His Remarkable Bride (13 page)

“You don’t want to see what the bedrooms look like,” Athos said as he walked back into the room, startling Elspeth out of her thoughts. “I should have made them clean up a little more often.”

“Is it that bad?” If she focused on concrete things instead of regrets, maybe her heart wouldn’t break.

Athos smirked. “We might need shovels. At least we won’t have to worry about Piper’s attic.”

They continued to work. Athos cleared away the last remaining mess in the dining room, bringing her a few dishes that had escaped notice the day before. As hard as she scrubbed or as focused as she tried to be on cleaning, Elspeth couldn’t shake the sensation that the house was too quiet. Maybe it wasn’t just the missing children. Maybe Natalie’s ghost was scolding her for letting Mrs. Lyon sweep in and destroy everything.

“How did you end up with such an interesting name?” she asked when she couldn’t stand the oppressive quiet anymore.

“Athos?” Athos straightened from where he was rearranging the shelves in the pantry, on the other side of an open doorway, to make room for the boxes and cans that had been living on kitchen counters. “It’s from Alexander Dumas’
The Three Musketeers
. My father was an avid reader, and Dumas’ stories were some of his favorite.
The Three Musketeers
was being published in serial form around the time I was born.”

“I see. So you’re literary then?”

He laughed. “I don’t have time to read, other than the dime novels I get to read to the kids at night.” His words trailed off to sadness for a moment. He cleared his throat, then continued. “My father used to read to us every night too. I think he read
The Three Musketeers
five times before I was ten. I always used to dream that I would be a musketeer.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah.” He huffed a soft laugh. His hands stilled on the shelves, and he stared off at nothing. “I always thought I would be a daring hero, running around the country protecting the king. Of course, that was before I realized America had a president.” He laughed and returned to work organizing the shelves. “I used to carry a wooden sword around with me wherever I went.”

Elspeth burst into a smile. “I can imagine that.”

He chuckled. “All I wanted to do was fight for what was right and good, defend the land, and have adventures. What I ended up doing was going to work right out of school, marrying too young and starting a family, and dedicating my life to the railroad.”

She put the last of the scrubbed plates on the counter to dry. “I’d say that’s pretty adventurous.”

“Really?”

She turned to lean her hip against the counter, crossing her arms. “Yes. Absolutely. You left everything to come out West and begin a new life.”

“Because that’s where my job sent me,” he qualified. “I wasn’t a brave pioneer, like Howard Haskell and his family.”

“I don’t know.” Elspeth shrugged. “It takes a lot of courage to say yes when your employer sends you out into the frontier.”

He finished his work, then stepped into the doorway, leaning against the frame. “Maybe. But keeping your nose to the grindstone while your children get older and your wife grows distant isn’t exactly the sort of thing Dumas wrote about.”

Between his words and the wistful look in his eyes, it felt as though a vise had grabbed hold of Elspeth’s heart. She noticed, possibly for the first time, that he had the clearest hazel eyes she’d ever seen. Plenty of other women would have found him too stocky and unkempt to be handsome, but there was something noble, something tender about him all the same.

She pushed away from the counter and crossed to close her arms around him in a hug. Athos drew in a breath in surprise, tensing for a second. Then he let that tension go and laughed.

“What’s that all about?” he asked as she leaned back to study his face.

“You looked like you needed it,” she answered.

He looked into her eyes, really looked. Something beyond sadness and defeat glowed there. Yes, she could see it. Behind those clear hazel eyes and scruffy face lurked Athos the Musketeer.

A moment later, he blinked, and an even deeper emotion flared to life. With a soft rush of breath, he dipped closer to her. His eyelids lowered as his lips sought out hers. She surged up to meet him with a thrill of gladness in her heart that she couldn’t explain. He kissed her gently at first, then with an increasing rush of intensity. His lips parted hers with more boldness than she would have guessed he had, and his tongue sought out hers. His arms tightened around her, one hand brushing her side close to her breast.

