Only Mine (7 page)

Rafe took a long knife from a sheath at his belt and held it out to her, haft first. “Watch out. I shave with it.”

She grasped the knife carefully, glanced quickly at the golden-bronze stubble covering his face, and smiled an almost hidden smile. “Do you? When?”

He chuckled, then shook his head and said wistfully, “You remind me of my sister. She was a sassy little thing, too. At least, she used to be. I haven’t seen her in years. Too many of them. Wanderlust is as bad as gold fever for keeping a man away from his family.”

Jessica sliced off strips of petticoat with remarkable speed. The knife was indeed razor sharp. It made quick work of the fine, ice-blue silk petticoat
whose color matched the wool of her dress. As she began binding Rafe’s arm, rifle fire broke out again.

Rafe cocked his head, listening. No return fire came. “Sounds like they’re giving up.”

“Praise God,” Jessica said fervently. “Wolfe was so exposed up there.”

“You were hardly out of the line of fire, ma’am. The stagecoach isn’t thick enough to stop bullets at close range.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” she admitted. “I was too worried about Wolfe.”

“Like I said, he’s a lucky man.”

“Maybe one day he’ll think so, too,” Jessica said under her breath. She ripped the trailing end of the silk down the middle and tied off the bandage. “There. That should help the bleeding. At the next stage stop, I’ll wash the wound with soap and clean water.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

“Yes, it is,” she said as she helped Rafe back into his jacket. “A man called Semmelweis discovered that the horrible infections of childbed fever could be prevented if the doctor simply washed his hands before he treated each patient. If one infection can be prevented by washing, it stands to reason that others can, too.”

“Are you a nurse?” Rafe asked, easing his arm into the coat with her help. “You have very good hands, gentle and quick.”

Jessica smiled. “Thank you, but I have no formal training. My guardian raised me to be able to handle the common emergencies of a country estate—broken bones, fevers, gashes, and such. I’ve also had experience with pregnancy and childbirth.”

Enough to know that I want no part of either
, Jessica added silently as she turned away to check on the
girl, who was still hugging herself.
If I learned nothing else from my mother, I learned that.

“Are you all right, Mrs. O’Conner?” Jessica asked.

Numbly, the girl nodded.

“And the babe?” Jessica said bluntly, putting her hands inside the girl’s coat and pressing lightly against the womb. “Is it well, too?”

The girl stared, shaken out of her apathy by the gentle, unexpected explorations of the other woman’s hands.

“Is there any pain?” Jessica asked.

Mrs. O’Conner shook her head.

A soundless sigh of relief came from Jessica. The girl’s torso was supple and resilient rather than rigid with untimely contractions. Smiling reassuringly, Jessica arranged the girl’s coat snugly again and sat next to her on the bench seat, giving Rafe the opposite seat all to himself.

“Tell me if that changes,” Jessica said.

The girl nodded, then smiled hesitantly. “Thank you, ma’am. I’m sorry if I insulted your husband. It’s just…” Her voice died and she crossed herself with a trembling hand. “I’m so frightened of Indians. It sh-shames me.”

“Don’t worry yourself about it,” Jessica said. A feeling of sudden, overwhelming tiredness claimed her as the urgency of the moment passed, leaving her drained. “I understand nightmares and daytime fears better than most.”

The girl looked at Jessica’s hands, saw their trembling, and made a startled sound. “You’re afraid, too!”

“Of course I am. I’m not too stupid to know when I might be mauled or murdered. I’ve simply learned how to hide my fear.”

Jessica shoved her hands beneath her cloak, pulled the heavy folds tightly around her, and closed her eyes, fighting for control. It had been much easier when there had been something to do besides sit around like a chicken trussed for the spit.

Finally the sounds of gunfire faded, became sporadic, and stopped completely. The pace of the stagecoach didn’t slow. One of the jolts was so great that a rear wheel lifted completely off the ground, sending Jessica and Mrs. O’Conner tumbling across the narrow aisle into Rafe. Jessica’s head cracked against the side of the stage, stunning her for a moment.

