Karen Mercury (21 page)

“There’s the same raven from last night,” Zeke opined.

Neil scoffed. “How do you know it’s the same one?”

Zeke said, “It’s doing the same thing. Look how it lifted its tail and shat upon the branch below.”

“All birds do that.”

“Not this one. I think it’s Caleb, telling us where to dig.”

Neil slapped Zeke with the back of his hand. “By
shitting?
Coincidentally, the tree the bird’s on is the short one, the one we want to dig under anyway.”

Zeke insisted, “I’m telling you, it’s Caleb. Caleb!” He waved an arm. “Come sit on my hand if it’s you!”

“Come
shit
on his hand.” Spenser chuckled.

Chess drew Fidelia away, around a corner of the yellow house. She thought it very considerate of him to not want her seeing them dig up Ulrich.

“Isn’t Caleb that psychic fellow that Alameda was discussing?” Fidelia asked. “You said you’d met him on the train.”

“I think so.” Chess seemed nervous and definitely didn’t seem to want to discuss Caleb. He shifted about on his feet and glanced from side to side. “Fidelia Schiller,” he started.

Oh,
Mein Gott.
He’s going to formally ask for my hand.
“Yes?”

“I know I haven’t known you long. But what I have known, I have loved very much,” he started out clumsily.

He paused so long she had to say “thank you” just to fill in the silence. He cleared his throat so many times Fidelia added, “And I have loved what I have seen of you. Very much.”

“Fidelia,” he started again. “I think you would make a splendid wife. You are a good cook, very handy around the house, have quite a practical head on your shoulders.”

Fidelia frowned. “Oh,
Mein Gott
, Chess. You make me sound like a household appliance. Are you trying to ask me to marry you?”

Such relief washed over Chess’s handsome, rugged face! He smiled from ear to ear, leaned back on his heels, made gestures at the sky. “That’s it! Fidelia, how good you are at reading me.”

She decided to let him off the hook. Chess Hudson was just not a flowery or emotional man, and what came easily to most or some other men cost Chess greatly, so she wouldn’t force him to stumble on clumsily. She threw her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

Chess pulled back a fraction of an inch. “What does this mean?” he murmured. “What is your answer?”

“Yes,” Fidelia breathed before silencing him with another kiss. She plunged her fingers into the queue of silken hair at the back of his skull and breathed in his musky scent.

A week ago she would have laughed if someone would have predicted this. She could have imagined being wed to someone like Wolf—poetic, sensitive, tender. But never, never a gruff, domineering brute such as Chess first appeared to be. Herr Gottfried and his yelling and beatings of her had insured she would forever shy from someone that crass and oppressive.

But Chess had revealed himself to be a different sort of man entirely from what he’d first seemed. He touched and seemed to revere her and Spenser with a great deal of tenderness. Tenderness he would never display to anyone else.

He soon withdrew again, stilling her by holding her wrists. “Almost forgot.” Grinning like a schoolboy, he fished around in the shallow pocket of his leather vest and withdrew a ruby ring. “Here, Fidelia.” He took her hand and slipped it on. It was too small for her ring finger, so Chess was forced to slide it onto her pinkie. “My dove, this was my mother’s ring. I got it from my father this morning.”

“But he doesn’t even know me! How did he agree—”

“He knows you well enough.”

Fidelia remembered that Simon Hudson had been at her
poses plastiques
performance the night before, as brief as it may have been. “And he just lets you marry anyone?”

Chess grabbed her upper arms and shook her once. “Fidelia Schiller, you are not just anyone. Why do you think that way? Of course I told my father I had met the most bright-eyed, bubbly, spirited, captivating, vibrant—”

“Naked Eve,” Fidelia added.

Chess remained serious. “Fidelia, you are not going to be Eve anymore. I’ll buy that place for you, let Sackett move on.”

A surge of love overcame Fidelia then—no one had ever purchased, or even really given, her anything before—and she just wanted to stare into his piercing blue eyes. Then there came a throat-clearing from around the corner of the yellow house.