In a moment, the world was spinning for joy as she pressed against him. Athos Strong was deceptive. His kiss was passionate, his arms firm with muscle, and his embrace full of promise. Excitement zipped through her as she felt him stiffen against her hip. The sudden, mad urge to reach for him and give him the pleasure her soul felt he’d been missing from his life was almost irresistible. They could be exceptionally good together. Her heart and the experiences of her past whispered that temptation in her ear. But unlike her shameful past mistakes, she and Athos were married.

The distant cry of a train whistle blasted through their moment of intimacy as swiftly as a cannon. Athos jumped back, panting and flushed.

“It’s early,” he gasped, at odds with the picture he presented.

“What?” Elspeth blinked rapidly, pressing a hand to her pounding heart.

“The eleven forty-five. It’s early.” He leapt into motion, rushing out of the pantry and heading for the hall and the front door. “I have to be there if I can,” he went on, frantic and blabbering. “Trey is a good friend, but he really doesn’t know how to meet a train. It’s more than just unloading the cargo and passengers. There are things to be recorded, messages to send back to switching stations and central depots. I really should ask for an assistant. This sort of thing needs to get done, and I should be there.”

When he reached the front door, he pivoted to give Elspeth one final look. The heat was still in his eyes.

“That was nice,” he said, reaching for the door handle. “We…we should do that again sometime.”

“Yes, we should,” Elspeth answered.

But he was already rushing out the door, like a schoolboy, giddy over his first kiss.

She was standing by his side, her hair wreathed in summer daisies, the way it had been for their wedding. The sun shone merrily down on a green church lawn. The air was scented with honeysuckle and roses. Every part of him was warm from his head to his toes…and one important area in between. The minister murmured dreamlike words, and he knew the time had come for him to kiss his bride. He turned to her, drawing her into his arms and slanting his mouth over hers. She responded with open affection, looping her arms around his neck. His body sang with need as their tongues twined, as they pressed against each other. He was ready, aching with need, heart bursting.

Only when he leaned back to smile at his wife, it was Elspeth’s beautiful face he saw, not Natalie’s.

Athos awoke with a start. It wasn’t the first time he had dreamed of that wedding day, far more idealized than it had actually been. Dreams about Natalie were common enough. They’d spent over a decade together, after all.

Dreams about Elspeth were something else entirely. In his dream, she had been so, so beautiful. So alive and welcoming. Like she had been the day before when he’d kissed her. He’d carried that kiss with him through the entire rest of the day, tasting her lips on his, feeling the softness of her curves pressed against him. One kiss, and Elspeth had stirred something to life in him that had—

He sucked in a breath. He was hard as a rock. Hot, pulsing need had him at full attention. And heaven help him, it felt good. Waking with an erection was common enough, but not one this strong. The delicious fullness had him stretched and sensitive…and half out of his mind to know what to do about it. Thank God he lay on his side with his back to Elspeth. Even if she was awake—which he doubted based on the steadiness of her breathing—she wouldn’t be able to see the mammoth tent he was likely to make of the blankets if he had been lying on his back.

Elspeth. He could smell her feminine scent, feel the heat of her body only inches away from his. The gentle rush of her breath against the pillow and the brush of her arm against his back told him she lay on her side facing him. He could twist to face her. He could keep going and roll her to her back. He could lift up her nightgown and graze his hands against the silky-smooth flesh of her inner thighs, parting her legs. She would probably be wet and ready, the furnace of her desire stoked even hotter than what he’d felt when they kissed the day before. He could slide between her thighs and glide—

He stifled a moan as his erection twitched. Another part of him wanted to laugh out loud. When was the last time he’d felt this kind of anticipation, this heady lust? Arousal was a dangerous game to play when young children might bounce into the room at any second and crawl into bed with you. That wasn’t a problem at the moment.

A devilish thought struck him. Flushing hot with desire and daring, he slowly inched his hand down to the drawstring of his drawers. He paused to listen, checking to see if Elspeth had awaken yet. Everything was still, so he tugged on the string. It came loose. He paused to listen again. Still nothing. He swallowed and reached into his drawers.

