Sudden Storms (15 page)

“I’m not,” Marianna sighed. Her countenance changed, and she ceased her struggling, lovingly looking up into Paxton’s face. “I’m sorry, Paxton darling. I was…I was just so jealous. You understand.”

Paxton looked down at the woman in utter disbelief. “How can you possibly…” he began, but paused as the woman began placing tender, lingering kisses on his shoulders and neck.

Rivers watched in abhorrence as Marianna smiled up at Paxton between the kisses she placed on his body.

Paxton was unnerved. A revulsion he had never experienced was coursing through his veins, and on impulse, he shoved her away. His skin crawled with the lingering sensation of her kiss, and he could only stare at her in disgusted awe.

The whistle of the approaching train caught Marianna’s attention. Rivers flinched as a sudden bolt of lightning illuminated the sky, revealing the woman’s smiling and calm pleasant-appearing face.

“There’s your train,” she said, smiling sweetly at Rivers. Rivers could only look to Paxton, who stood bleeding profusely, still completely stunned by Marianna’s actions. The thunder accompanied the next whistle blow, and the ground began to rumble as the lantern light of the train cut through the night. The familiar whistle distracted Rivers this time. As she glanced at the approaching train, Marianna leaped forward, snatching the knives from their place in the moist grass.

“Paxton!” Rivers screamed too late as Marianna turned, heaving one knife through the air and laughing hysterically as it embedded itself deep in Paxton’s shoulder. Paxton crumpled to the ground, his body wracked with pain. Rivers stumbled toward him.

“No, dear. You’ve got a train to catch,” Marianna giggled, attacking Rivers and holding the knife firmly against Rivers’s abdomen. “Come along, Jezebel. Let’s meet that train.”

Rivers hesitated, and Marianna pressed the knife harder against her body. Grabbing Rivers’s hair in hand, Marianna pulled hard, forcing Rivers back toward the tracks. Marianna giggled as she pushed Rivers onto the tracks, steadily increasing the pressure of the knife against Rivers.

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever hopped a train in a predicament like this, have you, dear?” Marianna sneered.

Rivers looked to where Paxton lay in the grass, struggling to get to his feet. Suddenly, the blast of the whistle alerted her that the train was nearly on them. The engineer was no doubt in a state of panic at seeing two people on the tracks before him. He would know he could not stop in time to avoid crushing them. The whistle blew again, and Rivers started to move. Marianna slashed Rivers’s trousers, cutting her deeply across the abdomen.

Rivers cried out in agony as Marianna shouted above the roar of the approaching engine, “Let the train take you, Jezebel. It’ll be quicker. You understand.”

Rivers looked to Paxton. Time seemed to slow as she saw him struggle to his feet. He bolted toward them. Taking Marianna’s hair in one hand and the knife in the other, he threw her to the tracks. He shoved Rivers hard enough that she rolled free. Paxton stumbled and fell to his knees on the tracks as the train continued to rumble toward them. Rivers screamed! It seemed he could not possibly save himself. Miraculously, and only an instant before the powerful locomotive ground Marianna’s madness into the steel, Paxton threw himself backward from the tracks, narrowly avoiding the same fate.

Rivers collapsed to her knees, sobbing hysterically as the train passed. The noise of the screeching on the tracks as the engineer tried to stop the monstrosity was deafening.

A light rain began to fall as Rivers laid her head against his shoulder, which appeared to be the only part of his upper body void of severe laceration.

“You came for me. I can’t believe you came for me,” she whispered. She felt his hands on her head as he stroked her hair. Pulling herself up to sit beside him, her heart swelled with guilt at the knowledge she was responsible for his body being so painfully desecrated.

His hands lay on his chest. He closed his eyes for a moment as the rain fell on his face.

“I killed her,” he muttered. “I killed her.”

“No, Paxton,” Rivers soothed, smoothing his hair back from his forehead as the rain fell there. “I saw her. She could’ve moved, just as you did. She chose not to. She stood up and met her fate full in the face.”

It was true. As Rivers’s mind horribly reviewed once more the vision she beheld just before the train crushed Marianna, she remembered the mad woman standing and stretching her arms at her sides, laughing maniacally.

