The Pride of Hannah Wade (31 page)

Those keen and quick blue eyes darted a glance at Stephen coming up short beside her. Relief gentled the set of Cutter’s features. “I see you’ve found her.”

Irked by the comment, Hannah corrected it, enunciating very clearly. “I wasn’t found because I wasn’t lost.” Before she swept by him, she caught the flash of amusement in his face.

“Have someone see to my horse.” Stephen thrust the reins at Cutter and walked after Hannah.

The mounted company returning to the stables after morning drill broke their column to let Hannah cross in front of them. Quickly, Stephen was at her elbow to escort her. The air was sharp-scented with stirred-up dust, damp horsehide, and sweated leather, all of it warmed by the high yellow sun. Hannah walked quickly toward the row of adobe buildings that lined the parade ground.

“Tell me, Stephen,” she began on a challenging note, still angry with him for his intolerant attitude, “what would you have done if that baby was mine?”

“Since the matter doesn’t arise, I don’t see how I can answer that question.” He was very stiff and contained.
“Obviously it would be very difficult for me to accept an infant conceived . . . under such circumstances.”

It was an extremely honest answer, Hannah felt. She herself hadn’t wanted a child fathered by Lutero. The subject triggered a memory of her earlier encounter with the newspaper publisher. “When I left our quarters, I was stopped by a man named Hy Boler.”

“What did you tell him?” Stephen demanded.

“Nothing. But it doesn’t matter. He knows.” She had hated the idea of secrecy. Secrecy had guilt and shame attached to it, and she felt neither. “He spoke to some of the Apache prisoners. They told him that Lutero had married me.”

“Stop using that word. You are
married
to me!” Stephen reacted with taut anger, using the trivial issue as a release for his frustration.

“I told you it wouldn’t do any good to try to keep it a secret,” she reminded him.

“I know.” He sighed heavily, then swore. “Damn, the Goodsons are having a dinner party on Saturday for us—actually a welcome-home party for you.” As they reached the walk in front of Officers’ Row, Stephen reached out and put an arm around her cinched-in waist and rested his hand on its narrow curve. The faint pressure of his fingers urged her to a slower, more refined pace, one befitting an officer and his lady out for a morning stroll. “That’s what I came home to tell you.”

“I see. And did you tender our acceptance?” She guessed that he had, and she was irritated that he hadn’t bothered to consult her first.

“Naturally I did.” He was curt. “They are honoring you—celebrating your return. These are your friends. Surely you want to go to the party.”

“Of course.” A sigh of self-impatience accompanied the response. She went through the motions of smiling and waving to Mrs. Bettendorf, who was out tending
her rosebushes in front of the commanding officer’s quarters. A wide-brimmed straw sunbonnet was perched on her gray head.

“And the next time you go for a walk, wear a bonnet or carry a parasol,” Stephen advised as they turned up the path to their quarters. “The sun has done enough damage to your skin.”

“Oh, goodness me, that’s what I was missing—a parasol,” Hannah mocked. Everything was rubbing her the wrong way—his insinuations, his presumptions, his short temper, and his doubt of her. It was all so unsettling and she couldn’t seem to handle it gracefully, her tongue becoming sharp and quick.

She swept into their rooms, her skirts whirling about her legs as she stopped in the parlor, feeling heated and stiff. Stephen followed her into the shadowed interior where the sunlight couldn’t reach.

“Will you be here when I come back, or will I have to tear the fort apart looking for you again?” He stood rigidly before her.

“Why don’t you simply put me under house arrest?” she retorted. “Then you won’t have to worry about me wandering off.”

“Dammit, Hannah, can’t you see that I was worried about you? I was afraid something had happened to you—“ Stephen began in half-angry, half-irritated explanation.

Her temper flared, ignited by something in his answer. “Don’t be afraid! If there’s one thing I learned from the Apaches, it’s don’t ever be afraid. No matter how badly something hurts, you’ll forget the pain in time. You can be driven half mad with hunger and thirst, but you can live longer than you think without food or water. You would be surprised how much you can stand.”

