Waltzing In Ragtime (8 page)

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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: Waltzing In Ragtime
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She took his arm, pulled. “Come,” she pleaded, “a few steps, just to the bed.”
“Bed?”
“Please.”
“No.” He frowned. “Trouble. Gran didn’t raise a fool,” he mumbled, but took her arm.
Olana stripped his coat, then eased his shoulders down so she
could peel his shirt and his one piece to his waist. His energies were not focused on any shame or embarrassment, the way hers had been. His back was broad and straight and still had traces of deep summer coloring. The bleeding wounds were incongruous, torn through its knotted strength. He was quiet, too quiet. What would she do if he passed out? He must not pass out. She offered him a crockery cup of the ruby-colored wine. It brought a flush of color to his cheeks.
“Better?”
“Yes. You’d best have a long one yourself,” he advised, before she took up the snow left in her basin to pack into the slashes. She didn’t argue. She lifted the bottle to her lips. She’d never seen so much blood. Would he die? No. People who were dying didn’t chat her fears away.
“Once my gun went to pieces, he sort of stared at me, you know, ’Lana?”
“The bear? The bear stared at you?”
“Yep. Trying to figure if this blame fool who broke a good rifle rather than fire it would give him indigestion, I wouldn’t wonder.”
“Why didn’t you shoot, Matthew?”
“Don’t know. Except that he was so close. And the pain hadn’t started in my back yet so I wasn’t mad, just damned surprised and … ’Lana, he was so beautiful.”
“Beautiful?”
“Yep. So I growled.”
“Growled?”
“To confirm his indigestion thinking, in case it was running along those lines.”
She giggled. It felt good, knowing she could still make that silly, girlish sound. And it seemed to please him enormously.
“I was scared spitless, surprised any sound at all came out of me,” he said. “But it was a sound, a big sound. Well, he turned tail, ’Lana. He turned tail and ran.”
Her hot tears didn’t start until then, until that quiet wonder entered his voice.
“What’s the matter? Your hands hurting?”
She shook her head. “Stop being so — decent!”
“What?” His shoulders started to shake.
“It’s not remotely amusing!”
“Sure it is,” he insisted, turning, breathing life back into her trembling hands, then pulling her in against his chest.
“I was so frightened,” she whispered into its pine-scented warmth.
“I’ve got you. I’ll be all right and I’ve got you now, hear?”
Even Matthew Hart’s burning anger began to subside as he held her. He felt her hand spread out against his chest. Her chin steadied itself into a pout.
“I’m terribly envious,” she said.
“Of what?”
“Of how comfortable, free you are in your own skin.”
“I been wearing it longer.” He smiled. “But you’ve got more cause to be proud. You’re a beautiful woman.”
“As beautiful as your bear?”
“Oh, by half.”
She giggled. When was the last time he’d made a woman laugh? Seal Woman seldom laughed, even with the baby. Olana stroked the wet hair back from his temple, then pressed lovely, delicate kisses there. He took her hand. “’Lana,” he warned gently, “we’re both a little drunk.”
Her brows lowered, but in something closer to intrigue than anger. “Is that the only way you could call me beautiful?”
“Out loud, yes.”
There was still no anger in her eyes. He searched for ways to make her stop tracing his hairline, ways to provoke her fine, hot anger. It had been easy enough when he wasn’t trying.
“Matthew,” she whispered. “Please kiss me again.”
He had to take control. He was older. Responsible for her. And their worlds were so different. There was no chance in hell it would ever come to any good. As he covered her mouth with his, he heard McGee’s words, a faint echo “ … the problem with you, Matt, is that you love women the way women love men.” He tasted deep in eager, sweet recesses. How had he lived so long
without this? Wait. Something was wrong. “’Lana,” he called, bringing her upright. “Breathe.”
She took great gulps of air, all the while saying “Yes, of course, how silly of me,” politely. He smothered his relieved laughter in her shoulder as he caressed her waist through the worn wool of the shirt tied around her.
“Olana, listen, if we go on like this —”
“Now you want to make speeches, you strange man?” She laughed. He drew her into his lap, took up her hand. Yes, speech. Not this need. He had to find a way to tell her, explain. That he wasn’t free. Then he saw the bruise around her wrist. The Carsons. They’d hurt her, of course they’d hurt her. Now she was giving him what they would steal. He brought the wrist to his face, gently kissed around the purple mark. Her fingers opened up in his beard.
