Lily's Secrets [Elk Creek 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (2 page)

Lily hated that he felt the need to protect her so since she’d returned, though she understood his reckoning.

Sometimes she thought she and Wyatt would have been better off all the way around had the savage just killed her. Wyatt might have been able to start over again with another woman, one healthy in mind, body, and spirit, unlike Lily. She’d had these thoughts often after the raid that had stolen her adopted family away from her and before she’d found her way back home almost a year ago. She’d come home more out of desperation than desire. With most of her Kiowa clan dead and whatever survivors left scattered to the four winds, Lily had had no choice but to return to the only other home she’d known since her childhood.

Wyatt had suggested several times since her return that she go back to teaching. She had been a good teacher, loved working with children, but the thought of being around all those youngins again on a regular basis made a tight ball of sorrow form in her throat.

Lily didn’t want to think about the little boy now lost to her and shook off the emerging memories of plump, ruddy cheeks, chubby, churning toddler legs, and hearty childhood giggles.

Avoiding the other customers and the town’s curiosity, she quickly found refuge in a deserted aisle before someone could witness the tears forming in her eyes. True, the people of Elk Creek made allowances for her “delicate” condition since she’d returned from her “ordeal” with the Indians and would have probably understood her sudden bout of melancholy. Lily just hated seeing pity shining out of the town people’s eyes, especially in relation to her.

She took a hanky out of her handbag, patted her eyes dry, and quietly blew her nose before she felt ready to rejoin civilization.

Cautiously, she poked her head out of the aisle, looking left and right, still not ready to leave the safety of the passageway when she noticed Lucy Peyton chatting with Sabrina over one of the mixture displays.

Lily smiled at how confident and happy Lucy had been looking lately. In fact, she seemed to be thriving in the wake of her husband’s recent death. This was in spite of his estate—including the saloon where Lucy had worked up until very recently and the house where she’d lived with her husband—being in probate. Lily wasn’t too sure of all the legalities regarding Rance Peyton’s will, except that Lucy didn’t have access to her husband’s assets and had had to take up residence in Sabrina’s boarding house until everything could be set to rights.

She thought how charitable Maia and Sabrina had been to hire Lucy when no other businesses in town except Winchester’s would and when Lucy needed the income most.

Lily knew what it was like to be a pariah and she knew that Maia, Sabrina, and Lucy understood those feelings, too.

For the second time that morning she thought about asking Maia and Sabrina to take her on as an employee. Though her monetary situation wasn’t dire like Lucy’s, far from it. Wyatt would always provide for her as long as he was alive and, unlike Rance had done Lucy, even after he was dead. Lily’s emotional situation, however, was a horse of a different color.

She ducked back into the aisle, browsing the shelves of colorful bottles with interest. There were several bottles marked “Sample” that drew her attention. She lifted a small one off of a top shelf. It was filled with an inviting amber liquid and she unscrewed the cap. Carefully, Lily lifted the mouth of the bottle toward her nose, unprepared for the clean, woodsy scent that wafted out to her.

Lily’s nostrils flared at the familiar aroma and she closed her eyes at the memory of the stranger it evoked. She could almost hear his deep voice rising over the sound of a nearby flowing stream. She could just feel the heat of his strong fingers when he’d touched her, the slight calluses on his palm prickly against the back of her hand. She’d reckoned then that he was a hard worker like Wyatt, most probably a hunter or a warrior of some sort.

She thought he could have been the most bloodthirsty hostile around, but no one would ever know it from her. With her he had been nothing but gentle, his manner never wavering from kind and polite, even when she had been less so.

Lily regretted that she’d never had the chance to thank him for saving her, but once they’d arrived to “his people,” he’d disappeared and she’d never heard from him again. He could have walked up and spit on her in the street and she wouldn’t have known him. She regretted this most of all, that she had never laid her gaze on her savior. She only had the memory of his voice, his smell…his touch.

She took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of cedar from the bottle and releasing a shuddering sigh as her bloomers became wet.

Goodness, she was shameless, no better than a loose Jezebel! Maybe she had deserved exactly what had happened to her five years ago. What well-brought-up woman, a decent
married
woman, harbored such carnal thoughts about a man who wasn’t her husband?

The self-recriminations did precious little to stop Lily reminiscing about the day her life had changed forever.

After the attack she had woken to the sensation of intense pain all over. She’d lain on her back and tried to blink open her eyes but they were well-nigh swollen shut. She was, however, able to catch a peek of stars and the moon against the indigo sky as the litter carrying her battered and bruised body bumped along the quiet road.

Though the ride proved rough, she sensed the care and time that someone had taken to secure her to the makeshift stretcher slowly dragging behind a horse. She was wrapped in a blanket, the thick cloth cushioning the jolts enough not to overly jar her.

They rode a long while in silence before arriving at a flowing brook. The scent of flowers, trees, grass, and earth remained heavy in the air, suffusing her lungs with the promise of hope, the promise of life.

Lily listened as the stranger got off his horse and spoke to the animal in a language she didn’t recognize, his voice gentle and deep, almost musical.

This was not the same savage who had attacked her.

Fleetingly, Lily wondered what Wyatt would think when he returned from town and found her missing from their home.

Lily closed her eyes against the idea of Wyatt’s grief and realized she couldn’t go back to him in this condition and that was if she lived through whatever came next.

She had a moment to wonder if her baby had survived the attack and whimpered at the idea of having lost her and Wyatt’s baby.

Oh my God. Oh no!

By the time the stranger came to check on her, Lily had gotten one arm out of the blanket and was working on the other.