Paxton shook his head from side to side and was silent for a moment before opening his eyes to glare at Rivers.

“You tried to leave me!” Paxton accused, pulling himself to a sitting position, in spite of such dreadful pain. “I thought sure ya knew I was only…that I just can’t say things…that I was…afraid to love ya completely, Rivers.”

“You all right?” the engineer shouted as he approached. “She was laughing when she went under. I ain’t never seen anything like that!”

“We’re fine,” Paxton grunted, trying to stand. Rivers stood and took his hand, helping him up.

“Fine?” the man gasped as he studied the wounds on Paxton’s body and the state of odd and immodest dress in which Rivers found herself. “Point me to the nearest farmhouse where I can get some help, mister.”

“Yonder,” Paxton said, pointing in the direction of his own farm.

“Thank ya. You all just stay right here. I’ll go for help,” the engineer assured them. He turned in the direction Paxton had indicated. He paused, however, adding, “Looks like folks is already comin’ ’round.”

Rivers looked and saw Weston and Jolee in the distance riding a bareback horse—Weston attired only in trousers and Jolee in her nightdress, hair blowing in the cool night breeze. The engineer sauntered off toward them.

Still weak, Paxton crumpled to his knees.

“Paxton!” Rivers cried. “Oh, Paxton, we have to get you home! You’re so badly hurt.” Once again the cool of the rain mingled with the salted tears on Rivers’s face as she dropped to her knees before the man she loved. “She butchered you because of me.”

“I would’ve let her cut my heart out to save you, Rivers,” Paxton said, taking her in his arms. His pain-stricken body leaned against her own weakened one. Still, he bound her powerfully in his arms.

As the rain washed over them, rinsing the blood from their bodies, Rivers took Paxton’s face between her hands and gazed into its beauty. Her thumb pressed at the corner of his mouth, forcing him to grin, revealing the beloved dimple there.

“I love you,” she whispered. It frightened her to say the words aloud. Fear still whispered he would reject her confession. His response was not a verbal confirmation he felt the same. Rather, he placed a hand at the back of her head, drawing her nearer to him and blessing her with a deeply intimate and impassioned kiss, thoroughly enhanced by the refreshing rain streaming down their faces.

Rivers tasted the subtle salt of a tear as it touched her lip, finding its way into her mouth as Paxton drew away, gazing with adoration into her face. She realized then it was his tear she had tasted and not her own, for another single tear followed over Paxton’s cheek to linger briefly on the curve of his lip before falling from his face.

“I love you,” he breathed at last. “I love you so hard it scrapes at my bones, Rivers. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you…show you…I’ll never make that mistake again. I’ll never hurt you again,” he whispered. He grinned, pressing the lock of his hair more firmly into her corset. Then he grimaced as his eyes lingered on the wound at her chest. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, pressing a tender kiss to the hollow of her throat above the wound. Struggling to his feet once more, he groaned, “Help me get home, Rivers. I’ve got to get rested up so…” He paused, suddenly seeming puzzled. “I never told you I love you, Rivers…but didn’t I show you enough sometimes? Couldn’t ya tell by the way…the way ya sent me out of my head in the cellar? Or in the kitchen, for that matter?”

Rivers looked away, wiping a tear from her cheek. “I’m a wanderer, Paxton—plain and unexciting. Even at this moment, after you’ve said it to me…it’s hard for me to believe it’s true…that a man like you could truly…” she stammered, shy and still somehow fearful.

Paxton understood then. Finally, he understood why this beautiful young woman he valued and loved more than life could not believe he loved her. His mind reviewed quickly a conversation he’d had with his mother before she’d died.

“
You’re unusually handsome, son,”
his mother had said to him one day.
“I hope you won’t use that gift to take advantage of women when the time comes. There will be some girls that’ll think they deserve a man who looks like you do. There’ll be some with wicked ways about them, and they’ll want ya just because of the way ya look. But it’s the one who doesn’t…the one who’s humble, sweet, pure, sincere, and sees herself as not good enough for you as a whole person…that’s the one ya want, darlin’.”
He had never understood until that very moment what she had meant.

