Texas Lily (20 page)

In anyone's eyes, that pretty much made it a draw.

Chapter 16

The Christmas festivities turned out to be Lily's undoing.

They started joyously enough. The anticipation of having a real Christmas get-together after all the years of hard labor and isolation had all the women in the surrounding area excited. Trunks left closed since they had crossed the Sabine were opened and lovingly rummaged through. Remembered customs from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, and even as far away as England and Germany were pulled out and mulled over and converted to the availability of local resources.

Ollie's barn was trimmed with pine and decorated with acorns and pinecones. Magnolia leaves from somewhere to the east were nailed proudly over the door. A sweet-smelling brew of dried orange rind and cinnamon simmered on the fire the men had built near the door. Whiskey punch was the order of the day, but the women made no objections to this male addition to their celebration. War was in the air, but for this one day they would ignore it.

Running her fingers over the piano keys, Lily laughed at the sounds Roy created from the flute Cade had made for him. For one whole day she was going to forget about the concerns of home, the worry over how she would pay Langton for the hire of his slaves to pick the cotton, the need to get her cattle to market. These could be the least of her problems. She glanced surreptitiously at Cade lounging against a barn post drinking from a steaming cup of punch and sighed.

It wouldn't work. It couldn't possibly work. She didn't want to consider that it might have to. She looked up to find Travis determinedly heading in her direction and smiled. He'd been out "scouting the territory" after they'd had word that the Alamo was now in the hands of Austin's rebel army. She was glad he had returned in time for the celebration.

"You look positively glowing, Lily. You ought to wear your hair like that more often. It becomes you." He touched the soft loops of gold she had painstakingly arranged over her ears.

"It will all come down before the evening's end," she replied disparagingly, trying to ignore the appreciative gleam in Travis's eyes. He still had the power to make her feel like an attractive woman. She wished he didn't. It would make life much simpler.

"Let the fiddler play, and come and dance with me, Lily, my sweet. I want to hold you in my arms again. It's been a long cold spell since I saw you last," he whispered near her ear as he ostensibly bent over the music on the rack.

"We dance reels here, Travis. You're not likely to hold me much in a reel, so I'll dance with you. But that's all I'll do." Lily accepted his hand as she rose from the bench.

She didn't complain when Cade joined the dancers with Maria. He had played the flute earlier while she had played the piano. It was time some other musician held the floor. But she suspected that wasn't his only reason for joining the dancers.

She was almost ready to enjoy the competition. Lily knew perfectly well there were ten men to every woman in this room and every female from the age of ten upward had partners waiting in line, but for just this once she wanted to feel attractive like her sisters. Travis's laughing smile warmed her heart, and though the look Cade gave her was far from smoldering, it was significant enough to give Lily a small feeling of triumph. He wasn't quite as impervious as he liked to pretend.

She danced with Ollie and her father and even Jack. The men had drunk enough that her height no longer mattered to them. A chance to stamp and shout and work off excess energy and liquor was good enough reason to grab a woman by the waist and swing into the music. Lily glanced up once to see even Juanita timidly following Travis's direction as they tried a respectable quadrille.

Lily gratefully accepted the punch someone handed her between sets and laughed with Anna's mother at the piano before Travis carried her off again. She didn't have to look up to know that Cade took the place at her right, making him the first man to sweep her around the circle after Travis lost his place in the reel—she could tell by the heat of Cade's hand against her waist, the strength of his grip as he practically carried her along, and the fresh-scrubbed scent of him in this room full of pomades and sweat.

He was there again at the beginning of the next set, removing the cup of punch from Lily's hand and looking down at her enigmatically through dark eyes as he wordlessly held out his hand and she accepted it. Damn, she was not used to men looking down on her. It was an unnerving experience.

Lily felt giddy and unsteady on her feet as the music pounded louder and faster and the dancers swirled in brilliant profusion around them. Ollie twirled her around. Juanita passed by with a flashing smile on her brown face. Travis whispered sweet words as they passed. And Cade caught up with her again, catching her waist and swinging her off her feet with a flourish as the music ended.

When the music stopped and he set her down, Lily swayed and almost fell before Cade could catch her.

Looking down at her suddenly pale face and glazed look, Cade swore under his breath and discreetly led her toward the door, supporting her with his arm as he practically carried her out. He saw her father bearing down on them, but he gave the old man a look that scared him off before hauling Lily through the barn door and into the brisk breeze of a December night.

"Stand here, out of the wind." Cade leaned her against the barn behind the open door, blocking her from view with his bulk.

"I'm all right. It's just the punch. I'd better go back in," Lily whispered unconvincingly as she pushed upright and avoided Cade's eyes. She had never felt like this in her life. Her head was spinning and she wasn't at all certain she could continue standing. She wasn't given to queasiness or the vapors. She wasn't even wearing a corset, for heaven's sake. It had to be the punch.

"I only gave you the kind without whiskey," Cade replied, blocking her path with the barrier of his arm. Irrelevantly, he added, "The moon is full tonight."

Lily leaned against the wall to ease her spinning head and met Cade's gaze. She was beginning to understand his mind too well, and it frightened her. A shock of black hair fell over his brow and she let her thoughts wander to how it would look if Cade grew just the one long braid of hair down the right side of his head and shaved the left like his father did. She thought he would look very good with feathers and beads in that braid. She wondered if he had tattoos like most Indians were said to have. She didn't even know what his body looked like beneath his shirt.

