A Lady of the West (46 page)

Still, it might become necessary to put him down. If no one could work with him without fearing for their lives, there would be no choice. Jake wanted to wait and see before he did something irrevocable.

“I won't order him shot,” he said, and watched her face become even more withdrawn. He whirled her around to face him. “Not yet. I'm not saying I won't, I'm just saying that I'm going to think about it before I do something that can't be undone.”

“Celia can't be brought back, is that damn horse worth more than she was?”

“No, damn it, but killing him won't bring her back, either.”

“It'll accomplish one thing, at least.”

“What?”

“I won't have to look at the barn and know he's in there, safe and warm and well-fed, while my sister is in her grave.”

They buried Celia with the sun shining brightly on her coffin, making the pale new wood gleam with a golden hue that almost matched her hair.

T
hey all retired early that night, too dispirited even to try and talk. Emma watched Jake lead Victoria into their bedroom, his arm around her waist both possessive and tender, and the door closed to lock them in their private world where no one else could enter. Ben walked past her with a quiet good night and went into his own bedroom.

Emma carefully closed her own door, went about the nightly ritual of washing and getting into her nightgown, and then was totally unable to get into bed. She sat in a chair with her hands folded in her lap, rocking back and forth in a silent paroxysm of grief.

Death came so suddenly and it was so final, so indiscriminate. In a short time it had taken a nameless infant, an unloved whore, and a girl whose smile had made hearts break. They were promised nothing, any of them, not another year, another week, or even another day. Babies were born and every day of their lives after that was a risk. People could hide from life, but not from death.

Celia had lived life as if it were the greatest joy. She had reveled in its beauty and ignored the ugliness unless forced to look upon it. She had tried to hide
from that part of life, but in the end it had found her.

In the end all they had was the moment, the everlasting now. One could plan for the future, one could try, but nothing was guaranteed.

Victoria was with her husband and their child was growing in her body. Celia had reached out with eager hands to embrace her love. But she, Emma, had turned away from the love that had beckoned her. Oh, she had had very good reasons and perhaps the love wasn't what she would have wished, but it had been offered and she had denied it.

How would she feel if Ben didn't survive the night?

A mighty hand squeezed her chest and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. He might never return the devotion she felt for him, but that wouldn't make it one whit weaker. She had turned him away, and he hadn't asked in months now. She was alone, by her own will.

She got to her feet and blew out the lamp. Sitting here brooding wouldn't accomplish anything. She needed to get some sleep.

But she could not get into that bed. She paused, staring at its pale expanse in the darkness. A cold, empty bed, just as she was cold and empty.

She bolted out the door and down the hall. She jerked Ben's door open without pausing to think, her eyes wide and desperate, and came to an abrupt halt when he whirled around with his gun in his-hand. The hammer was pulled back, his finger on the trigger. She looked down the unwavering barrel, dead level with her head.

Ben aimed the gun toward the ceiling and slowly let the hammer back down. “Don't ever do that again.”

“No. I won't.”

He wore only his pants, and the dark hair around his forehead was damp from his washing. Emma stared at the broad expanse of his chest, muscled and covered with dark hair, and felt her knees go weak.

“What do you want?”

“I want—” She stopped, her throat tightening. Her fingers dug into the wood of the doorframe. “Ben—” He faced her, waiting.

“I want you to hold me,” she whispered, one hand blindly reaching out for him. “Don't let me be alone tonight. God, I don't want to die without knowing what it's like to lie with you.”

He sighed as he caught her hand, his rough fingers closing warmly, reassuringly around it. He'd given up hope that she would come to him, though he'd never quite been able to lose the dream. He had ceased to pressure her during the past few months, not because he'd wanted her less but because what he was offering wasn't fair to her. He still found the thought of marriage distasteful, and that was what a woman like Emma should have.

But his newly developed scruples didn't extend to turning her down if she came to his room wearing nothing but a thin nightgown, begging him to hold her.

Desire was already pumping through him, and he looked at her through narrowed, burning eyes. “You know that holding you won't be all I'll do, don't you? There's no way I can lie down with you and not be inside you, Emma girl.”

“Yes, I know.” She straightened her shoulders, though her soft, wide lips were trembling. “It's what I want, too.”

He pulled her inside and closed the door. She was shaking as he gently freed her hair from its nighttime braid and spread it over her shoulders like a dark cloak. He lifted her hands and placed them on his shoulders, then bent and covered her mouth with his. Emma's eyelids fluttered shut, and she sank against him, against his wonderful heat and strength. Now that she had taken the step, she felt a deep calm underlying her sexual arousal, as if things had finally fallen into their rightful place.

He caught the hem of her nightgown and lifted it up and off. She trembled even more, and her hands made slight movements as if to shield herself, then she let them lie trustingly on his shoulders while he looked down at her slender white body. Ben felt breathless. She was so finely made that he felt coarse and clumsy, likely to hurt her with the lust that burned through him. He put his hand over one breast, marveling at the silky warmth of her and the contrast of his tanned, callused hand against the alabaster globe, then he lifted it and bent down to take the nipple in his mouth.

Incredible heat washed over her, more intense than anything he had taught her before. His taste and scent were achingly familiar; she recognized him by the primitive signs with which women have always recognized their mates. When he placed her on his bed, she went willingly.

“I don't know what to do,” she whispered.

“I'll show you,” he murmured in reply, kissing her neck and ear and then her mouth. He was achingly erect, throbbing with the need to enter her, but this first time control was crucial. “You taste sweet, Emma girl.”

