CHAPTER 12
FOR AUTRY WHITMAN that third train robbery was the final outrageous, insufferable insult.
When word of it reached him in Denver, he’d ordered his private car coupled behind a locomotive and stormed onboard. Now, on a bright Friday morning, he was steaming southwest, toward Flagstaff, with a trail of passenger and freight cars rattling along the track behind him.
The passenger cars were emptier than they should have been—word of the holdup had already spread, and folks were afraid to travel. Fewer passengers meant less revenue, a condition soon to be reflected in Autry’s bank balances.
And that would not do.
He meant to meet with the Rangers and as many other law enforcement officials as he could corral, which was plenty, given the extent of his influence, political and otherwise, and demand immediate action. By God, this was America, and a man had a right to run a railroad without being molested by a pack of no-account hoodlums and ne’er-do-wells.
No one treated Autry Whitman like this.
No one save Lark McCullough.
Bile seared the back of Autry’s throat, sour and scalding. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and glowered out the window at a snowy landscape. He’d have an accounting from her, some fine day in the near future, and it would be a memorable one, too.
Especially for her.
Why, he’d found her in a San Francisco show house, cavorting for a lot of seamy strangers in a scanty getup, and he’d been stricken at the sight of her—not with love, Autry didn’t believe in such fatuous sentiments as that—but with the desperate need to possess her. He’d given Cyrus Teede, the owner of the gentleman’s club, twenty-five thousand dollars, and even at that price, Teede had been reluctant to sell.
He’d known what he had.
Lark. The golden songbird. The smiling Jezebel. On top of what he’d given Teede, Autry had spent a fortune to outfit her as a decent woman, befitting his station in life. He’d taken her home to Denver, knowing full well what she was, all her clever trickeries aside, and she’d played her part well.
For a while.
Then she’d begun the little rebellions. Talking back to him. Wearing blue when he’d specifically told her he liked her best in red. Giving his hard-earned money to street urchins. Finally she’d tried locking him out of her bedroom.
And he’d thrashed her for it, same as he would a disobedient hound or a balking horse. It was his right as a husband, as head of his household.
Three days after that, the songbird had flown.
Autry’s right hand tightened into a fist. He’d find her, that was for certain. Divorce or no divorce, she was still his property. The little chit couldn’t elude him forever—he had too many competent men out searching for her, spanning the whole West like a great, long-fingered hand.
Autry looked down at his fist.
He’d told the Pinkertons, and a few private agents, too, that he wanted to find Lark so he could tell her all was forgiven. Set up living arrangements for her, if she wouldn’t come back to him.
But the truth was a little different.
Lark had humiliated him, far and wide.
And she would pay for it.
Once he’d taken care of business in that upstart cow town, he might even pay a call on an old friend, a local named Ruby Hollister. Ruby was a woman of singular talents, as he recalled, though he hadn’t seen her in many years, and she knew how to lift a man’s spirits.
Among other things.
Autry might have smiled in anticipation, if the trail of his thoughts, having turned a bend into the area of female favors, hadn’t led right back to Lark.
Beautiful, golden-haired Lark, with a singing voice suited to her name.
She owed him. He’d rescued her from a seamy environment, willing to overlook all prior sins, and he’d been generous, too. Given her everything a woman could rightly want—starting with the title of Mrs. Autry Whitman—and plenty besides.
She’d lived in one of the finest mansions in Denver. He’d hired a maid for her, and she’d never so much as washed a dish or made up a bed.
Her clothes were the best to be had, some sent from as far away as Paris, France. He’d decked her out in jewels, too, and asked only one thing in return—that she stand at his side, in public and private, as his wife.
Why, he hadn’t even minded when she spurned his advances in the bedroom. There was a considerable difference between their ages—Autry would be seventy in May, while Lark had been just shy of twenty-five when he first laid eyes on her.
She’d done a lot of living by that time, though.
He’d known she didn’t love him and, well, his intended assignation with Ruby aside, there were times when he couldn’t do much besides set Lark on his lap and paw at her. She’d endured that for a long while, but Autry was no fool—he’d seen the revulsion in her eyes, even though, in the beginning, she’d tried to hide it.
