Sunset Embrace (41 page)

"I figure you been wishin' you had me 'tween your legs instead of that outlaw you're hitched up with. Reckon he's better at ridin' his horses than he is at ridin' you."

"Oh, God, no." He had ripped her bodice and was reaching inside her chemise to pinch her nipples painfully.

"Been missin' this, huh?"

Lydia wouldn't scream, for one scream would alert the camp and everyone would come running. They would see Clancey. They would know what he had done to her. He would tell them . . . Oh, God. What could she do? Ross must never know about Clancey. But could she stay with him if Clancey defiled her again? No. She struggled harder, clawing at his face with her nails.

He grappled with the buttons of his pants and pushed her skirts up. "No, no, no." He clamped a hand over her mouth, banging her head against the tree.

"Lydia!"

Her name came from nowhere and sounded much louder than it had been spoken. Clancey spun around. He and the man stared at each other for a ponderous second, both rendered motionless by mutual surprise. Then the man threw back his head and emitted an outraged yell as he charged toward Clancey, aiming for his throat.

"Winston, no!" Lydia screamed.

The warning came too late. Clancey, with almost lascivious delight and not a little scorn for the soft-featured man in the white suit, pulled the long-barreled pistol from the waist of his pants and fired point-blank into Winston Hill's chest.

The sound of the firearm's discharge reverberated on the windless evening air. "Goddamn it to hell," Clancey cursed viciously. He glared with undiluted hate at the fallen man, then at Lydia, who screamed, "Winston," and fell to the ground beside the prone, bleeding figure.

"Shit!" Clancey spat before running pell-mell into the cover of the trees.

Lydia didn't even notice his flight. She was watching in horror as the scarlet bloom flowered with alarming haste over Winston's white suit. "Winston, Winston," she sobbed, bending over him.

She thought he was dead, but his eyes opened laboriously. "Lydia . . . you're safe?"

"Yes, yes." Tears streamed down her face, dropping off her chin to strike the pooling blood on his chest like raindrops. "Don't talk," she said fretfully, anxiously fluttering her hands over his chest as though to hold it together.

"Haven't felt . . . much a ... a man . . . re-cently." She clasped his searching hand and brought it to her cheek. "Died like . . . like one . . . anyway."

"Please don't talk. Don't
die!"

He smiled at her then. "Better ... far better this way, my friend."

His eyes drifted closed then and, after one wheezing breath, that hideous gurgling sound in his chest ceased. Lydia whispered his name, knowing he wouldn't hear her. Aimlessly her eyes wandered over his body, as though searching for a way to revive him.

That's when she saw the velvet pouch clutched in his fingers. That was the only handhold he had got on Clancey. Her stepbrother had been so surprised by Winston's attack that he hadn't even noticed that Winston had jerked the pouch from his belt.

Someone shouted her name. Ross. Ma. Running footsteps through the trees. Leafy branches being knocked aside. Closer.

Acting mechanically, she wrested the velvet bag from Winston's hand and crammed it back into the pocket of her dress just as Ross came plowing through the trees.

"Lydia!" he cried raggedly. He pulled up short when he saw her bending over Winston.

Ma, right behind him, cried out, "Good Lord have mercy," She turned around, barring the path. "Get the children back to camp. It ain't pretty."

Lydia looked at Ross over the body of her friend. Her eyes were liquid with tears. "Ross," she croaked, reaching for him.

Several others stepped around him as he stood stock-still, staring at his wife with her hair hanging untidily down her back, her bodice ripped apart, her chest and neck scratched and bruised. He felt the feral snarl working its way up his chest before it came out of his mouth. Shoving the others aside, he lunged for her and pulled her to her feet.

Unable to stand alone, she clutched his shoulders for support. "Cover yourself," he said gratingly in her ear.

Miscomprehending his anger, she looked at him blankly. Roughly he grasped the edges of her bodice and pulled them together over her breasts,

"Mrs. Coleman, what happened?"

Grayson had to repeat his question several times before it penetrated her shock-benumbed brain. Why was Ross scowling at her? Didn't he realize she had been trying to protect him?
My friend has just died because of me,
she wanted to scream at his cold, mask-hard face.