The strident declaration rang loudly in the still room. In the ensuing silence, Hannah saw the stunned and
frowning look on Stephen’s face; he gazed at her as if he was staring at a stranger. She turned away, her head tipping downward in contrition.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted at you.” It troubled her that she had done it. “I had no call to raise my voice like that.”

Abruptly, Stephen said, “I have to get back to headquarters,” and walked to the door.

Hannah made no attempt to stop him and smooth over these harsh feelings. Instead, she wheeled from the room and walked swiftly down the narrow hallway to their bedroom. This disagreement with Stephen merely amplified all her other irritations. The hard leather boots hurt her feet, and the layers of skirts and petticoats got in, the way when she bent to remove the shoes. In a temper, she stripped off her day dress and the slips, down to her ruffled pantaloons, corset, and chemise. As she went to fetch her robe from the wardrobe, the bedroom door opened.

Stephen paused in mid-stride, arrested by the sight of her disrobed state. Slowly he reached up and took his hat off, then stepped the rest of the way through the opening and shut the door. Hannah stood still beneath the slow rake of his dark amber gaze, a small thumping in her chest.

“I don’t want to fight with you, Hannah.” His low-pitched voice vibrated with the force of his repressed feelings. “We have to stop pushing each other away.”

“Yes.” She agreed completely that this wedge had to be removed before it drove them farther apart.

He hesitated for a heartbeat, then came toward her, absently tossing his hat onto the dresser. Her pulse accelerated slightly as he stopped before her, whether in tension or excitement, Hannah didn’t know. His hands touched her bare arms, lightly rubbing them as if to discover how that golden-brown skin felt. He
warmed to its satiny texture as his gaze traveled over the cotton bodice of her chemise, paying special attention to the beginning swell of her high breasts.

She didn’t know. She wasn’t sure. She felt an uneasiness in the pit of her stomach, but she didn’t back away from him. Her hands moved to his flat, muscled torso, lightly bracing herself as Stephen bent his head and devoured her lips.

“It’s been so long since I’ve held you.” His mouth grazed the side of her face and nuzzled into her neck with aching force. “So damned long, Hannah.”

“I know.” Her fingers slid into the thickness of his hair as his hands slipped the chemise off her shoulders and reached for the hooks of her corset.

The bed stood in the deep shadows of the room. Stephen carried her to it, her pantaloons and chemise discarded but the gartered stockings and corset intact, only the top hooks loosened to free her breasts to his intimate attentions. He was quick to shed his uniform and climb onto the bed with her, while her gaze clung to his. She ignored the whiteness of his body, intent on keeping the face of her husband before her.

She was enveloped in a fevered heat of kisses, his hands touching and urging, their bodies thrusting and recoiling to thrust again. Maybe it was the relentless grinding of hips, the straining of their bodies that made it all too intense. When the release came, it wasn’t enough.

Afterward, Hannah made slow work of tying the sash of her robe in a precise bow while Stephen put on his uniform. Going over it in her mind, she knew that it had not been good between them. They had tried too hard, because both had images they were trying to blot out of their memory.

“Why, Hannah?” With his second boot pulled on, Stephen stood up and reached for his uniform blouse.

“Why what?” She turned to look at him, golden sunlight shafting through the window to make a silhouette of her.

“Why did you make love during the daytime? You never have before,” he stated.

“I don’t understand.” She gave a confused shake of her head, her faint contentment still alive but fading. “What do you mean?”

“Are you used to making love during the daytime? Is that when you did it with the Apaches?” The questions were made blunt by the grudging anger he felt.

Her mouth opened in shock. For a moment she was unable to get any words to come out; then they rushed from her. “Why on earth would you ask a question like that now? Why ruin—“

“Tell me which is worse, Hannah,” Stephen demanded, “to ask the question or to wonder?”

The ache inside her was very painful. “Mostly at night, since I had work to do during the day,” Her voice was flat and emotionless. “Why are you doing this to yourself, Stephen? Why do you keep asking?”

