The Peacemaker (23 page)

Between the men sliding off sleekly curried backs, loud cursing the likes of which made Indy curl her toes, and several mounted riders whose rein-sawing made their horses go through all kinds of contortions, sidesteps and turns, the scene on the parade ground had become a circus, complete with a ringmaster, clowns, trick riders and dancing horses.

Indy had never laughed so hard in all her life. She laughed so hard her stomach hurt. Everywhere she looked horses were rearing and bucking, turning in circles and turning their heads around to bite the men hanging on to their manes. There were plaintive whinnies and disdainful snorts. The men yelled, cursed, and called the horses such startling names that Indy was left openmouthed and gaping.

There was no time to recover herself from laughing at one thing before discovering something else even funnier. But for having to wipe stinging sweat from her eyes, she hardly noticed the heat or the way the sun beat down on her head.

Captain Nolan was beside himself, bent forward, slapping his leg with his hat, laughing in loud spontaneous bursts that had Indy laughing at him as well.

Even Jim was heartily amused, Indy noticed when she was forced to stop laughing long enough to catch her breath. Though more conservative than the captain's, Jim's laugh was a rich, full bass that gave her unexpected pleasure and she hoped she would have the opportunity to hear it again and again.

Laughter gave relief to Jim's dark, ruthless features and took the wariness from his eyes, allowing her a brief look at the man Captain Nolan had described as thinking about little besides enjoying himself. That had been before the war, before his court-martial, before Tess had deserted him, and before going into exile. Time and events had changed him, hardened him. Some of his wounds were the invisible kind but pained him still, she thought, unprepared for the surge of emotion that resulted.

Suddenly she knew that she wanted to be the one to heal his wounds, to bring a smile to his lips and happiness and love into his heart. She would never desert him as Tess had done. She wanted only to be able to love him and care for him always.

She stood silent now, overwhelmed by the enormity of her thoughts and wishes, hopes and dreams, fears and desires. She stared bemusedly at the circus scene that had suddenly started to shimmer and shine. Frowning with annoyance, she blinked, then closed her eyes and raised a hand to wipe away the sweat. Upon reopening them, she was struck by a wave of dizziness that caused her to take a steadying step forward, but in fact added to her unbalance and started her to totter back and forth and from side to side.

"Captain? Aubrey?" Blindly, she reached out her hand . . .

Something warned him. He glanced her way and saw her sway and her eyes roll back in her head. Crossing the distance between them in two swift strides, he caught her as she was going down, just barely saving her from falling facedown in the mud.

Aubrey was there now too. "For God's sake. What happened?"

None too gently, Jim maneuvered Indy's limp, lifeless body into a position where he could pick her up in his arms rather than throw her over his shoulder like a grain sack.

"Must be the heat," he said in as few words as possible as he curved his arm behind the backs of her legs. With an economy of movement he lifted her up, settled her within his arms, and started for her quarters.

Over his shoulder, he shouted, "Carry on, Sergeant, until they've got the hang of it, then dismiss them for supper call."

"Yes, sir! Hope the little lady's gonna be all right."

He didn't hear the sentiment. He was too busy wondering what the hell he was going to do with Indy once he got her inside. It wasn't that he didn't know what to do, he'd seen heat sickness before. It was more a question of should he do it? The person had to be cooled down however it could be accomplished. Since there wasn't a stream handy or even a water trough nearby, it would mean taking off some of her clothes.

Aubrey had run in front of him to open the door. He looked about helplessly. "Take her in her bedroom, I guess. I'll get some water."

"And some cloths. Lots of them."

Aubrey nodded. "Cloths," he repeated. "Lots of them." And hurried off to the back of the parlor.

Jim could scarcely squeeze the two of them through her bedroom door. Gently now, he laid her down on the bed. Trouble, he thought. She was nothing but trouble. He'd warned himself about her early on and just the other day he'd vowed to stay away from her—and he'd tried but he couldn't. She was everywhere he was.

Remembering the pitcher of water from the last incident, he went for it, but it was empty. "Damn. Of all the luck." And no telling when Aubrey would come back with the water and cloths.

