True to the Law (20 page)

She averted her gaze as Cobb lowered himself once more between her legs. She stared at the ceiling instead, at the play of light and shadow across it compliments of the flickering lamplight. There was a hairline crack in the plasterwork just above her head. She had never noticed it before. She wondered if Walt would be willing to look at it. He repaired almost everything at the Pennyroyal.

“Tru?”

His voice came to her as though from a distance. Her eyes shifted from the ceiling to his face. Between her thighs, she felt him stirring. There were no longer any barriers between them. Her nightgown was caught in the crease of her hips. While she was thinking about plasterwork, he had laid himself bare.

“Where did you go?” he asked.

She laid her palm against his cheek and chose to answer obliquely. “I’m here now.” When Cobb’s eyes narrowed, Tru tilted her pelvis and pressed against him. It was enough. He expelled a breath of air on the back of a quiet groan and found her wrist. She let him draw her hand to his cock. Her fingers folded around it without instruction or encouragement from him.

She did not have to think about what she was doing then. It was better that way. Sometimes she responded to instinct, sometimes to images she still held behind her closed eyes.

She helped guide his entry. In spite of her willingness to do so, she still winced as he came into her. The care he took only added to her distress.

“Quickly,” she whispered. “Do it quickly.” And when he balked, Tru bit down on her lip and thrust hard against him.

It was all she needed to do to push him past whatever hesitation or sense of reason he still harbored. He settled himself heavily between her thighs as his mouth came down hard on hers, and when he tore his lips away, she tasted blood. She knew she was both the cause and source of it and wondered if he understood that as well. It seemed as if he might because he rocked her body backward the next time he pushed into her.

Tru did not hold on to him. She sought the sheet under her. Her fingers scrabbled at the fabric until she had enough bunched to make fists around it. The pillow under her bottom kept her hips angled toward him but did nothing to help her accommodate the girth or length of his cock. The pressure never eased. Downstairs, he had made her wet for his fingers. It was not that he had misjudged her readiness here. She had. Or perhaps she had not misjudged at all, she thought, but fooled herself instead into believing she was eager for the act when she was only ever eager to have it done with.

His stroking, long and hard and even at first, shortened. He pumped his hips. She had never tried to match his movements, but if she had, she would have failed now. He swore under his breath. The coarseness of the word, and its relationship to the act they were engaged in, made her blink.

Tru uncurled her fists and released the sheet. She set her hands on his shoulders, tentatively at first, and then felt her way to his back and finally up and down his spine. The caress was not an act of desire but born of the need to comfort, though whether she was comforting him or herself, she wasn’t entirely sure.

She felt as if all of him contracted at once. The tension in his long frame was palpable. He seemed to stretch over her, rising, falling, rising again, and then he groaned deeply and shoved away from her. He did not go far. He shuddered as he came against her belly.

Tru did not move. She took careful, measured breaths and waited for Cobb. In those last moments before he left her, she had felt the pounding of his heart. She remembered that now. She listened to his breathing, harsh at first, then more softly until it was no longer audible. She imagined his heartbeat slowing, quieting.

Cobb turned on his side then his back. He laid his forearm across his eyes. “Was that what you wanted all along?”

Tru didn’t hear him. Under the covers, she was touching her belly with her fingertips. It was wet with his seed. So was one of the folds in her nightgown. Her fingers slipped lower. The sticky evidence of what she had let him do to her was there on her mons. She withdrew her hand and pushed her nightgown over her hips.

Cobb lifted his forearm long enough to glance in her direction. Lamplight highlighted her profile but not her expression. Her eyes were open. Had she ever closed them? She was staring at the ceiling again. When he posed his question a second time, it was not merely impatient but accusing as well.

A frown line appeared between Tru’s eyebrows. “All along?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”

Frustrated, confused, Cobb ground his fist hard into the mattress. It was not nearly as satisfying as smashing it against something as solid as a wall. Beside him, he felt Tru tense. “Jesus, Tru. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t set out to rape you.”

