Sunset Embrace (25 page)

"Take off that shirt. It stinks of your whores' perfume."

"They weren't
my
whores. They were just women in trouble and I only helped them."

She struggled into her camisole, then turned around. As she grappled with the buttons, she glared up at him. "How kind of you. You were ready to boot me out of this very wagon when you thought I was a whore and I needed help. Why were you so generous with them?"

His eyes were riveted to her breasts as she pulled the cloth together and secured the buttons. Even so, her breasts spilled over the lacy border. Plainly he could see the dusky circles of the areolas and nipples. He was still entranced as she plopped down on the bedroll and began to pull on her stockings, her breasts jiggling softly with each hurried movement.

Only the sudden hardening of his manhood jerked him out of his daze. "I'm a fast learner. I helped them because I didn't want to get stuck with them the way I've been stuck with you."

Lydias head came up and she stared at him fiercely from where she sat on the bedroll. He was the first to look away, tearing at the buttons of his shirt and balling it up angrily when it was off. He searched for a clean one, wreaking havoc on the neatness with which Lydia had folded all his things in his trunk.

She rose to her feet when she had shoes and stockings on and reached for her petticoat. "I was the one stuck here last night to face the decent people on this train, not you."

He wheeled around and was brought up short by the sight of her squeezing her breasts together and peering over them to button the waistband of her petticoat. He cleared his throat and wished he could clear the congestion in his manhood as easily. "If you want to run off anytime you get a notion, I won't be the one to stop you."

She faced him belligerently, the petticoat finally buttoned around her narrow waist. "I don't want to make a fool out of myself like you did by getting stinking drunk and sleeping with whores."

His jaw went rigid and he strained his words through clenched teeth. "I told you I didn't sleep with any whore. If I had wanted to do that, I could have stayed here."

The residual silence was heavy and thick, palpable. It filled Lydias air passages, smothering her. Ross nodded his head tersely as though he had made his final, triumphant point.

It was that smug satisfaction lifting his moustache that brought her hand up. Her fist swung wide and connected with a resounding smack against his cheekbone.

He stood stock-still as the waves of pain rolled over the ones already undulating in his head. He blinked against encroaching blackness. He also balled his fists at his sides to keep from wrapping them around her throat and killing her.

"I'm not a whore," she said softly, each word deliberately enunciated. "I never was. I've told you that."

He fought off another attack of nausea and said, "You weren't married when you conceived that baby of yours, were you?"

"No," she said, shaking her head, willing away the tears that seemed intent on filling her eyes.

That brought Ross to the crux of his dilemma and he had to face it. Whose baby had she had? What man had had her, touched her? It haunted him, drove him crazy. He had to know. Despite his good intentions not to put his hands on her, they came up to shackle her upper arms. He brought her up against his naked chest and lowered his face to within inches of her.

"Who was the man? Who was he, Lydia? Dammit, answer me."

"Who are
you,
Ross Coleman?"

Everything in him went still as death, though his hands didn't loosen their grip on her arms. "What do you mean?" he asked huskily.

She almost backed down from that cold, feral glint in his green eyes, but she had gone this far. "You live like an ordinary man with a wife and child, you go about the day-to-day things like an ordinary man, but you're not. You've got the eyes and reflexes of a predator, Ross Coleman. You're not ordinary at all, though you pretend to be. Who are you?"

He released her gradually, pushing her back slowly, and all the time staring into the depths of her eyes. Then he turned away without speaking. They finished dressing in antagonistic silence.

Lydia stepped into the pink morning light and began to stir the coals of the fire to life. She was scooping coffee into the pot when she heard Ross come out of the wagon and start to shave.

When he stepped beside her a few minutes later and reached for the coffeepot, she glanced at him and gasped softly, His skin had a greenish cast. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes were ringed with blue shadows. Forgetting her anger, Lydia touched his sleeve. "I'm sorry I hit you. I know you don't feel well. Actually I had no right to be angry. You're free to do what ... I mean, this isn't a real marriage." She lowered her eyes. "And . . . and I want you to know that, in spite of the fuss I made, I really didn't mind the way you . . . you slept on me last night."

