The Devil You Know (18 page)

He raised his head. “‘Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring'?”

She nodded. “You?”

“The same thought.” Israel blinked when Willa smiled again, this time brilliantly. It touched every part of her face, but most especially her eyes. He drank it in, but not all of it. He did not believe he deserved all of it. “So there
are
things you don't take seriously. I suppose I was hoping that kissing was not one of them.” His smile was a shade rueful. “Do you think we can come back from that lapse into humor?”

“Oh, I think so.” To prove it, she cupped his face in her hands and kissed him hard on the mouth.

“I guess we can,” he whispered when she put a hairsbreadth space between them. “That is very good to know.”

Willa briefly touched her forehead to his and released his face. She returned her hands to his shoulders as she drew back and sought a more comfortable position on his lap.

Israel gritted his teeth and winced.

“I'm too heavy for you,” she said.

“No. You're not.” He moved his hand from her hip and slipped it under the curve of her bottom. He shifted her in his lap until they were both satisfied with the fit, he perhaps more so because she was pressing in an agreeable way against the bulge in his trousers. Israel moved the hand he had resting on her back to her nape and made a half circle around her neck with his thumb and fingers. His thumb did a slow up and down pass from the base of her ear to the knob of her collarbone. He brushed loose tendrils of hair out of the way.

Israel bent his head and kissed her where his thumb had been. He sucked gently, heard her whimper, and moved on, kissing her once on the jaw, her cheek, and then the corner of her mouth.

He kissed her deeply, slowly, with heat blossoming in his belly and in his groin. She answered in kind, which made him think it was no different for her. She was a glowing ember in his arms, bright, hot, sizzling when he touched the damp edge of his tongue to her skin.

Israel felt her hands move from his shoulders to the uppermost button on his coat. She stopped there, fingers hesitating. He looked down and saw that she was tracing the circumference of the button with a forefinger. His eyes lifted and caught her staring at him.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

She was a long time answering. “I'm not sure I should say. You might think me a whore.”

“A whore? Willa. I would not think that. Ever.”

“You might.” She shrugged as if she had decided it no longer mattered. “I want to touch you,” she said, grasping the button and deftly pushing it through its hole. “Do you mind?”

“No. Not unless you will think me a whore.”

Willa did not laugh, but the shadow of a smile passed quickly across her face. “A rogue,” she said. “There's an old-fashioned word for what you are. Maybe scoundrel. Rascal, I think is a better description. Yes, definitely rascal.”

Israel had been called all those things, sometimes with amused affection, sometimes in punishing, strident tones. He'd also been called much worse: good-for-nothing, reprobate, degenerate, and sinner. Annalea had wondered at the outset if he was a villain, and he had not denied it.

By the time he glanced down again, Willa had three buttons undone and her hand was inside his coat working the buttons on his shirt. When she had room to slip her fingers inside, she tugged on his undershirt, pulling it up until she could slide her hand beneath it and lay her cool palm flat against his hot skin.

The contrast in their heat made him suck in a breath, but then her palm began to slowly warm and he released it during the transition.

“You are like a forge. Metal would glow on your chest.” Her hand jumped when his chest rumbled with quiet laughter. “No wonder you didn't need a blanket.”

He let her go on believing she had nothing to do with the heat. While she dragged her fingers from the hollow between his collarbones to just above the buckle of his belt, he fiddled with the knot keeping her robe closed. She did not appear to know he had undone it until his hand was under the curve of her breast. Her flannel nightgown was still a barrier between them, but his warmth slipped through as if there were no impediment, as easily as water through a sieve.

Israel regarded her inquiringly when she raised her eyes to his. Her bottom lip trembled almost imperceptibly. The widening and darkening at the center of her eyes was easier to see. She did not tell him to remove his hand. She did not tell him to stop.

His thumb made a slow pass across the tip of her breast. The nipple was already budding, but it stood at attention when he brushed over it. Her lip stopped trembling because she bit down on it hard.

“That's all right?” he asked low in his throat.

“Mm.”

He kissed her again, openmouthed, with hunger. She arched into him, filling the cup of his palm with her breast, and then suddenly she was a wild thing in his arms, squirming, changing position so that she straddled him, her knees resting on the bench on either side of his hips. It seemed to Israel that if she could have crawled under his skin, she would have done it. He didn't mind for himself, but he was afraid for her.

