by stage was an endurance contest she couldn’t hope to win.

Damn it, Jessi. Why won’t you give up and go back where you belong?

Yet even as Wolfe formed the thought, he was smoothing back Jessica’s hair from her face with a gentleness he was helpless to combat. She looked like fine porcelain, defenseless against a world
more harshly made than she was.

With no warning, Jessica’s eyes opened and looked full into Wolfe’s. Even the dawn couldn’t conceal her shock at finding herself held so intimately.

“W-Wolfe?”

With more speed than gentleness, Wolfe set Jessica on the bench seat opposite him, yanked his hat down over his eyes, and ignored her. Shortly, he was asleep.

Dazed by her own fitful sleep, stunned by awakening in Wolfe’s arms when she had fallen asleep slumped in a hard, drafty corner of the seat, Jessica simply stared at her husband and tried to remember where she was, and why. Finally she opened the side curtain in an effort to orient herself.

Dawn was simply another, lesser shade of darkness spreading across the sky. In all directions, the land was flat, bleak, and featureless but for the icy ruts that marked the stage road. No smoke lifted into the sky, announcing man’s presence. No fences marked off pastures. No roads led to distant houses or farms.

At first, the lack of trees and habitation fascinated Jessica, but after a time the unbroken monotony of the landscape numbed her as much as the cold wind pouring through gaps in the side curtains.

Jessica braced herself against the uncomfortable seat and fought to stay upright. Since they’d left St. Joseph, time had been a blur to her. She couldn’t remember whether she had been traveling three days or five or fifty-five. Hours and days ran together without anything to separate them, for Wolfe had insisted that they travel constantly, sleeping upright, getting down from the stage only
to use the privy when the horses were changed at one of the miserable stations that dotted the long route west.

Other passengers came and went at various stops, and ate or slept in the low, rudely built stage stations. Jessica and Wolfe did not. He brought her food to her and they ate inside the stage, where they also slept. At least the past night had been spent in privacy, for no other passengers had chosen to endure frigid hours on the stage. But the result of the relentless travel was to make Jessica feel as though she had been born into the jostling, jouncing, pounding stagecoach box and would die in the same place.

She hoped it would be soon.

Wearily, Jessica stretched and rubbed her aching neck. With cold hands, she took down her hair and attempted to brush and braid it into submission. Wolfe’s stinging comments about girls who were too useless to comb their own hair had rankled deeply, as did the memory of his laughter when he had found her long braid trapped in the trunk.

By the time Jessica had managed to make two uneven braids and pin them in a coil on her head, the stagecoach began slowing. With a flurry of shouts and curses, the driver pulled the horses to a halt alongside a crude sod building that appeared, at best, uninviting. Despite that, Jessica looked forward to the stop as a break in the punishing ride.

Wolfe woke and stretched. His long, powerful arms and wide shoulders seemed to fill the interior of the stage. The necessity of completing the journey to Denver without spending a night in any of the station houses had eaten into even Wolfe’s endurance. At least Jessica assumed it had. It certainly
had shortened his temper to a hair’s breadth.

Yet Wolfe showed no sign of discomfort. He climbed down from the stage with the muscular grace that was as much a part of him as his high cheekbones and blue-black eyes. Jessica both admired and resented the resilience of her husband’s body. She felt like a carpet after a spring beating.

Nonetheless, Jessica smiled cheerfully at Wolfe when he glanced her way, for she was determined not to lose her temper with him again. No man wanted to live with a shrew, and to be fair, Wolfe hadn’t even had the chance to choose his wife. It was up to Jessica to be unfailingly sweet, gentle, and pleasant to be around. Then Wolfe would be less irritable, less difficult, and more like the wonderful companion of Jessica’s memories.

When Wolfe turned and held out his hand for Jessica, she leaned on his strength in a distinctly unladylike manner as she descended stiffly.

“A lovely morning, is it not?” Jessica asked, smiling into the teeth of a cold wind.

Wolfe grunted.

“I don’t know when I’ve ever seen so many delicate shades of gray,” she continued cheerfully. “Quite enough to put a dove to shame.”

Wolfe shot Jessica a look of disbelief. “I’ve heard a cold March morning called a lot of things out here. Lovely wasn’t one of them.”

She sighed. Perhaps Wolfe would feel better after he had the wretched coffee Americans so admired. As far as she was concerned, there wasn’t enough sugarcane in the world to sweeten that evil brew.

There was no more conversation while Wolfe strode alongside Jessica to the privy’s miserable comforts. When she emerged, clutching her scent-drenched handkerchief, the cold prairie wind cut
through her wool cape and dress as though they were sheerest silk. She looked longingly at the smoke streaming from the canted chimney pipe of the stage station.

The thought of being close to a fire’s warmth made Jessica shiver with pleasure. Ever since Wolfe had set her so abruptly on the far side of the coach, she had been getting steadily colder. Even worse, the sound of the wind had been gnawing at her nerves, eroding her self-control.

“Wolfe, let’s eat inside this time.”

“No.”

“But why? We’re the only passengers. Surely—”

“See those horses?” he interrupted curtly.

Jessica looked. There were indeed horses tied on the lee side of the rudimentary barn, which was more a lean-to attached to the station than a true barn.

“Those are saddle horses,” Wolfe said.

She schooled her expression into one of cheerful interest. “Why so they are. You can tell by the number of legs.”