“Ah,” said Spenser. “We found a body. Wearing a porkpie hat.”

Fidelia squeezed her eyes shut. Everyone had assumed that they’d find Ulrich’s body under the trees, so it should have been an anticlimax to hear the words spoken. Even so, she felt a bit light-headed and had to breathe deeply and lean on the yellow house.

“Well, that’s predictable,” said Chess. “And a relief.”

Spenser said, “Also, more to pin on Bullet Bob. Neil was saying we could get him sent to the brig at Fort Sanders, although that Foster Richmond lawyer wants to defend him, mostly for the fun of it, it seems. I guess they’re planning on building a Territorial Penitentiary at the fort.”

“Yes,” sighed Chess. “It’s a shame someone will have to pay to feed him, though. Whatever happened to Judge Lynch’s frontier justice? This is nothing a necktie party won’t solve.”

“It looks like that way of life is fading, Chess. I hope Fidelia isn’t too upset about this discovery.”

She could hear the men just fine but only wanted to turn her hand about in the sun, enjoying the sparkle of the ruby.

Chess said fondly, “I hope not. I just asked her to marry me.”

Spenser paused. “I assume she said yes. We knew you’d follow Ulrich’s predictions.”

“Of course. But Spence, I want you to know…”

Fidelia looked at the men, curious. The same height, they stared into each other’s eyes, Chess clearly more uncomfortable with such closeness than was Spenser. Finally Chess placed his palms on Spenser’s chest. He spoke low and fast and looked at Spenser’s clavicle. “That I love you as well, and I meant what I said about you moving up to Ulrich Ranch with us and helping me build a new house and—”

Spenser smiled, relaxed. “It’s okay, Chess.” He took Chess’s chin in his fingers and tilted his head up. “I get it. God, I love you. I’m not going anywhere. I never thought I’d fall in love with a man, much less one as crass and tough as you. But I do, Chess. I love you.”

The men kissed then, taking Fidelia out of her sorrow over Ulrich.

She held the backs of their necks and watched with something like satisfaction. Or, could it be happiness? Fidelia had never even tried to imagine what so-called “happiness” was like. Perhaps this was it? She felt a security she’d never felt, a confidence in the future. A lack of fear.

“Hey, let me in.” The men would not detach their mouths and make room for her. “Come on. Boys! Boys!”

At last, with a slurp and a sigh, the men pulled back from one another and regarded Fidelia. Spenser stroked her face with the back of his hand. “Mrs. Chess Hudson,” he said, experimenting with the name.

“Hey! What’s going on?”

Zeke popped his head around the corner, his usual idealistic and vacantly gleeful expression lighting up his face.

“Consoling Fidelia! Oh, let me! I’m a member of the Wild Bunch! I want to console—”

The three instantly broke apart, walking in separate directions.

“Oh, never mind,” said Chess.

“I’ll see you later,” said Spenser.

“I’ll go identify Ulrich’s body,” said Fidelia.

Zeke was left standing there, holding his empty hands out. “What’s wrong? What did I do? Come back! Fidelia! Are you overcome with grief? Let me perform for you. That always cheers people up. I can play the guitar, and sing…”

Fidelia knew she’d found true love. But more than that. She had found true friends.

October, 1872

When Chess clanked into the parlor of the Serendipity Ranch house with his spurs still on, he saw Fidelia staring at that creepy photograph Harley had taken.

It was a photograph of a dead man’s eyeball. Harley had enlarged it in order to view the reflection of a fellow wearing a bowler hat—the murderer of Zeke’s beloved, Minerva. Harley was quite the untraditional, breezy bon vivant, but this was ridiculous. A framed photograph on the wall by the fireplace of a corpse’s eyeball! If this was Chess’s house, he would never allow it. It was much too morbid, especially for the two children the Tempest family usually had stumbling about.

But the children, along with their parents Ivy, Neil, and Harley, were all ensconced in their Laramie house now. The children would go to school soon, and Neil needed to do more marshaling and less ranching. Ivy loved her job operating the telegraph, and Harley was the city’s head engineer. But the Tempests still wanted this house for their summertime holidays, and they did love the ranch, so Chess was building a new house a mile away—Ulrich Ranch.

