Chapter Sixteen
THE OPENING OF THE DOOR captured their attention. Helen walked into the kitchen, glancing from one to the other and not unaware of the silence and tension between them.
“The dinner?” she prompted gently.
Nora’s blank eyes began to focus. “Dinner? Dinner!” she gasped. “Oh, Aunt Helen, I am sorry! We were talking and everything slipped my mind.”
Helen only laughed. “I suppose I’m going to have to start cooking again pretty soon,” she murmured. “Unless I miss my guess, you won’t be here much longer?” She looked at Cal, who was frowning slightly. “Surely you plan to take Nora with you when you go?”
Cal hadn’t, because he didn’t think she would agree to go. But he looked at her, and his silver-gray eyes asked a question he didn’t dare put into words.
“An oil camp is a rough place,” he said slowly. “It’s dirty and primitive, with few amenities and little privacy. You’re fragile, and the weather is cold and unrelenting.” He felt the truth of his logic acutely. He smiled sadly. “It wouldn’t be wise to take you there.”
Nora felt her last hope slipping away. “But I’m strong,” she protested, shocking him. “The doctor says that even if the fever recurs, it won’t kill me. And I can cook!”
He hesitated.
“Eat first, then you can talk about it,” Helen said wisely.
They agreed. Nora put everything on the table, and they ate with only desultory conversation. Afterward, Nora cleared and washed the dishes, and then she and Cal sat down alone in the parlor to talk.
He rolled a cigarette and lit it. His dark suit jacket lay on the sofa beside him, leaving him clad only in dark pants, a white shirt and a black-and-white floral print vest. He looked different in a suit to Nora, who had never seen him dressed in anything except denim and buckskin. It didn’t occur to her to ask why he looked so prosperous when he had no job. Nora’s eyes darted away from him, because she was remembering how it felt to lie against him and be held and wanted.
“It really is impractical to consider taking you with me,” he said resignedly when he was smoking his cigarette. “You’re better off here. In fact,” he added with solemn reluctance, looking at her, “if you apologized to your father—”
“Never!” she said firmly. “It is he who should apologize, for insulting my husband!”
His eyebrows lifted. He smiled delightedly. “You have changed.”
“I have had to,” she said simply. “Shall I tell you the truth about myself? I was never an adventuress. I went to Africa and stayed in a magnificent home while my cousins went out to hunt. For one night I was allowed in camp, and during that night Edward Summerville became disgustingly amorous and tore my clothing. As a result, I was bitten severely by mosquitoes and I acquired the fever that will plague me for the rest of my life.”
“A malarial fever,” he said.
She nodded. “But not a fatal one, or so I am now told. I had thought it might be, which is why I did not tell you. I feared for our child.” The memory made her sad. She averted her face.
“I am sorry about the baby,” he said heavily. “I could have spared you the housework, Nora, simply by hiring a daily woman….”
“How would you have afforded one?” she asked, missing the renewed flare of guilt in his face. “Cal, it does no good to look back. I have always felt that the Almighty decides matters of life and death. I, too, am sorry about my baby. But many people face such losses and go on. So must we.”
He leaned back against the sofa and studied her with pale, quiet eyes. “There are still things about me that you do not know,” he said, wondering how he was going to tell her his own secrets without making her hate him even more.
She straightened her skirt. “I would like to go with you to Beaumont.”
“It’s a small cabin, and my drilling crew lives in tents around it. We would not be alone out there, but there is also only one bed,” he added stiffly.
She colored a little. “I see.”
He stared down at his cigarette thoughtfully. “Of course, you could stay in Beaumont at a hotel.”
She straightened her skirt again. “Yes.”
His eyes lifted. “Even so, it would be harder for you than it is here,” he said. “And I would be out at the rig with my crew. I don’t like the idea of having you so far away from me, especially at night. Nora, it’s a bad idea.”
Her blue eyes clung to his. “Do you not want me to go with you?”
His face tautened. He took a draw from his cigarette and glowered. “If you want the truth, there is nothing I desire more.”
