Caress of Fire (12 page)

She had three twenty-dollar gold pieces in her pocket. Gil had told her to use them for anything she wanted, but she hesitated. She wouldn't spend a penny of his money, not when so much remained unsettled between them.

Instead of careening through Litton's General Store as if she were set on buying out their wares, and especially their hats, Lisette glanced down the street, to the Lusty Lady Saloon. Tinny piano music blared from its swinging doors. A painted woman, plumes in her hair and red satin draping her voluptuous body, emerged from the establishment, her arm around Matthias.

“Your lady would be ashamed of you,” Lisette scolded him
sotto voce,
certainly out of earshot.

“Afternoon, ma'am.”

She turned to the strange voice holding a Southern drawl considerably softer than a Texan's accent. A nattily dressed gentleman approached Lisette and tipped his hat. He looked to be in his early thirties and had a refined air about him.

“Excuse my forward–good heavens, ma'am, you've been injured.”

“I had an unfortunate accident. That's all.”

“Is there anything I can do to help? I've heard a cold steak helps bruises.” Concern in his dark eyes, the stranger went on. “Why don't you let me fetch one?”

“Please don't bother. I truly am fine.” And she was–a bit beat up, but fine. “My husband is taking wonderful care of me;” she overstated.

“Where I come from . . . well, you don't want to hear all that.” He took a step forward. “May I present myself? I am Charles Franklin Hatch. And you are . . . ?”

“Lisette Kel–McLoughlin.”

“McLoughlin.” A muscle ticked above his eye as he smiled. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. McLoughlin.”

“The pleasure is all mine, sir.”

“Your husband . . . Where is the fine man?”

While she considered Mr. Hatch a gentleman, she was beginning to think him much too nosy. And she was somewhat suspicious of his intentions. “Mister Hatch, I really think it wrong, my speaking to you without proper introductions.”

Gallantly, he nodded. “You're right, Mrs. McLoughlin. Where were my manners? As a gentleman of Georgia, I apologize for putting you in a delicate position.” He began a retreat, then stopped. “Perhaps we'll meet again, when your husband is present. I'd be honored to buy supper for the two of you .”

He tipped his hat and went on his way, and he dropped from Lisette's thoughts.

She scanned the surroundings again. Once before she had waited on a courthouse lawn for Gil McLoughlin. Was it mere weeks ago she had been so filled with hope for the future?

At present she had no idea of what it would hold.

“Lisette.”

She straightened and turned to her husband. He stood a couple of yards in the distance, near the street, his brow shaded by a new, wide-brimmed straw Stetson. He held a cigar, the first she'd ever seen him smoke.

Of course he wore his usual attire–gunbelt and Thelma, bandana, denim shirt, doeskin vest, close-fitting britches–but the leather chaps had been left in the chuck wagon. She noticed his feet. New boots, those were new boots, larger ones. They made a statement. As did his fresh haircut.

She yearned to make peace with her handsome, unhappy husband.

“Did you buy dresses and hats?” When she shook her head, he said, “We'd better rectify that. You can't go on wearing Willie Gaines' gear forever.” He took off in the direction of Litton's. In the middle of the street, he turned back to her. “What's keeping you?”

An hour later, they checked into the Keystone Hotel, two boxes hanging from strings in Lisette's hands and a hat tugged down over her brow to shade her bruises. Three boxes were tucked under Gil's arm as he signed the registry.

An odd realization was that they would be sharing one room. She had suspected Gil would ask for two.

“We have baths,” the desk clerk pointed out, leaning back to get away from the clientele's odor. “Hot springs baths. They're extra, of course. Fifty cents. You interested?”

“We're interested.”

“That'll be a buck-fifty for the room and the baths.”

Gil handed over the appropriate sum and took the skeleton key from the bespectacled clerk. He dug in his pocket, extracted a coin to flip it across the counter. “Get someone to fetch my trunk. And send up some food, will you?”