He looked down at her, troubled and aloof. “Maybe because I don’t understand how you could let him touch you . . . why you didn’t kill yourself before you let that savage get his hands on you.”

Her smile was gentle, almost pitying. “That’s easy to say, but it isn’t easy to choose not to live.”

“I’ve faced death before.” Stephen rejected her insinuation.

“Have you? A soldier’s death, maybe—the quick kind, never knowing where it will come from or when. But I’m talking about another kind—when you can reach out and touch death and invite it. When you’re faced with it, you’ll slap it away and hang onto that last scrap of life for as long as you can. Because while you’re alive, you have hope. When you’re dead, you
have nothing. I know, Stephen,” She laid her fingers along his jaw. “You are a soldier. You’d fight with the last breath in your body.”

“But you were a refined woman. You should never have been subjected to such handling.” He could not shake that thought.

Hannah moved away from him, laughing under her breath without humor. “I agree. It is not at all ladylike.”

“Do you have any idea how helpless I feel? How impotent?” Stephen faced her, taut and angry. “A savage brutalized my wife, held her captive, made her his squaw, and I could do nothing. I was powerless. A man’s wife is his most precious possession. You belong to me. You’re mine. The thought that anyone else has touched you—“ The rage swelled within him, choking him with its bitter fury. “I want to kill him. I want to kill him for damaging my property, for violating it in the meanest sense. I never should have let you go riding that morning.” Stepnen began a bitter recrimination. “We knew Juh and his band were in the area. Sloane was so damned green, so new to this country—and Delvecchio was so lovesick over you that he never saw anything else. I shouldn’t have let you go with them.”

“Stephen, I did. We can’t change the past.” She rubbed her hands up her arms to her shoulders, hugging herself to ease some of the ache.

“Damn them for ever letting the Apaches take you alive,” he muttered.

“Delvecchio tried to kill me,” Hannah informed him. “It was the very last thing he did. But I knocked the gun away. I wanted to live.” For all the complexities of the moment, the decision was always remarkably simple. “Stephen, do you really wish I were dead? Are you sorry that I’m standing here right now?”

“No. No,” he insisted more forcefully, but even as he
gathered her into his arms and held her close, Hannah could sense the conflict. Every time he looked at her, the thought was in his mind that another man had known her. She suddenly wasn’t sure whether Stephen would ever be able to forget.

When he finally released her, her robe slipped off one shoulder. The fiery red burn scars were clearly visible. Hannah started to pull the robe back in place and cover them, but he stayed her hand and stared at the ugly scars, against his will.

“He even left his mark on you,” Stephen said stiffly.

She didn’t attempt to contradict him nor to explain that the scars were the result of punishment by Gatita. They were part of the result of her months of captivity at the hands of Lutero.

“They’ll fade . . . in time,” she replied.

“Yes.” But it was an empty response as Stephen turned and scooped up his hat from the dresser; his attitude clearly said that they would never fade enough. He jammed the hat onto his head and strode to the door, then stopped, his back to her and his head down. “Hannah, was he larger—“ He stopped, biting off the rest of the question. “I mean, all men aren’t the same size . . . the—“ He slammed the flat of his hand against the wooden door frame, the force of the blow disturbing the dust in the rafters so that a fine powder came sifting down. “Damn!” Stephen jerked open the door and charged through it.

Hannah listened to the stride of his steps carrying him out of their quarters, then walked slowly to the bed. She sank onto the mattress, a sick feeling in her stomach, beginning to realize what an enormous amount of pride Stephen had and how sorely it had been damaged.

A sob rose in her throat at the complete injustice of it. She had lived. She had survived, and she wasn’t sure whether Stephen would ever forgive her for that.

What was right and what was wrong? Hannah didn’t think she knew anymore. She stared out the rectangular window and watched the sunlight’s pattern through the thatched
ramada
roof. Some code of conduct had been broken. Somehow in Stephen’s eyes she had lost her respectability.