The worry left her face. She looked amazed. “Truly?”
“What if you become ill?” he asked seriously.
“What if you do?” she countered. “You don’t have fever, but you could go down with a cold or even pneumonia, and who would take care of you?”
His lips parted on a gush of breath. “You would…take care of me?”
“But of course,” she said guilelessly. “And if I go, Cal, I will not stay in Beaumont,” she added firmly. “Regardless of the hardships, I will go with you, to the drilling site. I don’t wish us to be separated again. I am your wife.”
His wife. His eyes slid over her body covetously and back up to her lovely face. His heart began to race. He should tell her the rest of it, about his family, his background. But if he did, she would hate him all over again. She would know that she had suffered unnecessarily and blame him.
But if he waited to tell her, just a little while, if he took her to Beaumont and he was kind to her, then she might begin to love him. And if she did, when he told her the truth…
He leaned forward, the smoking cigarette in his hand forgotten, and pinned her with narrowed pale eyes. “If I take you with me, you must tell me if it becomes too much for you. Your health must come first. No shows of pride, Nora. Never again.”
“Very well,” she said.
He watched her for a minute with growing need before he spoke. “And if you go with me—” he hesitated, holding her eyes “—you sleep with me, Nora,” he said huskily.
Her cheeks colored prettily, but her eyes didn’t fall. They slid over his face, down to his mouth and lower, to his chest. “Very well,” she whispered shyly.
His high cheekbones flushed. His whole body went rigid at the soft reply. He remembered, as she must, the pleasure they could give to each other. She didn’t even pretend not to want him, thank God.
“Then pack your things, Nora,” he said tightly. “I want to leave before dark.”
Her smile changed her face. “I’ll go at once and tell Aunt Helen!” she said, rising.
He rose, too, and stood towering over her with a solemn face and glittering eyes.
“It will not be easy,” he said. “Even the cabin here will look like a luxury in hindsight. There are rough men and few women. In fact, before I left, a bordello was trying to set up on the outskirts of the camp, where the oil crews are working,” he added frankly.
Her blue eyes widened. “Why, how exciting,” she said. “I have never seen one of those women.”
“Nora!”
“You needn’t look so outraged,” she said pertly. “Women are curious about such things, you know.”
“No decent woman should be.”
She lifted her chin and glared at him. “How superior you sound, Mr. Barton,” she taunted. She frowned as a thought occurred to her. “That bordello…?”
“I have no need of bought women,” he said shortly. “You insult me.”
“You have done little else but insult me since we met,” she pointed out. “And it is quite noticeable that you were not innocent when we married, or before!”
His chest shook with laughter he was trying to suppress. “You look like an angry little hen with ruffled feathers,” he mused.
She pushed at the ruins of her high coiffure. “I am not a chicken,” she informed him. Her brows lifted. “Did Aunt Helen mention that I can prepare a chicken? I am still a bit squeamish about it,” she added conspiratorially, “but at least I no longer quail at the prospect.”
The pronouncement didn’t get the result she had expected. He looked as if each new mastered chore she recounted was painful to him. He moved forward and gently took her by the shoulders. His fingers lingered on the warm softness of the skin that he could feel through the cotton dress.
“That will no longer be necessary,” he said quietly. “We will have to buy our meals—”
“We will not!” she assured him. “Not when I have spent an entire day having the bunkhouse cook show me how to prepare a meal over a campfire!”
His surprise was visible, and his breath caught.
“You see, you still think I am a dead loss,” she fumed. “Well, let me tell you, I am no helpless Nellie! I can—”
Smiling, he bent and stopped the tirade with a warm, hungry kiss in which tenderness and long weeks of abstinence were mingled.
The shock of pleasure sent Nora pressing close against his long, powerful body, her arms meeting at his back as she opened her mouth deliberately and pushed upward.
He groaned, caught off guard. She felt his thighs tremble against her as his arms contracted and his mouth became bruising in its quest.
