Nora (20 page)

His silence brought Cal's eyes to him, narrowed in thought. “It wouldn't have mattered. Would it?” he pressed.

King averted his eyes. “Go and see her before you make choices. It's always better to know for sure.”

Cal finished his cigarette and dropped it to the ground. He pressed it into the dirt under the heel of his boot. “You got lucky,” he said abruptly.

King's eyes were wistful. “Not at once,” he said. “It was a rocky path, and for a while, she hated me. Those were hard days.” He laughed softly. “But now… Now I don't envy any man alive. God, how I love her!”

The emotion in that deep voice made Cal envious.
A blind man could see that Amelia worshipped her husband equally. He hoped that they would have years and years together.

“I'll buy a ticket to Virginia,” Cal said presently. He arched an eyebrow at his brother. “One way.”

“I'd buy two, for the return trip,” King murmured dryly. “And carry her kicking and screaming to the train. So would you have, before this thing laid you low.”

Cal burst out laughing. He and King were so much alike. The two of them swamped poor Alan. It was just as well that he had a totally different career in mind than throwing in with either of his brothers. Alone, he stood a better chance of being self-reliant.

King clapped his brother on the back and turned him toward the house. “I'll ride into town with you and bring your horse back.”

“It sounds as if I'm leaving,” he remarked.

King nodded. “Since you'll be going through Tyler Junction anyway, stop and see how Tremayne's doing. Tell him you heard we're pleased with his progress. That should reassure him.”

“It's all vaguely deceitful, you know,” Cal remarked.

King shrugged. “All for a good cause.”

“I suppose so.” Cal relented, but reluctantly. He wasn't best pleased with the idea of seeing the Tremaynes again after the way they'd parted company. And the memories of Nora in that house were going
to tear him apart. For himself, he'd just as soon send them a telegram as go out there and deliver a message in person.

 

B
UT IN THE END
, he left Alan on the train as it pulled out of Tyler Junction en route to Louisiana, hired a horse and rode out to the Tremayne ranch.

It was cold, as December often was, even in East Texas. He saw the fields spreading out bare and lifeless before him, but the cattle had feed, thanks to that new combine and the tractors Tremayne had bought at Cal's insistence. Everywhere he could see the benefits of the improvements, and he thought that his father and brother were going to be pleased.

He'd cabled Pike in Beaumont and heard that the part had come in early. Pike already had the derrick put up and they were drilling. They had a problem with mud seeping into the shaft, but they'd been given some advice by another wildcatter and had solved it with a valve. Some oil and gas pockets had been found in Gladys City, but there was the possibility of a real strike on Spindletop Hill, where some serious drilling was being conducted despite the advice of one well-known geologist. Pike, like Cal, refused to listen to him. Cal had good friends at the large oil field in Corsicana, and they had invested in his several-hundred-acre tract of land. He refused to believe that they were going to find any more dry holes. This time, he told himself, they would find oil. He knew they would. He planned to swing by Beaumont on his way to Virginia
and check that drill and the new valve before he left Texas. He'd worked with the men in Corsicana long enough to understand drilling, although he and Pike had a contractor who knew the business better than either of them.

The Tremayne house was quiet when he rode up and left his horse with the stableboy. He walked onto the porch and knocked.

To say that Chester was shocked to see him was an understatement. Cal looked different in his dark suit and string tie and dressy black Stetson and boots. He looked like a businessman more than the ranch foreman who'd left several weeks before. Cal's hand was shaken profusely and he was greeted like a long-lost son.

“We're just sitting down to dinner! Come in, come in, and join us. How have you been?” Chester enthused.

“I've been well. Things look good here,” he added. “Very profitable.”

“You'd think so if you saw the balance sheets. Sure you don't want your old job back?” the older man coaxed as they entered the living room, where Helen sat alone at the dinner table. “I haven't hired anyone else.”