He stood over her and heaved an exasperated sigh. "Well, I suppose they can court-martial me as many times as they want, but they can only hang me once! So, here goes." Leaning over her, he picked up the hem of her dress, put his teeth to it like he was biting off a piece of jerky, then rent it as far as it would go, which was to her waist, where the skirt was sewed to the bodice.

Once that was done, he contemplated the dozen or so pea-sized buttons that filed down the front of her bodice and decided to hell with it. Why bother undoing them? He'd already ruined the dress. What was one more tear? So thinking, he undid the top button and gave each side of the neck opening one quick yank that sent the buttons popping off and flying through the air like buckshot from a scattergun.

His sense of triumph ebbed when he realized an even bigger challenge faced him in getting her arms out of those long, tight sleeves.

He jerked his head toward the bedroom door. "Aubrey?"

No answer. It was as if he had disappeared.

Bemoaning the fact that he didn't have his knife, he set to work, pulling, tugging, wondering how the hell she had gotten into the stupid damn thing in the first place, and how, in years past, he'd gotten women out of their clothes so easily. The answer to that, he realized, feeling foolish, was that the women had helped him.

Finally, he got one arm out of one sleeve and that's when Aubrey walked in.

"Do you think you should do that?" Aubrey's voice sounded unusually high and anxious. "Good God, Jim! What will her father say?"

"We need to cool her off."

"We?" His face paled.

"I'm not taking off anything else, if that's what you're thinking. I'm a lot of things but I'm not crazy! This will have to be enough," he said as he got her out of the second sleeve. "Set that bucket down and soak those cloths while I get rid of this damn dress." With one hand behind each rounded, white shoulder, Jim shimmied the dress down behind her back, then tossed the offensive garment across the room. "Jesus, that was worse than breaking jail."

"You should know," Aubrey replied jokingly.

Jim shook his head and chuckled. He never would have thought the day would come when he'd laugh at anything having to do with the time he'd spent in military prison. Maybe someday he'd even laugh about Tess.

"Start wringing out those cloths, but not too much. I want them good and wet." After a moment, while waiting to be handed the first cloth, he said, "If you're planning on taking a furlough to find yourself a suitable wife, you'd better be prepared to deal with all the female trappings, or you could run into a few problems." He folded the cloth and laid it across Indy's smooth, unblemished forehead.

"If she's suitable I won't have to deal with them."

A second cloth he laid on the bare skin just above her milk-white breasts. "I didn't know you were such a model of propriety."

"Who said I was?"

"If I'm not mistaking, I think you just did."

Jim laid out more cloths on her shoulders, her arms, and, after lifting her petticoat up to her knees, on her legs as well. "That ought to do it. She should be coming to pretty soon."

In a rush of words, Aubrey said, "Well, that's about all anybody can do. I'm no help here. Think I'll get back to the parade ground and give a hand. Just yell out if you need anything."

As Aubrey turned to leave, Jim called after him. "Captain?" When Aubrey had turned around and Jim had his full attention, he pointed to the window and said, "The coward's way out is through there." For the first time ever, Jim saw Aubrey Nolan blush and it was funnier than anything he'd seen a few minutes ago on the parade ground.

A moment later Jim was considering if there was anything else he could do for Indy other than slap her awake. No sense doing that; it would scare her to death.

Tired of leaning over, Jim scooted her over a few inches and sat on the edge of the bed. She still wasn't showing any signs of coming to and he was beginning to worry. It had to be the heat, he told himself, going back over what he remembered happening: the heat, her high-necked, long-sleeved dress, the excitement, her delighted laughter. She probably would have been fine if she hadn't set aside her parasol.

He dipped one last cloth into the bucket and pressed it against her lips, squeezing slightly so some water would trickle into her mouth. More than likely she'd be mad as a peeled rattler when she came to and saw him, then saw herself, how she was lying there in her petticoat.