He moved her against him, loving the response she gave him, loving the taste and touch and feel of her. Her tongue shyly eased into his mouth, and at her belly she felt, with something oddly like pride, the incredible swiftness with which his body reacted.
He tore his mouth from hers and pushed her back, holding her at arm’s length with eyes so dilated, they seemed black.
“We are married,” she whispered, protesting breathlessly.
“Remember where we are, if you please,” he said angrily, although the dampness of his forehead and the furious beat of his heart, visible under his shirt and vest, belied his remoteness.
She smiled tenderly, her eyes drowsy with pleasure. “I missed you,” she said dreamily.
He drew in a long, steadying breath. “And I, you,” he said after a minute. “Are you sure, Nora?” he added. “I could not bear to be the instrument of any further risk to your health.”
“My place is with you,” she said simply.
He nodded. His eyes fell to her mouth and lingered there. She thought absently that he looked like a different man in that suit. There was a new authority about him, a sternness that was at variance with the easygoing man she had met when she first came here.
“You are like a stranger,” she said, puzzled.
He traced her face with tender fingers. “I am a stranger,” he said. “In more ways than you realize. You know me only as a lover.”
Her cheeks became rosy as her gaze dropped to his firm mouth. “It is the only way in which you would permit me to know you,” she ventured. Her hands toyed with a pearl button on his vest. “And I have been equally reticent in talking about myself. Shall we agree to talk to each other more in future?”
“Nights are long in the camp,” he mused. “And we will have little privacy in which to do much else,” he added with a rueful smile.
“But you said that I must sleep with you,” she blurted out.
“And you must,” he agreed. “But, sadly, that is all it may be between us. There are tents, very close to the cabin, where my crew stay.” He pursed his lips, looking down at her with amusement and delight. “And you are very noisy when we make love,” he whispered.
She hid her face against his vest. He held it there, chuckling tenderly above her disordered hair. “What a delight you are to me,” he said huskily. His hand smoothed her nape. “Nora, there is something else to consider as well,” he added. “Forgive me for being blunt, but I do not wish to make you pregnant again so soon. Your body will need time to recover from its ordeal.” He felt her shiver, and his arm contracted around her shoulders. “When you consider that our child was conceived the first time we were ever together…”
“Yes, I know.” She drew in a faint breath. “Do you…want a child with me?” she asked hesitantly. “Someday?”
“What sort of a question is that?” He tilted her worried face up to his. There was censure in his pale eyes. “Why should I not want a child?”
Her lips curled inward. “You said that I was not the sort of woman you should have married,” she began.
His thumb pressed softly over her mouth. “I said many cruel things. So did you. That is over. We are married, and I look forward to a long and happy life with you. Children will certainly be part of it, when you are healthy again.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Do not sound so dispirited,” he coaxed. “It will not be forever.”
She nodded, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
He sensed disappointment and something beneath it. He bent and kissed her lightly, feeling her immediate response. Her caught breath went into his mouth and she shivered. And then he understood.
“I want you, too,” he whispered softly.
She winced. “It will be so long,” she said involuntarily, and flushed. “Forgive me. I sound wanton.”
“You do not,” he argued. “You sound like a very normal woman, newly married, who enjoys the embraces of her husband.” He smiled. “Now, brace up. You look like the sinking of the Maine.”
She peered up at him. “I feel it,” she muttered.
“You have forgotten something I told you early in our marriage,” he said.
“What?”
He drew his lips lightly over her ear. “That there are ways to pleasure each other that do not involve the possibility of creating a child,” he whispered. “At the risk of darkening my reputation even more, I must tell you that I have considerable skill in that direction.”
“Cal Barton!” she ground out, shocked.
He laughed, letting her twist out of his arms with a face that looked sunburned.
“Roué!” she accused, straightening her apron.
He lifted an amused eyebrow. “And worse,” he confessed. “You will get used to it.”
“I suppose I must, but I hope that you are reformed. Now that you are a respectable married man,” she emphasized.