“Of course.” Smiling and revealing a gold tooth, the clerk pocketed the extra specie. “Anything else, sir?”

“Leave us alone after you've done as I requested.”

Lisette's heart tripped. Gil wanted to be alone with her.
Why?

If Gil had expectations of bathing with her, or even talking with her, he didn't act on either, and Lisette swallowed a large dollop of disappointment. Disappointment was made to be swallowed.

Outside the Keystone Hotel dusk came and went while she twiddled her thumbs and waited for her husband to join her. She knew he had entered the bathing area; she'd been with him at the time. When she'd waited in the corridor, fully dressed and smelling of lilac-scented soap, he had yelled out, “Go on to the room. I'll be there after a bit.”

Hours had passed since the wooden trunk was delivered. The meal sent up by the desk clerk had grown cold and congealed. Right now, as the clock on the bedside table struck eight, the fried chicken had withered to petrified proportions and the potato salad probably had enough sickness in it to fell the entire Prussian Army.

She paced the room. Her eyes kept catching on the five boxes. Litton's General Store sported a large selection of dry goods. Gil had picked out five dresses and the proper underpinnings, though Lisette had eschewed a corset.

“I refuse to lace myself into one of those contraptions, fashion or no fashion,” she had announced vehemently
Even if I could afford one,
she added silently

“I don't blame you,” he'd said. “What about this bonnet? Your face is getting brown. Like it?”

It was a hideous thing of calico, though in vogue for most pioneer women, and Lisette hated it. Yet the beast nestled among the pile of purchases.

And Gil had insisted on purchasing lanolin “because your hands are rough,” plus ribbons and hairpins “since you lost yours a while back.”

“I don't want these things,” she protested in a small voice, not wishing to be beholden to him. She dug in her pocket and turned to the proprietor. “I'll have this cake of lilac soap, and that will be it.”

“Wrap it all up, and add some lilac water.”

Lisette's chin was not perhaps as jutted as Gil's, but she thrust it upward. “All I want is the soap.”

“Tally up the clothes, man, and be quick about it.”

The proprietor rushed to do the cattleman's bidding, and Gil said to Lisette, “I won't have you smelling like the wrath of God or looking like Willie Gaines' ghost.”

“Aren't I fortunate?” she said breezily, not feeling her sarcasm at all.

Now, as the hours passed in a second-floor room of the Keystone Hotel, she was especially glad for not going wild in the emporium.

Plainly, Gil had no use for a browned woman with rough hands who reminded him of a man, dead or otherwise, least of all the same woman he didn't want to be legally wed to. A woman who was used goods.

Her eyes went to the iron bed built for two. Already she knew the sheets were clean as a whistle and smelled of the sun. The bed had a snowy white crocheted spread and four plump pillows, and it invited more than sleep. Therein lay the obstacle. Even if Gil were to charge into this room right now, saying he'd forgiven her, and even though their marriage was duly recorded, she would shy away from disrobing.

Why hadn't she thought about that while speaking with the preacher?

Gil's reprove tumbled over and over and over again in her head and heart. In his words, “Damn.”

Dressed in a robin's-egg-blue dress of corded silk–totally frivolous for the upcoming days on the trail but insisted upon by her husband–Lisette sat down on a hard-backed chair facing the window. From the Lusty Lady Saloon below, piano music blared. Was Gil there? Had he sought out a woman trained in the art of giving pleasure?

Lisette shivered. With his passions, he couldn't go on forever without relieving the pressure. Was her husband releasing his seed . . . and smiling?

If she had an ounce of pride, she'd leave this hotel room. Instead, she slammed closed the window and cut out the sounds of the Lusty Lady.

Another hour passed before he rattled the knob and opened the creaking door.

“You didn't eat your dinner,” Gil said, and she heard him walk across the room.

“I wasn't hungry.”

“You'll get skinny if you don't eat.”

