Chapter Five
NORA WASN’T CERTAIN WHETHER to be happy or sad that she wasn’t able to dance even once with Cal Barton. His impatience with her made her miserable. If only he were someone of wealth and station, someone she had the right to care about, to be seen with. Aunt Helen had made it quite clear how she felt about division of the social classes. It made Nora sad to admit that her mother would have felt exactly the same. No one was going to approve of Nora getting herself involved with a poor cowboy.
Melly was also subdued, after her unsatisfying confrontation with the abominable Mr. Langhorn. She had known his plans to marry the widow Terrell, of course she had. But to have him tell her so brutally… It didn’t bear thinking about. He seemed intent on breaking her poor heart in as many ways as possible. Nora seemed to sense that hurt, because she reached out a gloved hand and touched Melly’s arm affectionately. It was a comforting gesture, and it eased the pain a little.
IT WAS A LONG RIDE HOME in the surrey, with Cal taciturn behind the reins, and Chester and the others talking in low, subdued voices. When they arrived, Chester helped Helen and Melly down, so Cal had to lift Nora down from the high step.
His big, lean hands contracted gently at her waist as he lowered her slowly to the ground. He didn’t release her at once, and her heart began to race as she stared at his firm mouth and remembered unhappily how hungrily it had kissed her own that once.
In the soft moonlight, he looked down pointedly at her mouth for several seconds. His hands caressed her waist gently before they fell and he moved slowly back to take the surrey on to the barn. That look was magic. It took away Nora’s pain and all her fears, because she knew then that he felt something just as powerful as she did. She didn’t think about all the reasons why it was impossible, not the least of which was her own infirmity, which might recur at any time. All she knew was a thrill of ecstasy that Cal Barton desired her!
Chester lit lamps for the girls before he and Helen called good-night and went on down the hall to their bedroom.
“I’ll be along in just a minute, Melly,” Nora said as she went to the front door. “I dropped one of my gloves.”
Melly wasn’t fooled. She called back a reply and went to her room with a smothered grin.
Outside, Nora walked briskly down to the barn, where the flickering kerosene lantern gave Cal enough vision to unhitch the sleek buggy horse and bed it down for the night.
He had just finished when he saw Nora standing in the doorway, watching him. His face hardened. He latched the horse’s stall and grabbed the lantern from its nail with subdued fury.
“Aren’t you out of place, Miss Marlowe?” he asked coldly. “A barn is hardly your setting, is it?”
She nodded toward the lantern. “Could you put that out, please?”
He hesitated, but only for a minute. “Why not?” He humored her, curious.
“And could you put it down, as well?” she persisted.
He shrugged. He set the lantern on the ground and straightened.
“Thank you,” she said softly. And she moved forward, right up against him. She went on tiptoe and looped her arms around his neck.
Cal caught her by the waist, breathing in her perfume, and pushed while he still had enough sense to resist her.
“Don’t do that!” he said angrily.
But she wouldn’t budge. Her arms tightened, in fact. “Why not?” she whispered. It delighted her that he was so quickly responsive. She could see his shirt jerking with the hard beat of his heart, and it thrilled her. She pressed her hands against the shirt, smoothing them over hard, warm muscle through the fabric. She loved the touch of him.
He barely heard her for the thunder of his heart. He stopped pushing as he felt her breath on his mouth, teasing, tempting. The warmth of her body, the scent of her, made him so hungry that he could hardly stand straight. Would it be so terrible to give in to what he was feeling, just this once? He groaned as the need caught him up in its fervor. Her mouth was so soft, so sweet. He had to have it!
“Eleanor,” he whispered huskily, bending. “Oh, God, Eleanor…!”
Even as he spoke her name, she pushed her lips upward against his firm mouth and made a tiny sound, deep in her throat.
He groaned, lost to everything except the softness of her in his arms. He lifted her against him and riveted her slender body to his in an intimacy she’d never shared with anyone except him. The feel of his powerful body so close to hers made her reckless and she clung even closer, loving the experienced crush of his hard mouth over her soft lips.