“Soft,” she whispered, a tickle of surprise in her voice. “Of course. Even where you look rough. You’re a complete fraud, Matthew Hart.”
He shifted. “Not, ah … complete.”
He found the remnant of cloth that held her thick plaited hair, pulled gently, and watched it swirl around her arms, shoulders, face. He wove his hands through it, finding her scalp. He massaged it until her head went back and she moaned her pleasure. God, she was beautiful.
He loosened the yanked taut strings of her camisole, kissed the rising fullness of her new-skinned, beautiful breasts. Her eyes grew large with delight, and a touch of fear. Fear. Of course. She was a virgin. He steadied his hand at the knot in his shirtsleeves at her waist.
“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered gruffly.
“I know.”
She leaned back in the pillows. He lifted her feet to his lap. Her breathing, soft and skitterish at first, guided him as he massaged her still swollen feet, her ankles, calves. He felt her trust grow as her breathing deepened. When he reached her thighs she opened with a tantalizing sweetness under his touch. The fire
made a light and shadow play of the rich colors in her skirt. She called his name over and over as he touched, stroked, eased her out of the swirling colors. He didn’t know he was so fond of his own name.
He kissed her eyelids gently after her first peak. She sighed, then locked his mouth on hers, fiercely starting over. He laughed, marveling again at how diverse and lasting a woman’s pleasures were.
The night shrouded them in a darkening mantle, sparked by the glints of red in her hair, the glowing beauty of her skin. Matthew’s reluctance, fears, even his pain dissolved in the growing power of their lovemaking. But he made himself content to stay outside her. He did not lead her curious hand down to his aching hardness, did not even shuck off his trousers and one piece until he thought he would die inside them.
When they were at last all skin to skin under the sheets, feeling her shy explorations of him was enough for awhile, that and helping her rise to her own delights. He lost himself in the wild music she made at her peaks. When he could hold back no longer he turned away, released without effort or thought, like a kid in a wet dream.
Matthew felt her reach through the flannel, carefully avoiding the bear’s marks he was only now beginning to feel again. She touched his shoulder tentatively.
“Matthew?”
“Hmmn?”
“Are you well?”
He turned back to her and propped himself on his elbow. “Very well, sweet girl.”
“It wasn’t supposed to end that way, was it?”
“It can end different ways.”
“But you could have — I wanted you to. I love you.”
“No.” He sighed, drawing her close. “No, you don’t, darlin’.” He kissed her hands, breathing in the harsh lye soap and knowing he’d never think the scent mundane again.
Olana awoke one sense at a time, the utter winter stillness of the outside broken by the hum of the warm, well-banked fire, the steady rhythm of Matthew Hart’s breathing. He’d done that — banked the fire, set the pillow under her feet. When?
The smell of the Carsons’ crude force, of Matthew’s blood, of her own fear was cleansed, like the items of clothing strung, stiff and dry, on the clothesline. She felt the light hold of the ranger’s arm across her waist, still protecting, though the rest of him seemed lost in the bed’s depths, where he slept in childlike abandon. The dawning sun warmed her face and illuminated his. Olana no longer cared what he looked like underneath his beard, what life and the Klondike had done to his face. He stirred, nestled her closer.
She had never, she realized suddenly, ever seen him asleep. It hadn’t occurred to her until now that he might miss the bed he had given up to her. She wished she’d offered it back sooner. As long as she could stay, too. Olana giggled at the audacity of the thought, not able to work up a shadow of real shame. She felt too alive.
She slipped on her new homemade camisole and petticoat,
then left the bed without disturbing him. She found her clothes nesting happily with his, warm on the stones of the hearth.
The covers slipped off his back. Olana winced at the raw red slashes, at the swelling around them, at the remembrance of the blood. She kissed the hard, muscled knot of his shoulder before rebundling him in flannel and furs. He needed his sleep. Then coffee. She had watched him make coffee. She was sure she could do it.
She’d set the pot on a hearth stone when the animals grew so insistent she was sure they’d wake him. She could go out a few steps to the barn, feed them. But the thought of it kept her rooted to the wooden floor. She wanted to cry out her fear of the cold world beyond the treehouse, of the Carson brothers. Matthew would take her into his arms then, sooth her like a child. But she was not a child. Hadn’t he treated her as a woman last night? The animals’ cacophony rose higher. She slipped her moccasined feet into his boots, lifted his wide-brimmed hat from its nail, and headed out into the cold.