Their mouths fused, parted, came together again. They shared heat and air and desire, all of it equally, and then he was on his feet, carrying her, his hands cupping her bottom, her long legs wrapped around his hips. In three long strides he had her back pressed flush to the stall door opposite them. Her fingers were scrabbling at her robe, her gown, tugging hard to put them out of the way. Israel could not reach his belt, not without setting her down, and he was not going to do that. She pushed against his groin, grinding, and he felt himself swell and harden and thought he might come in his trousers like a schoolboy looking at his first French postcard, and then . . . and then John Henry sank a mouthful of teeth into his boot.

Israel growled deep in his throat but then so did John Henry. He tried to shake the dog off but lost his balance as soon as he was one-footed. Willa began to slide down the wall, and he hoisted her back up as if she were a saddle, which might have worked if she were a saddle, but she was a woman, all woman, and her forehead banged hard into his nose.

Israel's eyes watered with the force of the blow. Willa had to stop clutching his hips and find her own way down. When her foot touched the floor, John Henry nipped at her ankle.

“Hey!” she said, nudging him out of the way while she rubbed her forehead. “He bit me.”

“I bet he bit me harder.” Closing his eyes, Israel gingerly investigated the topography of his nose with a thumb and forefinger. It did not seem to be broken or bloody. “Damn, that hurt.”

Willa shimmied once so that her nightgown fell into place, and then she closed and belted her robe.

Israel blinked several times to clear his eyes. He saw the knot Willa had tied in her belt and knew there would be no opening that robe again tonight. He glared down at John Henry. Willa placed her fingers on one side of his chin and urged him to look at her. He did.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “If it's any consolation, your face is as manfully beautiful as the angels sculpted it.”

Amused, Israel let her grip his chin and tilt his head this way and that while she regarded him with a critical eye. For all her self-possession, he wondered if she knew her face was a glorious shade of sunset red.

“Lord, but you're pretty, Israel McKenna. It's a shame, if you ask me, and I will wager that those fine looks got you out of more than half of the scrapes you got into.”

Israel thought the tips of his ears might be turning pink, but he quelled the urge to run a hand through his hair to find out. “Why don't you sit down, Willa?” She was as wobbly on her legs as a foal, although she did not seem to be aware of that either. He guided her to the bench she had been sitting on earlier and she dropped like a stone. There was even a whoosh as air left her lungs when she went down.

He scooped one of the blankets off the floor, shook it out,
and wrapped it around her shoulders. She was shaking now, not much, but enough for him to see that she was beginning to take an accounting of her situation and all that had come before it. Israel did not imagine that was going to go well for him.

He sat down beside her and nudged her shoulder very gently. He spoke quietly, a husk in his voice. “Breathe. It will be better if you just breathe.”

She answered with a faint nod.

“Is there something I should apologize for?”

“No.” Her voice was pitched just above a whisper. “Not if you want to live.”

He smiled a trifle crookedly. “I suppose it's good that you have a sense of humor.”

She turned her head and cocked an eyebrow at him. “I'm serious.”

His crooked smile faltered, but then she turned away, and when she was facing forward, she dropped her head on his shoulder. “I guess you are,” he said.

“Mm.”

They sat without speaking for a time, heartbeats slowing, breaths coming more regularly. There was more stirring among the horses but even they quieted eventually.

“If we're going to be married,” he said at last, “then I'm glad our first time together wasn't in the barn.”

“And if we aren't going to be married?”

“Then John Henry will never be able to make it up to me.”

Willa chuckled soundlessly. She pointed to the hound. He was lying at their feet again, looking up at them under a heavily wrinkled brow. “He looks apologetic,” she said.

“No. He looks sorrowful, not sorry, and I think he's got a taste for my boot.” He raised his right foot and angled it to show her. “New one.”

“John Henry improved it,” she told him. “It looks like a boot that's been lived in, not Sunday-morning-only wear. I bet you had a pair of shoes like that growing up.”

“I did. I had to polish them every Saturday night until they gleamed and wear them until they pinched. Usually longer. My parents are frugal. I blame it on being Presbyterian.” Israel liked the weight of her head on his shoulder.
It felt comfortable and something more than that. It felt right. He did not understand that. He had spent years avoiding this sort of complication, and now that the complication was resting her head on his shoulder, he felt at peace.

“No one's showed up in Pancake Valley looking for work,” said Israel. “You have to wonder if that was ever Eli's intention.”

“I don't have to wonder. I know.”

