Texas Angel, 2-in-1 (41 page)
“I’ve got it.” But he wasn’t fast enough to avoid brushing her arm nor her loose tangle of lilac-scented curls. He wanted to plunge his whole face into those curls, breathing lilac until the sweetness of it oozed from his own skin.
She giggled as he pulled one way on the saddlebag and she pulled the other. She dropped her hand when she saw he had a firm hold on the bags, but she could not seem to make herself move away from him. It was he who moved, rather quickly, she thought.
“You must be hungry,” she said.
He had been hungry for three weeks, deprived of the sustenance of her presence. He had been empty and realized only now just why.
“That’s a good guess” was his casual reply. “Let me get my horse settled first.”
Could he possibly guess just what he was doing to her at that moment? Could he see how every fiber of her heart, even her soul, was stirred? Could he realize what she was only just now discovering? Perhaps he would despise her if he knew, resent her for ruining a perfectly good arrangement.
She forced herself to walk calmly at his side toward the barn. But as they walked, the door of the cabin flung open, and Leah appeared.
“Papa!” The child grinned, then toddled forward. She had been walking for a few weeks now but was still not completely steady. With her eyes focused on her father, she forgot about the step as she careened toward him. She tumbled down.
Elise and Benjamin both rushed to her rescue. They reached her at the same moment, their four hands thrust out. As they bent, their heads brushed.
“Sorry,” they said in unison, their warm breath mingling. It was a full moment before they jerked apart and refocused on the child sprawled at their feet.
Benjamin scooped Leah into his arms. She was whimpering a bit and had a skinned knee, but otherwise she was no worse for the mishap. Her father and stepmother, however, were practically panting, as if they had been the ones to fall—not down a single step, but rather down a precarious cliff.
Y
OU MIGHT SAY I RECEIVED
a mixed reception,” Benjamin told Elise when she asked about his circuit. “I frankly confessed my mistakes and asked their forgiveness. I wanted to tell them all about the new perspectives I’ve been learning, but I restrained myself for the most part.”
“Why is that?” Elise asked.
They were alone in the barn. Micah had left when Elise and Benjamin entered, taking Leah with him back to the cabin. He looked anxious to leave the barn as soon as Benjamin had entered and attempted to engage him in conversation. His answers to Benjamin’s questions had been short and strained. He’d noted Leah’s skinned knee and volunteered to tend it.
Elise should have gone back to the cabin also to check on the children, but she simply could not pull herself away from Benjamin’s side. She asked Micah to let her know if she was needed. She wanted to hear about Benjamin’s trip almost as much as she wanted to be near him.
“I didn’t want it to appear as if I was just foisting a new doctrine upon them.” He paused thoughtfully as he brushed his tired horse’s coat. “It is all so very personal that I found it hard to properly express it. I hardly know how to preach from my heart. It would be best if they saw it in a changed life rather than in words from my mouth.”
“But that’s rather difficult, seeing them as you do only on the circuit.”
“Yes. I wish it could be otherwise. For more reasons than one.” He lifted his eyes to meet hers. His were nearly the color of sapphires now in the dim light of the barn.
“What do you mean?” As she looked into his eyes, she sensed that somehow she was involved in those reasons.
She was right.
“I realized something while I was gone,” he said. “I missed being home. I missed . . . everything. The children . . . everything.”
“Everything . . . ?”
“Yes, you know . . .
everything
.”
As he breathed that final word, her heart began its thumping drum-beat again. She could barely steady her voice to ask, “What will you do, then?”
“Maybe I should make my parish come to me for a change!” He chuckled. “At any rate, as things now stand, I doubt very many would. I wrote a letter to the mission board in Boston and left it in Cooksburg on my way home for Mr. Petty to post. I haven’t communicated with them since Rebekah’s death, when I wrote to inform them of that and of my inability to maintain my circuit, what with caring for the children. This time I formally requested an extended leave of absence.”
“So you aren’t going to continue your circuit?” She tried to mask the hopefulness in her tone.