His head spun while he kissed her and kissed her in the silence of the barn. He kissed her until he felt her tremble like a leaf, and then his mouth was briefly cruel because of the fever she raised in him. But eventually she stiffened a little and moaned, and he realized that he was bruising her.
He loosened his hold enough to let her feet touch the ground, but her mouth clung to his lips even then.
“Don’t stop,” she pleaded, her legs shaking as she held to him to keep her balance. Her face hung just under his, yielded and worshipping, her swollen lips parted and faintly red.
“Don’t tease,” he said unsteadily. “You know how dangerous it is.”
“Do I?” she asked dazedly. “But I only want to kiss you,” she whispered. “Please, just a little while longer…”
“Eleanor, you must stop this!” He dragged her hands down from his neck and stood gasping for breath, fighting the specter of uncontrollable desire.
“Don’t you want to kiss me?” she asked, confused.
He ground his teeth together. How could he confess to her that he was dying to have her? That his body ached to bury itself in the warm innocence of hers, that his hands longed for the naked softness of her breasts and her belly and her legs!
“You try me too far,” he ground out. Perspiration beaded his broad forehead. He pressed her hands to the front of his shirt and held them there. “Eleanor, go back inside. This is not the hour for us to speak of personal matters. What would your aunt and uncle think if they saw us now, like this?”
She was barely able to think at all. But it occurred to her at once that they would blame him, accuse him of trying to seduce her. He would suffer, not she. No one would believe that she had deliberately tempted him.
She managed to step back from him, her body hungry for the pleasure she had to deny it. “Oh, I am sorry,” she said miserably. “I didn’t stop to think. You were angry with me, and I wanted you to know that it was Aunt Helen who forbade me to dance with you.”
He moved back a step as well, his tall body faintly unsteady as he realized how close to the edge they’d stepped. He’d never been quite so vulnerable before, and he was no novice. She certainly didn’t kiss like one, he thought. He was more curious about her experience than ever before.
It was more than possible that she was playing with him, as she’d played with Greely. It might even be a game to her, seeing how far she could push him. After all, he knew that she was well aware of what she presumed was the difference in their social status. If she wasn’t just a tease, why was she permitting him these liberties when she knew her aunt and uncle would disapprove? Certainly she couldn’t be in love with him. A woman of her background and status wouldn’t allow herself to fall in love with someone as unsuitable as she considered him. She was too haughty. No, she had to be teasing, to see if she could make him respond to her advances. She was toying with him, thinking that he was of the same ilk as Greely—a shy, untried rustic.
The thought strengthened his resolve. She needed to be taught a lesson, and he was just the man to do it. She had a sweet mouth. He enjoyed kissing her. But his heart was unassailable. No woman had ever touched it.
“Why did you come out here tonight?” he asked with a lazy drawl, his hands still holding her waist loosely.
“Because I don’t like having you angry with me.” She looked up sadly. “You must know that I would have enjoyed nothing more than to have danced with you.”
She even managed to look repentant, he thought. He saw right through the subterfuge. “But the politician was your social equal, and I was not,” he reminded her. “You did not want people to think that you were associating with someone who was socially beneath you. Isn’t that the truth of the matter?”
Her blue eyes shimmered with sadness and resignation. It might be kinder to let him think so than to have to admit the truth about her own hopeless infirmity. But she didn’t have the heart to do it.
“I cannot put my aunt in such a position,” she said quietly. “She is my mother’s sister. Both of them came from European royalty. It would… Forgive me, it would outrage them to know that I allowed myself to become interested in someone who was…not of our class,” she finished miserably. “Oh, can’t you see that it is no wish of mine?” she asked, looking up with tears in her eyes. “Can you not feel my heart beat when you hold me, and know that I…that I…!”
She was drawing him in with those tears, that wobbling voice. But he knew too much about the vagaries of women to be caught like this. He simply played along.
“That you care for me?” he asked softly.
She dropped her eyes to his chest, all but strangled by the mad beat of her heart. “Yes,” she said huskily. “That I care for you.”