Israel thought how like him it was to poke at the peace. He would always skip stones on the calm and glassy surface of a pond. “What about the proposal? Is that something he will do here or does he wait until he sees you in town?”

Willa looked up at him briefly and then resettled her head on his shoulder. “It's hard for you to let a thing just rest, isn't it?”

Israel gave a small start but not so small that Willa could have missed it. “I was thinking the same thing,” he said, and that he had admitted it aloud surprised him. “If there was freshly poured concrete somewhere in Herring, I dragged a stick through it.”

She chuckled.

“I'm serious. It's in my nature.”

“Huh.”

“You don't believe me? You would be the first.”

“Oh, I believe that you would disrupt a sleeping baby just to create a commotion, but that doesn't mean it's in your nature. It could merely be a habit of long standing.”

Israel shook his head and said curtly, “Don't make excuses for me.”

“I wasn't. I was offering an alternative explan—” She stopped. “I see. You'd rather believe it's in your nature. You feel no obligation to try to change that.”

“I am trying to deal honestly with you, Willa, and trust me,
that
goes against my nature. I want you to know what you're getting if I say yes to your proposal.”

“Do you?”

Israel missed the presence of her head as soon as she lifted it. He was aware of her shifting on the bench, swiveling so she could study him. He only gave her his profile.

“Tell me, Israel, where were you really going in Chicago on the last day you remember?”

It needed to be said, so he said it. “I was on my way to buy a train ticket.”

“All right. That makes sense. Now tell me where you were coming from.”

And this, most of all, was what she needed to hear. Israel turned his head so she could look into his eyes. Without inflection, he said, “The Cook County Jail. I had just finished serving my time.”

Willa woke up groggy from a poor night's sleep, but after sitting on the edge of the bed for a few minutes and pretending to listen to Annalea chatter, she shook it off. “I am going to ride out with Israel this morning and give him an opportunity to show me what he can or can't do with a gun. I'll probably take him to Beech Bottom. Would you like to ride along? You could pack some food and blankets, if you like.”

Annalea beamed and bounded out of bed. She hopped around, mostly because she was excited, but some because she was barefooted and the floor was cold.

Watching her, Willa bit back a smile and said, “Chores and then breakfast. Oh, and you should find your socks. One of them is under the bed. I think John Henry is sitting on the other.”

At the mention of his name, John Henry lifted his head and looked from Willa to Annalea.

“And take John Henry out with you when you feed the chickens,” Willa said.

“Can he come to the bottom with us?”

“No.” For a moment it looked as if Annalea wanted to argue, but then she seemed to think better of it. If that was any indication of how the day was going to go, it would be very good indeed.

With that in mind, Willa made a first attempt to wake her father and discovered he was already up, had the stove fired, and the coffeepot set to brew. He was sitting at the table in the chair closest to the stove, warming himself and watching that coffeepot. She could not fail to notice that he had shaved this morning and also combed and slicked back his
hair. He was wearing a clean shirt, reasonably clean trousers, and spit-shined boots. Willa's eyes wandered to the galvanized pail beside the stove. It was filled with kindling where it had been almost empty the night before. It seemed that Happy had been at his chores.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Mornin'.” He moved his stretched-out legs so she could get around the table without having to step over them. “I was thinking eggs and ham this morning. I brought a nice cut from the smokehouse, but I figured I'd wait for Annalea to gather up some eggs. Those chickens don't like me.”

“They don't like anybody except Annalea.” Willa put out the iron skillet and then took plates and cups from the china cupboard and set them on the table. “I have outside chores first,” she said, “but I'll be back to make breakfast. I wouldn't mind if you looked for me coming back, maybe had a cup of coffee ready.” When Happy nodded, Willa went to get her boots. She sat down at a right angle to her father to put them on.

Happy folded his arms across his chest and regarded Willa down the length of his nose. “I heard you come in the house last night, and that was after you were already in once. What took you outside?”

Willa did not flinch and she did not look up. She concentrated on getting her left foot in the correct boot. “John Henry.”

“He got out?”

Eyes downcast, she nodded. “I found him nosing around the coop. He made me chase him all the way to the barn. I don't know what got into him.”

“I'll be darned. Wonder how he got out.”

“Can't say.” She elected to pull on the second boot very slowly. “Did you step out last night? Maybe he slipped through the door and you didn't notice.”

“Except for hearing you, I never stirred. Funny, though, that he was so frisky, leading you on a chase that way. Not like the little fella to do that. I wonder if there's varmints in the barn.”

