Only Mine (19 page)

“You don’t?” Jessica asked. “What do you use, then? Nets or traps? Or do you hunt like the Eskimo, with spears?”

Caleb shook his head. “Nothing that fancy.”

“How do you catch fish, then?”

“Patience, stealth, and bare hands.”

His smile shifted as he measured the deepening color of Willow’s cheeks. His golden eyes gleamed with a frank male sensuality that surprised Jessica; up to that instant, she hadn’t thought of Caleb as a particularly passionate man. She had been wrong. The hunger in his eyes as he watched his wife was barely veiled by his half-lowered lids.

“You see,” Caleb explained in a slow, deep voice, “trout like to be stroked all over. That’s why they hold station in the fastest currents. Isn’t that right, honey? Don’t they just lie there, quivering,
waiting for the moment when—”

Willow’s hands clapped over her husband’s mouth, cutting off his words.

“Caleb Winslow Black, if you weren’t too big, I’d turn you over my knee and teach you a few manners!”

Laughing, Caleb turned his head quickly aside, evading his wife’s attempts to muzzle him. Believing the caress would be hidden by Willow’s hands, he flicked the tip of his tongue between two of her fingers, stroking the sensitive skin.

But Jessica saw the secret caress, just as she saw the change in Willow’s smile and the brief, sensual glide of her fingertip over his lower lip. For an instant, something quite primitive arced between man and wife; then Caleb smiled and pulled Willow onto his lap with gentle hands.

“I’m too big for your knees, honey. You fit real nice across mine, though.”

“Caleb…”

Willow’s voice died. She flushed and glanced toward the other two people in the room.

“Hush,” Caleb said softly, pressing Willow’s cheek against his shoulder. “Wolfe and Jessi are husband and wife. They won’t faint if they see you sitting in my lap.”

With a sigh, Willow relaxed against her husband. He shifted her more closely against his body, brushed a kiss over her hair, and leaned toward the boxes with their intriguing array of flies.

“You’ll probably have some luck with this one,” he said to Jessica, pointing toward something that looked like a black ant. “We have mayflies and caddis, too, so that box should fill many a frying pan.”

“Is the stream you mentioned far from here?” Jessica asked.

But the question occupied only part of her mind. She was still measuring the difference between marriage as she understood it and marriage as Willow and Caleb lived it.

Is this why Wolfe can’t be reconciled to our marriage? Did he expect of marriage what Caleb and Willow so obviously have—a union of lives rather than a merger of titles and wealth?

“The Columbine isn’t far,” Caleb said. “Wolfe knows how to get there.”

“Thank you,” Jessica said quickly, “but if it’s close, I’ll just go by myself.”

“Like hell you will,” Wolfe said. “If it’s the stream I’m thinking of, there’s a band of Utes that winters there. They like hot springs as well as white men do.”

Caleb nodded. “There’s a small camp. No more than three or four families. Mostly old men, women, and boys. I haven’t had any trouble with them.”

“Yet,” Wolfe retorted. “You let down your guard and you’ll be missing some horses real quick.”

“Keeps a man on his toes,” Caleb agreed blandly.

Wolfe laughed. “You should have been a warrior.”

“He is,” Willow said sleepily. She yawned and burrowed closer to her husband’s strength. “If he weren’t, I’d have died a year ago.”

Long, amber eyelashes flickered down and Willow sighed, relaxing deeply against her husband, letting the rest of the world fade into the warm distance of sleep.

“Reno and Wolf j helped me,” Caleb pointed out in a dry voice.

Willow didn’t answer. She had fallen asleep. Caleb smiled and smoothed a bright lock of hair back from his wife’s face.

“You’re right about the camp,” he said quietly to Wolfe. “It’s not far from the best stretch of trout water for a hundred miles around. But as long as you keep your rifle handy, you won’t have any problems. The Utes know Tree That Stands Alone. You’re a legend with them.”

“I’m sure Wolfe has better things to do than watch me lash a stream,” Jessica said quietly.

“That’s a fact,” Wolfe agreed.

Caleb looked from Jessica to Wolfe and bit back impatient words. Caleb didn’t know what was wrong between the two of them, but he had no doubt that something was. Normally controlled to a fault, Wolfe’s temper had become as volatile as nitroglycerin. He spent the days working like a man possessed, yet from the look of him there was no rest at night, nor any peace. Jessica looked no better. When she had arrived ten days ago, she had been exhausted from the long trip. She still looked exhausted.

“Nonsense,” Caleb said firmly. “It will do Wolfe good. He’s been working like two men.”

“Bull,” Wolfe said. “Looking after our broodmares isn’t work, it’s pleasure.”

“And digging pestholes, cleaning out springs, fencing off rockfalls and blind canyons, chopping firewood—”

“I said I don’t mind,” Wolfe said, cutting across the other man’s words.

