Brides of Prairie Gold (25 page)

My secret messages are plainer than his. I've left the cake and the ribbon. But his acknowledgment was so subtle that I didn't recognize it which made me wild inside.

I'm so angry, I'm furious at the oxen and the streams we have to cross. I hate the stinking sage and the prickly pear and the half cooked food and muddy water. I hate the noisy teamsters and Perrin Waverly and the haggard people we meet on the trail.

He's the only person who really knows me. Why is he doing this to me? His silence is cruel.

I'm so tired of waiting. Come to me, come to me, come to me.

"I wonder if we could walk a little," Perrin suggested, glancing back at Cora over her shoulder. Cora paced beside Augusta's wagon, wringing her hands in her apron and anxiously watching as Perrin joined Cody for their evening meeting.

Cody nodded curtly, then walked away from the squared wagons. Hurrying to catch up to his long strides, Perrin lifted her skirts away from the patches of prickly pear that plagued the entire Platte corridor. Every night she and Hilda spent an hour after supper picking thorns out of their hems and rubbing ointment on the scratches above their ankles. All the women hated the prickly pear. And the ubiquitous sage that ripped skirts and triggered sneezes. And the dust. And the lack of fresh water for bathing. And the afternoon heat, and

Cody halted on a sandy rise, a dark silhouette against the blood-red sunset. He folded his arms across his vest.

"We're out of earshot," he said as she climbed toward him, then turned her face into the dying sun. As far as the eye could see, the western horizon burned scarlet, orange, and lavender. "What's so important that it couldn't be said back there?"

The vastness of sky and land overwhelmed Perrin, made her feel suddenly lost. The great prairie stretched endlessly before them, a featureless green and brown ocean tugged by dangerous and unseen currents. As this hour, crimson-dark shadows tiptoed across the immense expanse and she decided she had never seen anything so empty or so lonely as this terrible and beautiful country.

Dropping her head, she blinked down at the flap of leather tearing back from the side of her boots. This would be the second pair of soles she had worn out, walking behind the wagons. Sometimes it seemed frighteningly arrogant and desperately foolish to believe that a small group of humans and animals could cross this endlessly vast land one plodding step at a time.

"Perrin?"

Raising her head, she gazed into his eyes, into the blue of a thousand stormy skies. Cody's face was darkly tanned now. The creases splitting his cheeks seemed deeper tonight, still dusty from the day's travel. She studied him silently, wondering if he had been avoiding her, forcing their evening meetings to be as brief as possible, or if she only imagined it.

Drawing a breath, she gripped her hands together and forcefully told herself that she did not want to stroke his face and feel the softness of brown whiskery stubble beneath her palm. She didn't wonder about the texture of his skin or yearn to trace the contour of his lips with her fingertips.

"Cora Thorp wants to be a bride," she said.

Cody frowned at the sunset, his fists resting on his hips. "No."

"With Lucy gone" She swallowed, finding it impossible to speak of Lucy's death. It was too terrible to think about. The memory of Lucy's lonely trailside grave would be painful for a long, long time. "There's an available bridegroom"

"The bridegrooms insisted on specific qualifications."

"No one works harder than Corayou must have noticed that. We all felt sympathetic toward Jane Munger when Winnie couldn't help with the chores, but Cora has been doing everything herself all along. She's twenty-three. That's young enough to bear many children. She's the fourth of ten children, so she knows about families and babies. She's thin as a rail, but she's strong. Cora is exactly what those men in Oregon are looking for in a wife."

His steady gaze was unwavering. "First, Lucy's bridegroom knew and loved Lucy Hastings. Paul Quarry didn't want just a wife, he wanted Lucy. I doubt you can run in a substitution and expect him not to notice."

A rush of pink stained Perrin's throat. "That isn't"

"Second, the Oregon men specified healthy, educated women. They're building for the future. They want women able to work hard, but equally important, they want educated women who will teach their children, who will bring culture to the community, who will polish the roughness off the edges of the territory. Cora Thorp is uneducated and about as polished as a granite chip. Bluntly speaking, Cora Thorp is a pair of hands and a strong back. The Oregon bridegrooms also want an educated mind."