Dazed, she turned toward Grayson and the others standing by quietly, waiting to hear. "What? Oh, a man," she stammered. "I was walking. A man . . ."

"What man? Had you ever seen him?"

She looked through Mr. Grayson as though she had never met him. Why were they worried about Clancey? Winston Hill was dead. He had lent her books. Ross had helped her to read the books. "Uh . . . no, no," she said, shaking her head. "He attacked me. Mr. Hill ..." Her voice began to wobble uncontrollably. "Mr. Hill tried to help me."

"That's enough, gentlemen," Ma said, going to Lydia and enfolding her in her stout arms. "I'll take care of Lydia. Seems to me somebody's got in mind to take out vengeance on this wagon train. You'd best go after him. He can't be far."

No one had noticed Moses as he came through the trees. He had stood beyond the rest, looking at the body of his former owner, his friend. He could remember the day Winston was born. There had been a celebration in the big house. He had been only a houseboy then, but he had taken a shine to the young master. He had loved him always because Winston had treated him like a man. Not like a black man.

Grayson, feeling that the weight of the world had just resettled on his back, said, "I guess we need to get Mr. Hill back—"

"I'll see to him." With enviable dignity, Moses weaved through the others and knelt beside Winston's body. With the care of a mother for her child, he lifted the body in his arms, stood straight, and carried it back in the direction of the wagon. The only evidence of his heartache was the unshed tears making dark mirrors of his eyes.

Once ensconced in the Langstons' wagon under Mas watchful care, Lydia surrendered to her grief and despair. First Luke, now Winston. They had died because of her. Her. White trash. Not worthy of any of them.

"Where's Ross?" she asked. Where is he? Why had he looked at her with such hate? Could he know about Clancey?

"He's out beating the bush for your attacker, and I 'spect Luke's murderer too. Here, drink this tea."

"Lee?"

"Anabeth already has him put to bed. Now you try to get some sleep and forget all about what happened."

"I can't. It's my fault they're dead."

"You ain't makin' sense, Lydia. 'Course it's not your fault."

She wasn't to be consoled and finally Ma left her alone to cry until she fell into an exhausted slumber.

They buried Mr. Hill the following morning. Lydia was dry-eyed and stoic beside her grim husband. She had cried himself out. They didn't speak.

No one blamed her. Rather, they commiserated, Baying that she had been lucky not to have been murdered too. "Or worse," the ladies whispered behind their hands. Their condolences over the horror she had experienced only made Lydia more miserable. She was to be blamed, not comforted. There were no words of comfort from Ross.

They traveled that day. They were too close to their destination to take a day off and everyone's fears had been stoked by the second killing.

Moses drove the team of the Hill wagon just as he always did. The others went out of their way to be kind to him. He came to Lydia's wagon that evening.

"I'm sorry, Moses," she said.

"He would have preferred it, Miss Lydia. He was dying of the sickness, and he saw that as a death without valor. It was better this way."

"That's what he said," she whispered hopefully, grasp-ing at anything that would relieve her guilt. "He told me that before he died."

"He meant it. He thought a great deal of you. If he died protecting you, he died as he would have wished to."

"Thank you, Moses." She took the man's hand and squeezed it gratefully between hers.

She invited him to eat supper with her and Ross, but he declined, returning to the wagon he had shared with Winston. When Ross appeared for the evening meal, he was as silently brooding as he had been since he'd seen her leaning over Winston's body. They ate in silence. She could barely see his eyes under the shelf of dark brows he kept lowered over them, but she knew he wasn't looking at her. It was as it had been at the first, as though the sight of her was repulsive to him.

By the time they retired to the wagon, her nerves and emotions were stretched to the breaking point. Clancey had almost raped her—she knew the meaning of the word now. She had watched her friend die. Wasn't there any sympathy due her?

Ross's indifference infuriated her. Didn't her feelings warrant his consideration? After getting Lee settled, she turned toward Ross, ready to force him to tell her what he was sulking about. He was rolling up a pallet.

"What are you doing?" It had been weeks since he had slept away from her.

"Sleeping outside."

She wet her lips. "I wish you'd stay in here with me . . . and Lee." He went about his business, not glancing at her. She wouldn't admit to him how much she would miss the comfort of his arms. She used another argument. "That man could still be roaming around. I'll feel safer if you're in here."