“There are always varmints in the barn,” she said dryly. She sat up straight, rolled her shoulders, and finally looked at her father. She lifted her chin in the direction of the stove. “Better check your coffee before it burns.”

Happy did not jump to his feet. He as was slow to unfold his arms and legs as he was to shift his gaze from Willa's face. “It couldn't hurt to have a look around the barn today, maybe find what attracted John Henry's sniffer.”

“Sure,” she said. “I'll do that.”

Happy turned toward the stove. “I have it in my mind to do it myself.”

Willa stared at her father's back and said nothing. She had not heard this particular voice from Happy in a very long time, but she recognized it immediately as the one he used when he would entertain no argument.

On her way to the barn, Willa saw Zach leaving the bunkhouse. She waited for him and told him about her plans to ride out to the bottom with Annalea and Israel. He was in agreement that it was time but advised caution when it came to putting a gun in Israel McKenna's hands.

“The only account we have that the man is a poor shot is his own,” said Zach. “Could be he's just being modest.”

Or lying
, she thought. Israel McKenna was a damn hard one to figure out. Last night he told her about his eight months in prison followed by four more in the Cook County Jail and his release on the day he had been walking along Wabash, but except to say he had not murdered anyone, he offered no explanation for his confinement, and she had not asked. Willa didn't know if he would have told her, or if he had, if it would have been the truth, but she was more certain just then that she did not want to find out.

“Maybe,” she said in response to Zach's observation. “I'll be careful.” They talked guns as they walked. Zach suggested she take Happy's old Colt .45 that he kept clean but hadn't pulled the trigger on for years, and plenty of the long ammunition for it. She agreed that they should probably know if the gun could shoot straight. As for the rifle, Zach was in favor of the Remington; she was partial to the Winchester. She decided to take the Winchester and leave behind the weapon that Zach preferred.

“You're still expecting trouble from Big Bar?” asked Zach. He opened the barn door and let Willa enter first.

“Aren't you?”

“Well, I guess you don't ever
not
expect trouble from them, but it's crossed my mind that I figured things wrong.”

“Hmm. Does that mean you think I shouldn't have asked Israel to marry me?”

Zach's hat tipped cockeyed as he scratched behind his ear. “I'm still puzzling that one out. I expected you'd put that proposal to someone from town. That Knowles fella, for instance, the one that works at the mercantile with his father, or maybe Ben Coldsmith. He's about your age and a widower. Good-lookin', too. Not as handsome as Israel, I'll grant you, but then not every man can look like one of God's fallen angels.”

Willa laughed out loud at that dead-on description. “Well, he hasn't said yes.”

“Can't puzzle that out either. Didn't take him for a fool.”

“Zach,” she said patiently. “You didn't say yes.”

He reset his hat on his head and gave her a lopsided grin. “You have to hire smarter hands, Willa. That's a fact.”

She chucked him lightly on the arm and then walked to Felicity's stall. She spoke to Zach over her shoulder. “You think you're smart enough to figure out what Happy's up to?”

While she made a surreptitious inspection of the barn, primarily in the area where she and Israel had been sitting, then embracing, and then sitting again, she told Zach about Happy being the first one up and dressed for the day in a manner that made her think he had something other than chores on his mind.

“He didn't tell you anything?” asked Zach.

“I didn't ask. I figured if he was shaved and cleaned up just because he wanted to be, I shouldn't call attention to it. It'd seem as if I were suspicious.”

Zach caught her eye and held up a finger in the manner of one addressing a point of order. “Um, I believe that, in fact, you
are
suspicious.”

“Well, of course I am, but I'm trying to act as if I'm not.”

“Huh,” he said, scratching behind his ear again. “Seems like you're goin' at the thing sideways, but then I always did think women like a meandering path.”

*   *   *

The ride to Beech Bottom also took a meandering path, but the steep angle of the descent made it the safer route coming and going. Willa knew Felicity could negotiate the more direct trail because she had done it before, but then they had been trying to rescue a calf that had wandered away from her mama and was frozen with fear on a narrow ledge of rock. There was no urgency now and unlikely to be any. The cows had been herded out of the bottom before the first snow so they would not be trapped without sufficient food or water, or worse, killed in an avalanche.

Willa was satisfied that Israel and Annalea and their mounts could manage the route she had chosen. She only felt the occasional need to glance back and make sure they were following. Annalea was the caboose of their little train, a position she insisted upon because she believed that Israel might need guidance from time to time, and she could do that better if she were behind him. Not only did Israel not take issue with Annalea's assessment, but he accepted it with equanimity.