Rafe caught Jessica with his right arm and braced her across his chest as the coach slammed back down onto all four wheels.

“I’m terribly sorry, sir,” Mrs. O’Conner said, flushing as she righted herself and sat across the aisle once more.

“No problem,” Rafe said. “Ma’am? Are you all right?”

Dazed, Jessica shook her head, trying to clear it. Sounds seemed to come at her from all sides, battering her, making it impossible to think or speak. Darkness spun around her, closer and closer.

Struggling despite the certainty that she couldn’t win, Jessica fought the dark tide that was closing over her. Her last thought before she went under was a sick certainty that this was how her mother had felt each time the earl had dragged her into the marriage bed despite her screams and flailing fists, forcing her to accept the seed that one day would tear her apart.

Mrs. O’Conner made a horrified sound and went
to her knees in the narrow aisle in front of Jessica. “Mrs. Lonetree?”

Rafe didn’t bother calling to Jessica. He had felt her body go utterly slack. He cradled her cheek against his chest, covered her exposed ear with his hand, and whistled shrilly enough to shatter glass, demanding the attention of the men riding on top of the stage.

“Slow down!” Rafe yelled. “One of the women is hurt!”

The words sent a chill through Wolfe. He grabbed the railing and bent down until he could look through a torn curtain into the stagecoach’s interior. At first he could see nothing. Then Mrs. O’Conner moved aside and he saw Jessica cradled in the big rider’s arms.

The stage was still rolling when Wolfe swung down, ran alongside, and opened the door. With catlike quickness, he leaped into the stage’s interior.

“Is she shot?” Wolfe demanded, setting aside the rifle he had kept in hand.

“No,” Rafe said. “The stage hit a bump and sent her flying. She hit her head so hard that it stunned her.”

Wolfe grunted. “Well, that explains why the screaming stopped.”

Rafe shot him a surprised look, but Wolfe didn’t notice. He was too busy lifting Jessica from the stranger’s big lap and onto his own. Mrs. O’Conner drew back to the far corner of the seat to make room for him. Wolfe barely noticed the girl’s retreat. He was too busy controlling the irrational anger that had seized him when he saw Jessica in another man’s arms.

“That was some fancy maneuver you pulled,
mister,” Wolfe said as he examined the slight bruise forming on Jessica’s temple. “Don’t know as I’ve ever seen a man get on a stage like that.”

“The name is Rafe, and I wouldn’t have had a chance without your shooting and your wife’s quick thinking. If she hadn’t opened that door, I’d have had a hell of a time pulling myself up on top of the stage one-handed.”

“Thank Mrs. O’Conner. I’m afraid my wife was too gently raised to be of much use in a crisis,” Wolfe said curtly. He looked up at Mrs. O’Conner. “Allow me to thank you as well. If you hadn’t exposed yourself to fire long enough to pass up the rifle case, we all would have had a much worse time of it.”

“I…” The girl’s voice dried up as she looked at the fierce lines of Wolfe’s face, seeing the clear presence of the savage beneath. She looked away quickly. “I did nothing.”

Wolfe assumed the girl was simply being modest. He smiled at her and looked back down at Jessica. His smile faded. She appeared very small and fragile. Her face was bloodless. Even lips that were normally the color of ripe cherries had gone pale.

Now will you admit what I always knew?
Wolfe demanded silently of his unconscious wife.
You’re not the kind of woman who can survive the West, much less raise children in it. You’re a creature of lace and moonlight, an aristocrat who was never meant for hard use. You need a wealthy, titled husband who can wrap you in silk and satin and keep you from all harm.

I’m not that man. I never will be. I can no more change what I am than you can become a woman like Willow. 1 can only try to keep you alive until even your stubbornness has to give way before the truth.

We are all wrong for each other.

Silently, Wolfe held Jessica’s frail weight and cursed himself and her for the unholy tangle she had made of their lives; and beneath it all, he cursed the desire for her that gripped him even now, his body responding to the feel and scent of the girl he must not take, for then their marriage would be as real and final as death.