“You didn’t.” She turned her head to look at him. His forearm was resting across his eyes. “You didn’t,” she said again, this time with more conviction. She sat up, dragging the quilts on her side with her. She shoved the pillow away and drew her knees close to her chest and hugged them. Her voice was tremulous and hardly more than a whisper. “Is that how it seemed to you? As if you were raping me?”

Cobb was silent as he tried to find better words to explain himself, but Tru was too impatient to wait.

“And you are asking if that’s what I wanted all along?” She gave him no opportunity to answer. Her voice was brittle. “How dare you. How dare you ask me that.” Tru swept away the covers, throwing them over him. She climbed out of bed and stood at the edge. The floor was cold, but it felt warmer than the chill that was settling in her bones. “Get out.”

Cobb raised his forearm and used it to push back the blankets. He sat up and swiveled his legs to the side of the bed. He hooked his heels against the frame and tugged on one shoulder of his union suit. Without looking back at Tru, he began to button up. When he was done, he stood and went to the chair where his clothes were carefully folded and stacked. He did not expect her to attempt to stop him, and she didn’t.

Neither of them spoke as he dressed. He sat down in the chair long enough to put on his socks and shoes. When he stood, he smoothed the front of his vest and fastened his jacket.

“I’ll show myself out,” he said, nodding once in her direction.

“I expect you will.”

Still he hesitated. He had apologized earlier for not hearing her out; he did not want to make the same mistake again. “Tru.”

She said nothing. Her eyes moved pointedly toward the door.

Cobb went. At the threshold he paused a second time and looked back at her. “Just to be clear, Tru, I don’t know what happened here.” His eyes grazed her still figure. “And now I’m wondering if you do either.”

Tru stayed precisely where she was until she heard the back door close. She walked around the bed to the washstand, stripped off her nightgown, and performed her ablutions in a mechanical manner. When she was done, she stepped over the soiled shift and took out a clean one from her armoire.

At her bedside, she extinguished the lamp. In that last flicker of light, she saw her hand was trembling. Tru crawled into the bed, burrowed deeply under the quilts, and stared at the fireplace.

It was then, under the cover of absolute darkness, that she could finally surrender to the lump in her throat and the ache behind her eyes.

* * *

Not for the first time during the Sunday service, Jennifer sneaked a sideways glance at her friend. If Tru noticed, she didn’t respond. Jennifer was afraid to whisper, knowing that Tru was right and that she would be heard three pews front and back if she made the attempt. She felt Jim’s large hand on her knee. He squeezed it lightly, cautioning her. She supposed that not even her sideways looks were surreptitious. Annoyed with herself as much as her husband for knowing her so well, Jenny deliberately moved his hand to his own knee and gave her attention to Pastor Robbins at the pulpit.

Tru carefully let out the breath she’d been holding. For a moment, it had seemed that Jenny was poised to make a remark. The thought of what her friend might say had the power to make her heart stutter. Tru was so sure she was behaving as she did on any other Sunday, at any other service, but Jenny’s fleeting looks in her direction were an indication otherwise.

Earlier she had wondered if she should even go to church. It served no purpose to entertain that argument again, not when the force that propelled her out the door was fear of her own cowardice. Fear, Charlotte Mackey had told her, never presented itself from the outside. It lived inside us, she’d said, and facing it was the act of holding up a mirror to one’s soul. Mrs. Mackey had been staring down death when she said it. Tru thought that going to church this morning was the very least she could do to honor the woman who faced her fears so bravely.

Tru rose with the rest of the congregation to say the Lord’s Prayer and stayed standing to sing the final hymn. The rich bass timbre of Jim’s voice so close to her almost caused her to miss the baritone notes coming from somewhere behind her. Tru’s fingers tightened on her prayer book. She did not dare turn around. She knew that whiskey voice, knew with certainty that it had not been present at the start of service.