“As long as I can do my work–thin, brown-faced, rough-handed–why would you care?”

He chuckled. “You have all the makings of a shrew”

“You won't get an argument there. I
am
a shrew.” She studied the worn rug. “I used to be somewhat more amenable–before I encountered your ugly face.”

“Do you think my face is ugly, Lisette?”

Her muscles tensed. She refused to answer, would not turn to him. He cut around the chair to halt in front of her. At last she turned her face up to him.

He wasn't tousled nor did he appear sex-spent; his look was as fresh as a man just returned from a bath. Although they had lain together but once, she could tell when he didn't have the look–or smell–of sex. No, he hadn't spent the past hours in some strumpet's arms.

Gil repeated his question.

Ugly? No, he wasn't. Despite the new wound under his eye, which was reddened and puffed, he was still as attractive as ever. His hair needed smoothing, and she yearned–despite any rhyme or reason–to touch the indention on his chin. All around, he looked magnificent, wearing fresh clothes and those provocative boots. And she remembered exactly how he'd looked, naked.

Desire, cursed desire began to build in Lisette.

Replying to his question, she said, “You're about as attractive as a cake of lye soap.”

“And you are as beautiful as heather on the hillside.”

She hadn't expected his tone to be soft, nor his eyes to gaze tenderly at her. For once his inflection held the tone of his homeland. Back in Fredericksburg, she'd wanted to know everything about him. She still did. While she knew many things about this man she'd taken to husband, Lisette realized there were many facets yet to discover–among them, what did he want besides a woman untouched by another man.

And where
had
he been?

She voiced her question, and he replied, “Taking care of business. Hiring more cowpokes.” He paused. “And mulling the question of you and me. I found Eli Wilson, told him to file our marriage license. I want to settle this trouble between us.”

Relieved that he had spoken with the preacher, she was nonetheless unconvinced of their long-range potential for marital success. “I can't be what I was not.”

“I know.” He crossed to the bed and sat on its edge. Dropping his wrists between his spread legs, his head ducking, he said, “Yesterday morning I decided . . . I never thought I'd be asking, but I got to thinking about something you said. You told me there'd been but one man in your life besides me. I want you to tell me what happened.”

Back in San Antonio, when Lisette learned Thom Childress had made vacant promises, Aunt Ernestine had warned her never to speak of him to another man.
Onkel
August's English wife had said no man enjoys hearing tales of another. Lisette believed his wise counsel.

She abandoned the seat, walked to the window, and stared down with unfocused eyes. The room took on the quiet of a crypt. She could feel Gil's gaze on her back, and she heard his breathing as well as the rasp of a match striking. Even before a ribbon of smoke waved toward the ceiling, she smelled the sweet scent of expensive tobacco.

“Lisette . . . how many other men have known your body?”

“I told you: one.”

“Just one?” he asked slowly.

“I said one.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I'd rather not dredge up the past.”

“We'll get nowhere with lies of omission between us.”

“Lies of omission? Seems to me you left out a few details about your former wife.”

“I'm not here to talk about Elizabeth.”

Lisette almost laughed at the irony of the woman's name. “Elizabeth, you say? Do you know the German forms of her name?”

“No, Lisette, I don't.”

“One is Lisette.”

Another tendril of smoke curled through the room, and she moved to open the window. She heard Gil as he tamped the smoke into a dish. “That's where the similarity ends,” he replied at last. “I recognize you're not Betty.”

“The similarity ends with our names?” She disliked herself for being so cynical, but why not? “I was under the impression she and I had another similarity–our both disappointing you.”

A moment passed. “Lisette, we can spend this evening arguing, or we can get on with the conversation. Which do you choose?”

“Getting on with the conversation.”

“Then tell me why you didn't come to me a virgin.”

If this was the sole way to air their problems, so be it.