When Jessica’s eyes opened, the world swung dizzily around her, and the center of that world was a nightmare with dark eyes glowering fiercely down at her. With a stifled sound, she wrenched away. Wolfe’s hand came down hard across her mouth as he held her close. The ease with which he overcame her struggles would have panicked Jessica, had not her eyes finally focused enough for her to recognize Wolfe. Her struggles stilled instantly, for she knew Wolfe would never hurt her.

“Finished?” Wolfe asked.

Jessica nodded, for his hand gave her no way to speak.

“Good. We’ve heard quite enough of your screams of late.”

“She never screamed when I was around,” Rafe said evenly.

Wolfe gave the other man a look that would have frozen lightning.

Rafe gave the look right back.

“She’s a good hand at bandages, too,” Rafe added, opening his jacket enough to reveal his arm.

For the first time, Wolfe realized that Rafe had been wounded. Then Wolfe noticed that the bandage was made from an ice-blue silk that was the exact shade of Jessica’s eyes, which at the moment
were quite icy indeed. He lifted his hand from her mouth.

“Thank you, my lord,” Jessica said in a voice as cold as her eyes.

“I’m not a lord.”

“And I’m not a screaming ninnyhammer.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“It is no great trick to fool a man who is deaf, dumb, and blind.”

Rafe hid his laughter behind a cough. “How is your head, ma’am?”

“Still attached.” Jessica closed her eyes for a moment. “As is my tongue.”

She looked up at Wolfe and remembered all her vows to be sweet, gentle, witty, and companionable. A wave of fatigue swept over her like another dark sea. It was very lonely being married to a man who looked at her with such unforgiving eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Jessica said unhappily, her voice too low for anyone but Wolfe to hear. “I’ve done nothing but displease you. I wish we could go back to the days when you would run through a violent storm to find me. But we can’t, can we? I’m sorry for that, too.”

“We can end it, my Lady Jessica. Just say the word.”

“Never, my lord bastard,” she said softly, remembering the horror of having Lord Gore’s teeth and hands raking her naked flesh. “
Never.
”

Unable to bear Wolfe’s eyes any longer, Jessica looked away. She had no more energy to fight him or the pain slicing through her temples with each jerk of the stage. Darkness tugged at her, a darkness it took all her strength to hold at bay. Yet it wasn’t the blow to her head that drained her, it was the need to stave off the terrifying blackness
of her unremembered dreams.

Somewhere deep inside her, a child screamed terror into the wind…and was answered by a greater terror, memories condensing where none had been before.

“Jessica?”

There was no answer.

At first Wolfe thought she had fainted again. Then he saw that her eyes were open, fixed on something only she could see.

Something terrible.

A chill touched Wolfe’s spine as he realized how deep Jessica’s fear must have been during the attack. Despite his vow to wear her down until she agreed to an annulment, he couldn’t help but ease her closer to his body, cradling her, protecting her because at that moment she was too defenseless to protect herself.

“Jessi,” Wolfe said very softly against her ear, “let me go. Don’t make me hurt you any more.”

Although he was certain she heard, she didn’t answer him in any way.

“Is that what you want?” he asked roughly. “No quarter asked and none given?”

Jessica neither moved nor spoke. It was as though nothing had been said between them.

“So be it,” Wolfe said, his voice bleak. “No quarter asked and none given.”

T
HE
Rocky Mountains rose steeply beyond Wolfe’s home. Their icy peaks were swathed in clouds, their broad shoulders streaked by the changing season, and their feet firmly rooted in the plains Jessica had learned to love while on safari with Lord Stewart. She had never been to Wolfe’s home, for Lord Stewart had preferred to hunt in Wyoming Territory. Even so, she hadn’t expected Wolfe’s house to be large, for she knew that most Americans couldn’t afford such splendor as Lord Stewart’s country mansions.

However, Jessica hadn’t understood what living in a small house meant in terms of day-to-day intimacy. Wolfe had. He had been anticipating her dismay with real pleasure, assuming that it would bring him a quick victory in the battle for annulment.