The barn was as neat and spare as his treehouse. His animals gave her welcome squawks until she removed the hat, freeing her hair and showing a face different from their master’s. Farrell’s horse backed into the stall she shared with Matthew Hart’s speckled mare. The gray goose hissed at her heels.
Olana had more luck with the chickens, once she found their grain and held it in the apron already heavy with his firearm. She sprinkled it as he and Mrs. Goddard had shown her, then checked the nests for eggs. Four, a good morning. “I’m going to learn how to make custard,” she told the hens.
“Will it be as good as your coffee?” Matthew Hart spoke softly from the doorway, two enameled cups in his hands. She approached, inhaling the steaming warmth.
“’Lana —”
She laughed her skittish laugh, avoiding his eyes. “I’ll have you know my name is —”
“Likely to get tangled in a man’s throat,” he groused.
“Call me anything you like then,” she said softly.
He stepped back. “You didn’t have to tend them.”
“Yes, I did. You needed to sleep. Because of your back, I mean,” she amended, feeling herself blush. “Shall we feed the horses?”
He led her to the grain bins, then showed her how to scoop out a bucketful and cast it into the horses’ troughs. The two mares hesitated, then began chomping.
Matthew covered the barrel’s bin, then lifted her on top so her legs dangled like a schoolgirl’s and her eyes were level with his. His face was pale, his eyes ringed in shadow. He must eat, Olana decided. His hands took hers and rested in her lap.
“’Lana. Last night. The things I did — I had no right.”
“I gave you the right.”
“Yes. But I’m older and I’m supposed —”
“Was I too young to please you? Is that why you turned away?”
“No. Oh love, you pleased me.”
“I could learn to do better. I want to make you feel as glorious as I did, over and over.”
He half smiled. “It doesn’t work that way for me. The over and over part, I mean.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a man.”
“How does it work?”
He kissed into her palm. “’Lana, I —”
“Don’t.” Her fingers danced nervously against his mouth. “I’m so happy. You don’t have to love me back. But don’t say you regret it.”
The goose honked madly as Matthew Hart lifted her off her perch and kissed her as if he were hungry for more than the warm eggs in her skirts.
He carried her to a pile of fresh hay, found their coffee, and joined her. They drank, she sipping, he in his long, gulps as they watched a swallow’s flight among the rafters. Olana leaned back. The silence between them was still charged, but now with a kind of peace that allowed her to enjoy the soft weave of his sleeve
brushing her cheek, of the way the thin lines of steam from their coffee found each other, mingled.
She felt his chin nudge the hair off her forehead. The simple gesture was making her breasts tingle. Did he know? The chin was suddenly gone, as was his arm from her shoulder. Even his scent of coffee and pine and leather seemed to be drifting away, though he hadn’t moved from her side. She couldn’t bear it. Olana took up his hands. She turned them over, traced along the long, powerful fingers, calloused, but gentle, warm, and now — quivering?
“Matthew, the other women, before me. Which taught you how to be … so loving?”
His eyes shot back to the barn swallow. “Don’t ask me that.”
“Why not?”
“Ain’t … proper.”
She laughed. “I thought
I
was too concerned with propriety!”
He shrugged.
“However did you know all those places …” She touched between her breasts where he’d settled his feathery kisses the night before. “How to make me feel so —”
“It’s not me,” he insisted. “I can’t make you feel anything. It’s you do the feeling.”
She touched his chin, trying to discover the outline of his face. “You don’t have to tell me everything. I don’t think I could bear everything. One. A teacher. A name.”
“Lottie,” he surrendered.
“Lottie.”
“I dreamed of her,” he ventured further. “The day of the storm. She sent me out to get you.”
“Matthew.”
He put his head back in the straw, winced. “Listen to what I’m telling you. And I ain’t even drunk.”
“I think it’s wonderful.”
“So do I,” he admitted.
“When did you know her?”
“Years back. In the Klondike.”
“But, there weren’t any women in the Klondike, at least none except — Olana’s mind raced, searching for explanations besides the blatant one. She found none. “Matthew, you didn’t consort with a —”
“She ain’t a whore now, she’s dead. You satisfied?”