As a young man, Paxton Gray had all manner of women, of good report and bad, pursuing him. Not one of them had captured him until Ruby came along. He had admitted to himself, finally, that he’d committed to Ruby out of a sense of duty, but also as an escape. He had grown tired of the flirtatious ways of most women. The batting eyes and winks he found himself battered with at every turn. So, when Ruby had come along, ever insistent they were made for each other, he’d relented. But his conscience and will to direct his own destiny had brought him to his senses in time.

Now, standing before him—dressed in boy’s clothes, tears streaming down her face, body bruised and bloodied because of him—was the very vision of what his mother had described that day so long ago. Paxton realized the “gift” his mother had spoken of was now his curse to bear. Rivers saw herself as a lesser, undeserving human being. Yet all the while she was the beauty—the gem that perhaps he was unworthy to hope for.

Dropping to his knees in the moist grass, Paxton held Rivers’s waist in his hands as he looked up at her.

“I’m just a man, Rivers,” he said. “Tall or short, handsome as a horse or ugly as a mud fence…I’m the same inside.” He gazed up at her and continued, “I won’t hurt you, Rivers. I love you the way a man loves only one woman—only one woman…forever. Marry me, Rivers, so I can prove it to you.”

“I love you, Paxton,” Rivers whispered, slipping through the embrace of his hands at her waist to kneel before him. “You’ll never understand how much.”

Holding her against him, Paxton brought her mouth to meet his in a moist, heated, impassioned kiss. His life-giving, reassuring, and magnificent kiss manifested thoroughly to Rivers his professed love for her was faithful and true. It was exhilarating to be in his arms! More so each time she found herself there. His mouth was hot and honeyed, and as she gave herself and her heart completely over to him, she was acutely aware of how happy she was at his confessing his unfeigned love for her.

“I like this better when you’re in your drawers,” he whispered. She forced a scowl at him in reprimand. He chuckled and before resuming his previous endeavors teased, “Let’s see…there’s got to be an old root cellar around here someplace.”

EPILOGUE

Rivers awoke late in the morning, the morbid and tragic visions of Marianna and her death foremost in her mind’s eye. Now…now that it was over, now that Paxton was out of danger, she could pity the poor madwoman. Something had fouled Marianna’s mind and caused her unwanted lunacy. Rivers wondered, though, if she would ever be able to dispel the horrid visions of that night from her memory. The sounds were still ringing in her ears now and again—the sounds of Paxton’s body being wounded, the sound of the train screeching to a halt. However, the visions would be the worst to endure. Yet she knew time would somewhat fade them at least, and it gave her hope of eventual peace of mind.

As she dressed, her thoughts turned to Paxton, and rejuvenating warmth spread through her. Paxton’s wounds were much more profound than hers. He had been nearly irrational when they returned home and he had seen in the brighter light of the lantern the damage done to her. He had insisted her wounds be tended before his own. While Jolee cleaned and bandaged her injuries, Paxton paced, incessantly asking about her state of health. She basked in the thought he cared so deeply for her.

“Well, I don’t know about you, Rivers,” Jolee began as Rivers entered the kitchen, “but I want my own weddin’! I don’t care if you and Paxton have yours first…but I want my own. Do ya think I’m terrible?” Jolee’s happiness in her anticipated marriage to her beloved Weston perfumed the very air and lightened the heavy burden of the memories of the night for Rivers.

“What are you talking about, Jo?” Rivers asked. She hadn’t mentioned the conversation she and Paxton had in the dew-covered grass near the railroad tracks.

“Paxton told me this mornin’, when he first woke up. He said ya never answered him exactly but that he was purty sure you’d agreed to marryin’ him. I knew he was lyin’ last night. And now I know why. He’s got that same sixth sense you do, Rivers. He knew Marianna was millin’ around, and he figured out why.”

Rivers nodded, but her thoughts still lingered on one fact—that after all that had happened, his being butchered, Marianna’s horrible fate…Paxton still managed to tell his sister he’d spoken of marriage to her.

“I’m goin’ out for a jar of peaches,” Jolee stated, standing up and moving toward the door. “I’m gonna make a pie for Weston’s supper.”