Sunset Embrace (4 page)

"I don't want that girl touching my baby," he muttered in disgust. "Just all of you please leave me and my son alone. If he must die, let him die in peace."

"Thank heaven someone around here has held on to reason."

"Shut up," Ma told Leona Watkins as she shoved her aside on her way to reach Ross. "You seem to be a reasonable man, Mr. Coleman. Why won't you let Lydia feed your boy and at least try to save his life? He'll starve otherwise."

"We've tried everything," Ross said impatiently He plowed through his thick dark hair with frustrated fingers. "He wouldn't take cow's milk from a bottle. He wouldn't take the sugar water we spooned into him last night."

"He needs mother's milk. And that girl's nipples are oozing it."

"Oh, my Lord," Leona Watkins said.

Ross cast another glance at the girl. She stood between him and the pale lantern light, making the outline of her body visible through the thin nightgown. Her breasts did look heavy. The voluptuousness of them repelled him. Why was she traipsing around wearing only a nightgown? Even if she were sick after childbirth, no decent woman would let other people, particularly men, see her like that. His lip curled in revulsion, and he wondered what cathouse the girl had been dredged up from. Victoria would have been horrified at the sight of her.

"I won't have a slut nursing Victoria's baby," he said tightly.

"You don't know her circumstances any more than I do."

"She's trash!" he shouted. The anger he had harbored against the world since Victorias unfair death finally erupted. The girl happened to be a convenient scapegoat. "You don't know where she came from, who she is. Only one kind of woman has a baby without a husband around to take care of her."

"Maybe once, yes, but not since the war. And not since the whole countryside is crawlin' with renegades and no-goods and Yankee carpetbaggers who think everythin' and everyone in the South now belongs to them. We don't know what she's suffered. Remember, she lost her own baby two days ago."

Lydia was mindless of the argument. Her attention had been captured by the infant boy. His skin had an unhealthy pallor. Lydia had never seen a newborn other than her own. This one was even smaller, and his meager size alarmed her. Could anything that small live?

His fingers, balled as they were into tight fists, were almost translucent. His eyes were closed as he breathed in light, shallow pants. His stomach rose and fell jumpily. His crying was jagged, as though he had to pause often to rest and collect his shrinking supply of air. But the weak crying was incessant. And it was like a Lorelei's song to Lydia. Inexorably it drew her to the child.

She felt a tugging deep inside her womb, not unlike the labor contractions but without the pain. Her heart seemed to expand, crowding her already swollen breasts. They tingled, not with the flow of rich milk, but with a need to succor, a compulsion to render maternal comfort.

She watched, unaware she was even moving, as her finger touched the baby's smooth cheek. Then her hand slid beneath his head, which she could easily cup in her palm.. Moving slowly, fearful that she would hurt him, she slid her other hand under his bottom and lifted him from the crate. Staring into the wrinkled, mottled face, she sank onto a low, three-legged stool.

The baby's thin legs thrashed and his feet kicked against her stomach. She turned him sideways into the crook of her arm. The small head bobbed and the wizened face rooted against her full breast. Lydia watched, mesmerized and awed, as the birdlike mouth turned to her. It was open and seeking.

Serenely, she raised her hand to the first button on the loaned nightgown and unfastened it. Then the second. Others followed until she was able to shrug the garment from her left shoulder and peel it down over her breast. With her free hand, she lifted her breast toward the baby's face. His mouth gaped, roamed, searched until it found her nipple. The child latched onto it immediately and began sucking greedily.

The sudden cessation of the infants cries brought an instant halt to the virulent conversation at the back of the wagon. Ross's heart rent in two. His first thought was that his son had died. He whirled around, expecting to see his son still and dead, but the sight that greeted his worried eyes stunned him even more.

The girl was holding his son on her lap. The baby was sucking gustily at her generous breast. Milky bubbles foamed on his eager mouth and around the dusky areola. She was crooning to the baby softly as she pushed her breast deeper into his mouth. Ross couldn't see her face for the unruly hair that fell across it.

"Well," Ma harrumphed in satisfaction, "guess that says all that need be said. Mr. Grayson, why don't you escort Leona back to her wagon? I'll see to things here and get Lydia settled in."

