Catch Me If You Can (26 page)

Bella fussed over the girl, Clare, who had a shy withdrawn look about her. When Bella had taken her off to bed, Pearl and May chatted to Leo about the journey west, working their magic and lifting his mind with their attention. The Indian woman, Fern, sat close to Eleanor’s left, looking at her.

“You ever had to kill anyone before?” she asked, eventually.

“No,” Eleanor replied, glancing at Rivers. Her eyes gave little clues as to her thoughts. She smiled and put her hand on Fern’s shoulder. “I hope I never have to again.” 

So do I
, Rivers thought to himself.

Bella came back in, her expression determined.

“When you go in the morning, I want you to take Clare with you to California,” she said to Eleanor, glancing over at Rivers to include him. The room fell silent and everyone watched her. She looked emotional but determined. “I been thinking it would be good for her to get away, start fresh, away from here. At least for a little while, see how it goes.”  She looked at Eleanor. “Would you look after my little girl for me?”

Eleanor looked briefly surprised, but they could all understand Bella’s reasons for the request. Rivers realized it must be heart wrenching to make this decision, to send her child away. Ghosts echoed through his soul as he thought briefly about his own departure from family and home many years before, and how hard that had been. He had to admire Bella’s selflessness in thinking of her child’s future.

“Of course,” Eleanor replied. “I would be glad to have her with me, if you think it right for her, but are you sure?” 

Bella looked down at her hands, nodding. “I’m sure. She’ll be sixteen next month and grown up enough to manage without her mother.”  Her eyes clouded and her voice was brusque. “I asked her if she’d go with you and she said she would, if you wanted her to come.”

“I’ll willingly take Clare, she’s looked after me and I’ll gladly do the same for her.”  She asked for a pen and paper and wrote. “This is where we’re going. You can send letters to Clare and you’ll be welcome to visit us there, Bella.”

The older woman nodded and took the piece of paper from her, folding it carefully into her hand.

“We’ll leave at dawn,” Rivers said, joining the conversation for the first time. “Make sure everything is ready for we leave at first light.” He looked at Eleanor and she knew he meant to stay with her that night, and she willingly stood.

They rested in the room where they’d spent their time in passionate abandon the day before. So much had happened since then.

Eleanor curled into his arms on the big bed. They didn’t talk. He held her safe in his arms until she slept. As he observed the moonlight’s passage across the polished wood floor, Rivers vowed to himself that she would never again be put into a situation like that, not while there was breath in his body.

Is this the nature of love
? he asked himself, and the fierceness that roared in his heart confirmed it. It wasn’t only passion he felt for her but respect, and undeniable affection. It was all of those things and more. This was a type of commitment he’d never known before, yet had sometimes seen between others. He’d fought it, but from the first moment he’d seen her it had been lodged in him and now he knew there was no denial.

In the early dawn light, he kissed her awake with gentle touches of his lips upon her eyelids. When her eyes fluttered awake, she smiled, still locked in his arms.

She giggled, and gently beat her hands on his chest. “Set me free!”

“Never...” he replied.

Chapter Twenty-two

A Damsel in Distress

The party of seven riders took their leave of Clearwater Creek before the rest of the town had awoken. Several more horses followed, laden with supplies.

As the countryside unfolded around them, so did Eleanor’s story of what had happened to her and how she’d come to be in Clearwater Creek.

“You certainly had your adventure,” Rivers commented. The deep concern in his expression showed her he didn’t approve.

What could she expect in all honesty? Eleanor regretted telling him. Luckily, it was too late for recriminations and once the tale was told, they looked forward instead of back.

They steadily made their way across the plains of Utah. The warm hazy days and comfortable nights made their passage easy and they rode until darkness fell before setting up camp, covering the ground quickly. Their two youngest companions were quiet at first, each wrapped in their own thoughts.

After a few days, Clare complained about her aching bones.

“Haven’t you ever been riding before?” Leo teased.

“Sure I have. Not all day long.” He laughed at her and she rode over to him and gave him a playful slap. They chattered.

Eleanor let the sound of their voices accompany her with growing pleasure. She enjoyed the responsibility of having the young people with her and wondered at life’s rich pattern – the people she’d met and grown close to, how their mutual destinies had woven them together.

“Leo Nelson, if I’d known I was going to get stuck with you, I wouldn’t have come.” Clare’s voice lifted in mock objection.

Eleanor and Rivers smiled as their words drifted over. Apparently the two had been to school together, and they fell easily into conversation after the land distanced them from the ghosts of their past.

“They are as bad as us when we first met,” Rivers commented.

“No! Please tell me we weren’t that bad.” Eleanor blushed.

“Not far off, if you recall our ill-fated meeting in Southampton.” He smiled the teasing smile she loved.

