Echoes (31 page)

He shifted Arlie to the side and reached out for her in one fluid movement. His lips touched hers in a sensation of hot on cold that turned everything inside her to a liquid need that pulsed with her racing heartbeat. He held her face with one hand, his son with another. She wrapped her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe. Obviously confused by this touching of his father and his Molly, Arlie was unusually still and quiet.

The kiss lasted just a moment but it seemed to stretch through all of time while falling short of fulfillment. Adam pulled his mouth from hers with such absolute reluctance that she sighed in both pleasure and pain. Her hand slid down from his neck to his chest. His heart thundered beneath her touch, letting her know that she was not alone in the wild rush of want that had taken over her senses.

Adam rested his forehead against hers for a moment. The sunshine filtered down into the chasm, creating shadows carved of darkness and light that played across his face. "Where is my mother?" he asked hoarsely.

"Mrs. Imogene's," she answered.

"I'll be back."

The statement held as much question as certainty.

"Yes."

He scooped up Arlie's things and carried him out of the ravine still wrapped in the towel. The front of his shirt and trousers were soaked through where her body had pressed against him.

The pool felt warm against her skin when she returned to it. Nervously she stripped the cotton chemise and washed her hair and body, each brush of her fingers like a memory of Adam's touch. She couldn't stop grinning.

She had just climbed out of the pool and wrapped herself in a towel when the clatter of pebbles bouncing down heralded Adam's return. Poised between excitement and embarrassment, she turned to face him as he rounded the corner into their sanctuary.

Only it wasn't Adam who met her expectant look with a big smile.

"Brodie," she gasped, clutching the towel over her nakedness. "What are you doing here? Where is Adam?"

His smile dimmed and his bright eyes lowered to the ground. "I came to see you," he said, as if that should be obvious.

"How did you know I was here?"

"I saw you come down," he said, staring at her feet and ankles in a way that made her think he was picturing everything else above them.

Heat rushed to her face. He'd seen her coming down. What else had he seen? An image filled her head of him peeking over the rocks as she and Adam…. Her stomach clenched.

"You got pretty little feet," he said, glancing up shyly. "Pretty ankles."

A trill of disquiet followed a drip from her hair down her spine. She cleared her throat and tried to look casual and unalarmed. "As you can see, you've caught me by surprise, Brodie. Would you please allow me some privacy while I dress?"

"You didn't make Adam leave. He stayed a long time."

"Were you spying on us, Brodie?" she asked in her best school teacher voice. "It is rude to spy."

Brodie flushed and returned to his examination of her feet. "I just wondered what you were doing in here, is all. I thought you'd be glad to see me."

He took a step forward and again she realized how closely he toed the line to manhood. He'd grown over the weeks on the trail. His lanky frame had filled out and he'd stretched to nearly Adam's height. His youth had somehow reduced him in Molly's perceptions until that minute. Now the surrounding walls of rock closed in on them as Brodie's imposing build seemed to force the very air from the shelter. He looked at her boldly, now with a hint of defiance that turned her unease into a deep foreboding. Where was Adam? He should have been back by now.

Molly flinched when Brodie reached out to touch her hair. He scowled, lifting a dripping strand from her shoulder and rubbing it between his fingers.

"You were swimming," he accused. "Weren't you?"

"No. I was bathing." She pointed to the soap placed on the rocks next to the water.

"You said you couldn't swim."

"I wasn't swimming, Brodie. I had a bath. The water's not deep."

"How come nobody told me to have a wash?" he asked, looking from the soap to her bare shoulders with suspicion.

"I would have come to find you after I dressed," Molly said, forcing an even, calm voice. "Your mother as well."

Overhead the sun slid behind a cloud, casting a gray chill into the seclusion. Brodie was breathing heavily, staring at her in an intense, feverish way that notched her apprehension.

"Now please, Brodie. I'm getting cold and I want to put on my clothes."

He let loose the strand of her hair but instead of moving back, he stepped closer. His hot, damp hand settled on her clean, cool skin. "You're soft," he said, stroking her shoulder. "You smell like flowers."

He smiled and his face lit up in that childish way she used to find so endearing. But where innocence once seemed to sparkle in his eyes, now deceit gleamed. He was not oblivious to the impropriety of his presence. He chose to ignore it. Her feelings of fear or pleasure were inconsequential to his desire to touch her. What other inborn senses of right and wrong did he ignore at whim?

"Brodie, I must insist that you go," she said, her voice steady despite the vulnerability that made her mouth dry.

"I could've saved you," he murmured in a husky voice. "Would've too, but Adam always sticks his nose in my business."

She grasped the towel in her white knuckled hands and spoke sharply. "Brodie, I have asked you to leave. If you insist on ignoring me, I shall have to—" What? What could she do? Who would hear a scream? The camp was well out of earshot. And where was Adam?

"I saw you fall in and I was set on saving you," Brodie continued, as if she hadn't spoken at all. "I told you I would, now didn't I?"

Angrily she shrugged her shoulder and stepped back. Instead of releasing her, Brodie tightened his grip painfully and jerked her forward.

"I told you I could swim better than any fish." His eyes blazed. "Didn't I tell you that?"

"Y-yes," she said quickly.

He nodded. "That's right. And that stupid Dewey, he didn't think I could, but I showed him. I showed him."

Showed him? She swallowed thickly as memories of that horrible river crossing unfurled in her head, overlapping one another in their fight for the surface. They tangled in her mind, revealing nothing to explain the sickening terror that lay within them. It was more than what had happened to Molly as she'd been catapulted down the rapids…but she couldn't bring it into focus…

"He wanted to take you from me, but I didn't let him." He shook his head, keeping one hand tight on her while the other roamed her shoulder, down her arm and up again. "That's what he wanted. He wanted to have you for himself. But you belong to me."