"Settled in!" Leona shrieked. "Surely shell not stay here in Mr. Coleman's wagon. It isn't decent."

"Come along, Mrs. Watkins," Hal Grayson said. He was anxious to get back to his own bedroll. Dawn came too early these days and Mrs. Coleman's death had put a pall on the adventure of trekking to Texas. He hadn't particularly wanted the job of wagonmaster, but he had been elected, and he would see to it that those who had placed confidence in him weren't disappointed. "Well straighten all this out in the morning. I'm sure nothing indecent is going to happen in the meantime." He practically pulled the protesting woman from the wagon.

When they were gone, Ma looked at Ross Coleman, who was staring at the girl, a hard look on his face. Ma held her breath, wondering what he was going to do. He seemed a likable sort, friendly enough, and he had treated that wife of his like she was the Queen of Sheba.

But there was a constant turbulence in his eyes that made Ma believe there was more to the man than what lay on the surface. He moved a little too quickly, his eyes were a little too sharp and shifty not to belong to a man who had seen enough of life to be wary of it. Right now he looked like a man who was fighting a battle within himself, for every one of his finely formed muscles was straining against his skin.

Ross forced his feet to move across the crowded floor of the wagon. His son was nursing hungrily. He wasn't crying anymore. This trashy girl, a stranger, was holding his son and nursing him, and he, Ross, was standing there letting it happen. What would Victoria think if she could see it?

Ross flinched as he thought of her body twisted and! bloated and sweating, of her sighing her final breath even as his son had pushed his way into the world. No, no other woman, especially a woman of loose morals, was going to rear Victoria Gentry Coleman's son. It would be a sacrilege. How could he live with himself if he allowed something like that to come about? But how could he five with himself if he let his child die by standing on principle?

Torn by the decision he must make, he squatted down in front of the stool and watched his son's mouth avidly pulling on the generous breast. The only thing marring its creamy perfection was the faint blue veins riveting toward the dark nipple like lines on a map. Ross was fascinated by it and had to force his eyes upward to the girl's face.

He watched her eyelids as they lifted slowly, painstakingly slowly. The thick screen of her lashes was finally raised and then he was staring directly into her eyes. Their reactions to each other were of equal surprise and intensity, though they strove to keep them secret and silent.

Ross felt that he had sunk into a vat of femininity. It surrounded him, filled his nostrils, his throat. She personified sensuality and he found himself wallowing in it and, in light of his wife's recent death, hating it. He fought his way to the surface as a man would grope for air in a pool of quicksand. When he was able to breathe evenly again, he assessed her with forced detachment.

Her eves were thickly fringed with brown lashes, tipped gold at the ends. The irises were the color of aged bourbon, the expensive kind that slides down a man's throat and curls around his insides in a warm embrace. They were almost the same unusual color as her reckless hair, which he guessed typified her wild nature.

Her skin was fair, but looked as though it had been recently exposed to too much sun. There was a light dusting of freckles on her nicely formed, if a bit impudent, nose. Her mouth bothered him most of all. Its full lower lip demanded attention, and a man would have to be dead not to give in to it. So he didn't try, but looked his fill, hoping to shame her for the sheer sensuality of her mouth. Instead, her tongue came out to moisten that seductive lip. Ross felt his stomach lurch again and tore his eyes back to hers.

She seemed not the least ashamed of what she was or that she was sitting there with her breasts exposed to him if he had wanted to look, which he swore to himself he didn't. Her eyes were bold as she studied him as thoroughly as he was appraising her. There was no modest fluttering of her lashes, no shy ducking of her head, no hint of demureness.

She was a whore all right. Born to be one. He had been with too many not to recognize the signs, not to see the unspoken challenge lurking in her eyes, not to sense the hot blood that flowed in her veins. She was the antithesis of his genteel, ladylike wife, Victoria. That was reason enough to despise the girl.

Lydia thought that with the least softening of the scowling expression it might be one of the nicest faces she, had ever seen. It was certainly one of the most arresting. She had felt a definite shortness of breath the first time her eyes had met his, and she didn't know where such nervousness came from.

