The Beloved Woman (10 page)

For several minutes Sam wrote methodically. Then he stopped to gaze solemnly at Justis. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. This oughta do it for sure. Tell him that I’m goin’ to marry her. In church. With a preacher. The whole shebang.”

Sam’s fine-boned patrician features were schooled at hiding his reactions, but his mouth twitched with humor.
“Has she agreed to even the first part of the she-bang?”

“No. But she will.”

“Should I elaborate for the governor?” Sam cleared his throat. “As in adding something such as, ‘Miss Blue Song is dear to my heart, the light of my life,’ et cetera?”

“Hmmm. Sure. If that’ll make it sound good.” Justis glowered, then rose and paced the floor, aware that Sam was frowning at him.

“Do you think she feels anything for you?”

“Some gratitude for what I’ve done to help her. Some hate for what I won’t do. As for anything else—” Justis gestured vaguely. “She needs me in the way any woman needs a man.”

“The lady is not exactly smitten with you, then. I say that only to help you see the situation as it really is, without undue hope.”

Justis thought of the carefully fathomless expression Katherine kept in her eyes so much of the time. “She’s still grieving for her family. And she’s not the kind that craves a husband. See, there’s a lot of old-time Cherokee raisin’ in her—she was taught to be in charge of things. Cherokee woman in the old days, well, she didn’t take shit off any man. She owned the house and the children. She picked her own husband, and if she got tired of him, she’d just kick his butt out and marry another one.”

Sam sighed. “You’d better accomplish something soon, partner, because if she doesn’t marry you, she’ll likely end up in the stockade with the other Cherokees, and then be sent west.”

Justis stopped by a window and stared into the night. “I know,” he said wearily. “Tell me what you wrote to the governor.”

Sam read the letter back. It sounded just right, formal and not embarrassingly desperate. Justis returned to the desk, bent over Sam’s elegantly drawn words, shook his hand several times to get the kinks out, then signed his
name with as many curves and loops as he could manage.

He hadn’t felt so worn out and worried since the back-busting days when he was a dock foreman down in Savannah. Now he had a good-sized fortune in gold and everything he could want. Except Katherine, and she might be the most difficult to gain.

“I need a drink,” he said bluntly, and left the office with his work hat crushed in his hand.

T
HE QUICK CLATTER
of childlike feet on the hotel stairs made Katherine look up from her afternoon reading. The feet ran down the hallway to her door, and a fist rapped hurriedly.

“Miss Katherine! Mr. Justis wants you over at the mine!” The high-pitched voice belonged to Lilac. “And bring your doctor’s bag!”

Katherine flung the door open and looked down into wide brown eyes, pigtails, and a gap-toothed mouth. “Did anything happen to Mr. Justis?”

“No’m, one of the miners got his leg split wide open. Mr. Justis says to let you have a try at patchin’ him.”

Katherine realized that she had sighed with relief at hearing that Justis was unhurt. The fact that he had asked her to come doctor one of his workers amazed her. No other man would have trusted a woman with the job.

She grabbed her satchel and followed Lilac out of the hotel to a rickety cart hitched to a bay pony. “Can you drive this contraption?” Katherine asked the tiny Lilac as they climbed in.

“Like a li’l demon,” Lilac said, grinned, and slapped the reins.

The Gallatin mine wasn’t far from town, and Katherine would have sworn that they reached it in half a minute, considering the way the pony galloped and Lilac drove. Along the way they took a back street that ran
through the middle of the brothel section. Katherine had never seen so many brightly clad women run for their lives before.

The Gallatin Mining Company was a small community unto itself, with cabins, sheds, barns, and a couple of saloons scattered around a square tunnel cut into the side of a hill. The thunderous, repetitive boom of a stamp mill sounded from a tall building near the mine entrance.

Justis came out of a shed as Lilac pulled her pony to a stop. Katherine clutched the sides of the cart to keep from sailing onto the pony’s back. She caught a glimpse of Justis trotting toward her, his long, powerful legs swinging in an easy but purposeful rhythm.

“Any of your teeth shook loose?” he asked, lifting her out of the cart.

“Only a half dozen or so.”

