Colorado Bride (25 page)

“Because I want to give it to you.” Lucas reached out and brushed her cheek with his fingers. There’s something about you that makes me want to shower you with gifts.” Carrie felt even more miserable. She felt like three separate conversations were trying to take place simultaneously, the one about the mare, the fact that she had discovered that she was in love with him, and her confession that she had never been married at all. In the end she was unable to get anything out and Lucas had to break the silence.

“Come on up to the cabin. I have a pot of coffee on.” He reached out and took her hand, and it was all Carrie could do to keep from jumping. It was just like the bite of static electricity except that its energy was not dissipated and her whole body felt charged with sparks arcing across the lines of her nervous system.

“Those horses will make a nice addition to our teams. How long does it take you to break them?”

Lucas had to give a tug to her hand before her feet began to move. “It depends, but I ought to have the first of them ready inside of a couple of weeks. It’s teaching them to respond to the reins and run in harness that’s the hard part.”

The hard part is walking hand in hand with you and pretending I’m not about to stand on my head from the upheaval inside my brain, Carrie thought. She hesitated involuntarily as they reached the cabin door.

It’s not much of a cabin, even for a man,” Lucas said, “but it’s free.” The cabin was made up of two plain rooms, one behind the other. The front room took up most of the space and was the living, cooking, and eating area. A large fireplace took up one end with a mantel free of objects and a bear’s head mounted above it. A large sofa was placed before the fireplace. At the other end of
the
room, a small cooking stove with a flue going straight up to the roof provided the heat. There was no table and no chair other than the sofa. The spaces between the logs had been filled in with mud, and the whole whitewashed with lime, but dust and soot had turned the walls gray. An oil lantern suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the room provided the only light other than that coming in the two small windows.

“This place could use a good cleaning,” Carrie said, selfconsciously seating herself on the sofa. That wasn’t what she wanted to say, but she wasn’t sure what she
did
want to say. Nevertheless, she had to say something, and that was certainly safe enough.

“You’re welcome to have a go at it anytime you like. I don’t pay good wages, but I might be talked into providing coffee and a little something extra.” Lucas set two cups of steaming coffee on an upended log in front of the sofa and sat down next to Carrie. “Don’t you want to know what the something extra might be?”

“I haven’t decided if I’m going to clean up the place. I suppose it does belong to the company though no one said anything-”

“Can’t you forget the company for one evening? Would it be completely out of the range of possibility that you would clean it up because it belonged to me?”

Carrie didn’t know where that statement was meant to lead—there were so many possibilities—but she was too nervous to make a rational choice among them. Lucas was resting his arm on the back of the sofa, and his fingers were touching her shoulder, moving back and forth ever so lightly, and it was driving her crazy.

“I suppose I could,” she managed to say, “but that would just reinforce your male idea that God created woman merely to cook and clean for man.”

“Did it ever occur to you that the roles men and women have assumed were dictated by impersonal considerations like size, strength, and childbearing and nurturing?”

“Of course it did. I’m not a fool. And if we were still living in a primitive society, I would expect to fall into the traditional pattern.”

Lucas leaned over and took a sip of his coffee, but he didn’t move his hand and his fingers were now at the nape of her neck.

“Tell me something about your husband,” he said unexpectedly. “Why did you marry him?”

Now, Carrie said to herself, tell him
now,
but instead she said, “I married Robert primarily to get away from my family. I know that sounds awful and I suppose it was, but I was desperate to escape the prison they were building for me and Robert was the only chance I saw.”

“Surely a young woman as pretty as you would have offers of marriage.”

“You have no idea what a toll the Civil War took on Virginia’s men. Many were killed, others disappeared, still others just never returned. There weren’t many men in our town, but the only ones to come back were my brothers, Robert, and two who already had sweethearts. Our whole county was devastated so there was no incentive for people to move in.

“But that wasn’t the only reason. I knew Robert would never force me to become anything I didn’t want to become or do anything I didn’t want to do. When I talked him into finding a job away from Smithfield, I knew I was stronger than he was.” Carrie didn’t like the look in Lucas’s eyes; it made her feel defensive. “There’s nothing wrong with that. Many women are stronger than their husbands, and they have very happy marriages.”

“Did it work out the way you had hoped?”

Tell him, you fool, tell him now, or get up and walk out of this cabin and never come back. Carrie tried to say the words, but they wouldn’t come out. She didn’t know what she was afraid she might lose, but she knew she would lose more if she didn’t tell him the truth right now.

“I never married him.”

“What?” Lucas exclaimed, sitting forward and looking at her very intently. His fingers were still.

“I never had the chance. I told you he died in St. Louis of a fever. That was true, but he died before I got there. I have never been married.”

“Then what is your name?” Lucas demanded. “Your
real
name.”

“It’s Terwillinger. Carolina Marsena Terwillinger.” There was a moment of stunned silence. “Now you can see why I prefer Carrie Simpson.”

“But to tell everyone you were married.”

“I knew there’d be no problem in my coming to the station if they thought my husband was taking it over. Duncan Bickett would never have allowed me to stay here a single night if he had known I was an unmarried woman of twenty-two. I knew I would soon have to tell everyone I was a widow, but a widow has much more freedom and standing in a community than a single woman. I also knew I had to be a great success if they were to let me stay, and I was determined to give myself every chance.” The fingers on the nape of her neck were moving again.

“Have you told anyone else you were never married?”

“No.”

“Not even Katie?”

“I’ve told no one.”