“Your house is quite handsome, but…” Jessica’s voice died.

“Yes?” Wolfe prompted, knowing very well what was bothering Jessica.

“There is only one bedroom.”

His black eyebrows lifted in silent, sardonic amusement. “Are you certain?”

“Quite,” Jessica said, slipping back into the
clipped accents she had worked so hard to shed. “And there is only one bed in that room.”

He nodded.

Smiling, forcing her voice to be teasing, Jessica asked, “Are you going to make your bed in the willows with the birds?”

“Why would I do that? The bed is large enough for two.”

“Wolfe, I’m serious.”

“So am I. I’m not an aristocrat, your ladyship. I’m an untitled bastard. In America we have a quaint custom among the lower classes—husbands and wives share the same bed.”

Jessica’s heart began to beat frantically. She clasped her hands together to hide their trembling and smiled coaxingly.

“Surely you’re joking.”

He laughed and said distinctly, “No, I am not.”

“You must be,” Jessica said, her voice light despite the pleading in her eyes. “No woman would suffer a man every night.”

“No
aristocrat,
surely,” Wolfe retorted. “But a Western woman would. Ask Willow Black. She and Caleb share the same bed night after night after night, and both of them spend their days looking like they’ve swallowed the sun.”

The naked longing in Wolfe’s voice irritated Jessica so much that she forgot her fear of sharing not only a bedroom with Wolfe, but a bed as well.

“Willow again,” Jessica said, concealing her annoyance beneath a sigh. “What a paragon she must be.”

“Yes.”

“Where do Western women who aren’t paragons sleep?” Jessica asked mildly. “In the stable?”

“Only if they don’t spook the horses.”

“No stable for me, then.” She took off her hat and shook down her half-unraveled braids. “The horses will take one look at my hair and think the hay is on fire.”

Unwillingly, Wolfe’s expression softened. In the days since the attack on the stagecoach, it had become nearly impossible to be with Jessica and not enjoy her company. She had been unfailingly cheerful, agreeable, charming, and witty. With one exception, she had enlivened the long stage ride for everyone.

The exception was the powerful blond stranger who had given them only one name: Rafe.

Wolfe and Rafe had tacitly realized they would tangle if they both stayed caged up with a laughing young woman dancing between them. Without a word spoken on the subject, Rafe had spent the remainder of the ride with the driver. At the second stage stop, Rafe had bought a horse and saddle from a homesick Easterner and ridden off toward the setting sun after expressing his appreciation of Jessica’s nursing once again.

Rafe had been much too appreciative of Jessica, as far as Wolfe was concerned. Watching Jessica’s glance follow the soft-spoken Rafe until he vanished into the incandescent eye of the sun had rankled Wolfe deeply. He couldn’t help wondering if Jessica would have stared at Rafe in fright as she had at Wolfe when she awakened on the stage and found herself in his arms.

“You may sleep in my bed like a Western wife or you may sleep on the living room hearth like a favorite hound,” Wolfe said coldly. “It’s your choice, just as the marriage was your choice.”

Jessica forced herself to smile. “That’s very generous of you. I know how well you like hounds.”

Wolfe’s indigo eyes narrowed, but before he could say anything, Jessica turned away and looked at his bedroom once more. At first she didn’t really see it, but gradually the lines and colors beguiled her as they had at first glance. The room was like Wolfe himself, elegant and very masculine at the same time. It was the elegance of a falcon or a cougar, a matter of balance and strength rather than delicacy.

Like the exterior of the house itself, the room’s walls were composed of peeled logs. The inner face of the logs had been sanded to smoothness and polished to a fine luster, giving a warm, subtly rich feel to the room. Although the furniture had been made by a man who loved the grain and flow of wood, the stark simplicity of the design was almost startling to eyes accustomed to European luxury.