Sometime during Pastor Robbins’s remarks on the Reformation, Cobb Bridger had slipped quietly into church. That he had been able to do it without causing a stir among the congregants made him seem more preternatural than not.

At the end of the service, Tru hung back and spoke to Mrs. Burnside while Jenny shooed her husband away and cooled her heels in the center aisle. When she was confident that she had given Cobb enough time to leave the church, Tru gently disengaged herself from the druggist’s wife and sidled up to Jenny.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Jenny.

Tru feigned surprise. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Ha!” Jenny pointed an index finger at Tru’s nose. “If you can tell me that I don’t know how to whisper, I can tell you that you don’t know how to pretend even mild astonishment. In point of fact, you’re a very poor liar.”

Tru merely shrugged.

Jenny went on. “Do you know why? It’s because you don’t practice it nearly often enough. And don’t think I’m suggesting you start lying now, with me.” She stopped pointing at Tru and placed the same finger at the side of her own nose. “I have a smell for it. Always have. Tell me what’s wrong. Is it about that letter from Mrs. Coltrane? I
knew
that was bothering you.”

Tru sucked in her breath. It was exactly the right thing to do before she began lying through her teeth. “How do you always know these things, Jenny? It’s frightening sometimes.”

“I know, isn’t it?” She looped her arm in Tru’s. “So what foolish things have you been telling yourself? Are you worried about your position? I swear to you, the town won’t have it.”

“I don’t want to be a bone of contention,” said Tru. “I won’t allow people to take sides for or against me.”

“That might not be your choice.”

“Promise me you won’t stir the pot. Nothing’s happened.”

“I’m a baker, not a cook. I let things rest and rise.”

“Then do that now.” Tru squeezed her arm when she sensed Jenny hesitating. “Please.”

“Very well. I promise.”

Tru nodded. She looked down the aisle to where the pastor stood at the door. There were only a few people remaining in line. Even Jim had moved outside. “Come on. We’ll thank Pastor Robbins for his insights into the scripture, and you and Jim can walk me home.”

“There were insights?” asked Jenny. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. There always are.”

Jim was waiting for them when they stepped out of the church. Cobb was not with him. In spite of herself, Tru looked around for him.

“He went back to the Pennyroyal,” said Jim, following Tru’s eyes.

Jenny asked, “Who went back to the hotel?”

Jim grinned broadly at his wife, enjoying being a step ahead of her for once. “Our marshal, that’s who.” He tipped his chin in Tru’s direction. “That’s who you were looking for, wasn’t it?”

Tru did not attempt to lie. She did not want Jenny pointing at her nose again. “I was. I guess I wasn’t mistaken that he was at the service.”

“He was?” asked Jenny.

Her incredulity made it easy for Tru to laugh. Jim joined her.

“He was,” Jim said. “Four rows behind me and out in front of the congregation when it came time to leave. I caught up to him before he left the yard. He’s going to come by later and look over my collection of Nat Church novels, maybe take a few to read.”

“Did you invite him to dinner, Jim Phillips?”

“No. Was I supposed to?”

Jenny rolled her eyes. “Seeing how’s he’s coming by, it would have been the polite thing to do.” She looked at Tru. “It’s too bad that you’re having dinner with the pastor and Mrs. Robbins.”

“No, it’s not,” Tru said, and meant it. “I enjoy their company, and they’re kind to have me. I hope you don’t mean to push me at Cobb Bridger.”

“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. I thought the two of you got along very well.” She poked her husband in his side with an elbow. “Jim thought the same, didn’t you, Jim?”

Jim gingerly removed her elbow. “I recollect saying something like that.”

Jenny snorted. “He was more interested in crowing about winning at dominoes.”

“It
was
impressive,” said Tru. She glanced over her shoulder at Pastor Robbins. “Will you excuse me? I forgot to ask him if there was something I could bring.”