Heat pulsed in Perrin's cheeks. "Is that how you and the bridegrooms see us? As callused hands and strong backs? A group of draft animals who can read and write?"

He stared at her. "That's stating it too callously. But if Cora had interviewed as a bride, I would have turned her away."

Perrin's hands curled into balls, and scarlet warmed her throat. "When the journey began, we had eleven brides. Were there only eleven bridegrooms?"

"No," he admitted after a reluctant pause. "There were twelve letters."

"So there's one hopeful bridegroom who isn't going to get a bride. Is that correct?"

He pushed back his hat, his strong features bathed in sunset red and orange. "Perrin, Cora isn't acceptable."

A spark of determination kindled in her eyes and her small chin set stubbornly. "Augusta intends to put Cora off the train at Fort Laramie and she refuses to give Cora any money to pay for her return passage to Chastity." Her eyes hardened as her voice sank to a throaty whisper. "Can you guess what will happen if Cora is abandoned at the fort with no money for food or shelter?"

Cody scowled into her flashing eyes. "This is between Cora and Augusta. The problem doesn't concern you or me."

"Yes, it does! I know what happens to a woman when she's left penniless. I know that brand of desperation all too well. I know what Cora will do just to stay alive, and I know how she'll feel about herself afterward. She will wear a taint for the rest of her life! We can't let that happen!"

"Damn it!" He slapped his hat against his thigh. "You don't recognize the word no. Why is it that other people's problems become something we must solve? That we can't allow to happen?"

Eyes locked to his, struggling not to let herself be distracted by the stomach flutter that always occurred when she gazed into his eyes, Perrin tried to frame an answer.

"I don't know why it's our problem, but it is," she said, frustrated by the question. She drew a breath. "If I can polish Cora a little, will that make a difference?"

"There's more to this than a clean skirt and how she holds a teacup. You know that."

They paced one direction, then the other, ending nose to nose, standing so close that Perrin inhaled the sweet tang of the venison he'd eaten for supper. She gazed at dying sunshine glowing in the soft fuzz on his chin and jaw, at the shining red highlights in his hair, and her heart rolled in her chest.

"Please, Cody," she whispered, yearning for him. Then she remembered what they were discussing and hoped he would mistake the sudden pink on her cheeks as an effect of the burning light. "All I ask is that you consider giving Cora a chance at a better life." She let her fingertips rest on his sleeve, unable to resist, then quickly withdrew them when she felt his muscled heat beneath the flannel. "Cora has been around Augusta for several years. She's undoubtedly picked up a lot of knowledge that she can use if she must. Please, I beg you to give her a chance. Don't abandon Cora in a military fort. Don't let that happen!"

His gaze dropped from her imploring eyes to her lips. "I didn't promise the bridegrooms a wife in the making, I agreed to furnish women ready-made to the qualifications they specified."

She noticed the pulse beating at the bronzed hollow of his throat and felt her breath involuntarily quicken. "Cora would be happy with so little. She'd work her fingers to the bone in return for a husband, a home of her own, and a brood of children. Just give her a chance. You gave Winnie a chance and look how well that turned out. Won't you please consider"

She bit off the words, forgetting what she had intended to say. Cody stared into her eyes with a hard dangerous expression that mingled anger and desire. She smothered a gasp and felt her knees go weak.

"Damn it, Perrin. When you look at a man like that, it's hard to refuse you anything," he growled, his voice thick.

Her breath hitched in her throat and her heartbeat accelerated. Surely, she thought desperately, she hadn't heard him correctly. Uncertain, she wet her mouth and trembled at the sound that emerged from low in his throat as he watched her tongue dart over her lips. Unconsciously, she swayed toward him, drawn by the lean irresistible magnet that was Cody Snow.

"Then you'll let Cora be a bride? I've persuaded you?"

"Tell me something." His gaze traveled slowly over her flushed face, moving from brow to cheek to slightly parted lips. "Is this about Cora? Or about Augusta? I'm assuming if Cora changed status, she wouldn't remain in Augusta's wagon?"

Perrin's gaze steadied helplessly on his mouth. His lower lip was fuller than his upper lip. She hadn't noticed that before. "If Sarah agrees, Cora would like to take Lucy's place in Sarah's wagon," she whispered. Why couldn't she stop staring at his mouth?