He had to fight to keep from laughing. She was good at dalliance. He wondered how experienced she really was, under her facade.
She glanced up at his set face, trying with her inexperience to read what was there. Her male cousins had hardly prepared her for a contretemps with a man she desired. She wanted to know everything about him. She wanted to be with him all the time. She wanted only him, if it meant the sacrifice of everything she had.
He drew her face up to his and kissed her briefly on the mouth. “You must go inside,” he said quietly. “This is not the time for such discussions.”
“I do not want you to go,” she said. “I want only to be with you.”
He steeled himself not to feel those words right through to his heart. He wasn’t going to allow her to toy with him. Poor Greely had suffered at her hands, but Cal was no impressionable boy.
She realized at last that he didn’t believe a word she was saying. In his eyes was cynicism and some sort of cool amusement.
“Why…you do not believe me at all,” she said slowly.
“After the way you treated Greely, do you expect me to?” he said. “You looked down your pert nose at me from the moment we met, making so sure I knew that you wouldn’t dirty your little hand by touching a common cowboy.”
She faltered. “I…have lived in such a different world from yours,” she tried to explain it. “Even in my travels, I was sheltered from the realities of life. You must allow for my background.”
“Why?”
She didn’t know how to reply to such a blunt question. Her soft eyes searched his hard face. It was like talking to granite. “I shall try,” she said. “Really, I shall. I…want to know about your life, about you. I want to understand.”
He touched her soft mouth with his fingertip, tracing it lazily until he felt her lips tremble. She was affected by him physically. She couldn’t hide that. But whether or not her heart and mind were involved, he didn’t know. His eyes narrowed with calculation.
“You have already said that your aunt does not approve of any contact between us,” he reminded her.
She caught his hand in both of hers. Forgotten was her illness, her life before now, her wealth and position. She wanted this man as she had never wanted anything before. It would work out. It must!
“I will meet you, in secret,” she said fervently. “When ever, wherever, you say! I will do anything you ask of me.”
He went very still. “Anything, Eleanor?” he taunted softly.
She flushed. “Anything…within reason.”
“And nothing indiscreet?” he persisted. His pale eyes narrowed. “It is a poor regard which sets such rigid limits.”
She gnawed her lower lip. “I cannot be indiscreet,” she whispered. “It is not only my own wishes that I must consider. There is my family.” Her eyes pleaded with him to understand. “Surely you understand loyalty to your kinfolk? Don’t you feel the same responsibility toward yours?”
He did. More than he could admit. But he wanted her completely yielded, so much in love that she would dare anything, risk anything, for him. He refused to consider his reasoning, or his motives. It was suddenly imperative to bend her to his will.
He pulled her close and bent to kiss her with slow, rough hunger. He felt her soft body tremble in his arms and wondered cynically how many other men had experienced her pretended shy passion. An innocent adventuress was a contradiction in terms.
His big hand slid up her side to touch the side of her small breast. She jumped and caught at his wrist frantically, drawing her mouth back in a flurry of embarrassment.
He let his arms fall away and smiled mockingly. “Limits already, Eleanor?”
She clasped her hands together tightly. “No decent woman—” she began.
“Decency has no license here,” he said firmly. “A woman who cares deeply for a man thinks less of rigid social conduct and more of giving pleasure.”
She moved back a step. She was appalled at his attitude. Surely if he cared for her, he would not ask such a sacrifice. Her whirling mind struggled to focus.
He was losing her. He saw the uncertainty in her face and moved forward to take her hands in his and lift them hungrily, palms up, to his mouth. “Forgive me,” he said smoothly. “I was testing you. I shall not ask any great sacrifices of you, Eleanor. I want only the pleasure of your company, the solace of your kisses when I am lonely. I shall ask no more than you wish to give.”
She relaxed with a soft sigh and smiled at him. Her love grew by leaps and bounds, and she saw rainbows of happiness ahead.