"Brodie, you have obviously misunderstood our friendship," she said, willing the quaver from her voice. "I do not belong to you. I belong to no man."

"I'm going to marry you and we're going to live in the mansion with the swimming pool." The roving hand hesitated an instant and then plunged down to grab her breast.

She gasped with shock as her insidious fear blossomed into flat out terror. This was not an unwelcome predicament, this was a dangerous one and her isolation made it all the more so. She struggled to free herself from his grip. If she could get away, she could grab her clothes and make a dash for it. Surely there would be another shelter in which to dress. The important thing was to escape this secluded place and the frightening, possessive stranger who had her trapped there.

His gaze landed on the small circle of river water and his expression changed like lightning. "No one else is supposed to teach you to swim," he said grabbing her face. "Adam knows you belong to me."

With a strangled cry, she wrenched free and tried to bolt. She'd managed two steps when his fist closed over her towel and he hauled her back. For one teetering moment she fought with indecision—the towel or herself? And then she released her hold on the towel and stumbled free. She paused just long enough to scoop up her clothes and she was almost to the edge of the enclosure when she plowed hard into an unyielding barrier. Panicked she began to fight, but then a familiar voice penetrated the haze of fear. Adam.

She clung to him, her clothes a waded bundle in her arms, exposed and vulnerable and relieved to weakness at the sight of him. An unconnected part of her noticed that he still had Arlie, another that the boy was reaching for her and crying. Adam looked ghastly pale beneath a light sheen of sweat that gleamed on his face. He was staring at Brodie with confusion and anger.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded and then, in nearly the same breath and tone. "For God's sake, put your clothes on Molly."

He grabbed Brodie by the shirt and hauled him away while Molly fumbled with her clothing. Humiliation and horror made the simple task an impossible challenge. She heard Brodie sputtering angry accusations and then a woman's voice, familiar and panicked, cried out to them.

"Mr. Weston! Mr. Weston!"

Molly yanked her dress over her head and at last managed the buttons as Mrs. Imogene Tate's footsteps approached at a run. Molly peered around at the woman from behind the wall of rock as Mrs. Imogene stopped several yards away, out of breath, her face flushed and her eyes wide with concern.

"Thank the Lord I've found you. Come quickly. It's your mama."

Chapter Thirty

Molly sat in the hot cramped confines of the wagon, longing to be outside where the air stirred with the night breeze. But she did not budge from her seat, wedged between two barrels and perched atop a crate.

On the mattress at her feet, Rosie lay in a twist of bedclothes and sheets. Her skin glowed with a sallow sheen and the sickly-sweet stench of death hung around her like a portent. She moaned and thrashed, drenched in perspiration and shivering uncontrollably. Molly bathed her face with cool water and pulled the sheet back over her.

"Shhh, Rosie, I'm here. I'm here."

Rosie had lapsed into unconsciousness yesterday evening and had not resurfaced to take sustenance of any kind. Occasionally she sat up and shouted, talking to people only she could see. Haints, she'd called them when she'd seen others do it. Now the haints had come for Rosie.

Molly shifted, wincing as her stiff muscles protested. The spread of sickness had begun weeks ago when an elderly man in their party took ill. He traveled alone and with no one else to care for him, the women had banded together to help as they could. Each of them took a shift at his side, bathing the fever from his brow and offering him water when he broke from the fits of convulsions that wracked his body. Still, there had been little else they could do but watch the life quite literally drain from him. He'd died within days.

Like fire, fear spread with the word of his passing, igniting imaginations and tongues alike. They all knew about cholera, and the "go-backs"—those whose journey had met ill-fate and who decided to return home rather than risk more disaster—had told them that the epidemic was raging wild in other companies. It was a wonder the Hanson party had escaped it so far. Not that they needed the disheartening reports. They had all seen the graves marking the trail.

By the end of the week, three more began showing the signs of affliction, including Mr. Crawford, their guide. He and another died as quickly and painfully as the old man. The third, a young woman, made a miraculous recovery. After that, a feeling of optimism prevailed. A few days passed without any new cases of cholera and they all hoped it had somehow taken its toll and moved on.

Until Mrs. Imogene had come running to fetch Adam, that is. Blinking back the tears that welled up in her eyes, Molly smoothed back Rosie's damp white hair. Rosie mumbled something unintelligible and flayed her arms and legs in a sudden fit. She had survived the loss of her husband, the deaths of her children and the settling of a new frontier, but with each moment that passed, Molly could see this battle lost to the devastating disease.

Throughout the night she'd shook with wracking convulsions, losing her vital bodily fluids with a rapidity that could not be staunched nor replenished. Molly stayed by her side, wishing she could stop this hellish journey long enough to care for her properly, but knowing that she could not. The pilgrimage of fifteen wagons, forty-two adults and countless children and beasts did not halt for those entering the world with their first breath. It would not halt for those leaving it with their last. They stopped for nothing.

They were fortunate, however, that Captain Hanson had not deemed it necessary to isolate them from the rest as they'd heard was the practice of other companies both ahead and behind them. Some had gone so far as to cast out anyone who was afflicted, refusing to allow them to journey until the ailing member had either died or recovered. It was barbaric and yet everything about their westward excursion had proven to be so.

From outside she heard voices lifted in eerie incantation. She shifted so that she could see through the small opening at the back of the wagon. Not far from their encampment a small party of Indians who had been following on the fringes for several days had pitched a crude skin tent. Now they sat on the ground in front of their fire, chanting in high-pitched, despairing cries and plunging mournful wails. Their song brought gooseflesh to her skin and Molly crossed herself as she watched. The flames from their fire danced and flickered in the breeze, casting writhing shadows across the ghostly figures. She did not need to comprehend their words to understand their song. They sang of death.