When he had been able to attend to his husbandly duties, hoping to God to sire an heir, she’d lain stiff beneath him, like it was an ordeal. Considering where he’d met her, that was harder to take than the rest of it.
He could have accepted even that, so long as she played the part of an adoring wife in front of Denver society, and he had to admit, she’d done a good job of that—until the day she ran out on him during his best friend’s funeral.
He closed his eyes, remembering.
He’d come home after the ceremony expecting consolation, and found her gone. Gone. At first Autry was too stunned to credit it. After some investigation, he discovered that Lark had told Phillips, his manservant, some cock-and-bull story about her sister taking ill, and the damn fool had driven her to the railroad station without a single quibble.
Trouble was, Lark didn’t have a sister. She didn’t have any family at all.
Except him.
Ten days after her departure, Autry had received divorce papers by courier, from some lawyer in San Francisco. Enraged, needing to take the shock out on somebody, Autry had sent Phillips packing, and he’d made sure nobody in Denver would hire him, too.
Then he’d wired the Pinkertons in California, and had agents dispatched to pick up Lark’s trail there. But the lawyer hadn’t parted with any information at all, save to say Lark had left the city days before and had not shared her intended destination.
When Autry protested, also by telegram, that he had not agreed to divorce, the lawyer had responded with such immediacy that he might have been standing right in the telegraph office when Autry’s wire arrived.
“Divorce granted,” the answer said. “Special circumstances. Mrs. Whitman asks nothing in the way of financial restitution and requests that you do not attempt to contact her again.”
Autry still read that telegram sometimes, in the privacy of his study back in Denver, but only when he’d fortified himself with brandy and ire first.
“Mrs. Whitman asks nothing in the way of financial restitution.”
As if he’d have given her one red cent, after what she’d done to him.
And he most certainly meant to “contact” her. It was only a matter of time until he’d have the satisfaction of doing just that.
But first he’d deal with those robbers.
Autry leaned forward slightly in his plush seat, willing the train to go faster.
* * *
LARK SENT GIDEON and the Sommerville girls home an hour before school should have let out, but she stayed at her desk instead of going back to Mrs. Porter’s, reading and waiting for Sam O’Ballivan to come and fetch her in a wagon, the way Maddie had said he would.
At four o’clock she heard the distinctive sounds of a rig and team, clattering up outside.
Eagerly, smiling a little at the things Mrs. Porter had instructed her to find out, she banked the fire, donned her spare cloak and rushed to the door.
A buckboard waited outside the gate, pulled by a pair of bay horses, but Mr. O’Ballivan wasn’t holding the reins. Rowdy was.
The shadow of his hat brim, at which he promptly tugged with a practiced motion of one hand, covered most of his face. His impudent grin was clearly visible, however.
Lark froze on the schoolhouse steps.
Rowdy gave a visible sigh, climbed down from the wagon box and paused to open the gate.
Lark hesitated a few moments longer, then marched toward him, chin high, skirts swirling.
They met in the path, midway between the gate and the schoolhouse door.
“That’s some dress,” Rowdy observed, taking in the blue silk.
Lark had dined with the governor of Colorado and several congressmen in that dress, but she wasn’t about to say so. “Thank you,” she said stiffly. “And what are you doing here? I’m expecting Mr. O’Ballivan at any moment—”
“Plans have changed,” Rowdy said easily, although now that she was standing up close to him, she saw signs of strain around his eyes and in the set of his mouth. “I’m invited to this shindig, too, and Sam asked me to bring you along. No sense in his driving all the way into town and then back again—twice—when I’m headed out there anyway.”
Lark discovered, to her private chagrin, that she didn’t entirely object to the prospect of going to the O’Ballivan ranch and then returning alone with Rowdy Rhodes. And that realization troubled her more than anything, made her want to dig in her heels and refuse to go at all.
She couldn’t do that, of course, because Maddie had probably gone to some trouble to prepare for guests. And Lark wanted Maddie O’Ballivan’s friendship.
Still, Rowdy could not be trusted. The bold look in his eyes implied that, as if the way he’d kissed her behind the jailhouse that day wasn’t proof enough.
