Without Words (31 page)

She was ready to blow out the lamp and climb in beside him except for the hair. One hundred brush strokes. He counted along silently with her as he did every night. When this was over, he was going to brush it for her, let the long strands glide over one hand as the other pulled the brush through.

Ninety-nine. One hundred. She didn’t come to blow out the lamp as he expected, but crossed the room to the paper-wrapped packages on the bureau. She brought the top one to the bed, opened it, and lifted out folds of pale green wool almost reverently.

“Feel. It is very soft.”

He did feel. The wool had a cloud-like texture. At least she’d finally bought herself some nice things. “What is it?”

“Scarf. For your mother. I have one for Caroline too and one for your brother’s wife. What is her name?”

Bret hadn’t moved, but everything in him went a different kind of still. He ignored her question. “You bought gifts for my mother and sister because...?”

“For Christmas. Dr. MacGregor thinks you will be well enough to travel in time to be home for Christmas. I have silk handkerchiefs for your father and brother to embroider with their initials. Mrs. MacGregor thinks gray silk on the white would be good. Yes?”

She was too excited to wait for him to give an answer even if he had one, which he didn’t.

“I was not sure about the children. Dolls and wooden toys take up too much room for the packs, and maybe they have those things? We can find them gifts in Missouri?”

In some stunned part of his mind, Bret registered that she’d only spelled half a dozen words out of all that, and he’d understood it all. Thinking about his steadily improving ability to understand her signing was a way to avoid thinking of what to say to her.

“Sure,” he said finally. “We can probably get anything back home they have here.”

“I should not have bought these?”

“Of course you should. You like them, and they might not have those exact things or enough of them in the store in Oak Hills.”

“You don’t like them?”

“I’d like them better if they were for you. Get yourself one.”

“They had to order more from Kansas City. Only one left now. Lavender.”

Bret relaxed, shoved aside concerns about his family. “Give that one to someone else and keep another for yourself. The green is pretty. I like the blue of your new robe.”

She rewrapped the scarf and returned it to the bureau. The robe he liked came off and went over the back of the bedside chair. Bret’s breath caught when she undid the small buttons at the neck of the nightgown. His fingers twitched watching her undo one after another of the tiny discs.

With them all undone, she pulled the gown up over her head and tossed it on top of the robe. Her skin gleamed in the lamplight. She was alabaster and ebony.

“I am too shy for the light,” she signed, looking like a goddess and anything but shy. His skin rippled as she blew out the lamp, the flame in him leaping higher, not dying. The slippers still on her feet whispered against the floor as she moved to the side of the bed.

No weight dipped the mattress. The bedclothes lifted, peeled from his chest, his stomach, thighs, and landed at the foot of the bed. Her hand left a warm trail across skin already reacting to the chill of the night air as she pushed his borrowed nightshirt up.

Bret had imagined her straddling him like this at least a hundred times just today, couldn’t imagine it without her legs against his, bumping his. And right now he didn’t care.

She joined him on the bed, not rising up but curling down. Her palm slid across his belly, which was no longer warm but hot, almost as hot as his aching hard cock. Her hand stroked and cupped his testicles as her other hand grasped the base of his shaft.

She kissed the tip, her tongue swirled around, along the underside, and she took him into her mouth, her warm, wet mouth, and sucked. Bret moaned, his fists balling into the sheet beneath him to keep from grabbing her head, as the pleasure waved over him, through him.

“Hassie.”

More kisses. Her hair on his thigh, her cheek. Her warm, moist breath.

He lost control, his hips bucked. She didn’t pull away.

“You need to.... I’m going to...,” and the peak shuddered through him with such intensity, he wasn’t sure where he’d spilled or what she’d done.

After a moment, she pulled his shirt down, the covers up, and slipped away. Sounds came from the wash basin. Bare feet padded back and stopped by the chair. When she nestled down close to him on top of the covers, wrapped in the damned blanket, she had her nightgown on again. He worked his good arm free and felt both the soft cotton and the rough wool when he pulled her close.

“Unwrap that blanket and let me pay you back.”

She shook her head. “Next time.”

At least that’s what he thought she said, and she wasn’t going to move.