“No, I have other irons in the fire now,” Cal said in a subdued tone. He swept off his hat and smiled at Helen as he greeted her.

She was staring as if she'd seen a ghost. She made
a gesture to Chester, but he ignored it and told Cal to sit down.

A minute later, oblivious to their guest, a harried Nora, in a stained apron and a faded dress, swept in the door sideways with a huge platter of beef in one hand and a plate of biscuits in the other. She set the containers on the table with an apology when one almost spilled, and only then looked up and saw Cal across the table.

She went alternately white and red, and then began to tremble as her heart raced uncontrollably.

Cal's jaw clamped shut. He got slowly to his feet, made aware by the way she was dressed and what she was doing that she'd been reduced to the status of a servant here. He was all but trembling with rage as he looked at Chester.

“Would you care to explain this?” he asked curtly, with an arrogance and authority that made everyone suddenly nervous.

“Why don't you ask me?” Nora broke in, straightening as she struggled to regain her composure. She smoothed her stained apron and stared at him levelly.

“I'm working to earn my keep. I didn't want to go home.”

That bit of welcome news didn't stifle Cal's outrage at her changed status. “You're still my wife,” Cal said furiously.

Her eyebrows arched. “I am? Imagine that, and here I thought you'd vanished off the face of the earth!”

“You had the address of my attorney,” he said coldly.

“I've been too busy to use it,” she lied. Her chin came up. “Why are you here?”

“Not to see you,” he said with a cool smile. “I stopped to ask Chester about his progress. And to tell him that the combine thinks he's doing a fine job. I, uh, saw one of its representatives in my travels.”

Chester beamed. “How fortuitous!”

Nora brushed off her apron. “If you'll sit down,” she invited her erstwhile husband coolly, “I'll finish serving.”

She went back into the kitchen. Cal got up and followed her, without a query or an apology.

She was putting biscuits into a big bowl, but she turned as he entered the room and closed the door behind him. “I'm busy,” she said bluntly.

He leaned against the counter to study her. She was still thin, but she looked remarkably fit. She was just as pretty as she had been. His eyes fed on the sight of her, and he felt at peace for the first time since he'd walked out of this house the night she started to recover.

“Has the fever been kept at bay?” he asked.

She nodded curtly, and kept putting biscuits in the bowl. “I'm much better. I didn't want to go home and I didn't want to embarrass my people by getting a job with someone else. I do the housework and the cooking, and I stay in the house with them. Melly is getting married in the spring. She's gone to town with Mr. Langhorn and his son to shop.”

“Good for Melly.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I'm going to Beaumont,” he said, neglecting to add that he'd planned to go on to Virginia in search of her. She wasn't very receptive. Not that he'd expected anything else. There were open wounds in her heart that he'd put there.

“Are you? Why?” she asked.

“I have some leases on a prospective oil field,” he said honestly. “It's where I went on weekends. I have a partner. We're drilling our third hole. The first two were dry. We're hoping to hit oil this time.”

She frowned. “The Beaumont paper has mentioned some minor successes there, but one of the better-known geologists says there is no major oil field there,” she said.

“And I tell you there is,” he said easily. “I worked in the oil fields in Corsicana before I started looking in Beaumont over a year ago. I have leases on several hundred acres of land, and a crew hard at work even now.”

She was surprised. She had known less about him than she realized. She didn't want to ask how he was affording this expensive venture. Presumably his partner was rich.

She went to fetch the butter from the small icebox, where it was wrapped in a cloth next to the huge block of ice they had delivered from the plant in town.

“Are you staying to dinner?” she asked politely.

He nodded. “If it's convenient.”

“You must ask my aunt, not me. I only work for her.”

His cheekbones went ruddy. “You're my wife, by God,” he said curtly. “I don't want you working as an unpaid domestic!”

She turned to him, her pretty face composed, her blue eyes eloquent. “I am not unpaid. I work for my keep. You walked out and left me,” she reminded him calmly.