He’d just come from the construction site. Not that his express purpose had been a midday fuck, but Fidelia looked even more bountiful and downright cute than ever, now that she was pregnant. Or “ceased to be unwell” as she politely termed missing her monthly flow. Of course, they weren’t certain who the father was—in their zeal they had not planned far ahead into the future. After some discussion it was decided that no one cared much, but after this babe they would take turns fucking without using family limitation implements. That way, each man would have a turn at being a father.

The Mexican workers had run out of aguardiente and tortillas, and Chess knew that Fidelia always had an enormous pot of carne asada going in the kitchen. But now all ideas of eating flew right out of his head. How his wife captivated him just by a mere movement of her hand, or the swell of her ass! Chess came up behind her, grabbing a handful of her behind. “Are you going back to the Morning Star tomorrow?” He had purchased the Morning Star for Fidelia. Sackett had moved on with some of the
poses plastiques
actors to Green River, but it had been easy enough to find new actors from the doomed
Hamlet
production.

“I don’t think so,” said Fidelia. “Who else will stay here and make the cheese? Wash your clothes? Feed the chickens? Clean the hearth? Make the—”

“The servants.” Chess slapped Fidelia’s ass, which shut her up. He moved her away from the morbid photograph, turning her so she gripped the back of a couch. “My dove, why do you think we have all these people in place to do those chores? Ivy Tempest didn’t do many of those things. She was busy in Laramie enjoying her position as telegraph operator.” He bunched her skirts in his fist and humped her ass, reveling in the blissful sensation of his cock, clothed under the thick denim, massaging her rear.

Fidelia assisted by rotating her hips sensually. “Oh, Ivy enjoys making cheese! Maybe not so much milking the cows, but she likes the cheese, the washing of her husbands’ clothing, the cooking. There just isn’t enough time in the day to do it all.”

Chess undid the buttons at his crotch, not bothering to unbuckle his chaps. He knew that, in a deviant but erotic way, his wife enjoyed being taken by a man in chaps. She was equally as adept at playing the part of the submissive milkmaid as she was at acting like the big gun. Fidelia enjoyed binding Chess and tantalizing him with spanks and slaps. She said his cock became even juicier and meatier when he was the one being swatted. This was a new aspect of himself he’d never known—or perhaps a new aspect his new mates had only now elicited. But Chess was finding it enjoyable to
not
always be the one taking charge.

Today, Fidelia was the submissive maid. Chess rubbed his cockhead against her slick muff. She tugged aside her bodice to let a breast pop free, and Chess eagerly handled it. Today, she was the wanton, yet meek and obedient, servant.

“I know it’s overwhelming,” Chess agreed mildly as he rolled her nipple between his fingers. “But, Fidelia, you must pick and choose among these tasks and let servants do the rest. When the nipper arrives you’ll have even less time than ever. I do love the German cheese you make, but you must learn to allow others to do some of these things.”

“I like to be in control of everything.
Ah!
” Fidelia gasped when Chess entered her.

He only plugged her with three inches of his cock, enjoying gyrating his hips, pulling out, sliding in. He had replaced the painting of a snowy mountain that had hung over the mantel with a mirror, just so he could watch his partners fucking. Now he enjoyed watching Fidelia’s breast being smashed in his hand. His free hand toyed with her clitoris. He had finally somewhat mastered the art of bringing women off, and he enjoyed feeling her inner pussy contract, milking his cock. He had learned that if he stroked the swollen clitoris in a certain manner, her inner pussy would flutter and clutch in the precursors to orgasm. “If you attempt to be a jack of all trades, you will not master any of them. Dove, dove. You cannot please everyone.”

Fidelia swiveled her hips and leaned down even lower upon her palms. She liked to spread her feet apart on the silk carpet and tilt her ass toward him. “Yes,” she gasped in agreement, “but I am a perfectionist.”