Sunset Embrace (11 page)

"She was husky?"

"Dammit, no, she wasn't husky!" he shouted. Nervously he glanced over his shoulder. He lowered his voice to a vicious hiss. "No, she wasn't husky."

"And you taught her."

"Yes."

"Then why can't you teach me?"

"Because you've no business driving my team."

"Why?" she repeated.

Unconsciously he unbuttoned his pants to cram his shirttail in. The men Lydia had known wore suspenders to hold up their breeches. Even the dim memories of her father pictured him with suspenders. Her eyes were on Ross's hands as he secured the buttons on his pants and refastened the buckle of his wide leather belt, slapping it lightly when he was done.

"You have to take care of Lee, that's why."

She dragged her
eyes
up the long length of his torso, not knowing how provocative that sweep of her lashes was to watch. "But he sleeps so much. I enjoyed riding on the seat today. There's no reason why I couldn't be useful while I'm sitting there. That would free you to ride your horses if you wanted to. I'm not saying I'd drive all the time. If Lee was fretful, I couldn't, but I should know how."

More to end the conversation and get out into the open where he could breathe normally again, he said, "I'll think about it. It's not easy, you know." With that he stamped out of the wagon, leaving her with a satisfied smile on her lips.

* * *

The noise and general state of confusion at the Langston wagon served to camouflage the tension between Ross and Lydia. The two roosters were honored with hearty appetites that didn't leave one bone unpicked.

Only Bubba didn't enjoy the meal. After eating only half a plateful, he slunk away in the darkness, ostensibly to check on the horses. A few minutes later Luke found him leaning against a tree, absently peeling a twig of its bark.

"What's the matter, Bubba? Got a bellyache?"

"Go away," Bubba sighed. Privacy in a family the size of his was rare and valuable.

"I know what's wrong with you," Luke said cockily. "You couldn't eat on account of lookin' at Lydias titties."

Bubba sprang to his feet poised for hand-to-hand combat. "You shut up, you foulmouthed sonofabitch!" he shouted.

Luke only laughed and danced away from his brother, shadowboxing to egg him on. "Can't help but look at 'em, can you? 'Course a body would think you'd have your eyes full after gawkin' at Priscilla Watkins's all the time. Hers are pretty big. I seen the way she pushes 'em out every time you ride by their wagon, which is about as often as you can. You're about the randiest billygoat I ever did see."

Bubba lunged at his brother and managed to connect his flying fist with Lukes jaw. Luke fell back onto the ground, but he wasn't subdued by any means. He grabbed Bubba around the ankle, hauled him down, and a battle royal ensued. Ross came upon them moments later, grappling and rolling and slugging in the dirt.

"What's going on here?" he bellowed. He grabbed the top one, which at the moment happened to be Luke, by the collar of his shirt and hauled him to his feet. Bubba came to his feet of his own volition. They were heaving from exertion and bleeding from noses, mouths, and various scratches. "Is this all you two have to do?" Ross demanded.

He knew what came of fighting. First with fists, then with guns. It became a vicious cycle to see who you could best. If someone had curbed him when he was a youngster, maybe things wouldn't have gone the way they had. But by the time he was Bubba's age, he had already developed an awesome talent with a pistol.

"Bubba, I thought you were going to help me shoe that horse,"

Bubba dabbed at his rapidly swelling lip. "Sure, Ross."

"Luke," Ross barked. "Fetch some water to my wagon. Lydia has some clothes to rinse out." He didn't stop to consider how easily her name had come to his lips. "But shake hands with your brother first."

The boys grudgingly did as he instructed. They were both dreading having to explain their bloody, swollen faces to their ma. It would be hell to pay.

* * *

Lydia was enjoying herself. She never knew folks could be so cordial. "Neighbors" stopped by to meet her. Some were openly curious, some were cautious, and she knew she wouldn't have been nearly so well accepted had it not been for the Langstons. Because Ma approved of her, everyone else felt obliged to. It was an unspoken fact that Ma governed much of what went on in the insulated community. Almost as much as Mr. Grayson did. Her maternal instincts carried over to all members of the train. She adored and admonished each one, no matter how old or young, with the freedom she did her own children.