Lark blushed slightly at the memory, and her nipples pressed traitorously against the fabric of her best camisole and the bodice of her dress. Belatedly, she pulled her black velvet opera cape closed with both hands.
Rowdy chuckled, shook his head almost imperceptibly. Then he crooked an elbow at her. “Come along, Miss Morgan,” he said, with the old note of mockery. “Sam tells me it’s an hour to the ranch by wagon in high summer, and it’ll be slow going, with all the mud and slush.”
Lark sighed. Then, with the greatest reluctance, she took his arm.
He had the audacity to touch her posterior while helping her up into the wagon, and when she turned to glare him to a cinder, he only smiled and tugged at his hat brim again.
His eyes made some very forward promises, and Lark’s face went hot again with temper and—though she would have died before admitting it—a certain scandalous anticipation.
If he stopped that wagon somewhere along the lonely road to the O’Ballivans’ and kissed her, she’d be a goner. Why, she might even let him do a lot more than kiss her.
Don’t be a goose, she told herself, making a great fuss of settling onto the wagon seat, arranging the folds of her cloak, and generally situating herself for the long trip ahead. It’s the dead of winter, and even Rowdy Rhodes wouldn’t have the gall to seduce you in a wagon.
While Rowdy was climbing up to sit beside her and take up the reins again, she glanced back over one shoulder.
There were blankets in the bed of the wagon.
Lark’s heartbeat fluttered in her throat, as though she’d swallowed a live butterfly and the poor thing was trying to escape.
Rowdy must have caught her looking and discerned her thoughts in that disturbing way he had, because he grinned as he released the brake lever and urged the team forward.
“Don’t worry, Lark,” he told her quietly, his voice moving like a caress under her skin. “When I make love to you, it will be in a warm bed. At least, the first time.”
Delicious rebellion rose within Lark Morgan. He’d made her think about the things he planned to do to her in that “warm bed,” which was exactly his intent. “I ought to slap you,” she said, sitting up straighter on that hard wagon seat.
“You’ve tried that before,” Rowdy observed lightly, “and you weren’t quick enough.”
“Now you’re just being obnoxious,” Lark accused, as he turned the team and wagon in the road. “Why do you insist on talking to me like this?”
“Because it riles you,” he replied.
“If you actually believe I’m going to allow you to seduce me—”
“You’ll allow it, all right,” Rowdy said confidently, when she didn’t finish the sentence. Then he leaned toward her a little and whispered loudly, “It’s already begun, Lark. It’s been going on since you and I first met, in Mrs. Porter’s kitchen. One by one, I mean to strip away every objection, and when you ask me to—and you will—I’ll have you.”
Lark squirmed. Of course the seduction had begun—a word, a look, a touch. That soul-shattering kiss behind the jailhouse. “I will never ask you to make love to me,” she vowed, in a furious undertone, as they drove straight through the center of town.
“Yes, you will,” Rowdy countered easily. “Shall I tell you what it will be like?”
Lark’s body went achy hot. Yes, it said. Oh, yes.
“No!” she gasped, and then smiled a wobbly smile at a woman on the sidewalk, fearing she might have heard.
Rowdy chuckled. “I figure you’ve been with at least one man in your life,” he went on, just as if she hadn’t protested—indeed, as if she’d encouraged him, which she had not. “But I’d bet anything you’ve never felt the things you’re going to feel when I have my way with you.”
“Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop seducing me.”
“Way too late for that. You’re almost there right now.” He waved companionably to Jolene Bell, who scowled back at him from the doorway of her saloon.
“I most certainly am not,” Lark argued, but she wasn’t all that certain, and Rowdy clearly knew it.
“Of course, after that first time, which will take place in a bed, like it should, I might have you just about anywhere, as long as we’re alone. Against a wall, maybe, with your drawers down around your ankles—”
“Rowdy Rhodes,” Lark said heatedly, “stop it, or take me home!”
“You don’t want to go home,” Rowdy told her. “You wouldn’t want to disappoint Maddie like that. She’s been snowed in awhile, just like you have, and she’s probably looking forward to the visit.” He paused as they passed out of Stone Creek, into the open countryside. The roads were deep with mud and slush, just as he’d said they would be. “And you don’t want me to stop talking about making love to you, either.”