“I can’t right now. Maybe it is just my imagination—a pathetic hope that it is so—but I feel I am needed more in my home now. I need to strengthen my bonds with the children. I cannot lose the younger ones as I have Micah. You have been wonderful with them, Elise, but they still need a father.”
“I agree.”
“I set out on my circuit this time mostly to discover just where I belonged, and it was never clearer to me that I belong here. Oddly, though, I made that discovery just as I have realized I have so much more now to impart to my parish than I ever did before.” He shook his head. “Life is never simple, is it?”
“No, it isn’t, but . . .”
“Yes?” He looked at her eagerly, as if he hung on her every word.
A bit flustered, she continued. “Nothing is truly final. Now you will bide a season with your family because that is where the need is. Another time may come when you will be free to minister again.”
“Of course. I see that . . .” His voice trailed away, but his gaze lingered on her a moment longer, then he jerked away. “Everything seems so clear and simple when I am with you, when I talk it out with you.” The brush hung limp in his hand, the horse seemingly forgotten. “Elise . . .”
She heard a small thud as the brush fell into the hay, then suddenly his arms were around her. The embrace was hard, even clumsy, but she felt his arms tremble with fervency. He kissed her hair, and somehow the pin came loose and the waves tumbled in his face. He murmured things she felt rather than heard.
“Benjamin . . .”
She lifted her face, her lips parted and inviting. He accepted the invitation and pressed his lips to hers. She felt the hunger of his kisses, the passion seeming to explode. There was no finesse, little gentleness, only passion and immediacy, as if something had burst within him and escaped his control. She responded at first because she had longed for him more than she realized. Then his kisses grew rougher and seemed to bruise her lips. He pressed her so tightly to him she could hardly breathe.
Panic seized her as images of other men gripped her—men filled with urgency and nothing else. Men who had had their way with her, then tossed a few coins in Maurice Thomson’s cash box.
“Benj—” She tried to stop him. “P-pl.”
Suddenly he did stop, and she knew by the devastated look in his eyes that he was as appalled as she over what had happened.
“Wh-what have I done?” he gasped, horrified, his entire body shaking.
“It’s all right.” She tried to steady her voice.
“I didn’t mean . . .” He closed his eyes. “I never wanted to make you feel as you did . . . before . . . with Thomson.”
“Benjamin, listen to me. I understand.” Instinctively she knew what had just happened had nothing to do with her past, with cash boxes, with cruelty.
He stumbled back against the wall of the barn, hugging his arms to his chest. “How can you understand when I don’t—dear God! I have never taken a woman like that. I have never lost control. I almost—”
“But you didn’t!” she was shaking, but she knew him too well to believe for an instant that he would have hurt her in any way.
“It’s just that it’s been a very long time, and you were so close.”
If only he’d said anything but that. Yet what had she expected? Declarations of love? They had an agreement, and he was a man of honor—a man of honor who was only human. But had it meant nothing then? Nothing but the primal urges of a long-deprived male? Did he feel nothing at all for her? She thought she had sensed something from him when they were in the yard, but no doubt her own feelings had made her attempt to read something in him that just wasn’t there.
Miserably she realized her love once again had been spent on a man who would not return it. At the thought of Kendell’s harsh rejection combined with what now seemed another rejection, sudden tears sprang to Elise’s eyes.
She tried to blink them back, hoping, praying Benjamin would not see them, but they just kept flowing, ignoring her attempts to stifle them.
“I’m so sorry,” he said miserably.
“It’s n-nothing.” She sniffed and swiped the back of her hand across her eyes. But the tears would not cease.
“This will never happen again. I swear!” Benjamin was a man of honor, she knew, and he meant what he said.
The tears continued to flood.
“Please don’t cry!” he implored.
“I c-can”t help it!” Then she turned and fled.
Benjamin slammed his fist hard against the barn wall, barely grazing the hard log but drawing blood from his knuckles. He didn’t even consider chasing after Elise and comforting her—well, he did consider it for a crazy, idiotic instant. But who was he to comfort anyone?