“Then why did you tell me?” Carrie hardly knew what to say and those fingers on her neck and shoulder weren’t helping.

“I had to. I didn’t feel I could just go on pretending forever.” Lucas cocked his head to one side, a definite I don’t believe a word you’re saying look on his face.

“I knew I wasn’t being honest with you, and it was important that I was.”

“Why?” God, he was relendess.

“I don’t like lying to people, even for a good reason.”

“Then why haven’t you told Katie and Jake?”

“I don’t intend to,” she confessed. “I’m depending on you to let me go on with the pretense. Even if I’d been here for years and was accepted by everybody, I’d still prefer to be thought a widow. It makes everything so much easier.”

“Okay, I understand that well enough, but why did you elect to tell me and not the others?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do, and I intend to find out why. I promise I won’t ever lie to you, but you’ve got to promise you won’t ever lie or pretend a lie to me again.”

“Why?” she asked, thankful she could get in a question before he drove her to the wall in his inexorable search for the true nature of her feelings.

“Because what I feel for you allows no room for anything except the truth. It’s too important to me and too precious to both of us to risk losing it because of a lie.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You want me to go first?”

Carrie was thankful for Lucas’s understanding, but when one hand slipped down over her shoulder, drawing her against his powerful chest, and the other hand found and captured her fingers, she wasn’t sure that she hadn’t surrendered more than enough ground to give support to any notions of ownership he might have.

“I can remember just as clearly as if it were happening right now the very minute you stepped off the stage. You didn’t know I existed and your only thoughts were for Baca Riggins and the station, but it was as if a trumpet call announced your arrival, as though God said,
Here she is, Lucas. If you don’t do something about it, you have no one to blame but yourself.
I just sat under that tree, too confused to know what was really happening to me and having no idea how to draw myself to your attention. I know you weren’t pleased to meet a man like Baca Riggins, but I was glad because I knew it would give me a chance to do something for you that would force you to pay attention to me.”

“Did you anticipate I was going to be so difficult?” asked Carrie. “I can’t imagine that females are in the habit of giving you the cold shoulder.”

Lucas chuckled. “No, but from the first I suspected you were different. Once you drew down on Baca Riggins, I knew it.”

“Are you trying to tell me you fell for me after no more than a glance?” Carrie felt mighty comfortable. She hoped his explanation wasn’t going to be too short.

“No. I didn’t fall completely until the next day when I sat up in the loft and watched you figure out how to get a harness on that team.”

“So that’s where you were,” Carrie said, leaning slightly forward. “I always wondered.” Lucas gently pulled her back against him.

“I knew then that you were clever and resourceful as well as strong and determined. It’s not often you find all those characteristics in one person.”

“You make me sound like a list of qualifications.”

“Everyone is a collection of character traits that appeals to others. There’s nothing wrong with saying I like a girl with strength of purpose as opposed to one who agrees with every foolish thing I say.”

“Maybe men think like that, but a girl likes to feel like she’s wanted for herself, no matter what her list of desirable traits might be, and not because she’s a collection of characteristics which make her a good choice.”

“You’re not going to be reasonable about this are you?”

“Not if by reasonable you mean to list off the things you like about me. Suppose some of those things change? They do you know. Are you going to want to pitch me out the door?”

“I didn’t know we were talking about doors to homes and long-term arrangements.”

“You know what I mean,” Carrie said.

“Yes, and no. I never made a list of the things I like about you. I never got a chance. By the time I knew what was happening, it was too late.”

“Me, too,” Carrie admitted, now anxious to tell him some of the things which had been filling her heart to overflowing. “I knew I liked you, I mean who can help liking a man who’s got shoulders and a backside like you.” Lucas’s brows drew together and Carrie giggled. “I couldn’t help that. Men talk about women like they can be dismantled into their component parts without knowing that women do the same thing. I could tell you a few other things I like about you.”

“Somehow I think I’d ratiier you didn’t.” Lucas looked decidedly uncomfortable, and Carrie suspected she was the first
nice
girl he had ever known who had had the courage to mention the attractiveness of his body. Somehow it made her feel a little less at a disadvantage, more of an equal in this very new game she was playing.

“I liked you from the first, even after you told me you thought I ought to go back and wait for my husband.”

“Only part of that was concern for your welfare,” Lucas said. “I knew I was becoming, had
already
become, dangerously attracted to you, and I couldn’t possibly consider compromising a married woman.”

“You would have sent me back to Robert without ever saying anything?” Lucas nodded. “Nothing at all?”

“If I had ever once told you what I felt for you, I would never have been able to make myself stay from you.”

“What did you feel?”

“I didn’t know at first. It was something I had never felt before, maybe because I was too busy or maybe because I never met anyone who could pierce the armor I built around myself. Anyway, the more I saw you, the more I was drawn to you. Not just physically. I was familiar enough with
that
feeling to recognize it, but I wanted to be with you all the time, hold you in my arms, protect you, all things I’d never wanted to do for any woman before.”

“Never?”

“Never. And I wanted to do this so much I could hardly sleep.” Lucas leaned forward and kissed Carrie gently.

“Is that why you stole that kiss?”

“I kissed you hoping it would make you stay away from me, but it was a mistake. After that
I
couldn’t stay away from
you.”

“I liked it too,” Carrie confessed. “The only man I’d ever kissed was Robert, but I felt like it was a duty, not something I especially wanted to do again. But I remembered your kiss. At first I was angry, but soon I wanted you to kiss me again.” Lucas obliged.