Lydia tried to remember names and put the right children with the correct parents. There were the Sims with their two shy little girls, the Rigsbys with two boys and a baby girl. Lydia met the woman with the twins. They were almost a year old. One was beginning to take tentative steps, invariably in the direction of the campfire. Other names became familiar. Cox, Norwood, Appleton, Greer, Lawson. Everyone ogled Lee Coleman, who slept through most of it.

Mrs. Greer offered her the use of some baby dothes. "My boy has grown out of them. Ain't no sense in them going to waste." Such kindness was unheard of to Lydia, who had seen life as one scraping effort to survive. What one had, one kept and selfishly guarded.

Before Lydia returned to Mr. Coleman's wagon, Ma gave her one of Luke's shirts and an old skirt of Anabeth's. "They ain't as attractive as the dress, and Lord knows it ain't nothin' fancy, but they'll be a sight more comfortable, I 'spect."

Lydia carried Lee back to her own camp and was surprised to find Luke stretching a cord between the slender trunks of two nearby post oaks. He spotted her and averted his head. "Mr. Coleman told me to fix this here so you could hang them clothes up."

"Thank you, Luke," she said quietly. She didn't comment on his bruised, distorted face, sensing his self-consciousness over it,

When all the clothes were hanging on the line, she wearily climbed into the wagon. The camp had grown quiet and dark. She nursed Lee and settled him in his crib. Then she put on the nightgown Ma had told her was hers to keep. Her head was sore from supporting her hair all day. She shook it out and began brushing it. The brush, too, was a gift from Ma.

She didn't want to go to sleep until Ross returned to the wagon. His presence outside made her feel safe, though why that should be she couldn't imagine. For weeks before she had dropped in the woods to deliver her child, she had slept in the open, sometimes in a barn. But fear had been her guardian then. It had protected her from becoming tired or careless. But she had gotten careless and he had caught up with her. "Never again," she whispered in the darkness. "He's dead."

Just when her eyes were drowsily closing, she beard Ross outside. His movements were easy to follow as he banked the fire and shook out his bedroll.

Walking on her knees to the end of the wagon, she lifted the canvas. He was sitting on his bedroll tugging off his boots. "Good night, Mr. Coleman."

His head came up with a jerk. She was framed in the opening of the wagon, her nightgown reflecting whitely in the moonlight. Surrounding her head, her hair was a riot of curls and waves. Her voice seemed to come toward him out of the darkness to stroke his cheek.

"Good night," he growled and flopped down on his hard bed.

Still grouchy, she thought dejectedly as she settled herself on the mattress spread with soft bed linens. He was anxious to get across the Mississippi. By tomorrow maybe they would see it. He would be in a better frame of mind then.

♥ Scanned by Coral ♥

T
hey drove the teams hard for the next two days, trying to reach the Mississippi. It was a landmark to all of them. Once they crossed it and left Tennessee behind, they would feel they were truly on their way.

Ross let Bubba Langston lead his string of horses and drove the wagon himself. He never turned the reins over to Lydia, but he showed her how to hold and maneuver them. The instructions were tersely issued and he rarely looked at her directly. Though Luke's shirt and the old skirt left a lot to be desired in the way of fashion, Ross had been vastly relieved to see that she wasn't wearing that dress anymore.

She seemed determined not to foster his bad mood and pushed him into conversation. It became apparent that the girl knew little about anything, and he wondered again if she were mentally deficient. He dismissed that possibility, however. Once told something, she never forgot it, and behind her inquiring eyes he saw an eagerness to learn.

"Did you fight in the war?"

He nodded. "For Dixie,"

"You wanted to keep the colored people slaves, then?"

He stared at her incredulously. "No. I don't want anyone to be a slave to anything or anybody."

"Then why did you fight for the South?"

"Because that's where I lived," he said with growing impatience. She seemed to know his sore spots instinctively and went straight to them with probing accuracy.

Patriotism had had little to do with what side Ross had allied himself. The war had provided him, as a reckless young man, with a good excuse to loot and kill without consequence. He had been spoiling for a fight, and he had been granted a dilly of a one. When a group of guerrilla fighters had recruited him to ride with them, nobility had not entered into his joining.