“We must both hope so. Now, will you get your things together, please, and I will ask Chester if he can take us to the depot. I hired a horse to come out here, and he will have to be returned as well. I think it a bit premature to expect you to ride double with me.”
“I wish that I could ride,” she confessed. “Melanie started to give me lessons, but I’m afraid I didn’t get very far.”
His face changed. “Riding will be something of a requirement for you,” he said enigmatically. “It is one thing you will have to know.”
“Why? We can hire a carriage in Beaumont, can we not?” she asked with some confusion.
He was thinking about Latigo and any time they spent there. Summers and holidays with his family would be expected, and she would love it there. He knew it. But first he had to find some way to tell her.
“Never mind that for now,” he said.
“You ride very well indeed,” she said. “It was one of the first things I noticed about you.”
His pale eyes narrowed as they slid over her. “I noticed everything about you the first time I saw you,” he said. “You were exquisite, standing there in your fashionable suit and that silly little French hat.”
She was very still. “How did you know that the hat was French?”
His mother had one similar to it. He was hardly likely to admit it. He pursed his lips. “Perhaps you told me.”
Her eyes darkened. “Perhaps another woman did.”
His eyebrows shot up and he grinned. “Jealous?”
She whirled, her skirts flying, and went to open the door.
“Nora?”
Her head turned. “What?” she demanded.
He loved that temper. It was going to be a source of delight to him all their lives. It made her blue eyes sparkle like sapphires, and made her face radiant with color. “I haven’t looked at another woman, in even the most innocent way, since the first time my eyes touched you.”
The way he said it made her toes curl in her shoes. He had a deep, slow way of speaking to her that was exquisitely tender.
“But it pleases me that you would mind if I had,” he added.
The doorknob was cold under her fingers. She caressed it slowly. “I would not have blamed you,” she confessed tightly.
“I would have blamed myself, though.” He joined her at the door. His big, lean hand covered hers warmly. “That will never become an option to me,” he said. “If we argue, and we will from time to time, I will never consider shaming you in such a way. I am that much like my married older brother, who dotes on his wife and son. I think you will like them, and the rest of my family, when I take you home to them.”
She shifted her eyes to his handsome face and caressed it with a gaze that made his knees feel weak.
“You are not…ashamed of me anymore?”
“Oh, my God, forgive me,” he whispered with raw pain. His arms swallowed her up, crushed her, riveted her to him. He bent over her with such a wave of love that it almost buckled his knees.
She clung to him, a faint sob escaping her lips. “I was so wrong,” she choked. “Wrong about you, about so many things! My father was such a snob, and I never realized how much I was like him until I came here. Now I cannot bear to go back and watch him denigrate people because they have less than he does.”
He bent and kissed her hungrily, moaning softly as she answered his kiss and held on tight.
“This is so sweet,” she whispered when they were both breathless and her cheek was resting on his chest. “We must kiss each other very often from now on.”
“Not in public.” He groaned.
She laughed, because she could feel why. It no longer embarrassed her. Well…not as much as it had. Her hips tugged back from him just enough for decorum.
“Coward,” he said silkily, laughing down at her flaming face.
“Oh, on the contrary, I have become very brave,” she teased. “Even my father would be amazed at the change in me, because I would not let him order me around now. He was good to me when I was younger, you know, even if he was very stern.” She pursed her lips, and her eyes twinkled. “All the same, I am very glad that you hit him.”
“At least you didn’t ask me to shoot him,” he said, and burst out laughing when he remembered the incident. “I thought Summerville was going to croak right on the spot!”
“He would have looked rather nice stuffed and mounted like one of the poor animals he shot in Africa,” she recalled. She became solemn. “He was not even sorry. He wanted to marry me for my father’s fortune, and he stooped to low means. It was terrible when he came to England and pestered me. I was mourning you and I wanted no part of him.”
“We have spent an inordinate amount of time mourning each other,” he observed, watching her. “In future, I do not plan to spend even a day separated from you.”