He desperately needed a shave. His jaw was shadowed with dark stubble. A thick black moustache curved over the corners of his upper lip. The lower lip was straight and stern now as he pierced her with green eyes.

The eyes. She studied them. They were rare. So very green, like none she had ever seen before. Short black lashes surrounded them. They collected in spiky clumps. She was tempted to run her finger over them to see if they were wet, as they appeared to be. His brows were brushy and intimidating.

Midnight black hair, unrelieved by any other shading or tint, lay against his head in wavy strands and curled over the tops of his ears and along the collar of his shirt.

He seemed enormous as he hunkered there in front of her, but she didn't look at his body. Male bodies frightened her, repulsed her. The hard way he looked at her did nothing to alleviate her fears. Even as she watched, his eyes narrowed threateningly, as though planning some severe punishment. For what, she couldn't imagine. Her eyes wavered for a moment before she dropped them back to the infant, who was still feeding at her breast.

"Lydia, it's time to switch sides," Ma said gently, somehow managing to wedge her bulk between Lydia and the child's father.

"What?" the girl asked huskily. The man disturbed her. Not in the way Clancey had, but he disturbed her nonetheless. When he stood and moved away from her, his immense frame seemed to shrink the size of the wagons interior. The confines of it suddenly became stifling, and Lydia found that she was panting breathlessly as the baby had earlier.

"First one breast, then the other. That way the flow of milk will balance out." Ma lifted the infant away from her. His mouth had formed a tight seal around her nipple and, when it popped free, he began to wail again. When he was nestled in Lydia's other arm, he wasted no time in availing himself of the other breast.

Happy, spontaneous laughter filled the wagon. Lydia tossed her mane of hair back and laughed throatily. Her eyes reflected the glow of the lantern. They sparkled like whiskey with sunlight shining through it. Then they happened to lock with Ross's, and all light immediately left them. He was glowering at her with open hostility from across the wagon.

"Once the lad's done there, I'll get you settled in for the night," Ma said, beaming at the girl and the baby.

"She's not staying. Once he's done, you get her out of here." The masculine voice sliced through the atmosphere of the wagon with razor precision.

Ma turned to Ross, her fists planted in the sides of her generous hips. "Don't you think he'll get hungry again, Mr. Coleman? What do you propose to do, fetch her clean across the camp to your wagon each time he's ready for his dinner? Or are you gonna carry him over to her yourself? Seems to me that would be a lot of unnecessary steps on somebody, not to mention the hardship on the babe."

"I didn't mind takin' in Lydia and I would have taken in her own babe had it lived, but I ain't gonna shelter your babe when he'd have more room and more peace and quiet here in your own wagon," she finished huffily.

Ross drew himself up with proud dignity, but still had to duck his head and shoulders to stand upright in the wagon. "I wasn't intending to depend on your charity for my son, but the girl can't stay here."

"Her name is Lydia," Ma said. "And why can't she stay here? Who's gonna look after the boy durin' the day? You go off huntin' or scoutin'. At best you're drivin' the team. Who's gonna take care of him if he starts fussin', huh?"

The corner of Mr. Coleman's moustache was captured between his teeth and gnawed on as objections raced through his mind. "She's not even
clean."

"No, she ain't. She birthed a babe out in the woods alone. How clean is she supposed to be? And I haven't bathed her 'cause she's been feverish and I didn't want another death on my hands. If it's her bleedin' you're referrin' to, she ain't doin' nothin' that nice and proper wife of yours wouldn't have done. It'll stop in a day or two, and Anabeth or I will come see to her until then."

Lydia kept her head bent low over the infant while her whole body went hot with embarrassment. Apparently Ma's directness rendered Mr. Coleman speechless as well because he didn't say anything for a while. Tension was thick in the wagon. He radiated antagonism the way a stove radiates heat in the wintertime.

Finally the baby had eaten his fill. Lydia folded the nightgown closed over her breasts and followed Ma instructions on how to burp him. He let go a gusty belch. Ross watched the scene with mounting, impotent fury. No telling how many men the slut had entertained in her bed, and yet there she was acting like a decent woman nursing a child. His child. Victorias child. But what choice did he have? He wanted his son to live. The child would be his only link to the woman he had loved fiercely.