“What makes you so sure of that?” Lark demanded, incensed.
And wickedly aroused.
“The way you keep squirming on the wagon seat, because you can’t get comfortable, for one thing. The flush rising from your neck to your hairline for another, and the little throb at the base of your throat.”
“This wagon seat is hard,” Lark protested, in her own defense.
“Not nearly as hard as I will be,” Rowdy said.
Lark closed her eyes against an onslaught of feelings and images, but it was no use. Autry had been old and awkward and he’d smelled funny, too. Rowdy was her former husband’s opposite in every way—he was young and virile. He was comfortable in his own skin, with a gunslinger’s dangerous grace, and he always smelled of sun-dried laundry and strong soap.
He undoubtedly knew how to please a woman.
Think about Autry, she told herself sternly.
But she couldn’t, because Autry was miles away in Denver, and Rowdy was right beside her, so close, in fact, that their thighs were touching.
“Inside,” Rowdy went on mildly, “you’re wound up tight as a watch spring when the stem’s been turned too far. And I know just the way to make you let go. Won’t even need a bed to do it.”
Lark’s heart hammered in her throat. Her stomach jumped.
And she parted her legs ever so slightly under the skirts of her blue silk dress.
“Rowdy,” she pleaded.
“That’s more like it,” he said.
Her temper surged again. Where the devil had it been when she needed it? “That wasn’t what I meant—”
“Wasn’t it?” Rowdy teased.
She realized then that he was baiting her. Of course, he was merely nettling her, and she’d played right into his hands. So to speak.
“Go to hell, Rowdy Rhodes,” she said.
“Yup,” Rowdy said solemnly. “Tighter than a watch spring.”
They traveled in silence for a while. Passed a farmhouse or two, and copses of oak and cottonwood trees, bare-limbed and seeming to strain toward the sky, as if offering a desolate prayer for spring.
They’d probably been on the road for at least forty-five minutes, with the O’Ballivan place nowhere in sight, when Rowdy suddenly stopped the wagon.
“Horses need to rest,” he explained, when Lark stiffened. “It’s hard pulling for them, with the mud and all.”
She let out her breath.
Nothing could happen here.
They were on the open road. It was broad daylight. And anyone could come riding by on a horse, or driving a wagon, at any moment.
She was completely safe.
Then Rowdy leaned into the back of the wagon and picked up one of the blankets.
“You’re cold,” he said, his eyes twinkling, when she started again.
He smoothed the blanket over her lap.
Lark tensed, closed her eyes, opened them again when he kissed her.
She wanted to resist.
She truly did.
But when he persuaded her to open her mouth for him, his lips warm and firm against hers, his tongue exploring—she couldn’t help responding.
She whimpered softly and kissed him back.
She was dazed when he stopped, sweetly alarmed when he knelt between the wagon seat and the footboard and slipped beneath the blanket.
A molten shiver went through Lark as she felt him go under her skirts and petticoats, too. What was he going to do?
Autry had never done anything like—
He ducked under her left leg, set both her feet against the front of the wagon.
Oh, mercy. He was between—
She felt the delicate fabric of her drawers give way, right in the middle.
She sucked in a shocked, exultant breath.
And then his mouth was on her.
Lark gave a strangled cry, but it wasn’t a protest, and Rowdy must have known that, because he chuckled, under the blanket and her skirts and petticoats. The sound echoed through her.
“Rowdy,” she managed to gasp, clutching the edges of the wagon seat, “someone could come—”
He chuckled again. “Someone could,” he agreed in a wicked drawl, his voice muffled by her garments and her skin. “In fact, I’d bet on it right about now.”
Lark began to breathe harder, and more quickly. “Don’t—” she whimpered.
“Don’t what, Lark?”
“Don’t—stop.”
He feasted on her then. He tugged at her, and he teased, until she was wild with need, rocking in the wagon seat, her feet pressing hard into the footboard. Her nipples ached and perspiration broke out all over her body and she was climbing toward something, climbing and climbing—
And then the world shattered.