If Willa had thought Annalea would not get wind of it, she would have told Israel that she liked him for it, then again, Annalea's sole purpose on this ride was so there would be nothing to get wind of.

Israel was agreeable to riding out when Willa suggested it to him after breakfast, and he was amenable when she told him there would be target practice, and he was patently amused when he learned Annalea would be joining them.

“Chaperone?” he had asked.

Willa was not surprised he had seen right through her ploy but a little surprised that he had called her on it. No matter what he said, he was not afraid of her. A faint smile lifted one corner of her mouth as she reflected on it. At least he had not called her a coward, and she was fairly certain that applied.

The day was unusually warm for the middle of January, and the bowl-like nature of the bottom circulated a gentle eddy of wind but protected them from gusts. The trail was mostly dry, pockmarked where small rocks had been kicked
up and overturned. There were patches of ice that Willa steered Felicity around and warned the others about.

When they reached the wide flat of the bottomland, Willa chose a site close to the spring. Water spilled steadily from an underground source and into a pool that was not completely iced over, although the hard glaze was creeping from the edges to the center. She dismounted and saw Israel was still in the saddle, looking around, eyeing the small, shrubby trees that formed a thicket along the circular edge of the clearing. There were taller trees of the same variety beyond the thicket, some of them twenty, twenty-five feet tall with glossy, rich brown bark and slender, drooping branches.

“Water birch,” she told him.

He turned to her. “Ah. So it's called Beech Bottom because . . .”

Annalea swung down from her horse. “Because my granddaddy Obie named it before he got down here to see what was what. That's what Pa told me. Obie had the naming of everything on Pancake land.”

There was no mistaking the pride in Annalea's voice. Hearing it made Willa smile. She told Israel, “Grandpa Obie said the land spoke to him, and he never changed his story and he never changed the name of anything, no matter that the facts did not support it.”

“Like Pancake Valley not being a valley,” said Israel.

“You noticed,” Willa said dryly. “Yes, like that.”

Chuckling, Israel dismounted. He landed lightly and patted Galahad on the neck. Over his shoulder, he asked Willa, “What's next?”

Willa directed the activity. Annalea was charged with finding a satisfactory location for the two coffee cans she had strung together and looped around her saddle horn. She wasted no time skirting the edge of the pool and heading into the thicket. While she crashed around in the brush, Israel took the reins for all three mounts and, as Willa instructed, took them to a place where he could not possibly shoot one of them. When she looked up from loading her gun, he was still walking.

“You don't have to go that far,” she called to him. “I thought you'd figured out that I am not always serious.”

He stopped, turned. “And I thought you'd figured out that sometimes I am.” He led the horses another thirty feet and hitched them to a tree. By the time he walked back to Willa, Annalea had reappeared from the thicket dragging the dead trunk of a birch behind her. The rope with the coffee cans attached was slung around her neck so the cans banged and bounced against her as she pulled. “What is she doing?” he asked Willa.

“Give her a moment.”

Annalea dropped the log when it was completely clear of the thicket and then rolled it toward the pool, stopping a few feet from the edge. She stood back, critically regarding its placement, straightened it, and then took the rope from around her neck and cut it with her pocketknife. She set a coffee can on each end of the log, balancing them carefully, and backed away. When neither can toppled, she spun around to face Willa, arms akimbo. “How's that?”

“Very good, now get over here.”

“Maybe she should wait by the horses,” said Israel.

“You cannot be
that
bad of a shot.”

Israel shrugged.

When Annalea came around and stood beside them, Willa told her to find a place to spread out a blanket and work on lessons from her fifth year primer. “You remembered to bring it, didn't you?”

Annalea thrust out her lower lip. “You're truly going to make me do lessons?”

Willa did not deign to answer. She merely lifted an eyebrow and Annalea slunk off toward the horses to get her bedroll and books from her saddlebag. Watching her go, Willa shook her head. “I'm going to have to send her back to school in Jupiter in the spring. She wants no part of it, but I worry that I'm not giving enough attention to her studies. Happy promised to help out, but you can imagine how that is. It's still mostly when he feels like it, not when she needs it. Zach does not have time, and Cutter says he doesn't read or do sums as well as Annalea.”

Israel accepted the Colt she held out to him by the ivory grip. “Why haven't you asked me?”