Yet the lines of bed and dresser, table and chair drew Jessica’s eyes again and again, pleasing her in the same way that patterns of geese flying against an autumn sky pleased her. The beautifully colored blankets and the pale, luminous fur throw that had been folded at the foot of the bed were as rich as anything owned by a duke. A sunburst of clear crystals had been placed like a bouquet on the bedside table, but unlike a bouquet, the crystals would never fade and die.

“You have a fine sense of texture and proportion,” Jessica said slowly. “The room is quite beautiful. The furniture is…extraordinary.”

“Sarcasm, Lady Jessica?” Wolfe retorted, looking around his bedroom.

She stared at him, startled by the bite in his voice. Before she could speak, he did.

“The furniture was made by a backsliding Shaker in exchange for room and board over a long winter.
The blankets are standard trade goods from the Hudson Bay company. So are the furs.”

“If I intend sarcasm,” Jessica said tartly, “you won’t have to inquire. You’ll know.”

“Will I? Then tell me what you see in this room to please a gently raised lady’s eye.”

“Many things,” Jessica said, accepting the unspoken challenge. “The lines of the furniture are simple to the point of starkness, which emphasizes the appealing warmth of the fire, the rich colors of the blankets, and the inviting texture of the fur. The fireplace is quite clever, for it opens into two rooms at once. And is that a hipbath behind the screen?”

“Yes.”

“It’s quite large.”

“So am I.”

Wolfe watched as Jessica ran her fingertips over the straight back of a nearby chair.

“You have everything you need for comfort, and you have beauty as well,” she said quietly. “Whoever made this was a fine craftsman who loved wood. See how the grain of the wood both matches and repeats the lines of the chair?”

Wolfe saw more than that. He also saw the latent sensuality in Jessica, the sheer physical pleasure she took from the feel of the smooth wood beneath her fingertips.

“And the fur,” she added, walking over to the foot of the bed, “is magnificent.”

“It comes from Arctic foxes. They live at the foot of glaciers whose crevasses are the exact blue of your eyes.”

“Is it a beautiful color?” she asked softly.

“You know it is.”

“It never seemed so to me.”

Jessica’s fingers speared through the thick white fur, seeking and finding its softest textures. The sound of pleasure she made as she stroked the fur brought every one of Wolfe’s hungry senses to alert. The thought of those slender fingers tangling in his own hair sent a shaft of desire through his body. He turned away abruptly.

“I’ll bring your trunks in here. No matter where you decide to sleep, you’ll use this as your dressing room.”

Jessica looked up curiously, caught by the husky note in Wolfe’s voice.

“While I finish unloading the wagon,” Wolfe continued, “you start fixing a cold supper and some hot coffee. The supplies are in the burlap sacks. You might as well put everything away. Then you’ll know where everything is when you need it for cooking.”

“Wolfe,” Jessica said quickly.

He turned around.

She started to explain that she didn’t know the first thing about fixing suppers, whether cold or hot. The aura of expectancy in his stance told her that he was waiting for just such an invitation to bait her again on her inadequacy as an American wife. She wasn’t certain her temper was up to that at the moment.

The long, uncomfortable wagon ride from the stage terminus in Denver had tried Jessica’s resilience and resolve to their limits. She was stiff, cold, bruised, and more exhausted than she had ever been in her life.

But she was expected to cheerfully conjure a meal for that most demanding of all creatures, a Western husband.

“Yes?” Wolfe asked in a silky voice.

“I was just, er, wondering where to put my clothes.”

“As I didn’t know I was going to acquire a wife in England, I didn’t buy any dressers or armoires for your clothes.” His smile was a thin white curve against the darkness of his face. “Not that it matters. You won’t be here long enough to repay the trouble of unpacking even one trunk.”

“Oh? Does that mean we’re leaving on another trip right away?” Jessica asked in an artificially bright voice.

“We aren’t. You are. Back to London.”

“Ah, that trip. Well, you know how foolish it is to count unhatched chicks. I feel the same could be said of unhatched
trips.
”

Wolfe looked at Jessica’s bright smile and felt his temper fraying. If she had sulked or complained, he could have berated her, but her inexhaustible well of cheerfulness made that impossible.