Imagining her thoughts made him aware of what he was thinking about her lying there in nothing but her petticoat. He hadn't given it much consideration while he'd been undressing her. He'd been too concerned about getting her cooled down and too annoyed that she's caused him more trouble to take close notice of what he was revealing.

The petticoat. All of a sudden the whole top of it was wet and blessedly see-through, showing the small, dark circles of her nipples, which were gently peaked and smooth-skinned in repose.

He wanted them to know his touch. He wanted to see them pucker and harden because of his touch. Without even thinking of what he was doing, he raised his left hand and felt her through the thin material, his two fingers tracing the circumference of one nipple. The response was immediate, as he had known it would be.

And so was his. He felt that pleasurable race of heat and quickening down low and sucked in a breath. Instinctively his fingers spread out over her breast and pressed down, gently squeezed, massaged. Touching her, even through her petticoat, was the most exquisite torture he had ever known.

He longed to touch her all over, to rent the damn petticoat as he had the dress and feel the satiny warmth of her bare skin beneath his palm. He hesitated, knowing to continue was wrong, but justifying it by telling himself that she had driven him to the brink, not once but several times, and the result was that he had come damn close to literally taking himself in hand and easing his own ache.

She stirred and made a tiny moan that awakened him to his incredible stupidity. He took his hand away, raised the other hand that still held the cloth, and began wiping her face.

He suffered the fires of hell while she hovered between sleep and wakefulness, her body tensing, relaxing, stretching. Jim stood up, looked away, not sure how much more of this he could take, but knowing he couldn't leave her until he was certain she was all right. He was about to call out her name and shake her awake when Prudence Stallard came into the bedroom.

"Captain Nolan sent me. Said you might need some help?" She moved up close and stood beside him, her astute blue gaze taking in Indy's wet bodice, then moving to him and taking in everything else. "Somehow I doubt that, but I'll relieve you just the same." She took the cloth from his hand and gave him a teasing smile. "Don't you have something to do, Major?"

"Yeah," he said, feeling like a twelve-year-old caught with his short pants down. He started for the door. "I'm pretty sure it was the heat that got to her," he said, lingering a second longer.

She tilted her head and looked him up and down. "Looks like it got to you too, Major."

Dawn was still a long time off when Jim finally gave up on trying to get any sleep. He sat up, ran his fingers through his hair and leaned his back against the wall.

He hesitated lighting the lantern, then remembered that Aubrey had taken a construction detail out to work on the camp's water system, which meant he would have the next couple of hours to himself. A welcome thought. He could do with a little privacy. He had become something of a solitary man.

Without a doubt, last night ranked as one of the worst he'd ever spent. No,
the
worst! he amended. And it was his own fault. He shouldn't have touched Indy the way he had; he knew better but something had come over him, a longing so hot and thick that nothing short of a bullet could have stopped him.

For all the physical pain he'd suffered throughout the night, he wished somebody
had
shot him and put him out of his misery. The
fires of hell
is what it had felt like, using the expression one of his young privates had used to describe the pain of being gut shot.

If he'd had any sense, he would have found Prudence, apologized for walking out on her the other night and taken her up on what she had so willingly offered. From the knowing teasing looks she'd given him when she'd walked in on him and Indy, it was apparent she knew what troubled him. Damn the woman anyway.

And damn Indy too! Damn her seductive innocence, her soft hazel eyes, everything! If she didn't stay out of his way, out of his life, there was no telling what he might do. A man only had so much control.

His mood was anything but pleasant as he got himself ready for the day. At five o'clock he went down to the corrals and ordered a half-dozen horses be put in the large corral for later use.

Yesterday, Sergeant Moseley had kept the first-time riders working with the horses until every last one of them had learned the basics. By the time the training period ended, they'd know how to handle themselves on a horse as well as their cavalry counterparts, or they wouldn't go out with the Wolf Company.

After a breakfast of hard brown bread and sow belly, the men again assembled on the parade ground.

Without preamble Jim sternly ordered them to remove their hats and shirts and throw them in a pile. "From now on you're going to start looking like Apaches. As lily white as you all are now, you'd shine like a full moon on a night raid and give our position away."