She smiled tenderly. “What a lovely thought,” she said as she stared at him possessively.
“Mmmmm,” he murmured, equally fascinated with looking at her.
There was a knock at the door. They moved back and opened it, and Chester stood there.
“I wondered if you would like Helen and me to drive you to the station,” he asked with a grin.
“How kind of you to offer,” Cal said, smiling. “Nora is on her way to pack.”
“It’s the least I can do, my boy. Would you like to see the new hay baler while she’s packing?” he added.
“Indeed I would!”
He bade Nora a fond farewell for the moment and went out with Chester.
“I don’t suppose you might be persuaded to return?” Chester asked as they neared the barn.
“No. I’m sorry. I enjoyed my time here, but I’ve tied up too much money in Beaumont to divide my loyalties now. I’m prospecting for oil,” he confessed ruefully. “This is the third well I’ve sunk and I’m hoping it will change my luck.”
“Isn’t oil prospecting a gamble?” Chester asked seriously, although the younger man’s resourcefulness impressed him.
“Yes,” Cal replied flatly. “But if I’ve learned nothing else in my life, it’s that few fortunes are gained without some risk. I want to make my own way in the world and not be dependent on anyone else for my keep.”
Chester misinterpreted that. “Well, you know, you were pretty independent here, and I’d try not to interfere…”
He chuckled and clapped the older man on the back affectionately. “I know that. It wasn’t what I meant. You know, you really should consider an investment in that field while there’s still time.”
“I’ve read about it in the Beaumont paper,” Chester confessed. “And if there really is a strike, the price on that land will go sky-high overnight. But it’s such a risk.”
“Life is a risk,” Cal told him. “I’m going to give you two percent of my stock.” He held up his hand when Chester protested. He looked at him fully. “If I hit, that will amount to a hell of a lot of money. You can buy this place back from the combine and run it the way you want to. Now that you’re on the right track with some modernization, you should have no trouble keeping it solvent.”
Chester was flabbergasted. “But why would you do that for me?”
He couldn’t tell the truth, that it was for Nora’s sake, because they’d been so kind to her. Not only that, he’d nourished a real affection for the family since he’d been working for them.
He put an arm around Chester. “Listen. Wouldn’t it just make you feel like a king to own part of a huge oil operation and tell your brother-in-law in Virginia how you got it?”
Chester whistled. “Tut, tut, I’d rub it in until he was chased!”
Cal grinned at him. “So would Nora,” he added.
“I see!” He burst out laughing. “All right, then, I’ll accept your kind offer. But if you do hit it big, my boy, you really must take Nora back to Virginia to visit her family. Preferably in a golden coach.”
“I have something a bit more grand in mind than that alone,” Cal replied. His pale eyes were glittering, and Chester thought, not for the first time, that he was glad he had never made an enemy of the man. Cal had cold steel just under that characteristically warm good nature of his. He felt a bit sorry for his brother-in-law. And he sincerely hoped that Cal was going to bring in that well.
He would love getting richer. But what he would enjoy most would be seeing his brother-in-law bluster when the man he’d always looked down on turned up prosperous, with an elegantly dressed Helen on his arm. He didn’t think Helen would mind if her sister saw her that way, either. The one time the two of them had visited the Marlowes, it had been very uncomfortable. Nora’s father had considered himself so far above the Tremaynes that he spoke to them like servants during their brief stay. Cynthia hadn’t said a word about the treatment her sister received, although her face was sad. Chester had come home furious, and Helen hadn’t smiled for a week. The two sisters had come from the same wealthy background, but like poor Nora, Helen had been disinherited when her parents disapproved of her marriage to Chester.
Chester had secretly felt inferior ever since he’d married Helen. Perhaps Cal understood that feeling, and it was why he’d made his shocking offer. Whatever his reason, the offer delighted Chester. He only wished he had something to offer Cal in return for that stock. He’d have to see if he couldn’t manage a good Thoroughbred horse for the boy. He knew a breeder who owed him a favor, and Cal had something of a mania about good horses.