She closed the window and turned away from it. Speaking as if she were narrating someone else's life, she answered, “I met him in San Antonio. I'd gone there to wait out the war. My uncle and his wife took me in. A neighbor had a millinery shop, and she offered to teach me the trade. A young man delivered supplies for the shop, and we became friendly When Uncle August left to join my father's regiment, Thom asked my aunt for permission to court me. I thought I was in love with him.”

Gil rose from the bed. “Go on.”

“Thorn was conscripted into the army. He was to leave for training on the first of February. The day before he left, we received word my father and Uncle August had died in battle. I was . . . I was grief-stricken. And Thom preyed on it–on that, and on his own leaving. He said he might not return from battle, and he didn't wish to leave this earth without having known what it was like to hold me in his arms.”

“His was one of the oldest ploys in the world, Lisette.”

She wasn't schooled in ploys, but the past four years had versed her in reality. “Tell that to a girl of eighteen. Anyway, he asked me to be his wife, and I said yes. Of course, there was no time to marry. He left the next morning.”

“Did he die in combat?”

“He's not dead. On the battlefield, he got a case of–” She laughed dryly. “Dysentery sent him to the infirmary. One of the doctors had a daughter helping out, and Thom and the woman . . .” Lisette sighed. “They were married within a couple of months. The war ended before he returned to his regiment. He brought his wife back to San Antonio.”

“The guy must have been crazy not to wait for you.”

Perplexed, she gazed at Gil. There was nothing in his eyes, nothing in his expression to indicate he had been less than honest. Yet . . .
Frankly, you weren't that good.

Gil walked across the room to pull her against his chest. She couldn't let him do this. It was unfair, his holding her as if he meant to be her lover . . . for forever. But how long were his forevers?

She stepped back.

“Do you still love Thom, Lisette?”

Shaking her head, she gave an honest reply. “I do not. I'm not certain I ever did. I was a girl craving affection. That's all.”

“Then let's put him in the past.”

That was more than fine with Lisette, but just exactly what would happen if they–

Her eyes cut to the bed. If she went with her passions, if he received more satisfaction than the first time, would theirs be a lasting union?

Don't be a
Tropf.

Weariness sluiced through her, confession and uncertainty having sapped her strength. Tonight she couldn't deal with the present. Her attention turning to the bed once more, she yearned for its comfort, its solitary comfort. And she almost laughed. For hours she had ached for Gil's appearance; now she wished he would leave.

“Leave me alone,” she said.

“Impossible.” The tips of his fingers moved lightly across her bruises, and his silver-banded blue eyes became soft as velvet. “I want to cherish and protect and love you till–”

“Love? You told me once it was a foolish notion.”

“I expect to–”

“I expect nothing from you, Gil.”
Except an honest chance
...

“As I told you the night we wed, you can expect the unexpected.” His lips moving to her ear, his hand stroking the rise of her breast, he murmured, “Expect to be made love to.”

She tensed.

His tongue making circles behind her earlobe, he asked, “Don't you want me?”

That wasn't the issue. Last time it had started this way, Gil's touching and seducing her, and where had it led?

Her eyes heavy with fatigue, she stepped away from his arms and made for the bed. Fully dressed, she lay down on the covers and turned her face to the pillow She was simply too weary to make a decision she might regret later.

Or maybe she needed to hide one more time.

“I'll have to think about it, Gil.”

 

 

She's out like a light, Gil thought as he spread her braids across the pillow. Not a muscle did she move as he stripped her of shoes and dress and undergarments. Somehow he got the covers pulled back and her naked form on the bottom sheet. Pulling off his own clothes, he gazed at her. Her beauty held him captive.

She appeared somewhat plumper than the last time he'd gazed at her unclothed body. Not much, just a couple of pounds. Despite her hard work, the trail seemed to be agreeing with her. She was one helluva pioneer woman.

Unlike his former wife, she was molded of good stuff–determined, courageous, and accepting. Never would she try to control. He'd had a problem with Betty trying to run the show.
Put her out of your mind,
he told himself.