Lark threw back her head and shouted his name aloud.
He stayed with her, bringing her to several more releases, each one softer, and yet keener, than the one before.
She was dazed—melted—when Rowdy finally threw off the blanket, righted her petticoats and skirts, and shifted himself back onto the wagon seat. He wiped her wetness from his face with the sleeve of his trail coat, and Lark was suddenly, belatedly, mortified by what she’d allowed him to do.
She looked away.
He caught her chin in his hand and made her look back.
“That’s what you ought to feel when a man makes love to you, Lark,” he told her when she finally met his gaze. “It ought to make you moan and writhe and holler out his name when you come undone.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. She’d never felt that way with Autry, never even known it was possible. With Autry lovemaking was something to be endured. Fumbling and sometimes painful, and always done in darkness.
Rowdy Rhodes had just—he’d just put his mouth to the most intimate part of her body, on a public road, and she’d not only let him, she’d reveled in it, and she’d have done it again. And yet again.
She put a hand to her mouth, horrified by this realization. She’d always thought herself to be one kind of person, only to find out now that she was quite another. The next time she looked into a mirror, she’d see a wanton stranger gazing back at her.
She didn’t know how to be this woman she had just become.
Rowdy smiled, pulled her hand away from her mouth, and kissed her again, lightly this time. Then he brushed the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs and turned to release the brake lever and take up the reins again.
Lark sat, baffled and damp, profoundly satisfied and conversely in greater need than before, still clutching the edge of the seat.
Suppose it showed, what she’d just done with Rowdy?
Suppose Sam and Maddie guessed, somehow?
“I’m going to have to mend my bloomers,” she said.
Rowdy laughed. Shook his head. His blue eyes soothed her, even though they twinkled with mischief. “Where did that come from?” he asked.
She summoned up a little huff. “You tore them, remember?”
“I surely do. Leave them like that. It’ll save wear and tear and be easier next time.”
Lark stared at him, aghast. “Next time?”
“Tomorrow night, maybe,” he said. “Before or after the dance.” The mischievous glint in his eyes intensified. “Or maybe on the way back to town tonight, after supper.”
Lark flushed again.
Rowdy chuckled.
“You wouldn’t,” Lark told him.
“You know I would,” Rowdy answered.
Lark lapsed into sweet misery.
Half an hour later the O’Ballivan house came into view, nestled in a wide meadow beside a winding creek that had frozen blue in the cold. In fact, there were two houses on the property, at some distance from each other but enclosed by the same rail fence.
Smoke curled invitingly from their stone chimneys.
Rowdy seemed to know which place belonged to Sam and Maddie, and when Maddie came out onto the porch to smile and wave, Lark stopped worrying and relaxed.
Maddie wore a brown silk dress, and she was beaming. “Sam,” she called, through the open doorway behind her, “they’re here!”
Rowdy stopped the wagon, tipped his hat to Maddie and jumped down to come around to Lark’s side and lift her from the seat. At the touch of his hands on either side of her waist, and for just the merest moment, she was back where he’d taken her earlier, at the height of ecstasy.
She crooned involuntarily, under her breath.
Rowdy winked at her and made sure she traveled the whole hard length of him before her feet finally struck the ground.
Sam came out of the house, and he and Rowdy unhitched the team, led the horses to the barn, so they could rest comfortably before the long trek back to Stone Creek later that night.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Maddie told Lark, squeezing her hand and then pulling her into the house.
Mrs. Porter would have been impressed. It was a beautiful place, with paintings on the walls and bright Indian rugs gracing the wooden floors. The spinet gleamed in the light of a crackling blaze on the hearth of the big stone fireplace.
Lark took a step toward the little piano before she caught herself.
Mustn’t touch the keys, the still, small voice reminded her. Mustn’t sing.
Ever.
Those things were part of her old life, gone for ever.
“I thought I’d go mad, cooped up here during that blizzard,” Maddie confided. “Sam was here, of course, but talking to him isn’t like talking to another woman.”
“Where’s Terran?” Lark asked, remembering that she was a teacher and ought to inquire about her student.