“I fear you’re correct.” Eleanor had to laugh. “I cried a bucket full as soon as you stepped outside the door.”

“Oh, my poor love,” he said, guiding his horse closer to hers. “To think I could have been comforting you in your bed, instead of drowning my sorrows at a ghastly inn down at the waterfront.” He leaned over and kissed her until the horses moved apart again and a low whistle emanated from behind them.

Eleanor glanced back at Leo and blushed when she saw the wide grin on his face. It was true, she supposed, they had bickered like youngsters, each with their own high and mighty stance. However, things between them had altered dramatically since then. No matter if he was every bit the scoundrel and womanizer Frank had led her to believe, she’d well and truly lost her heart to Mr. Peter Rivers. She loved him, and he knew that. There was something else there, an unspoken agreement or consent between them. Perhaps that’s what would happen to these two young people. It was clear there was some flirtation going on – they were negotiating their way around obstacles and unknowns.

She glanced back at Rivers, wondering to herself how many obstacles they might yet have to surmount to be truly comfortable together. Would she ever know everything there was to know about him?

Sometimes Rivers rode alongside Leo and the two talked, Rivers pointing things out to him on the way and telling him stories about California. Eleanor was pleased he took an interest in the lad and wondered if he would be able to find a place for him on Frieda’s estate.

At night, they gathered round the campfire and exchanged tales. Eleanor realized how different it was to be part of a group, to look back over the day’s ride with the others. She thought about her lonely nights on the journey from St Joseph and was glad to leave them behind.

The mountains of central Utah were dotted with huge cedar trees, six to ten feet high and when they camped in the shelter of them, the scent refreshed their tired bones. She and Rivers captured quiet moments alone, walking off into the rocks after the supper was eaten and everyone rested. Their relationship evolved during the time spent covering the last stages of the journey. Whilst it was still driven by the fierce desire they had for one another, it was now tempered and enriched by amiability.

“I believe I had more success at getting you into my arms during those weeks in New York than I have since we embarked on this stage.” His eyes were hungry on her as they secured the horses for rest one evening.

“Rivers, we have others to consider.” She heated quickly. She agreed with his comment, she was as hungry for his lovemaking as he seemed to be for her.

“Concerned about others now are we, Miss Craven?” His eyes flashed at her.

Even the slightest remark or glance from him could set off that leaping flame of reciprocated desire inside her, that ready, willing response.

He closed on her. “Eleanor,” he murmured, his fingers lowering to slip undone the buttons of her shirt. “I cannot stand much more of this, when you are there, yet I’m not at liberty to touch you.”

“Yes,” she breathed. “I cannot agree more.”

He took in the hot look she gave him then glanced round up at the rocks above.

“We’ll make camp up there.” He shouted across to the other men, indicating the shelter of a cave opening, high up on the rocks. He reached down and kissed her neck before they stepped out from behind the shelter of the horse, lingering until she moaned. Eleanor was on fire.

She fidgeted while they set up camp, and during the meal they ate. His eyes watched and spoke to her silently all the while, keeping her stoked inside, ready for him. They lay until they were sure the others were asleep then he sat up and nodded toward the back of the cave, where the passage narrowed in the darkness. Eleanor stood. He followed and they crept into the narrow space there, feeling their way in the darkness.

The air was heavy with a damp musty smell and her senses responded to its earthiness. She paused where the rock sloped away to her right, thinking it a good place to lie. She pulled at his hand, and he turned toward her. She could see the outline of his face in the dim light of the fire that still reached them. His features were in stark outline, his eyes dark and full of animal passions. He moved and she gasped at the bulge within his breeches.

“Pardon, my love, I’m eager for your sweetness.” His voice was low against her ear.

“My need equals yours, rest assured,” she murmured, heart pounding as she undid her belt and let her breeches slip down. She took his hand and slid it down to her groin so he could feel the answering heat inside her there.

“You are indeed.”

“Hush, I blame you. You make me weak with desire.”

He moaned quietly against her mouth and kissed her deep while they both fumbled with his buttons. He was hard and long in her hand, rearing up for contact.

He gasped when her hand tested him. The light caught his expression, wild with lust, and she had to have him inside her. She reached for his hand and quickly pulled him against her, their love making fast and furtive in the forbidden confines of the dark passage. She leaned back against the rock, bracing herself as she edged his hardness inside her sensitive niche.

“Rivers,” she gasped.

“Oh yes,” he replied as he slowly eased his way inside, groaning as he experienced her flesh on his. “This is too good to keep waiting.”

She gripped his shoulders when he filled her to the hilt, brushing up against her most sensitive parts, then he moved against her, sending spasms of ecstasy jolting through her body from that tender point.