His jaw tautened. “I'm very well aware of the condition you were in when I left. And I will remind you that you told me to leave,” he added curtly. “You gave me no opportunity to tell you anything.”

“You didn't try!” she returned hotly.

He leaned back against the pantry door. “I was too upset. You had told me nothing about your health, except that you were carrying my child. I came back to find that you had miscarried and were at death's door. How do you think I felt?”

She grimaced. “I can imagine that you were shocked.”

“Devastated,” he corrected. “I knew that I had done you no service by bringing you here, to a life of drudgery and hard labor. You were too fragile for it. I was eaten up with guilt. Leaving seemed the kindest thing to do. I didn't blame you for not wanting to see me, Nora.”

She saw the pain in his face, and her eyes softened. “You gave me the best life you could manage,” she said gently, and wondered at the way he winced.
“What made me angriest was my own inability to do the simplest things. I couldn't cook or clean.” She laughed softly. “I find that I do both very well now. I'm no longer helpless. I've grown strong from my troubles.”

“You should never have had to bear so many,” he said sadly. “After you refused to speak to me, I went out to a tavern and got royally drunk. On the way back, it occurred to me that there would be little purpose served in staying around the ranch. You would recover more rapidly without me, I imagined, so I got on the next train to Beaumont. I thought that you would immediately return to your family in Virginia and divorce me.”

As she had guessed. No wonder he hadn't tried to contact her. She sighed. “My father would allow me to come home if I apologized,” she told him ruefully. “Since I did not think that I had anything to apologize for, here I still am.”

His face hardened. “Any apologies owed were on his side, not yours. Your father is a disgrace to his sex.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Indeed,” she said. “And he works so hard at it.”

It took him a minute to recognize the dry humor. When he did, a faint smile turned up the corners of his disciplined mouth. “So he does.”

She covered the biscuits in their bowl so that they would stay warm. She felt equally warm, having Cal close again, being able to look at him. Life had become beautiful once more. “I should have told you about the
fever,” she said apologetically. Her eyes lifted to his. “If I had done so, if I had been honest from the start, you would have been spared so much sorrow.”

“Neither of us has been particularly candid with the other, Nora,” he said quietly.

She stared at his eyes and saw the new lines around them, and in his lean face. He was thinner. He had aged, somehow. Yes, he had suffered, too.

“Why did you hide the true state of your health?” he asked.

“At first because I didn't know you well enough to share such an intimate confidence. And afterward, because it seemed so harsh, to tell a new bridegroom with a pregnant wife that she had a disease which, if it did not kill her, would certainly plague her all her life.” She lifted her face sadly. “You could barely keep us both on what you earned, and there was already the baby to provide for when it came,” she said painfully. “I hoped to spare you…any more burdens.”

His eyes closed. He turned away from her, to hide the anguish those words produced.

“Your parents…they knew you were ill and still would not relent after you lost the baby?” he asked with quiet guilt.

“They knew. I am an outcast.” She smiled suddenly. “But I can iron a shirt!” she announced brightly. “And I can cook biscuits that do not bounce, and steak that melts in the mouth!”

Her radiance caught him unawares. He searched her bright blue eyes hungrily. “It was not the things you
couldn't do that bothered me,” he said huskily. “It was the fact that if you had truly cared for me, it would not have mattered to you how I made my living or what I had,” he concluded. His eyes averted. “But you were contemptuous, of my station in life, of my work, even the way I dressed. I was cruel because it hurt me that you said you had married beneath you.”

She didn't know what to say. He made accusations that were truthful. She had said those things, and felt them. But now…looking at him, her heart melted in her chest. She loved him, wanted him, needed him. She didn't care if he was a pauper, if she had to work as a laundress or a cook just to stay with him. The discovery was not even shocking. She loved him so much that nothing else seemed to matter. But the difficulty was in trying to express it, after all the painful things that had happened. She had no idea how to begin.