"Lydia—"

"Miss Lydia?" Her name was repeated by Moses. "Oh, good mornin', Ross," he said, stepping around the wagon and seeing them standing by the campfire. "Winston asked me to bring this book to you, Miss Lydia. He said he meant to bring it last night when he came to visit, but forgot it."

Lydias eyes swung from the black man to Ross. She watched as his mouth went hard and his eyes turned cold again. He was angrily pulling on his gloves when he stamped away without another word to her and only a brusque "Moses" to the messenger who had unwittingly timed things so badly.

"Ross," she called after him, but either he didn't hear her or he ignored her.

* * *

The cigar butts in the ashtray were as stale as the coffee. The air in the cramped office was stifling. Howard Majors ran a hand over his oiled hair and drew in a deep breath, loosening yet another button on his vest. He was tired. So was the man at the window, but Vance Gentry showed his tiredness by pacing.

"Dead ends, all of them." He banged the grimy window glass with a frustrated fist. "Where the hell are they?"

Majors shuffled through the reports on his desk. "God knows," he said wearily. "There hasn't been a trace of the jewelry, though we've got every informant on the payroll searching through pawnshops." One report attracted his attention. At first it had seemed insignificant. "Here's one from Arkansas . . . Owentown, wherever the hell that is. A railroad town. One of our agents is working undercover there. He saw a man who looked familiar playing poker in a saloon. The agent thought the guy noticed him, so he turned his back for a minute. When he looked again the man was gone. He waited around, but the poker player had disappeared."

Gentry was already shaking his head vehemently. "If he's trying to unload that jewelry, he wouldn't be in an out-of-the-way railroad town. Who could afford to buy it in a place like that? I still think he would head for the major cities. Maybe even out of the country."

Gentry was becoming more of a handicap than a help, if the missing couple could be found, the Pinkerton Agency could find them, but it didn't need a hysterical father interfering. Majors stood and walked around the corner of his desk. "Why don't you go home for a week or two, Mr. Gentry. If anything turns up—"

"No. I can't go home without Victoria."

"But they might have come back- You might have word of her waiting for you there."

"I telegraphed my attorney in Knoxville to check on that. He rode out to the farm, and the only ones there were the servants. They hadn't heard a word since the day Clark left with Victoria, not telling where they were going."

Majors lit a fresh cigar and studied the burning ruby tip as he asked tentatively, "Could your daughter have taken the jewelry? If she were leaving a life she'd always known, maybe she wanted that security with her."

Gentry whirled on the detective angrily. "You miss the point, Mr. Majors. She wouldn't leave her home, me, unless this outlaw coerced her to do so. 1 know my own daughter. She wouldn't do it." He tore his coat and hat off a clothes tree as he stamped toward the door. "I think I've wasted enough time—"

Just as he was reaching for the door, it was opened from the other side. Majors's assistant rushed in. "Excuse the interruption, Mr. Majors, but this wire just came in. It might be pertinent and I knew you'd want to see it."

"Thank you," Majors said, taking the extended telegram. As the assistant went out, Majors's eyes scanned the paper. He put it on his desk, his eyes staring sightlessly for a moment before he raised his head.

"It's from Baltimore. A young woman's body was discovered."

"Body?" Gentry wheezed.

Majors nodded. "She was found dead in a hotel room she had shared with a man for several weeks. She had been stabbed." Majors, who thought he could stand anything, could barely watch the anguish that distorted Gentry's face. Yes, he was getting soft. It was time for him to retire. "The man has disappeared. Their descriptions fit. Of course, positive identification:—"

"Yes." Gentry cleared his throat gruffly. "When can we leave for Baltimore?"

L
ydia was hanging laundered clothes on the line Ross had stretched between tile corner of their wagon and a young cottonwood tree when Anabeth came running up to her, panting from exertion, excitement dancing in her eyes. "Guess what just rolled in down by the river?"