"Augusta Boyd can no more drive a yoke of oxen than she can lasso a buffalo." He watched the pulse thudding at the opening of her collar. "If Augusta can't keep up with the train, it's she who'll have to remain in Fort Laramie."

Of course Perrin had realized that Augusta couldn't cope on her own. But she didn't let herself dwell on the possibility of Augusta leaving; the thought gave her too much shameful pleasure.

"I care what happens to Cora." She made a gesture of dismissal. "I don't care what happens to Augusta."

That wasn't entirely true. During the course of her twenty-six years, Perrin had learned that hatred could forge bonds as strong as love, could create a fascination as powerful as that which existed toward one held most dear. In that context, she did care what happened to Augusta Boyd. In her secret heart, she wanted Augusta to receive her comeuppance. And Perrin wanted to be there when it happened.

A sigh lifted her breast. "Will you at least think about allowing Cora to become one of the brides?"

Cody paced in front of the sunset panorama before he faced her and threw out his hands. "I'll think about it, damn it. But that's all, Perrin. I'll let you know my decision in three days, when we reach Fort Laramie. But don't promise Cora anything. I'm against this."

"Thank you!" If she hadn't known Cora and others might be watching, she would have flung herself against his chest and kissed him in gratitude.

Imagining it swept her breath away. She would kiss him and kiss him until she was drunk and dizzy with kisses, until she burned beneath his lips. She would press against his body until she felt his manhood steely between them, until they were both damp and gasping. She would She caught herself with a sharp intake of breath.

Why did he obsess her like this? Why did the sight of him astride his horse make her feel weak inside? Why did her stomach flutter when she watched him pace along the wagon line shouting orders? What made her heart fly around inside her chest when she spotted him standing alone and hipshot against the evening sky?

Through word and action Cody had made it clear that he wanted no woman in his life. And Perrin was promised to a stranger in Oregon. Cody wasn't going to change and suddenly welcome a tarnished bride-to-be into his world. Plus, Perrin lacked extra funds to buy herself out of the marriage she had agreed to undergo. There was nothing between them but a chance meeting long ago, and now this journey.

That was all there could be.

Anything more would be fleeting and beyond the pale of decency. Perhaps a night of lust, an accident of loneliness and momentary need.

A shudder of apprehension rippled down Perrin's spine. A relationship with Cody Snow, no matter how exciting or how fulfilling, would become common knowledge within the small society of the train. She would irrevocably blacken herself with the others. She would unravel any progress she might have gained toward redeeming herself with the brides from Chastity, Missouri.

She couldn't risk that outcome. These women would be her neighbors for the remainder of her life. They might eventually forgive her for Joseph Boydpossiblybut they would never forgive a second lapse, a lustful dalliance with Cody Snow.

Straightening her spine, regret and sorrow in her eyes, she stepped away from the heat and the scents of him and forced her thoughts to Cora. "I will proceed in the belief that you will not abandon a young woman to the soldiers' brothels, Mr. Snow."

"Perrin? Damn it, come back here!"

"I'm confident you'll reach the right decision," she called over her shoulder.

Cora ran forward as Perrin descended the rise, the blood-red sky behind her. "Lordy, lordy. There was all that to-ing and fro-ing, you walking after him, then him walking after you." Cora wrung her hands and peered anxiously into Perrin's face. "He said no, didn't he? He ain't going to let me be no bride! I just knew it! I ain't good enough for them swells in Oregon!"

Perrin caught Cora's fluttery hands in hers. "He said he'd think about it."

"He's just going to say no later!"

Biting her lip, Perrin gazed at the lone figure pacing angrily before a tableau of crimson and ink. "We have a lot to accomplish before we reach Fort Laramie. A lot to arrange." She turned to study Cora's pale anxious face. "First things first. We'll speak to Sarah."

Sarah eased her back against her hands. "You want to move from Augusta Boyd's wagon to mine. You'll ride with Hilda during the day if that works out, and Perrin will ride with me, but when we halt for the night, you'll return here and help with my chores? Is that the gist of it?"

"Yes, ma'am," Cora said, bobbing her head. "I'm a good worker, Mrs. Jennings. I can cook and bake. I can set up the tent in no time flat. I can"