Lydia didn't want him to think her totally ignorant. "One day I watched a column of soldiers ride past our farm. They were all dressed alike. One was carrying a flag."

"Yankee troop. We sure as hell didn't have uniforms and flags toward the end." He had had only one uniform, and that he had taken off a dead soldier at Pea Ridge. He had never ridden in a column of soldiers, either, but struck unsuspecting camps at night. There one minute, gone the next, phantoms leaving death and destruction behind. And Ross hadn't cared if he got killed in the process because to him it was all a game of chance. He was perfect for that kind of soldiering.

"I never saw any more soldiers, but I can remember hearing the guns and cannons sometimes."

"Where was your farm?"

Lydia didn't want to confide too much, but then she didn't actually know where the Russell place was. "Northeast Tennessee."

"Didn't troops from either side ever loot it?"

She laughed bitterly. "No. There wasn't anything there worth stealing."

He had ridden with men who would have passed up food for a chance at the girl. But then the war had ended six years ago. She couldn't have been more than a kid. "How old are you?" he surprised himself by asking.

"I'll be twenty this year. How old are you?"

"A lot older," Ross said grimly. He was thirty-two if one counted chronologically. He liked to think his life had started when John Sachs found him.

Winston Hill rode up to their wagon on a prancing white horse. "Good day to you, Miss Lydia, Mr. Coleman."

"Hello, Mr. Hill."

"Hill."

"I hear that with luck we'll reach Memphis by nightfall."

"That's the rumor," Ross said curtly.

It irked Lydia that Ross was behaving rudely. She didn't want another argument with him concerning Winston Hill, but she didn't want to be a party to his bad manners either. "Do you think well have much trouble crossing, Mr. Hill?" She tilted her head back so she could see him from beneath her hat.

"That depends on the flooding they've been having upstream." He paused to cough into his handkerchief: "Once we're across, Moses and I would like to invite the two of you to celebrate with us with a glass of sherry."

Lydia wondered what sherry was. If it tasted as pretty as it sounded, she would like it. She was about to accept his invitation when Ross intervened. "No, thanks. Lydia is busy most evenings taking care of Lee, and I tend to my horses."

Mr. Hill's eyes glanced back and forth between the two of them before he replied with gracious acceptance. "Well, perhaps some evening when all your chores are done." He doffed his hat to Lydia and rode away.

"The next time someone invites me to do something, I'll answer for myself, thank you," Lydia said as soon as the man was out of earshot.

"Not as long as you're sleeping in my wagon and eating the food I provide, you won't," ne growled out of the side of his mouth. "I won t have you openly flirting with him or anyone else as long as you're caring for Lee."

"I wasn't flirting!" she said heatedly. "I was being mannerly, an area of your personality that could stand some improvement."

"Manners has nothing to do with it. I don't like the man,"

"He has said nothing but nice things about you and Victoria, but every time he comes around you puff up like a bullfrog. What's he ever done to you?"

Ross hunched his shoulders and didn't speak. Winston Hill represented everything Ross wished he could be. Winston was the kind of man Victoria should have married. Ross remembered the night they had met. They had had mutual acquaintances to swap gossip about and had spoken in a cultured language he could barely follow. He had felt like scum.

Though he wouldn't put a name to the emotion Hill aroused in him, he had been jealous of him since the first time he laid eyes on him. Hill carried his aristocratic heritage like a shield in front of him for all to see. Ross felt that his heritage was just as visible no matter how hard he tried to hide it.

"Why does he cough all the time?" Lydia asked. She ignored the working tension in Ross's jaw.

"He's tubercular."

"Tu . . . what?"

"He has tuberculosis. Lung fever. Caught
it
in a Yankee prison camp. When he finally made his way home, somewhere in Norm Carolina—Raleigh, I think—the plantation was gone. No one was left but old Moses. Even the house had been destroyed. He moved into town, but the weather there was bad for his lungs. He's on his way to a warmer, drier climate."

Winston had stopped at the wagon in front of them to chat. She studied the slight young man, whose eyes, though kind, were too old to match the rest of him. "I feel sorry for him."

That seemed truly to irritate Mr. Coleman. He didn't talk to her anymore until the noon break.