Bret fought sleep for a long time, trying to cope with the wonder of it. None of the women he knew and had long admired had Hassie’s generosity. When his letter arrived in Missouri, whatever the reaction to his simple statement that he had married a widow named Hassie Ahearne Petty and she would be with him when he made it home, no one would buy his new wife gifts because of Christmas or for any other reason.

Before the war, his father had gifted his mother and sisters with jewelry at Christmas, trinkets for the girls, expensive pieces for his mother. Bret only remembered the gifts going one way, head of household to females.

Thinking about it for the first time, he realized, “I ordered the cook to make your favorite...” didn’t count as a gift.

When he had dreamed of marrying Mary, he had expected she would enjoy their coupling in the same passive way she enjoyed his kisses. Any passion would be his. Mary would no more dance with a flower-bedecked dog than she would shoot two killers and force one to lift her unconscious husband onto a horse.

Mary undoubtedly suffered from double modesty too, but in Bret’s wildest imaginings he couldn’t see her ever throwing it aside to give a husband pleasure and relief he desperately needed the one way possible without
jostling
his wretched, slowly healing leg.

And how exactly had she known how to do that? He had used his mouth on her in the few weeks they’d had to explore, and she had touched his genitals, but he’d never expected so much from a wife. He knew now her experience with Cyrus Petty had been as basic as that of a female animal only a lot less frequent, and while she wouldn’t admit it, probably a lot less pleasant.

Mrs. MacGregor didn’t look like the sort to be giving instruction on more than how to use the sewing machine, but looks must be deceiving. The doctor’s anatomy books wouldn’t be forthcoming on the particulars.

Loving Mary had been one of the certainties in his life since he was a boy. If the war hadn’t torn through their lives, she would have been his wife, her children his. Their lives would have been part of an orderly, expected world where neighbors got along, luxuries were available for the asking, and their families were looked up to and respected as the largest landowners in the county who had connections all the way to the Missouri statehouse.

Those feelings still resided in the back of his mind, but they had faded more this summer than in the years since he’d turned his back on that life and ridden off to war. Like an old photograph they had no color, no longer seemed real.

In contrast, this summer stood out vivid in his mind. Bright blue skies, green prairie, and deep red sunsets. Ebony hair, violet eyes, and ivory skin.

His feelings for Mary had been civilized, part of the world they’d lived in. Hassie evoked something very different. A much heftier dose of lust for one thing. Men joked that having a woman cured intense desire. Little did they know.

Having Hassie escalated every feeling. How could a man not want more of a woman who welcomed him eagerly, met him with passion, and gave the way she’d given tonight?

But that wasn’t all. If the dog chased nightmares, Hassie chased anger, sorrow, bitterness. What he felt wasn’t love as he had once defined it. It was—more?

He fell asleep still trying to untangle the knot of feelings, old and new. Still marveling over the contradictions of Hassie and his own good fortune.

H
ASSIE WOKE EARLY
the next morning to the sight of gray eyes with a speculative gleam in them only inches away.

Bret’s voice sounded hoarse and deeper than usual. “Good morning, Mrs. Sterling.”

She giggled and burrowed her face into the cocoon of her blanket.

“I hope you’re not so embarrassed you won’t do it again.”

Sitting up with the blanket around her like a cape so her hands were free, she signed, “I like when you do that to me.”

“We’ll have a contest someday, see who likes it more. Soon.”

She laughed again and reached out to caress his stubbly cheek. He kissed her palm, and her body reacted with all too familiar wanting and frustration. The sooner he could move around enough for a contest like that, the better.

“Did MacGregor really say he thought we could be home for Christmas?”

“He did. December tenth will be eight weeks. Your leg will need more time after that to strengthen, but we can still be in Missouri before Christmas.”

“Good. We’ll leave on the eleventh.”

No, they would not. Convincing him to stay here among friends for even the winter would be impossible. He was determined to return to Missouri. There were ways to keep a stubborn man from being foolish, though. Hassie kissed him again and rose to dress and get his shaving gear.