It seemed all he could do was hurt the women he cared for. And even if he couldn’t admit more, he knew he cared for Elise. She had done so much for him, been so kind to him, encouraged him, supported him, loved his children, and he repaid that by treating her like the kind of woman he had once thought she was. But he knew in his heart Elise had never truly been
that kind of woman
.
What must she think of him now? How she must despise him. Yes, she said she understood, but just what did she understand? That he was like all the other men, thinking of her as merely an object with which to release his baser urges?
Was that in fact the case? He didn’t know . . . he didn’t think so. . . . He was so confused.
She was his wife, yet she wasn’t. He had missed her so on the circuit but shouldn’t have. He had yearned for her while he was gone but had never thought of her body, not in that way. Then the moment she was close, he had wanted her, body and all.
And the most confusing thing of all was that he still wanted her, yet feared losing her—not her body, but rather her sweet, dear spirit. She had run off in tears, probably wounded to the core. She would never be able to look at him again.
Perhaps that was for the best, after all. He couldn’t bear to hurt her as he had hurt Rebekah. He should never have allowed himself to get close to her, to need her, to even enjoy her. Their marriage was and could only be words on a piece of paper. It had been pure folly to have let it grow into more, to have become emotionally involved. He hadn’t planned for that to happen. They just seemed to have slipped into being comfortable with each other.
It wouldn’t happen again.
He’d put a tight rein on himself. If need be, he wouldn’t even look at her. It wouldn’t be easy, what with having to interact in the care of the children. Even eating meals was going to strain him. Too bad he couldn’t fall back on his circuit. But he would find enough distractions with his chores to maintain a proper distance from her.
He glanced down at his hand, blood crusting on his raw knuckles. He could still feel her, and he could still taste her lips on his. And the scent of lilac still lingered on his shirt. Like phantom pains he’d heard amputees feel, he curled his hands into fists, wincing at the pain.
He could stop looking at her and touching her, but how could he ever stop needing her?
E
LISE BENT OVER THE HEARTH
, scraped away a layer of hot coals that were covering the cast-iron Dutch oven, and lifted the lid. A sweet aroma of vanilla wafted up to her nose. It smelled right. It looked right. She slipped a knife into the center of the cake. If felt right. The knife pulled out clean.
Smiling, Elise took the Dutch oven from the coals and carried it to the sideboard. “Thank you, Lord!” she murmured.
Today was Micah’s birthday, and she had prayed the cake would turn out. She so wanted to make this a special day for him. In the last month he had been working hard with his father and John Hunter to build the addition. He deserved a celebration.
Unfortunately, she feared it wasn’t going to be much of a party. Things had been so tense around the cabin in the weeks since that ill-conceived scene in the barn that it was going to take a Herculean effort for both her and Benjamin to lay aside their personal difficulties long enough to offer a festive atmosphere for Micah.
If Elise had harbored a distant hope that she and Benjamin might be sharing that new room, it was more than hopeless now. Benjamin did not even move into the cabin when the room was completed but steadfastly continued to sleep in the barn. He came into the cabin only for meals and to play a bit with the children, all but ignoring Elise.
She told herself it was for the best. She could not bear another rejection. And she dare not do anything to risk ruining the good life she had found for herself and for Hannah by clinging to an unrequited love. She could be distant, too, and she would be that if it was the only way to make this arrangement work. In time she would forget those stirrings she had been feeling. Why, those feelings probably had nothing to do with love at all. She’d just been lonely for companionship, that’s all.
It had no doubt been the same for Benjamin.
Yes, he was wise with this new tack. The companionship that had grown between them before had been a dangerous mistake. They were both too wounded to take such risks.
After supper Elise presented her cake to Micah. He seemed pleased and surprised. For a few minutes some of the tension in the household lifted. Benjamin even acknowledged Elise by complimenting her on the success of the cake.
When Elise presented the buckskin shirt to Micah, he was actually speechless for a moment, his mouth hanging ajar as he gazed at the garment.