Nora (9 page)

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!

 

C
AL 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.

 

M
AGIC, 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.