Without waiting for an answer, she continued, "A peddlers wagon. He's toting more goods than a body can shake a stick at. 'Course Leona Watkins is raisin' Cain on account of It bein' Sunday and sayin' folks ain't supposed to buy nothin' on the Lord's day, but Mr. Grayson said this wasn't tike normal times and folks couldn't just run into town on a Saturday. I seen that Priscilla buy a candy stick with my own two eyes, and she hid it in her pocket. And Ma said for you to come on down there 'cause she already spotted a bolt of cloth that would make you a right pretty dress for the Fourth of July."

Lydia had paused in her chore to listen as the girl rattled off the exciting news seemingly without taking a breath. Ross, who was mending a bridle, had stopped to listen to the tale too. Simultaneously, they burst into laughter.

Things had been so strained between them since the morning after Owentown that their laughter surprised them both. When they looked at each other, it dwindled until they turned their heads away, embarrassed.

"Well, ain't you gonna come down and see what he's got?" Anabeth demanded disbelievingly when Lydia calmly returned to hanging up the wash.

"I don't need anything," she said quietly.

"But Ma said this material would look better on you than anybody 'cause it's kinda gold and with your hair and all ... I mean . . . you just gotta come see the wonderful things he has."

"I've got chores to do, Anabeth," Lydia said patiently and glanced toward Ross. He set the bridle aside and went into the wagon. She didn't need or want anything, but it would have been nice if he had offered to walk her down to the peddlerman's wagon just to look.

She should have known not to expect any kindness from him. He had barely spoken to her since he had learned that Winston Hill had called on her while he was gone. Every night he made sure she and Lee were settled, then he unrolled his bed beneath the wagon. No one on the train noticed. Many of the men slept outside where it was cooler.

Lydia noticed. She missed the sound of his breathing across the wagon floor. She missed his presence. She missed watching him take off his shirt and boots.

"Is your ma going to let you buy something?" Lydia asked, trying to ignore (he ache in her throat.

"Pa give us each a dime."

"You'd better get on then and do your own shopping before Priscilla Watkins buys everything up."

Anabeth laughed, then her spirits collapsed again. "Reckon I'd better. Sure you won't come along?" She had been so delighted to be the one appointed to inform Ross and Lydia about the peddler. Now it had been ruined because they weren't excited about him at all.

Lydia shook her head. "Come show me what you bought when you get back."

Anabeth's feet shuffled in the dust as she walked away, But then her initial jubilance caught up with her and she began running toward the river.

"Lydia." She looked over the improvised clothesline at Ross.

"Yes?"

Taking her hand, he pulled her through the damp clothes. He opened her fingers and dropped several coins into her palm. "Go buy yourself something."

She looked at the money shiny against her hand, then up into the wagon. She knew Ross kept his money hidden in there somewhere, but had no idea where and didn't care. Money wasn't important to her because she had never had any before, and the value of it meant nothing. The only reason it meant something now was because Ross was giving it to her.

"I don't need anything."

"Don't buy something you need. Buy something you want."

Hopefully she stared up into his green eyes as she asked, "Why?"

The question infuriated Ross. Whenever Hill came around with one of his little presents, a honeycomb he had found dripping honey as sweet as his speech, a book of poetry he thought she might enjoy, a fresh peach tart Moses had just baked, she never asked the reason behind the gift. Of course that gentleman with the sterling manners had always asked Ross's permission before he presented his Wife—yes, goddammit,
his
wife—with one of his gifts. Lydia always thanked him shyly, humbly, with a demure lowering of her eyes. But him, her own husband? Oh, no. She couldn't simply accept his generosity with one of the sweet thank-yous and radiant smiles she showered on Winston Hill.

Ross would never have confessed to jealousy. But that was what crawled through him like a serpent poisoning his whole system. Jealousy was what impelled him to say, "Because everyone will think I'm a lousy husband if I don't let my w
ife"
—he slurred the word—"buy herself a trinket from the peddler."

She bristled at his scorn. Brushing past him, she picked up Lee. She would be damned before she would spend any of his money on herself, but she might find something for the baby.

"Leave Lee here. I can watch him."