“Do be quiet, you’ll wake Willow,” Jessica said, showing both men two rows of even white teeth.

“In any case, I won’t be leaving Willow while you’re out working all over the countryside. The babe could decide to be born at any moment. There is enough agony and terror waiting for Willow. She shouldn’t be alone in the bargain.”

“Hold your tongue,” Wolfe said coldly. “Not everyone feels as you do about bearing children.”

“Not everyone,” Jessica agreed with equal chill.

“Merely every
woman.
”

“That’s enough!” Wolfe said.

“Jessica is right,” Caleb said abruptly. “God help me, she’s right about the danger. When I think of how Becky died…” His expression changed as he looked down at the woman who slept so trustingly in his arms. “Willow is my life.”

“I didn’t mean…” Jessica whispered, but no one was listening.

Caleb stood, lifting Willow with him. Without a word, he carried his wife into their bedroom. The door shut softly behind them.

Sleet rattled over the windows, breaking the silence Caleb had left behind. The howling voice of the wind curled through the room, filling all space, all silence, summoning all that Jessica had spent a lifetime trying to forget.

Hands clasped together until her fingers ached, Jessica fought not to show the fear she had lived with so long she couldn’t remember a time without it. The need to cry out was a constant aching in her throat. Hiding her fear was becoming harder each day. The nights were becoming impossible. Soon she would hear a woman’s screams mingled in awful harmony with the wind’s predatory cry.

Jessica wondered whether the screams would be Willow’s or her own.

“S
UCH
a fine, delicate stitch,” Willow marveled, watching Jessica embroider an ornate B on a christening gown. “I tried to learn when I was a child, but I didn’t have the patience. I still don’t.”

“I’d rather be able to make biscuits.”

“Your stew is excellent,” Willow said, suppressing a smile.

“It’s edible,” Jessica corrected wryly, “thanks to you. Without your tutoring. I’d still be trying to interest a skunk in my cooking. You’ve been very patient with me.”

“My pleasure. I’ve enjoyed having you here. I haven’t really had another woman to talk to since my mother died.”

Jessica hesitated. “You must have been lonely.”

“Not since I found Caleb.”

With a sigh, Willow settled deeper into the sofa next to Jessica.

“If there’s anything else about the domestic arts you want to know, just ask,” Willow said, yawning. “I’m going to be lazy and watch you embroider while the bread rises.”

Jessica became very still. “Do you mean that?”

“Definitely. I feel very lazy.”

“I meant about asking questions.”

“Of course.” Willow sighed and shifted her weight, trying to accommodate the baby’s restlessness. “Fire away.”

“What I need to know is very…personal.”

“That’s all right. The War Between the States made me pretty shockproof. Ask whatever you like.”

Jessica took a deep breath and said quickly, “You seem to enjoy your husband.”

“Oh, yes. Very much. He’s a wonderful man.” Willow’s hazel eyes kindled with delight and her smile became incandescent.

“No, I mean you
enjoy
him. Physically. In the marriage bed.”

Willow blinked. “Yes. I do.”

“Do many women actually enjoy the marriage bed?”

For a moment, Willow looked thoughtful as she remembered her mother’s laughter and her father’s low voice murmuring through the house late at night. Willow also remembered the Widow Sorenson’s eyes lighting when she talked about the pleasure of sharing her life with a man.

“I think many women do,” Willow said slowly. Then she admitted, “I never truly understood it until I met Caleb. I was engaged to a boy who died in the war. When he kissed my cheek or held my hand, it was nice but it didn’t make me want to be his woman. Yet when Caleb looks at me or smiles or touches me…”

She hesitated, searching for words.

“There’s nothing else in the world for you,” Jessica finished quietly, remembering how it had felt when Wolfe smiled at her, filling her world.

But he no longer smiled at her, and her world was the empty wind.

“Yes. Everything else vanishes.” After a moment, Willow said simply, “I never knew babies were conceived in ecstasy, until Caleb.”

The embroidery thread knotted under Jessica’s tense fingers as memories spurted through her unwilling mind. “Not all babies are conceived that way. My mother’s certainly weren’t. She fought my father. Dear God, how she fought him.”

Unhappily, Willow watched Jessica, sensing the violent tension in the other girl’s slim body. She put her arm around Jessica in silent sympathy.

“Was there no love between them?” Willow asked softly.

“My father needed a male heir. His first wife was an aristocrat, who couldn’t conceive. When she died, he took my mother as his wife. She was a common lady’s maid. She was pregnant with me at the time. The earl had bedded her, you see.”

“Then there was affection between them.”

“Perhaps.” Jessica set aside the embroidery and rubbed her hands together as though chilled. “But I think not. Mother was a commoner whose family was desperately poor. The earl was an aristocrat who desperately needed a male heir. I think desperation makes for a very difficult marriage bed. I know mother very much preferred to sleep alone, but she wasn’t permitted to unless she was breeding.”