The sudden brilliance of her eyes, the radiance of her face, made him feel vaguely guilty. To stay the unwelcome feelings, he drew her gently to him and brushed his mouth softly over her own.
“You must go inside, my dear,” he whispered. “We must not be discovered like this.”
The endearment melted her heart. At that moment she would have given him anything. Amazing, to find love in such an unexpected place, and so suddenly. She looked at him with her whole heart in her eyes.
He smiled. “You are very pretty,” he murmured. “Will you really meet me, against the wishes of your people?”
“Oh, yes,” she whispered fervently. “Whenever you say, Cal.”
His name on her lips made his heart leap. That was unexpected. He chuckled. “What do they say, that love will find a way?” he teased, liking her blush. “Then so be it.”
Eleanor nodded happily. Love would find a way, he said, so that must mean that he felt this same incredible pleasure that she did. She felt as if she glowed.
He held her hand tightly in his and walked with her around to the front of the house, up to the front steps. “We must be careful from now on. You must not be seen like this, alone with me,” he said gently.
“Yes, I know. But I thought that you were less strapped by convention, Mr. Barton,” she replied, teasing.
He looked at her intently in the faint light of the porch. “You will find that I am quite unconventional, in some ways. But your reputation is important to me.”
That pleased her. Her eyes twinkled up at him. “You are old-fashioned.”
He smiled faintly. “Why do I gain the impression that you are not?”
She shifted from one foot to the other. “I have perhaps given a false impression of my life,” she said slowly. “I tend to…exaggerate some of my adventures.” The sadness in her eyes puzzled him as they sought his. “I have had so little to look forward to,” she confessed slowly. “Perhaps I created laurels to rest upon.”
“You are young,” he protested. “You have marriage to look forward to, children….”
She went very still. Her eyes sought his, and she saw the cynicism there before he could hide it. “Why, you say it as if you think family life is for fools!”
His heavy brows darted inward toward his nose. “Not for fools,” he began. “But I have plans that do not allow for marriage.”
That was blunt enough. What had she been thinking, anyway, that they would marry and settle together? She could not marry someone like him, and he did not want to marry at all. Just the same, it might happen, she thought stubbornly. She would not relinquish hope now, not just now.
“When you leave for the weekend, I used to wonder if you had a wife and family that you went to visit,” she commented.
“I have a family,” he confessed, watching her face fall. “Parents and brothers,” he amended, and saw the light come back into her face.
“Are you the oldest?” she persisted.
“The middle brother,” he corrected.
“And did you grow up in the shadow of the eldest?”
“My younger brother grew up in two shadows, I fear,” he mused, remembering Alan’s childhood. Alan had never quite measured up to the two fire-eaters who arrived before him, although he had perhaps the kindest heart of the three brothers.
“I have often wished that I were not an only child,” she replied. “But it was not to be.”
“You have no siblings?” he asked, startled.
“No. My mother has always been delicate.”
He studied her with new interest. She changed sometimes before his very eyes. “And are you delicate, Eleanor?” he asked.
Memories of the horrible bouts of fever, for almost a year, echoed in her mind. She shivered. “I must go in,” she whispered. She turned quickly and went up the steps, calling a subdued good-night over her shoulder. She couldn’t admit to him that she was so weak, so impaired physically. Surely fate would not deny her this little spot of happiness in her barren life. If nothing else, she would have the memory of Cal’s kisses to sustain her in the empty years ahead!
CAL WAS NOWHERE IN SIGHT the next morning, and Eleanor wondered if she might have dreamed the night before. Melly didn’t question her too closely, but her aunt Helen’s eyes had been full of worry, as if she was uncertain about something.
Later that day, while Nora was helping Melly pick up eggs in the henhouse, Melly explained what was disturbing Aunt Helen.
“Nora,” she said, as if she were carefully choosing her words, “a telegram has come for you, from your parents. It seems that you have received an invitation to visit relatives in Europe. They say that you may be presented at court, to Queen Victoria herself!”