Emma moaned as he moved down to her breasts and began sucking at her nipples with a power that sent fire running through her veins. Time swirled and disappeared. His hands and mouth were all over her body, tasting her, feeling her. She received a jolt when he touched her between her legs, though the hot tide of pleasure quickly drowned her surprise. There was another jolt when he slid one long finger into her, testing both her response and the strength of her maidenhead. She winced away from the slight burning, but he rubbed his thumb across and around the sensitive nub at the top of her sex and with a whimper she returned, her hips rotating in search of more.

“Please.” She clutched at him with wet hands. “Ben!”

He heeded her cry and stripped out of his pants, then spread her legs apart. He stopped to steady his breathing and regain his control. “It'll hurt just this once,” he said roughly.

She lifted herself against the shaft that probed between her folds. “I know,” she murmured as he let his weight down on her and settled his hips in the cradle of her thighs.

He entered her with care, pushing forward with slow pressure. She gasped, and her nails dug into his shoulders. Her body was opening for him, stretching painfully. She thought it was unbearable, but found that it wasn't. Her maidenhead gave way and he went deep inside her while tears burned her eyes. He lay very still, but she could feel his length throbbing as she tried to accustom herself to his penetration.

Then he withdrew, and she stared at him with dark, questioning eyes. He managed a tight smile. “No, it isn't finished. I'm just getting started, sugar, but I'm going to make certain you enjoy this as much as I will.” Then he bent to her, applying mouth and fingers to the enjoyable task, and soon she was on fire. Just as she arched in her first convulsive climax, Ben thrust deeply into her, and there was no pain, only the intoxicating passion of their two bodies joined.

Two nights later Victoria slipped out of bed. Her eyes were burning from tears and lack of sleep, yet still she couldn't manage to do more than doze off occasionally. Every time she did, she woke with the sound of a single scream in her ears, and dreaded hearing it again.

It was after midnight now. Jake slept heavily, exhausted from the work he still had to do and his own lack of sleep since Celia's death. She didn't light a candle, knowing that it would wake him. His responses were still very much those of a gunslick, becoming instantly alert at the slightest noise or the
light from a single candle. This was the first time she had managed to get out of bed in the middle of the night without waking him, which meant that she had awakened him a lot during her pregnancy.

She couldn't accept losing Celia, she just couldn't. Her older brother had been killed during the war and she had grieved, but it had been different somehow. He had been a grown man, and he had chosen to fight. Celia had been on the verge of blooming into full womanhood, a promise that would forever now go unfulfilled; she had not chosen to be stomped to death by a killer horse. Dear God, how she missed her!

And Rubio still stamped about in his roomy stall, healthy and vicious. It was just a matter of time until he killed again.

Unless she stopped it.

She didn't bother with stockings, but put on her slippers. Her shawl was hanging over the back of a chair, and she wrapped it around her head and shoulders. Jake's holsters were also slung over a chair, one sitting next to his side of the bed so he could reach them in a hurry. She tiptoed over and gingerly slid one of the heavy weapons free of the leather.

It weighted down her arm as she slipped from the room and down the stairs. She would barely be able to hold it steady if she needed it. She hoped she wouldn't.

The cold air blasted her in the face as she tugged the door open. New snow was falling, fat, fluffy snow-flakes silently drifting down to cover everything in white. How Celia would have enjoyed it.

The walk to the barn seemed longer than it ever had before. The falling snow combined with darkness confused her depth perception and she stumbled several times. Already her feet and legs were freezing. It would be warmer in the barn with the body heat given off by the animals. Sophie was in there, her barrel swelling with Rubio's foal. And Gypsy, Celia's calm, gentle Gypsy. Several of the other mares had
been bred to the stallion, but not Gypsy, and Victoria was violently glad.

She had to struggle to open the barn door, and a horse nickered in curiosity. The blackness seemed absolute. She left the door open, pushing it wide, then swinging the other door open, too. She knew that there was a lantern hanging just inside the right door and fumbled around until she found it and managed to get it lit. The warm yellow glow dispelled the darkness.

Sophie put her head over the top of the stall, and down at the far end of the barn Victoria could see the stallion's well-formed head, showing as a dark shadow rather than the red she knew it to be. How much better it would have been if the double doors at that end of the barn had opened into a free pasture rather than a series of corrals and pens, but they did, which meant she would have to drive the stallion back the entire length of the barn.

She knew she couldn't shoot the horse. As much as she hated him, she couldn't put the gun to his head and pull the trigger. Jake was right; he was a dumb animal. She could have shot him in self-defense or to defend anyone from an immediate attack, but not otherwise.

“You're safe from me,” she whispered as she approached his stall, “as long as you don't start in my direction. Do you hear me, horse? Then I
will
kill you.”

His ears went back and he watched her with unconcealed hostility. He began stamping, one hoof thudding down repeatedly. In her stall Sophie whinnied and kicked out, sensing the stallion's agitation.

Victoria gripped the pistol in her right hand and used both thumbs to pull the hammer back and cock it. She had to be ready in case he did charge at her. Then she unlatched the stall door and pulled it open, backing up with it, keeping the sturdy wood between her and the horse at all times.

He screamed and backed farther into the stall. “Get out,” she hissed. She never wanted to see the stallion again. She had thought about it and in her exhaustion arrived at the truth: she couldn't live on this ranch if Rubio remained. The hate would fester, and every time she saw him she would remember that he'd killed her sister.