T
HE OPENING OF THE DOOR
captured their attention. Helen walked into the kitchen, glancing from one to the other and not unaware of the silence and tension between them.

“The dinner?” she prompted gently.

Nora's blank eyes began to focus. “Dinner? Dinner!” she gasped. “Oh, Aunt Helen, I am sorry! We were talking and everything slipped my mind.”

Helen only laughed. “I suppose I'm going to have to start cooking again pretty soon,” she murmured. “Unless I miss my guess, you won't be here much longer?” She looked at Cal, who was frowning slightly. “Surely you plan to take Nora with you when you go?”

Cal hadn't, because he didn't think she would agree to go. But he looked at her, and his silver-gray eyes asked a question he didn't dare put into words.

“An oil camp is a rough place,” he said slowly. “It's dirty and primitive, with few amenities and little privacy. You're fragile, and the weather is cold and unrelenting.” He felt the truth of his logic acutely. He smiled sadly. “It wouldn't be wise to take you there.”

Nora felt her last hope slipping away. “But I'm strong,” she protested, shocking him. “The doctor says that even if the fever recurs, it won't kill me. And I can cook!”

He hesitated.

“Eat first, then you can talk about it,” Helen said wisely.

They agreed. Nora put everything on the table, and they ate with only desultory conversation. Afterward, Nora cleared and washed the dishes, and then she and Cal sat down alone in the parlor to talk.

He rolled a cigarette and lit it. His dark suit jacket lay on the sofa beside him, leaving him clad only in dark pants, a white shirt and a black-and-white floral print vest. He looked different in a suit to Nora, who had never seen him dressed in anything except denim and buckskin. It didn't occur to her to ask why he looked so prosperous when he had no job. Nora's eyes darted away from him, because she was remembering how it felt to lie against him and be held and wanted.

“It really is impractical to consider taking you with me,” he said resignedly when he was smoking his cigarette. “You're better off here. In fact,” he added with
solemn reluctance, looking at her, “if you apologized to your father—”

“Never!” she said firmly. “It is he who should apologize, for insulting my husband!”

His eyebrows lifted. He smiled delightedly. “You have changed.”

“I have had to,” she said simply. “Shall I tell you the truth about myself? I was never an adventuress. I went to Africa and stayed in a magnificent home while my cousins went out to hunt. For one night I was allowed in camp, and during that night Edward Summerville became disgustingly amorous and tore my clothing. As a result, I was bitten severely by mosquitoes and I acquired the fever that will plague me for the rest of my life.”

“A malarial fever,” he said.

She nodded. “But not a fatal one, or so I am now told. I had thought it might be, which is why I did not tell you. I feared for our child.” The memory made her sad. She averted her face.

“I am sorry about the baby,” he said heavily. “I could have spared you the housework, Nora, simply by hiring a daily woman….”

“How would you have afforded one?” she asked, missing the renewed flare of guilt in his face. “Cal, it does no good to look back. I have always felt that the Almighty decides matters of life and death. I, too, am sorry about my baby. But many people face such losses and go on. So must we.”

He leaned back against the sofa and studied her
with pale, quiet eyes. “There are still things about me that you do not know,” he said, wondering how he was going to tell her his own secrets without making her hate him even more.

She straightened her skirt. “I would like to go with you to Beaumont.”

“It's a small cabin, and my drilling crew lives in tents around it. We would not be alone out there, but there is also only one bed,” he added stiffly.

She colored a little. “I see.”

He stared down at his cigarette thoughtfully. “Of course, you could stay in Beaumont at a hotel.”

She straightened her skirt again. “Yes.”

His eyes lifted. “Even so, it would be harder for you than it is here,” he said. “And I would be out at the rig with my crew. I don't like the idea of having you so far away from me, especially at night. Nora, it's a bad idea.”

Her blue eyes clung to his. “Do you not want me to go with you?”

His face tautened. He took a draw from his cigarette and glowered. “If you want the truth, there is nothing I desire more.”