Nora felt a sudden panic. This invitation could not have come at a worse time. Certainly it would be something quite special to be presented at court to Queen Victoria. But…
“Mama is uncertain about whether or not to tell you. You seem to be having such a good time, and you have been very ill,” Melly confided. “You are healthy here, and we do enjoy your company so much. We do not wish you to go away so quickly. But it is your choice, of course. I told Mama that I would speak to you, in private.”
Nora fingered the folds of her long skirt. How could she leave now, when she and Cal had only just discovered each other? On the other hand, her mother was not going to be best pleased if Nora missed an opportunity to be presented at court.
“You do not wish to go, do you?” Melly asked quietly. “You do not wish to leave Mr. Barton.”
Nora’s face contorted. “It is hopeless,” she whispered.
“Why? He is a good and decent man,” Melly said, “regardless of his circumstances. Surely it does not cause you embarrassment that you find Mr. Barton attractive?”
Embarrassment. Embarrassment. Nora didn’t want to consider what she was thinking, but she had to. It was the truth. She was embarrassed. Cal Barton was a marvelous ranch foreman. But could she really picture him dressed for the opera or the theater, in white tie and tails? Could she picture him discussing politics with her father’s contemporaries, or receiving guests with her in the parlor at her home? Would he know to keep his feet off the furniture, how to act at table, how to behave as a sophisticated gentleman? She was panic-stricken at the very thought of Cal Barton in a parlor. He, with his eternally nasty boots and worn clothes and unshaven face. Her eyes closed on a wave of grief.
“What shall I do?” she asked Melly. “I cannot stay and I do not wish to leave!”
Melly put an affectionate arm around her. “Do nothing for another week or so. Think about it.” Her eyes twinkled. “After all, Nora, so much can happen in a week. And I am your ally, you know.”
Nora hugged her back. “Your mother would never approve of any connection between Cal and myself. Nor would my parents.”
Melly exchanged a complicated glance with her. “They will never know. Will they?”
Nora smiled gratefully. She pursed her lips and studied her cousin. “This…compact…would not be the prelude to my doing a favor for you in return, of course?”
Melly flushed. “Oh, Mr. Langhorn would never wish to meet me in secret, I am certain.”
“As you say, dear, anything can happen.”
Melly burst out laughing. “Well, almost anything,” she amended. “Shall we think optimistically?”
“Let’s,” Nora agreed.
MAGIC, IT SEEMED, WAS AT WORK on the Tremayne ranch. For Cal Barton did not go away on his usual mysterious long weekend. With Melly’s help, he and Nora managed long walks together and even a buggy ride.
“This is wicked,” Nora told him amusedly as they jostled down the rutted road in a misting rain. “Melly will get wet waiting for us at the crossroads with the buggy.”
“She has both a parasol and a slicker,” he reminded Nora. He had rolled a cigarette and was smoking it. He seemed preoccupied, as he often was when they met. He never talked about himself, about his dreams or his family or his home.
“You are very secretive,” she commented. “I have told you about our summer home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and my childhood. I have told you about my family. But I know so little about you.”
He took a draw from the cigarette. “My past is uninteresting,” he said.
She nibbled at her lower lip. “Don’t you mean that you have no wish to share personal things with me?”
He chuckled, drawing the horse off the road under the trees and allowing it to graze in the mist. He put on the brake and turned to Nora, pulling her gently into his arms. “On the contrary. I wish to share very personal things with you,” he murmured, and his mouth bent to cover hers.
She permitted the shocking entry of his tongue inside her mouth, the touch of his lean, sure hands on her breasts. The pleasure she felt disturbed her almost as much as the license she permitted him. It was indecent to allow a man such intimacies, but ah, how sweet it was to feel his long fingers tracing around her taut nipples. Even through the fabric, it excited her. He groaned softly when he touched her this way, and she liked the quickening of his breath, the faint tremor of the mouth that kept hers prisoner so hungrily.
But today there was a difference in him. His hands felt for the tiny buttons at her throat and began to slip them out of their loops. She caught at his fingers, protesting.