“He’s over at the major’s, with Ben,” Maddie answered, indicating that Lark should take one of the chairs near the fire. “And Sam, Jr., is already asleep.” She sighed, glanced wistfully out one of the windows.
“It gets dark so early in winter.”
Inwardly Lark started slightly. It was dark.
When had the sun gone down. How could she have failed to notice?
“Would you like a cup of tea while we wait for Sam and the marshal to come back from the barn? Supper’s almost ready, but they’re likely to stand out there and talk awhile.”
“Tea would be lovely,” Lark replied gratefully. She stood again, and was instantly aware of the ripped seam in her bloomers. She would mend them the moment she got home, she told herself.
She really would.
Supper smelled heavenly—Maddie had made chicken and dumplings, one of Lark’s favorites.
The two women chattered as Maddie brewed and poured the tea.
Maddie was so obviously happy, through and through, that she glowed.
When Sam and Rowdy came in from the barn, entering by the back door, Sam introduced Rowdy to his wife. The look in Sam’s eyes as he gazed at Maddie made Lark’s heart catch painfully. Their love for each other was palpable, as real and eternal as the land the house was built upon.
Lark glanced at Rowdy, found he was watching her.
His expression was thoughtful, even a little solemn.
Maddie served supper in the kitchen, on sturdy dishes with flowers painted on the edges, and the meal was delicious.
Maddie and Lark laughed a great deal.
Sam and Rowdy were more subdued, though they exchanged the occasional word or two.
“Are you coming to town for the dance tomorrow night?” Lark asked Maddie, and then wished she hadn’t brought up the dance, because Rowdy had said he was going to do that to her again, before or after.
If not on the way home that very night.
“If the weather holds, we’ll be there,” Maddie said. Mischief shimmered in her brown eyes. “I would surely love to make Sam O’Ballivan dance.”
Sam grinned, shifted a little on his chair. But he didn’t say he wouldn’t dance. Lark concluded, a bit wistfully, that Maddie could probably get him to do almost anything.
Too soon, the meal ended, and the dishes were done, and Sam and Rowdy went back out to the barn for the team.
“I wish you’d stay the night,” Maddie fretted.
“Suppose another storm comes up?”
“We’ll be fine,” Lark promised. “And Maddie?”
Maddie paused, looked at her curiously. “What?”
“Thank you for tonight. It was wonderful.”
Maddie smiled, approached and squeezed both Lark’s hands in her own. “You’ll have to come back,” she said.
A few minutes later, when all the goodbyes had been said, and Lark and Rowdy were driving away from the ranch house, the lilting strains of the spinet reached Lark’s ears, rippling over the melting snow like a silvery river.
She began to cry.
The moon was out, and they didn’t need lanterns to see by, so she couldn’t hide her tears from Rowdy.
“What is it?” he asked gently.
“The music,” Lark said. She’d lied for so long, about so many things, that she wasn’t sure of anything anymore, but she still mourned. “The music.”
Holding the reins in one hand, Rowdy tucked the blanket around her with the other. Held her against his side for a long moment.
She felt dangerously safe there.
They’d gone a mile or two, perhaps, when Lark reached out from under the blanket to touch Rowdy’s gloved hand.
He glanced at her, confused.
She swallowed.
“Lark?” he prompted.
“Do it to me again,” she said, appalled at the brazenness of her words. “What…what you did before. Stop the wagon and make me feel all those things again.”
Rowdy drew the wagon up alongside the moon-washed road, under the arching branches of an oak tree. Somewhere in the near distance an animal howled, the sound so lonely and forlorn that it stuck in Lark’s heart like a nettle.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
She nodded.
He climbed over the back of the wagon seat, made a little nest of the blankets there. Then, crouched, he held out his hand to Lark.
She let him help her into the bed of the wagon.
Let him lay her down.
He took off his hat, set it aside, and lifted her skirts.
This time, he removed her bloomers entirely. He bent her knees, parted them and lowered himself to her.
Lark gave a sob of welcome, and entangled her fingers in his hair, holding him close, seeking him with the motion of her hips.
He tongued her.
He suckled.
And she cried out to the wintry silver stars overhead as she spiraled up toward them and became a part of the night sky.