She grasped at him, pulling his shoulders down to her, her legs locking tighter on him. He kept them close, with deep shifting thrusts, their bodies cloying together in the darkness.

“I’ve never known such exquisite pleasure,” she whispered.

He muttered incoherently. His hardness seemed to expand even more against her tender flesh. His hands gently molded over the fabric covering her breasts, moving them slowly to feel her, his face moving against her hair. Her cheek brushed against his face, tingling at the scrape of his soft stubble on her skin. She leaned further back on the rock and his body pivoted against her. He was crushed up against her, his angle affording all her intimate places pressure, both inside and out.

Eleanor put her hand to her mouth, the sweet rapture was becoming too much for her to maintain the silence. His manhood was massaging the core of her womanly flesh, it was pulsing hard inside her hot, wet grip. A wild pulse was pounding in her love bud where he rode hard against it. She all but passed out with the extreme intoxication of her senses as she came undone. His body arched like a bow against her. His hands tightened on her breasts and he ground deep and hard. She began to peak and a low sound escaped her mouth.

“Decorum, my dear, decorum.” He pulled her shaking fingers away and kissed her mouth deep.

“Forgive me, I…oh!”

He gasped when her flesh tightened on his, and rested his hand over her mouth to contain any sounds she might make.

She bit against his fingers as torrents of sensations rushed through her. He cursed low and thrust hard and fast, driving them both over the edge of the precipice within seconds.

* * *

High up in the canyons the fir trees grew denser, indicating their passage into more giving ground. Sometimes it seemed as if they could see for miles, the earth as flat as it had been thought to be centuries before, vast and ridged with mountains. Other times they were enclosed by the steep walls of the canyons, walls holding them enclosed in their deep ancient territory, marked with the lines of age that only eons of time can bring. Some were barely wide enough for the stage that passed through on the route they followed.

As their journey approached the Sierra Nevada and beyond, the West Coast, the canyons grew more daunting and impressive. They passed through one nearly a mile and a half long, edged with rocks. The heat of the afternoon deep in the crevice of rock was intense. No wind could cool them there and the sun reached in to burn the air, sending up a haze in front of them. Evidence of drought marked the place and clouds of dust rose up, making it difficult at times to see anything. They wore their neck scarves tied around their faces to ease the dust from the air they breathed.

When they reached the other end of the canyon, they set up camp and brushed the dust from one another with amusement, their faces and bodies all being cloaked in one color, as if they had been through some strange initiation.

After they emerged from one such canyon, the procession drew to a halt.

Rivers had raised his arm indicating they haul up and keep still. On the far edge, where the jagged wall of rock turned into another canyon, a carriage stood, half tilted against the rocks, two of its wheels shattered beneath it. A man sat idling on a rock nearby. Rivers carefully assessed the situation.

Eleanor could see it was one of the weekly stages from Salt Lake City.

Assuming no danger, Rivers moved on. Daniel was at his side, in the lead, and they approached the man, who rose to his feet nervously.

“Trouble?” Rivers asked of him.

“Hit a rock or something.” The man shrugged. “The driver and a couple of the other passengers took the horses and went off to get help, leaving me and the lady.” He nodded over to the carriage.

At that moment, the door sprang open and a parasol emerged, followed by its owner’s skirts in a flurry of frothy petticoats and pale pink tulle. She stepped down from the carriage, jumping daintily from its rickety doorway onto the ground below, and flounced her skirts out through the dust.

“Good grief. Camellia Rutherford, is that you?” Rivers edged his mount toward the woman.

Hearing her name the woman peered around, unfocused, then lifted a pair of spectacles out of the small silk purse hanging from her wrist.

“Why, Pierre Guillaime, can it really be you?” She looked up at him, squinting.

Eleanor and the others observed as Rivers took off his hat, leaped down from his horse and walked over to meet her.

“Camellia,” he exclaimed, as surprised and pleased as the woman appeared to be in return.

Eleanor observed, her emotions tangling. She watched as he gathered the pretty blonde-haired woman into his arms and they embraced. He swung her around, lifting her feet from the ground.
Was this one of his old conquests?

Eleanor opted to stare down at the reins in her hand, rather than watch any more of the reunion of these two old friends.

“My prayers have been answered. I couldn’t have wished for a more appropriate hero to rescue me from this damned mess.”

Eleanor couldn’t help herself, she looked back.

The woman was beaming up at him.

“Look at you.” He held her at arm’s length and she removed her spectacles. “You’ve grown up to be as pretty as a picture, although still as vain and short-sighted as ever.” 

She pouted and folded the spectacles into her bag. “I can see perfectly well. You look different.”

“It’s been a long time.” Rivers looked again at the sorry state of the stage. “Why are you traveling by stage?”