Jessica’s bleak eyes revealed much that her careful words did not.

“It isn’t that way in all marriage,” Willow said.

“It was in the marriages I saw. It was families and fortunes that married, not man and woman. It would have been that way in the marriage my
guardian tried to arrange for me.” Jessica turned and faced Willow. “But it isn’t like that for you and Caleb. You come to his bed willingly. He doesn’t…hurt you. Does he?”

Laughter and memory combined to tint Willow’s cheeks a bright pink. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have spoken so frankly about the private side of marriage, but she sensed Jessica must have been been ill-prepared for being a wife in more important ways than her lack of skill in the kitchen.

Willow also suspected that she had stumbled on the source of the tension between Wolfe and his wife.

“I’m more than willing to bed my husband, I fear. I’ve been known to seduce Caleb quite shamelessly.” Willow bent closer and whispered in Jessica’s ear. “In fact, as soon as possible after this babe is born, I’m looking forward to becoming Caleb’s woman in every way once more. I’ve missed it so much. I never feel so closely bound to him as I do when we share our love in that very special way.”

Jessica couldn’t help but smile in response to Willow’s sparkling eyes and pinkened cheeks. “Caleb is lucky to have you.”

“I’m the lucky one.” Willow smiled at Jessica. “Any more questions? Don’t be shy. Growing up as you did, I doubt you had many women with whom you could talk about such things.”

“I had only one friend.”

“You must miss her.”

“Him, not her. Yes, I miss him terribly. Our friendship didn’t survive our marriage.”

“Having seen how possessive Wolfe is, I can understand it,” Willow said. “Your friend must
have decided that discretion is indeed the better part of valor.”

“You misunderstood me. Wolfe was my friend. Now he is my husband.” Jessica grimaced and changed the subject quickly. “There is another way in which you’re very different from my mother.”

Willow smiled encouragingly. “Yes?”

“Pregnancy was very difficult for her, yet you seem not to suffer.”

“Oh, I’ll be glad enough to carry the babe in my arms rather than in my womb,” Willow admitted. “Just as I’ll be glad not to wallow clumsily when I walk, not to visit the privy hourly, and not to require my husband’s strong arm to pull me out of my favorite chair.”

“But you’re healthy,” Jessica said seriously. “You can walk across the room without fainting, you can eat without vomiting, and you don’t…”

Jessica’s voice died as she shuddered beneath another unwanted eruption of memory.

“What?” coaxed Willow.

“You don’t weep and scream and curse your fate.”

“Dear Lord. Was that what your mother did?”

Another shudder wracked Jessica. Her hands became fists, as though that would prevent the gathering pressure of nightmares from erupting into memories she had forgotten long ago, because remembering was unbearable.

“And you don’t curse Caleb for making you pregnant,” Jessica continued urgently, determined to have it all said, all questions asked. “Do you?”

“Curse Caleb?” Willow sounded and looked appalled. Impulsively, she took Jessica’s cold fists, uncurled the fingers, and placed Jessica’s hands on the firm mound of her pregnancy. “Feel it. Feel
the baby kick and turn and wriggle. Can you feel it?”

At first, Jessica tried to pull away, for the gesture called back more of her own childhood, when her mother had grabbed her daughter’s hands and pressed them against her womb, shouting at her daughter to feel the babe, to feel it moving, proof that this one would not be stillborn. But not once had Jessica felt a babe move. Not once had the pregnancies ended in a live birth.

Willow’s belly was warm and firm and resilient, and beneath the supple skin something drummed against Jessica’s hands.

“It’s moving,” Jessica breathed, shocked. “It’s alive!”

“Of course. The blessed little thing is as active as a flea.”

“No, you don’t understand.
It’s alive.
”

Willow laughed softly, bemused by the wonder on Jessica’s face.

“Yes, it’s alive,” Willow agreed. “Another life is growing inside me. A beautiful miracle. How could I curse the man who created this new life with me?”

Jessica said nothing, for she was too transfixed by the vigorous life in Willow’s womb to think coherently.

“Here,” Willow said, shifting one of Jessica’s hands. “Can you feel the baby’s head, all round, just fitting in your palm?”

Breathlessly, Jessica nodded.

“Now give me your other hand,” Willow said. She moved it to the other side of her abdomen. “Feel it kick? A tiny little foot, but already so strong. Every week it gets bigger and stronger. Lately, it seems to grow an inch a day.” She laughed. “Soon it will be strong enough to be born,
and then I’ll see Caleb hold his child and smile at me.”

“You aren’t afraid?”

“I’m strong. I’m healthy. My mother had babies without difficulty.” Willow hesitated, then admitted, “Caleb wanted me to go to the fort months ago, but the weather has been too bad. Besides, I wanted our child to be born here. I didn’t want to be in a strange place with strangers around me.”