The worry left her face. She looked amazed. “Truly?”

“What if you become ill?” he asked seriously.

“What if you do?” she countered. “You don't have fever, but you could go down with a cold or even pneumonia, and who would take care of you?”

His lips parted on a gush of breath. “You would…take care of me?”

“But of course,” she said guilelessly. “And if I go, Cal, I will not stay in Beaumont,” she added firmly. “Regardless of the hardships, I will go with you, to the drilling site. I don't wish us to be separated again. I am your wife.”

His wife. His eyes slid over her body covetously and back up to her lovely face. His heart began to race. He should tell her the rest of it, about his family, his background. But if he did, she would hate him all over again. She would know that she had suffered unnecessarily and blame him.

But if he waited to tell her, just a little while, if he took her to Beaumont and he was kind to her, then she might begin to love him. And if she did, when he told her the truth…

He leaned forward, the smoking cigarette in his hand forgotten, and pinned her with narrowed pale eyes. “If I take you with me, you must tell me if it becomes too much for you. Your health must come first. No shows of pride, Nora. Never again.”

“Very well,” she said.

He watched her for a minute with growing need before he spoke. “And if you go with me—” he hesitated, holding her eyes “—you sleep with me, Nora,” he said huskily.

Her cheeks colored prettily, but her eyes didn't fall. They slid over his face, down to his mouth and lower, to his chest. “Very well,” she whispered shyly.

His high cheekbones flushed. His whole body went rigid at the soft reply. He remembered, as she must, the pleasure they could give to each other. She didn't even pretend not to want him, thank God.

“Then pack your things, Nora,” he said tightly. “I want to leave before dark.”

Her smile changed her face. “I'll go at once and tell Aunt Helen!” she said, rising.

He rose, too, and stood towering over her with a solemn face and glittering eyes.

“It will not be easy,” he said. “Even the cabin here will look like a luxury in hindsight. There are rough men and few women. In fact, before I left, a bordello was trying to set up on the outskirts of the camp, where the oil crews are working,” he added frankly.

Her blue eyes widened. “Why, how exciting,” she said. “I have never seen one of those women.”

“Nora!”

“You needn't look so outraged,” she said pertly. “Women are curious about such things, you know.”

“No decent woman should be.”

She lifted her chin and glared at him. “How superior you sound, Mr. Barton,” she taunted. She frowned as a thought occurred to her. “That bordello…?”

“I have no need of bought women,” he said shortly. “You insult me.”

“You have done little else but insult me since we met,” she pointed out. “And it is quite noticeable that you were not innocent when we married, or before!”

His chest shook with laughter he was trying to
suppress. “You look like an angry little hen with ruffled feathers,” he mused.

She pushed at the ruins of her high coiffure. “I am not a chicken,” she informed him. Her brows lifted. “Did Aunt Helen mention that I can prepare a chicken? I am still a bit squeamish about it,” she added conspiratorially, “but at least I no longer quail at the prospect.”

The pronouncement didn't get the result she had expected. He looked as if each new mastered chore she recounted was painful to him. He moved forward and gently took her by the shoulders. His fingers lingered on the warm softness of the skin that he could feel through the cotton dress.

“That will no longer be necessary,” he said quietly. “We will have to buy our meals—”

“We will not!” she assured him. “Not when I have spent an entire day having the bunkhouse cook show me how to prepare a meal over a campfire!”

His surprise was visible, and his breath caught.

“You see, you still think I am a dead loss,” she fumed. “Well, let me tell you, I am no helpless Nellie! I can—”

Smiling, he bent and stopped the tirade with a warm, hungry kiss in which tenderness and long weeks of abstinence were mingled.

The shock of pleasure sent Nora pressing close against his long, powerful body, her arms meeting at his back as she opened her mouth deliberately and pushed upward.

He groaned, caught off guard. She felt his thighs tremble against her as his arms contracted and his mouth became bruising in its quest.