The stranger squatted beside her and she winced, instantly going still. She could barely see him through the slits in her eyes, but she sensed him flinch in reaction. For a long moment, he didn’t say anything, just sat on his haunches, waiting.

“I will not harm you, but you must not exert yourself. You need to rest.”

He used the same voice on her as he had used on his horse. She wondered if it was his natural tone or if he used it specifically to calm skittish animals and damsels in distress.

Strangely, the idea that he regarded her as either angered Lily.

He reached for her, his touch on her hand tentative yet firm.

Lily swallowed down the ball of panic that clogged her throat when he gently patted her hand. She thought of Wyatt’s concern at having to leave her alone earlier. She’d told him she wasn’t feeling well enough to go into town with him. He’d agreed that she had been looking a mite peaked of late but reluctantly left her.

She closed her eyes, wishing now she had told him the real reason behind her ill health.

“You speak English,” she whispered.

There was a pause followed by a quiet noise, as if he tried to hold in a chuckle. “Yes. I speak your language, very well in fact.”

“You’re not like him.”

“The one who attacked you?”

“Yes.”

“No. I am not like him.”

Lily sighed in relief. She hadn’t realized how tense she had been until that moment.

She still wasn’t out of the woods yet. She had no idea who this stranger was or what he wanted from her. She couldn’t even see his face and that scared her most of all.

“You are safe with me. I am taking you to my people. They will help you heal.”

He spoke as if he had read her mind, and Lily nodded her agreement.

She supposed it was easier, safer even, for him to take her to his people than to try and get her back to her own people. If he tried to take her to town and Doctor Hopwood in the condition she was in, he might be shot on sight.

He held the mouth of a canteen to her lips and she tried not to gulp down the cool water for fear of hurting her stomach. She already had enough aches and pains with which to deal.

She thought of the laudanum in the kitchen cabinet back home that she used for her monthly. Doctor Hopwood prescribed it to her like he did many of the women in town. It was the only thing that had ever helped with the cramps and headaches. She wondered if the stranger’s “people” used the equivalent for aches and pains like hers and knew that with the way she was hurting it would take a lot of something to alleviate it and help her heal.

After Lily had gotten her fill of the water, she felt him pat her face with a cool, damp cloth and tried not to grimace. She didn’t want to make him feel worse than she already had.

“I thought you were dead when I found you,” he murmured.

To everyone she knew and loved she might as well be.

I can’t go back. I can never go back
. “I am dead.”

Distantly, Lily heard the bell over the entrance chime, but she didn’t open her eyes right away, too deeply enmeshed in the past. Despite the pain of the memories and her shame, she wanted to sink into the liquid warm feeling washing over her. She hadn’t felt like this, like a woman to be desired, in a long time, not since before the attack and her rescue.

Wyatt had been treating her as if she was a piece of fine china since her return, and under normal circumstances this might have been acceptable, except that she wasn’t a piece of dinnerware. She was a warm-blooded, living, breathing being and she had needs.

Her husband, however, seemed only able to tolerate her presence, as if out of duty rather than desire and enjoyment. She didn’t blame Wyatt. He was an honorable man caught in a bad situation. She just didn’t like being anyone’s millstone. She didn’t want his pity any more than she wanted the town people’s pity, and this had been one of the main reasons she’d chosen to stay with the Kiowas even after she had given birth. She had been beaten, left for dead and unsure of what else had happened to her in between. With that doubt tormenting her every step, she’d felt unfit to any longer be the wife of a good man. Had the encampment not been attacked and most of the tribe slaughtered, she’d be with them even now—her and her son. The encampment
had
been attacked, however, and she had…her son had perished with everyone else, everyone else except her.

He had just been a baby, barely four. Why had God seen fit to let her live and her son die?

“Hmm, looks to me like someone is fantasizing about a handsome young married homesteader.”

Lily’s eyes shot open at the sultry purr, and she rested her gaze on the statuesque blonde standing at the end of the aisle smiling at her.

“Hello, Miss Morgan.”

“I told you before you can call me Rebel, unless the name sticks in your craw.”

“No, not at all…Rebel.” She liked the way the name sounded on her tongue and appreciated the privilege the woman had allowed her. Evidently, Rebel appreciated it, too, for her violet eyes twinkled.

“No need to blush, darlin’. I’d be fantasizing in the middle of the afternoon, too, if I had a husband as good looking as your’n.” Rebel chuckled, not unkindly, but it made Lily’s face even hotter. Maybe it was her compliment of Wyatt’s looks. Lily knew she had a fine-looking husband, at least she had always found him so. It just always unsettled her when other women noticed him the same way, especially someone as beautiful and worldly-wise as Rebel Morgan.

“Are you harassing the customers again, Rebel?”

Lily glanced past the other woman to see Maia stroll into the aisle behind her.

Maia easily placed a hand on Rebel’s shoulder though Rebel stood head and shoulders above Maia’s petite height. Lily loved that about the Negro woman, had from the first moment she’d met her. Maia didn’t let anything or anyone intimidate her, not even Wyatt, who had given her his best, flinty-eyed cowboy look upon first meeting her and could intimidate anyone with the best of them. Lily still found some of the words that came out of Maia’s mouth a little alien, much like the spelling of “magick” in the store’s name. She put down the strangeness to Maia’s originating from back East.

“Just complimenting Lily on that fine specimen of a man she has for a husband.”

“And keeping your hands to yourself?”

“Does that mean I’m not allowed to look at or
think
about him either?”

“Evil thoughts are the same as evil deeds.”

“Is that a Bible verse, darlin’? Because being the freethinking woman that I am, I wouldn’t be familiar with it.”

“Stop misbehaving.”