She knew it as well as he did. Better, perhaps.

“The kitchen, your ladyship, is through that door.”

“Why, so it is.”

She gathered the skirts of her ruined travel outfit in her hands and eased through the doorway that was filled by her unwilling husband.

“I’ll expect supper within the hour,” Wolfe said as yards of soft wool brushed over his thighs, tightening every muscle in his body. “I’ll expect the coffee a hell of a lot sooner.”

“I’m sure you will,” Jessica agreed.

But she wasn’t sure Wolfe would get it.

The kitchen had a brick floor, cupboards everywhere, a pump, a sink, and a big stove. The small table in one corner obviously had been made by the Shaker craftsman who had furnished the bedroom
. Sacks of supplies were lined up the length of the floor.

Now that Wolfe was no longer present to measure Jessica’s mood, her smile vanished as thoroughly as though it had never existed. In the place of her determined cheer was a physical fatigue that made even standing upright an ordeal. Mentally, she was no more resilient.

Nor was there any relief in sight. No matter how hard she tried to coax some simple human warmth from Wolfe, since the Indian attack he had remained abrupt, difficult, cold, and impossible to please. If that wasn’t bad enough, the wind seemed to moan without pause over the land. When she was alone, she heard the wind with terrible clarity.

She was always alone now, and never more so than when Wolfe was nearby. Automatically, her hand went to her breasts. Beneath her clothes, the locket lay concealed among soft folds of lace. The familiar contours of the necklace reassured her.

“Well,” Jessica said, forcing cheerfulness into her voice, for anything was better than the unborn horror keening within the wind. “Where do you suppose Wolfe has hidden his coffeepot? And what do you suppose it will look like when I find it?”

The low ululation of the wind was more answer than Jessica wanted to hear. Hurriedly, she fumbled for the matches and lighted a lantern, for Wolfe had shuttered the windows before he left for London. She had watched various servants light various lamps all her life, but it took several tries for her to get the right combination of match, wick, and oil. The lamp smoked annoyingly, but it was better than nothing.

The wind raked over the roof and made the cap on the stovepipe rattle like distant chains, reminding
Jessica of her childhood in Scotland, when she had hidden in the kitchen with the scullery maids because she could no longer bear the sounds coming from her father’s suite of rooms. It had been a very long time since Jessica had thought of such things. She didn’t wish to begin now.

Humming to shut out both the wind and her darkly stirring memories, Jessica set to work. The air she hummed was one of her favorites, “Bonnie Laddie, Highland Laddie.” The words had always stuck her as over-simple, but the melody had a fine lilt that lifted her spirits. The more fiercely the wind blew, the more loudly Jessica sang her lively, wordless song, opening and closing cupboards as she searched for the coffeepot.

After opening every cupboard, peering in, and holding the smoky lamp aloft, Jessica still hadn’t found anything that resembled the graceful sterling silver urns Lord Robert’s servants had taken coffee from. Nor did she find anything like the small, plump sterling silver pots or tissue-thin china that had been used for service in the bedroom.

“Blazes,” she muttered.

Jessica began the search and the song all over again. Halfway through the cupboard, she sensed that she was no longer alone in the room. She spun around.

Wolfe was leaning against the door frame, his arms crossed over his chest and an odd expression on his face.

“That song…” he said.

“’Bonnie Laddie, Highland Laddie’. It’s a rather silly air about a Scotsman wearing a cap.”

Wolfe cleared his throat and tried not to reveal the laughter that was shaking him. “Of course. It’s
been so long since I heard the original words, I’d forgotten.”

He made a strangled sound and looked away from a moment.

“Are you well, Wolfe?”

Silently, Wolfe struggled not to smile.

“I know my voice isn’t of stage quality,” Jessica said, smiling wryly, “but no one has ever laughed at it before. However, if it amuses you so, I’ll sing more often.”

“I doubt the verses you know would be as amusing as the ones I know.” Wolfe watched Jessica tilt her head and look at him with wide aquamarine eyes. “You look like a cat when you watch me with such stillness.”