A
FTER FOUR WEEKS,
Dr. MacGregor stopped predicting dire consequences every time the foot of Bret’s broken leg brushed the floor. After six weeks, the doctor had encouraged a little foot tapping and switching from two crutches to one.

On December tenth, eight weeks after the shooting, the doctor took the crutches back, and Hassie gave Bret a sturdy oak cane made by the local carpenter. That was the last of her cooperation. She didn’t want to leave Dearfield.

Bret wasn’t looking forward to the trip either. The more he used his leg, the more it ached, but he wanted to get home before the weather made it impossible, and he trusted MacGregor was right. The bone had healed. The pain came from muscles that needed to strengthen again. A few more months and the cane would go the way of the crutches.

Impatience to be on the way twisted through Bret as Hassie made excuses to stay first one day and then a second and third. The MacGregors abetted her.

“You could stay here till spring,” Dr. MacGregor said, “It would be wiser, and if it makes you feel better, I’ll charge you rent and you can start chopping wood for me next week.”

Chopping wood would be acceptable, but a few days’ travel wasn’t? Bret didn’t point out the obvious inconsistency there. “You’ve done enough, and my family is expecting us,” he told the doctor. To Hassie he said, “Tomorrow. The weather isn’t going to hold forever. Anything you haven’t bought or packed we can do without. We’re leaving right after breakfast tomorrow.”

He suppressed a guilty twinge at the unhappy look on her face, but even the MacGregors admitted the weather was unseasonably fine right now, one mild, sunny day after another. They had already delayed starting out for more days than the trip would take. Two days in the saddle, one cold night in between, and they’d be at the train station. Two days after that, home.

Breakfast the next morning was a bleak affair. In between bouts of forced cheerfulness, Mrs. MacGregor dabbed at her eyes with her apron. Dr. MacGregor bolted off mid-meal, his relief at having a bleeding patient to deal with palpable.

Hassie broke down and bawled at the end before following Bret outside to the horses.

“You are limping,” she signed, wiping tears from a sad face.

“I am, and we’re going anyway. Once I’m in the saddle, I won’t be limping, and all I have to do is sit.”

Her shoulders slumped. Abandoning further resistance, she mounted Brownie. Waving one last time to Mrs. MacGregor, who had come out to the porch, they rode through Dearfield and headed east.

After the first day of “just sitting” in the saddle, Bret wished he’d brought the crutches along. After the second, his thoughts turned to laudanum. A night in the ugly, primitive hotel near the railroad restored his strength if not his sense of humor.

For the first time Brownie climbed into a railroad car without a fuss and so did Gunner. Bret didn’t believe they cooperated because he was in no shape to force them to do anything. He did believe they sensed at the first sign of resistance he’d turn them over to the tender mercies of the railroad men.

Hassie’s sunny nature had reestablished itself within a few hours of leaving Dearfield as Bret had known it would. Now she fastened on new worries.

“I should have changed to a dress,” she signed as they took a seat in the passenger car.

An elderly woman in a ridiculous hat and bulky black coat stared at them with a shocked, disapproving expression.

“Stop worrying about what people think,” Bret said. “I bet a woman who wears a hat like that would have to close her eyes to shoot a gun.”

Hassie’s lips twitched. Bret pulled off his left glove and her right one, took her hand in his, raised it high enough to be seen and kissed her knuckles. Might as well really outrage that old biddy. Besides Hassie looked like she could use a kiss, and he felt like giving her one.

She settled in against him, head on his shoulder, and Bret stared out the window. This time of year the vastness of the prairie repelled him. At least now he and Hassie were safe from temperatures sinking to killing lows overnight or clear blue mornings turning to the blinding whiteout of a blizzard before noon.

Even if weather stopped the train, it carried enough coal to keep the stove at the end of the car radiating heat for days. The packs still held a couple days’ worth of food. Of course Hassie would insist on sharing it with everyone in sight, which would mean no one would get more than a bite.

His imagination roamed. He saw the train passengers, led by the disapproving hat lady, storming the stock car, wanting to eat the horses. Or Gunner. He saw himself on one side of the open doorway with the rifle, Hassie on the other with the shotgun. He fired. And missed. Hassie closed her eyes, fired, and the raging mob disappeared.