He stood, yanked a pail through a bin of oats, brought it to the horses. Olana followed him.
“You loved her?” she whispered.
“What if I did?” he demanded.
“If you did, I would understand better. Oh, Matthew, do be patient with me!”
He turned, stood over her. “Come,” he said quietly. He took her hand and led her behind the grain bins. The small area was scattered with sawdust and shavings. He uncovered a length of tarpaulin from a sleigh. She stared. This is what the weeks of banging had been about. The sleigh was a curious, mixed design — long, like the husky-pulled ones she’d seen in lithographs of the Alaska gold rush. It had room for only her, with a running board across the back for him to stand on. But it was set higher to take on the Sierra drifts. She touched the curved side to steady her hands and thought it graceful in its own way.
“It’s finished,” he said behind her. “I can bring you back.”
“When?”
“Today. We can start out today.”
“But — the snow.”
“This will get us through.”
“Those men.”
“They’ll be busy tending their feet for a few days. I want you safe before they take any notion to come back.”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
“What’s going to keep you safe if they return?”
“I have another rifle. And the Colt. And Cal Carson’s Bowie knife besides.”
“What about your back? You can’t reach to tend it yourself. And your medicines are all shattered, ruined.”
He raked his hand through his hair. “I don’t understand. I thought you wanted to go home.”
“I do!” She turned away abruptly. “I’ll gather my things.”
“’Lana?” he called her back. “I didn’t burn everything.” He pulled her green velvet hat from the sleigh’s seat and offered it to her like a truant boy.
She stared at the remnant of a former life, at the few clumsy stitches he’d made in his effort to repair it. Then she took the hat from his hands.
“It’s best, ’Lana.”
She nodded. He wound his arm around her waist, and led her inside his tree.
For him she had broken her promise to her brother, that she would never let anyone else call her by a pet name. ’Lana. It sounded like another of his whores.
 
 
The first part of their journey was as quiet as the woods around them. Neither spoke, except for Matthew’s quiet urging of the horses. Even the woodland animals were silent. They traveled the steep, long path he had dug to the high meadow. Once there, the horses paved the way, their hooves crunching through the light-powdered snow into the ice layer beneath. The colors of the blue sky, red bark of the giant sequoias, and glistening white snow were so intense Olana had to rest her eyes with a glance at her lap. What kind of a journalist was she, Olana wondered. No kind. Just a spoiled heiress playing at writer, as everyone already knew. How else could she be only discovering this beauty only now that she was leaving?
She remembered no landmarks from her blinding journey there until she sighted the cave where Matthew had found her. She saw him again through her slowed, freezing senses, a great swaddled giant with eyes full of hope and her hat in his hands. Why didn’t she know enough to love him then?
He drew the sleigh to a stop, came to her side. “We’ll rest a
while,” he broke their silence. The worry, exhaustion on his face shocked Olana out of her own self-pity.
“Shall I —”
“No. Stay put till I get you.”
He built a fire inside the cave’s mouth before he allowed her out from beneath a mound of furs. He carried her to his camp. There he set her down on the tarmac, offered her a portion of hard tack, smoked venison, and a mug of the coffee she had made that morning. She ate, but he only swallowed his coffee, his hat low over his eyes.
Olana watched as the fire illuminated glimpses of the endless reaches of the cave. And she listened.
“There’s a stream under the ice,” he answered the question she hadn’t voiced. “Listen.” Olana held her breath, smiled slowly. Matthew took out his knife, dug. She leaned over the spot. The white stone veined in black shone up through the running water.
“The bed’s marble,” he said. Her hands slipped out of the muff he’d fashioned of rabbit fur, but he caught them before they reached the ice.
“No,” he warned gently. “We worked too hard on those hands.” He pressed her fingers against his beard and breathed, spreading warmth almost to her troublesome feet. Then he slipped her hands back into their covering. He sat closer, yet his deep voice was almost shy.
“Olana? I hope you’ll come back and see it, the cave, once the ice and snow are gone.” She leaned her head on his shoulder as he bent a twig in his hands until it snapped. He laughed bitterly. “’Course, why should you want to come back, after — everything? Here I am still touting my wilderness over your city when just yesterday, you very nearly, you could have been —” He shivered, making Olana remember the swelling redness around his wounds, and wonder if he’d worried too much about her to dress himself properly. She touched his arm the way she had when she’d played his wife.

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