“When the time comes, I’ll help you,” Jessica said. “If you wish it. Lady Victoria saw that I had some small training, though I’ve never used it. She wanted me to be prepared if my future husband owned a remote country estate.”

Willow said simply, “I’d like to have you nearby.”

“Then you shall.”

With a lifting of her heart, Jessica picked up her embroidery again and resumed working on the christening gown. For the first time, she allowed herself to hope that the gown wouldn’t serve as a tiny shroud for a stillborn babe.

“O
H
, do play, please,” Jessica coaxed Caleb. “Reno told me you play quite beautifully. It would be wonderful to hear music again.”

“That’s the thing about being a Western wife,” Wolfe said, giving Jessica a taunting look. “You’re deprived of all kinds of civilized things.”

“Not music,” Caleb said. “Not unless you want to be.” He put the harmonica to his lips. A beautiful chord floated through the room. “Of course, a harmonica isn’t some fancy chamber music done in four-part harmony.”

“Do that again,” Jessica said, startled. Then she heard the blunt command in her voice and flushed.
“Please. It was very pretty.”

“It wasn’t Bach,” Wolfe said.

“Do hush up,” Jessica said sweetly. “If I had wanted Bach, I would have packed my violin over the Rockies and made all of you suffer through a nightly recital.”

Rafe laughed. “You tell him, Red.”

Despite himself, Wolfe smiled. “Actually, I like Bach.”

“You would,” Reno said. “You spent too long in civilization.”

Caleb lifted the harmonica and blew gently. All conversation stopped as the first, simple notes of “Amazing Grace” filled the room. Reno and Willow began singing, falling easily into the patterns of harmony they had learned as children. Jessica’s breath went out in a sigh of pleasure as brother and sister sang with voices perfectly blended.

After a moment another voice wove through the other two in a rhythmic echo that had no words. When Jessica looked at Rafe, she realized that he was humming in flawless counterpoint.

Grimly Wolfe measured the pleasure and admiration in Jessica’s face as she listened to Reno’s voice and Rafe’s haunting music. Even as Wolfe told himself that she was every bit as admiring of Caleb and Willow, Wolfe knew it didn’t matter. It was Jessica’s clear appreciation of the Moran brothers that flicked like a whip over Wolfe’s raw nerves.

Nor were Reno and Rafe immune to Jessica’s effortless charm. Their eyes kindled with special warmth when she laughed, when she smiled, when she walked into the room. Though neither brother had given her so much as an improper look, the knowledge that Jessica took pleasure in their company—but not in her husband’s—was
like an acid in Wolfe’s soul. The fact that he had worked relentlessly to make her uncomfortable in his presence only made the result more bitter.

I never should have brought her here. I should have guessed Reno would be wintering over with his sister. I should have known what effect Jessica’s fey blue eyes and laughter would have on a lonely man. God knows the effect they have on me.

Or rather, the Devil knows. I want Jessica like Hell burning. But I can survive that. What I can’t survive is watching her flit like a silken butterfly around those damned handsome Moran brothers.

I should grab Jessi and leave.

But Wolfe couldn’t do that. He cared too much for Willow to deprive her of Jessica’s company, especially after Willow had refused to leave the ranch in order to give birth.

When Caleb began a ballad set in waltz time Jessica began humming and keeping time with her fingertips.

“Wolfe?” she asked hopefully, wanting to dance.

He shook his head. He was tempted, but didn’t trust himself. If he held her in his arms, his body would state its hunger in unmistakable terms.

“I need some water,” Wolfe said, heading for the kitchen.

Jessica’s eyes followed him every step of the way.

“Never let it be said that Matthew Moran sat on his hands when a beautiful woman wanted to dance,” Reno said.

He went to where Jessica was sitting, bowed, and held out his hand. She put her fingers on his and stood.

“Thank you, kind sir.”

Jessica smiled, curtsied, and stepped into Reno’s
arms with a grace that had been learned from the finest tutors in the British Empire.

In the kitchen, Wolfe drank one cup of water, then another, cursing silently the whole time. He had wanted very much to hold Jessica, to feel her softness and warmth, to stand so close to her that he could smell her delicate rose perfume and see the intense clarity of her eyes.

Now another man was doing all those things.

The cup hit the sink with a metallic cry that was lost in the music of Caleb’s harmonica. A few silent strides brought Wolfe to the kitchen door. He stood in the shadows there, leaning against the door frame, watching Jessica with a hunger he could no longer hide. Her raspberry silk dress made her skin glow like fragile porcelain lit from within. The simple chignon Willow had taught Jessica to create emphasized the delicate lines of her face. Tendrils of hair escaped to lie in soft curves at her temples, nape, and ears.