A long, hungry sigh escaped from his lungs as he wrapped his hand around his swollen shaft and gave it a gentle tug. Too long. It had been too long since he’d done even that. It was a pale, pale imitation of what he really wanted. He wanted to bury himself deep inside of his wife, Elspeth’s perfect, willing body. He wanted to kiss her and stroke her and show her all of the things he’d learned in a decade of trying to make up for not being the man Natalie wanted to marry. He wanted to make Elspeth sigh and whimper as he brought her pleasure like—

“What’s the matter?”

Her piercing question came simultaneously with his release. His groan of completion ended up sounding more like a shout of terror. He thanked his lucky stars for the blankets covering him and twisted to look over his shoulder at her.

“Nothing?” he squeaked, panting.

One wide-eyed look from Elspeth and he knew he couldn’t hide anything. It didn’t help that a fine sweat had broken out on his brow and he was hot enough to guess he was bright red. The fact that he kept his hand well under the covers probably gave things away too.

Elspeth’s shock hung on for another second before her lips twitched. She snorted, eyes dancing with mirth, then slapped a hand to her mouth.

Athos squeezed his eyes shut, praying that in spite of her experience she didn’t know enough about men to guess how they played with themselves.

His prayer fell on deaf ears as she scooted to climb out of the bed and teased, “I guess I should let you get on with things in peace.”

He blew out a breath and turned away to press his face into the pillow. “Sorry,” he mumbled into the muffling feathers. “I’m so sorry.” In spite of everything, a giggle bubbled up from his heart.

“Oh no,” Elspeth insisted. She reached for something in her trunk, then appeared at the very edge of his vision, rushing for the door. “I understand. Men have…needs. Don’t let me disturb you.”

She pulled open the door, flew into the hall, then shut the door behind her. A muffled laugh followed.

Athos closed his eyes and did the only thing he could. He laughed at himself, laughed at the ridiculousness of getting caught doing the same thing that Hubert probably lived in terror of being caught at, and laughed because Elspeth was laughing with him. That last filled his heart and soul with a kind of bliss that he never saw coming. She hadn’t screamed or scolded or been disgusted, she’d laughed. She’d understood.

He sighed and shook his head, rolling over gingerly and slipping out the clean side of the bed. He should have turned to her for release after all. As he walked carefully to the wash table to clean up, he vowed that next time he would.

Elspeth didn’t say anything about the incident once he had cleaned up, dressed, stripped the bed, and headed downstairs, but she did grin and giggle the whole way through breakfast. They didn’t really talk about anything. All they could do was sit there and snort over their sausages, well aware of the implicit joke in what they were eating. It wasn’t until Elspeth hurried upstairs to dress for church that he realized they’d passed the morning together happy and silly, even though the children weren’t there.

The sobering truth that the children weren’t there grew even more meaningful when they arrived at church for Sunday services only to find that neither the children nor the Bonneville family were in attendance.

“I would have expected them to at least bring the children to church,” Athos whispered to Elspeth as they took their seats, waiting for the service to start.

“Perhaps they decided to conduct their own services at the ranch?” Elspeth suggested.

Athos shook his head. “I seriously doubt it. Bonneville is the sort who goes to church to be seen, not to worship.”

That thought and the absence of his family—well, except for Elspeth—stuck with Athos through the entire sermon, making it impossible for him to concentrate. He was a basket of nerves by the time Rev. Pickering finished and adjourned the congregation to the potluck that waited for them under the tent outside.

The very same tent where his youngest angels had rammed into the Bonneville sisters all those weeks ago, setting the horrible wheels in motion that they were now dealing with. If he had just been a little more contentious of his children. If he had only kept a closer eye on them.

“I can’t just stand here socializing when my children need me,” he blurted in the middle of a conversation with Pete and Josephine Evans and Libby and Mason Montrose. Whatever they were talking about came to an abrupt stop at his impatient statement. “We should go out there and demand to see them,” he went on, turning to Elspeth.

“If that’s what you want to do.” Her eyes shown with just the sort of enthusiasm he needed to see from his helpmate right about then.