He moved her against him, loving the response she gave him, loving the taste and touch and feel of her. Her tongue shyly eased into his mouth, and at her belly she felt, with something oddly like pride, the incredible swiftness with which his body reacted.

He tore his mouth from hers and pushed her back, holding her at arm's length with eyes so dilated, they seemed black.

“We are married,” she whispered, protesting breathlessly.

“Remember where we are, if you please,” he said angrily, although the dampness of his forehead and the furious beat of his heart, visible under his shirt and vest, belied his remoteness.

She smiled tenderly, her eyes drowsy with pleasure. “I missed you,” she said dreamily.

He drew in a long, steadying breath. “And I, you,” he said after a minute. “Are you sure, Nora?” he added. “I could not bear to be the instrument of any further risk to your health.”

“My place is with you,” she said simply.

He nodded. His eyes fell to her mouth and lingered there. She thought absently that he looked like a different man in that suit. There was a new authority about him, a sternness that was at variance with the easygoing man she had met when she first came here.

“You are like a stranger,” she said, puzzled.

He traced her face with tender fingers. “I am a stranger,” he said. “In more ways than you realize. You know me only as a lover.”

Her cheeks became rosy as her gaze dropped to his firm mouth. “It is the only way in which you would permit me to know you,” she ventured. Her hands toyed with a pearl button on his vest. “And I have been equally reticent in talking about myself. Shall we agree to talk to each other more in future?”

“Nights are long in the camp,” he mused. “And we will have little privacy in which to do much else,” he added with a rueful smile.

“But you said that I must sleep with you,” she blurted out.

“And you must,” he agreed. “But, sadly, that is all it may be between us. There are tents, very close to the cabin, where my crew stay.” He pursed his lips, looking down at her with amusement and delight. “And you are very noisy when we make love,” he whispered.

She hid her face against his vest. He held it there, chuckling tenderly above her disordered hair. “What a delight you are to me,” he said huskily. His hand smoothed her nape. “Nora, there is something else to consider as well,” he added. “Forgive me for being blunt, but I do not wish to make you pregnant again so soon. Your body will need time to recover from its ordeal.” He felt her shiver, and his arm contracted around her shoulders. “When you consider that our child was conceived the first time we were ever together…”

“Yes, I know.” She drew in a faint breath. “Do you…want a child with me?” she asked hesitantly. “Someday?”

“What sort of a question is that?” He tilted her worried face up to his. There was censure in his pale eyes. “Why should I not want a child?”

Her lips curled inward. “You said that I was not the sort of woman you should have married,” she began.

His thumb pressed softly over her mouth. “I said many cruel things. So did you. That is over. We are married, and I look forward to a long and happy life with you. Children will certainly be part of it, when you are healthy again.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Do not sound so dispirited,” he coaxed. “It will not be forever.”

She nodded, but she wouldn't meet his eyes.

He sensed disappointment and something beneath it. He bent and kissed her lightly, feeling her immediate response. Her caught breath went into his mouth and she shivered. And then he understood.

“I want you, too,” he whispered softly.

She winced. “It will be so long,” she said involuntarily, and flushed. “Forgive me. I sound wanton.”

“You do not,” he argued. “You sound like a very normal woman, newly married, who enjoys the embraces of her husband.” He smiled. “Now, brace up. You look like the sinking of the
Maine.
”

She peered up at him. “I feel it,” she muttered.

“You have forgotten something I told you early in our marriage,” he said.

“What?”

He drew his lips lightly over her ear. “That there are ways to pleasure each other that do not involve the possibility of creating a child,” he whispered. “At the risk of darkening my reputation even more, I must tell you that I have considerable skill in that direction.”

“Cal Barton!” she ground out, shocked.

He laughed, letting her twist out of his arms with a face that looked sunburned.

“Roué!” she accused, straightening her apron.

He lifted an amused eyebrow. “And worse,” he confessed. “You will get used to it.”