Wolfe started to speak, gave a crack of laughter, and shook his head. How anyone who looked so worn and fragile could be so full of mischief was beyond him. He reached out and gently tugged a wisp of mahogany hair that had unraveled from Jessica’s crown of coiled braids.

“That means the station is full of men who are waiting for the stage,” Wolfe explained.

“Why? They have horses, after all.”

“They could be borrowed. In any case, they’ve been hard used. A smart man wouldn’t set out for a hundred-mile ride on a played-out horse.” Wolfe shrugged. “But even if the station were empty, I
wouldn’t let you go inside. This is Cross-Eyed Joe’s place.”

“Do you know him?”

“Everyone between St. Joseph and Denver does. His station is the worst of a sorry lot, and he’s the sorriest of all. He’s a crude, blaspheming, drunken son of a bitch whose breath could back down a wolverine.”

Jessica blinked. “Then how does he hold his job?”

“He cares for horses the way a mother hen cares for her chicks. Out here, being afoot can be a death sentence. You can forgive Joe’s smell when he puts strong, eager horses in the traces.”

“Why would being afoot be so dangerous? Lord Robert never mentioned danger when we were here before.”

“Lord Robert’s ‘native guides’ fought even better than they tracked game,” Wolfe said dryly. “No Indians or outlaws were going to take on the kind of trouble twenty well-armed men could offer, no matter how tempting the prize.”

Broodingly, Wolfe looked at the unusually well-bred, obviously trail-weary horses tied in the lee of the station. Perhaps those horses belonged to honest men rather than to men whose lives depended on the ability of their horses to outrun the law.

Perhaps…but Wolfe doubted it.

Jessica’s glance followed Wolfe’s to the station house, but for a different reason. A week ago she wouldn’t have kenneled a dog inside something as disreputable as that sod house, but now it looked like a haven from the bleak landscape. When visiting the prairie with Lord Robert’s hunting expeditions, she had thought the place beautiful with
its tall grass and unexpected ponds, its melodious birds and arching blue sky, and its clean, endless vistas.

At the moment, Jessica’s view of the prairie was less charitable. The landscape was in the dying grasp of winter. Mile upon mile upon mile of land lay half-frozen around her. Flat, featureless, treeless, empty of lakes or rivers, inhabited only by the long, low howl of the north wind, the prairie defined desolation; and the sound the wind made was the disbelieving cry of a soul newly damned.

Jessica had heard that sound before in her nightmares. Shuddering, she looked away from the emptiness and knew she had to be out the reach of the wind, if only for a few minutes.

“Wolfe, please.”

“No. It isn’t a fit place for an English lady.”

“I’m Scots,” she said automatically.

Wolfe smiled, but there was no humor in his expression. “I know. Scots or English or even French, that place still isn’t fit for a lady.”

Jessica was very tired of hearing what was and was not fit for a lady, for it seemed those rules always worked against her. On the other hand, losing her temper only caused Wolfe to bait her all the more.

“I’m an American wife,” Jessica said, smiling through her teeth, “not a foreign lady.”

“Then obey your husband. I’ll bring breakfast, if it’s fit to eat. I doubt that it will be. The food here has been passed up by skunks.”

“Nothing can be that bad.”

“This is. If you’re hungry, we’ll eat farther up the line. One of the army wives makes egg money supplying the stage stop with baked goods.”

The wind’s eerie cry raked over Jessica’s nerves.
She trembled and looked at Wolfe with an unconscious plea in her blue eyes.

“Wolfe, just this once, just for a few minutes?”

“No.”

Fear and exhaustion shook Jessica. Fiercely, she fought the desire to cry. Her mother’s experience had taught Jessica that tears served no purpose except that of announcing weakness, and weakness was invariably attacked.

“Get back to the stage, your ladyship,” Wolfe said curtly. “I’ll bring you any food that’s fit to eat.”

Jessica’s spine straightened as anger swept through her, driving out fatigue and fear for a few blessed moments. “How kind of you. Tell me, what did you do for entertainment before you had me to torment, pull wings from butterflies?”

“If being an American wife instead of an English lady—”

“
Scots.
”

“—is such a torment,” he continued, ignoring her interruption, “then you have only to say the word and you’ll be free of this rude frontier life.”

“Bastard.”

“Without doubt, but the word I had in mind was annulment.”

The wind moaned with a chill promise of damnation that made nightmares awaken inside Jessica. When the stagecoach was moving, there was at least the endless rattle and clatter of the wheels to dull the voice of the wind. But now the stage was motionless and the traces empty while the horses were switched. Now the stage shifted and shivered beneath the cruel force of the wind.

Jessica knew if she sat in that fragile shell and heard the wind screaming, she would start screaming
, too. Yet she didn’t dare show such weakness to Wolfe. If he understood how much she feared the wind, he would use it against her, driving her back to England and a marriage with the likes of Lord Gore.

Then her nightmares would be real, rather than remaining black dreams she never quite remembered upon awakening.

Without a word, Jessica picked up her skirts and walked past Wolfe, who was staring at the weary saddle horses. As he had feared, some of them bore the marks of horses used by the South in the recent war. More than one band of outlaws had begun in the embittered rabble of a lost cause. Some had come from the North as well, men who had gotten a taste for looting and killing that hadn’t gone away when the war ended.