“Hush,” he whispered, teasing her mouth with his as he continued his task. “You love me, don’t you?” he asked tenderly, and saw the faint shock in her eyes. She didn’t deny it, and his heart raced. “Then there is no shame in permitting me this pleasure.”
He made it sound delightfully correct. Even as she felt the dark pleasure wash over her, she might have protested, but instead of his hands on the white flesh he was exposing, she felt his mouth. She stiffened, shocked at the whip of delight he kindled in her untried body. Her hands fluttered at his head and then suddenly caught in his hair and contracted, pulled, pleaded as his lips traced her throat and then her collarbone.
“Cal…we…mustn’t,” she choked.
“Oh, but we must,” he whispered ardently. His head lifted, just a fraction, so that he could pull away the fine fabric above the whalebone corset she wore and expose the delicate pink-tipped rise of her small breast under her lacy chemise.
It was not the first time for him. There had been women. But the sight of Nora’s firm, pretty little breast kindled something besides passion in him. He looked at it and had a sudden, staggering vision of a tiny mouth suckling there.
The shock was in the pale, glittery eyes that lifted to meet her dazed blue ones.
His thumb and forefinger gently pressed on the hard nub and she gasped, flushing, because she had never imagined that a man might touch her so in broad daylight and look in her eyes as he did it.
“Tell me now,” he said quietly. “Is this the first time for you?”
She bit almost through her lower lip. Her wide eyes dropped to her open bodice, to the lean brown fingers on the paleness of her skin. Her breath caught at the intimacy of it.
“Yes, look,” he breathed, aroused even more by her reaction. “See how the nipple hardens when I touch it, see how it lifts to beg for my mouth.”
That shocked her, and she looked up at him, flushing.
He searched her eyes. “You did not know?” he asked gently. “It is what a man often enjoys most with a woman—the subtle, sweet taste of her breasts in his mouth.”
Involuntarily her back arched just a little and her breathing changed.
He knew, without words. Smiling, he held her while his hand moved and his mouth slowly, tenderly, took its place. He began to suckle her, feeling her stiffen and gasp, and then cry out as the waves of sensation rippled through her yielded body. She had no thought of refusing him anything he asked of her.
And he knew it. He felt the violent throb of her heart under his mouth. There was a small deserted cabin nearby, just a few steps off the road. A flash of lightning made her jerk in his arms, and he knew then that it was fated, this interlude. With a small, triumphant laugh, he climbed out of the buggy and lifted her in his arms. He refused to think of consequences. He wanted her and she wanted him; surely nothing else mattered now! His body was in anguish from the long weeks of abstinence, and here was Eleanor, in love and wanting him. Even his thoughts of revenge retreated behind the fury of his desire for her. He felt it with every step he took, like a fire in his brain, in his blood.
“Cal,” she whispered, dazed.
“Don’t be afraid,” he murmured against her mouth as he turned with Nora in his arms and walked toward the cabin. “It will be our secret. No one will know, ever. I need you so, Eleanor,” he whispered huskily at her soft mouth. “I only want to lie with you, to hold you in my arms and feel your mouth under mine. Nothing terrible will happen. I will do nothing that you do not want.”
He felt her relax and had a moment’s guilt. She trusted him, and he knew that he wanted more than kisses. He could make her want it, too. It was blatant seduction, but he was powerless to stop himself. He ached for her, and she loved him; he had accused her of it, and she had not denied it. Her soft body went right to his head. Besides, she was a modern woman. Even though she was more innocent than he’d thought, it would be no terrible thing for her to know a man. She would succumb to someone eventually, as women of her adventurous nature inevitably did. It might as well be him. He wanted to be her first man. He wanted it beyond anything! He would be gentle with her, as another man might not be. He rationalized it until it made sense, until his conscience closed its eyes to the enormity of what he was contemplating. His body was in control now, for the first time in his life.
Nora lay trembling gently in his arms. She knew what he was going to ask of her, and as he carried her up the steps and into the darkness of the one-room cabin, she had just enough sanity left to struggle for an answer.