"I'm fine, Cade. Really I am. I'd better go inside before my father comes after us." She tried to stand, but he was too close for her to get far.

"It's been two moons, Lily. There's been time to know if there's a child."

She had known that was what he was after. She looked over his shoulder at the blue-black night sky. "I'm not that regular, Cade. I can't count the times I thought Jim and I..." She stopped, unwilling to reveal any more of the embarrassing details of her intimate life.

Her face was pale against the dark backdrop of the barn, and Cade lifted his hand to touch her cheek. Noting the difference between dark and light, he dropped it again. "In the eyes of my father, you are my wife. We will go to the
alcalde
to please your father. You have only to say when."

He didn't mean to abandon her as Travis had. That was small consolation. Lily closed her eyes and tried to imagine Cade's hand on her cheek, but imagination failed her.

He wasn't a tender man. She had evidence enough of that. She wasn't certain she wanted a tender man. She wasn't certain she wanted a man at all. But if a child existed...

"I'll hold you to that," she murmured.

He would have to settle for that much of an admission. Encouraged, Cade didn't let his hand drop this time when he touched the falling gold strands of Lily's hair. He had never had a golden-haired woman before. Even Serena's mother had brown hair, although it might have been lighter when she was young. The color fascinated him, but not as much as the woman whose hair it was.

Cade could sense Lily's terror as an animal senses fear. He didn't know whether it was of himself or of her predicament or both. She was frozen with it, but still she stared at him boldly, defying him with her promises. She was a strong woman, but he was stronger, and they both knew it. He had nothing to prove by forcing her further than she was willing to go. Without touching her more, he brought his hand back to his side.

"You will catch cold." Cade offered his hand this time, and hesitantly, Lily took it. Her fingers were cool and slender against his calluses. He held them, liking the way his hand engulfed hers, enjoying the smooth touch of her palm until they were inside the barn again, and he had to release her.

Lily didn't remember too much of the rest of the evening. Her father drank too much and had to be carried to the wagon. Roy got brave and tottered around without his crutches and told the other admiring children stories of how he'd been rescued by Indians until he was so exhausted that Travis had to carry him out at the end of the evening. Most of all Lily remembered Cade silhouetted against a cloudy night sky, reaching for the reins of a panicked mustang, the horse's flaring nostrils and sharp hooves rearing high above his head as he spoke calm words that worked magic.

The crowd that had gathered breathed a collective sigh of relief as the horse whinnied and shied and came to stand restlessly beneath Cade's touch. The drunken fool who had tried to ride him while celebrating the Lord's birth with a shotgun blast was helped from beneath the horse's hooves, bruised and shaken but otherwise intact.

No one thanked Cade for his courage. The man's wife wept with relief and was led away by her family. Thoroughly satiated with drink and song, the remainder of the crowd admired the performance as an interesting end to a good evening and then wandered off to their wagons and horses. Cade handed the horse's reins to an older man who claimed him.

A head taller than anyone else, Cade was easily visible as the crowd eddied around him, leaving a distance that made of him an island in a flowing river. He looked so alone that Lily wanted to go to him, but Juanita was handing her a slumbering Serena, and Roy was complaining sleepily, and Travis waited for her in the wagon. Lily climbed up to the seat, hugging the warm child instead of the man.

She didn't want a husband. She certainly didn't want a husband who never spoke to her, much less consulted her wishes. She didn't want any man who would take over her life and tell her what she could or could not do and expect more from her than she was prepared to give. She'd had enough of that.

But the possibility that after nine years of praying she might finally be carrying a life within her again kept Lily's mind a careful blank. She wasn't certain whether she would wish the possibility away or not should she stop to think about it. So she didn't.

She went about her days as if nothing had changed. The cotton was delivered to town to be ginned and baled and shipped. Now that the Alamo had been taken, and San Antonio was in American hands, more of the men wandered home to help with the harvest and to do the mending and repairing before spring planting began. Lily heard skeptically the news that Ollie had been sent to represent the district in the constitutional convention. The men seemed to think that the war was over and that they had won. Lily didn't think Santa Anna was quite that generous.

She didn't ask Cade what he thought. He was busy morning, noon, and night rounding up cows that seemed in imminent danger of delivery, rescuing calves born on the prairie that would fall prey to wolves and coyotes. Now that some of the hands were tired of playing soldier, he had more help, but he seemed to take the birth of each animal personally and each death as his own responsibility. Lily scarcely saw him except when he ate, and in his exhaustion, he had little to say then.

Cade had even less to say the night he came in soaking wet to find Travis, Ollie, and Ephraim engrossed in deep discussion beside the fire while Lily ran back and forth to keep them supplied with drinks and hot food while doing her mending in between their requests. When she bent to set another pitcher beside Travis, and he absently reached out to hug her hips, Cade's composure cracked.

Lily gasped in surprise as Travis's hand was ripped from her side and then Travis himself was hauled from his chair and shoved toward the door. Ollie leapt up, knocking his own chair over as he attempted to interfere, but Cade grabbed his collar with his spare hand and shoved him in the same direction as Travis.