His back was to her and he was making his way to the end of the wagon. He stopped, turned, and ran his eyes up and down her body with undisguised dislike. He snorted a contemptuous laugh. "Lydia, even a fool can see that you're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself."

He turned away from her again. That disregard, that smug expression on his face, fired her temper as nothing else could. She launched herself at him.

S
o he flew toward his departing back, grabbed his arm, and spun him around. Had she not totally surprised him, she would never have been able to accomplish that feat. But he was taken unawares by her attack, as he was by the fiery heat in her amber eyes.

"What do you mean by that, Ross Coleman? Tell me why you've not looked at me, not touched me since yesterday. I dare you to tell me."

Ross flung down the bedroll as though throwing down a gauntlet. He braced his hands on his hips. "All right. I'll tell you," he said, Because of a sleeping Lee and their close neighbors, he kept his voice low. That made it no less violent. It shook with rage.

"I didn't like finding my wife out in the woods alone with another man, her dress ripped open, her breasts exposed for all the whole damn world to see. I'm sorry Hill got shot, dreadfully sorry. But goddammit, what were you doing out there with him in the first place?"

"I wasn't,"
she flared. "I was alone. Just walking. Cooling off." She hated lying to him, but she couldn't let him think she and Winston had been meeting for a secret romantic tryst. "Winston came by just in time. Don't you realize what would have happened to me if he hadn't stopped that man?"

The muscles in Ross's jaw knotted. "Well, it wouldn't surprise me. You have that effect on men and you damn well know it. Hill was in love with you himself, and if he hadn't been such a Southern gentleman, he'd have had you long ago. Hal Grayson looks at you with calf's eyes. Every man on this train stops what he's doing to gawk when you walk by. Even Bubba Langston gets a bulge in his breeches when you smile at him. They're all just dying to have a go at you. Don't look so shocked." He sneered when she recoiled in dismay. "You know it's true." He took her shoulders under his hands and lifted her to within an inch of his face as he said with the sibilant deadliness of a rapier, "You invite it."

Lydia stared up into his hard, accusing face until the full impact of what he had said hit her. Then furious tears filled her eyes. She threw off his hands and backed away from him like a she-cat spitting her anger.

"How do you know anything about it, Mr. Coleman? Mr. self-righteous Coleman married to your lily-pure Victoria. How do you know anything about me, what I feel, what I am? You know nothing!" she said in a loud whisper.

Ross was entranced by this transformation. Her hair surrounded her head like a wreath, burnished by the lantern light. Her eyes glowed with the hypnotizing quality of a flame in the dark.

"Did I invite it when my stepbrother raped me?"

"Your—"

"Yes, my stepbrother. Not by blood. His pa was married to my mama. And when the old man died and there was no one threatening him to leave me alone, he took me. The first time it happened in the lean-to where we kept what sorry farm animals there were on that stinking place. And it was appropriate, because that's what I felt like, an animal. He surprised me and threw me down in the muck. He hurt me. I had blood on my legs when he was done and teeth marks on my breasts. The same breasts that offended you so much yesterday. And . . . Oh, God . . . what do you care?"

She covered her face with her hands and sank to the floor of the wagon, abysmally wretched as the memories came rushing back. "I was dirty, so dirty. I washed and washed, scrubbed inside and out, but I still felt unclean."

Ross, his eyes never leaving her, caught a stool leg with the toe of his boot and pulled it toward him. His anger, full-blown only moments ago, deflated like a sail caught in a sudden calm. He sat down, clasping his hands together and pressing the knuckles of his thumbs to his lips as he witnessed her misery. "It was this stepbrother who got you pregnant?"

Lydia nodded dispiritedly, the fight having gone out of her too. She stared vacantly into space. "When I wasn't quick enough to avoid him, or strong enough to fight him off, he would do it again."

"You could have run away," Ross suggested quietly.

She scoffed, sweeping back her curtain of hair with her hand as she glared up at him. "My mama was sick. The old man had worked her like a mistreated and underfed slave for years. When he died, she just lay down and never got back up. If I had run away, or killed myself, which I wanted to do many times, my stepbrother would have left her to die of starvation or smothered her in her sleep. He wouldn't have taken care of her. I had to stay."