“Ever tend a busted leg?”

“On a woman, yes.”

“Men got the same bones?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Good.”

He led her toward the shed, where a crowd of men in canvas coveralls stood, watching her warily. Their consternation over the boss’s choice of doctors was overcome by the boss’s scowl, and they stepped back respectfully, doffing their hats.

“Why didn’t you call a doctor from town?” Katherine asked Justis.

“Last time one of my men got a leg busted, the doc didn’t fix it right. Man was crippled.”

“I may not do any better.”

“Couldn’t do any worse.”

“Why, thank you, sir, for the confidence.”

A pathetic scream tore the air as they reached the shed’s door. Justis blocked her way with an arm and looked down at her, frowning.

“This is a bad thing for a woman to see. Maybe I was wrong to ask you.”

Katherine thought of all the gory, pitiful sights she’d seen while training with Dr. Ledbetter. She patted Justis’s shoulder. “I doubt I’ll faint.”

Then she ducked under his arm and went inside the shed.

S
HE WAS PLEASED
with herself, exhausted but pleased, and more nearly happy than she’d been in several weeks. Katherine sat on a plushly upholstered sofa, her stocking feet tucked under her comfortably, the sleeves of her plain gray dress rolled up in very unladylike fashion.

The nicest thing about today’s work had been seeing the respect in the men’s eyes when she left their comrade sleeping, his leg expertly set. She admitted that Justis’s proud smile had done more good for her feelings than anything else.

“Here,” he said now, striding across the cabin that served as the mine’s headquarters with two glasses perched easily in one of his big hands. Katherine looked at the amber liquid they contained. “Brandy,” he told her.

She took a glass, recalling the few times she’d sipped alcohol, just sweet sherry. It had made her feel too warm. “I can’t finish all of this.”

“No hurry.”

He sat down beside her and stretched his legs out, propping one booted foot over the other—looking deceptively lazy, she thought. His eyes were shaded by thick lashes that gave them a languid droop at the outer corners, as if he’d just come from bed.

He held his glass up. “A salute,” he said softly, his cheerful green gaze holding her uncertain dark one. “To you, Doc. For the best doctoring I’ve ever seen.”

Ridiculous claptrap. All flattery, she told herself. Then she smiled so widely her mouth hurt. He clinked his glass to hers, and, watching her carefully the whole time, put the glass to his mouth and swallowed the contents in one smooth movement.

Katherine sipped her brandy and liked the way it burned her throat. The rich scent and taste blended with the overtly masculine atmosphere of Justis’s office. She glanced at the various guns hanging on wall pegs, the quality desk and lamp, the bookcases filled with the classics, and the heavy, colorful rugs on the plank floor. It was a place of contrasts, like the man himself, a roughly built place that nonetheless had a compelling sense of style.

Bought with Blue Song gold
.

“I’ll be going back to the hotel now,” she said abruptly, and started to get up.

He caught the hand that held the brandy glass, then set his glass on the floor. With a graceful gesture he tilted her glass just enough to splash brandy on her fingers.

“That liquor favors the color of your skin,” he murmured. “Makes me want to taste you.”

She watched in dismay as he took the glass from her and drew her fingers to his mouth. “Please, let me go,” she whispered. With a regretful shake of his head he kissed her wet fingers, his lips sipping at her skin. They produced a taut, sucking sensation that traveled inside her, tugging pleasantly at the pit of her stomach.

“I need to know something,” he said. His mustache brushed her knuckles. It was the most provocative thing she’d ever imagined. His eyes were half shut but alert as he studied her. “I need to know that you want me as bad as I want you, at least in one way.”

She jumped a little and murmured a soft sound of distress. “I’m tired, Mr. Gallatin, and the past few weeks have left me more than a little confused. Now is not the time—”

“We don’t have much time left, gal.” He slid closer, turned her palm toward his mouth, and nibbled it. “Do you like this, Katie? You look like you do. Did you know that you’re touchin’ your tongue to your lips right now?”

Katherine realized that she was. Shivering inside, she groaned at her weakness. “I’ve had my hand kissed before.” But never like this, she admitted silently.

His jaw, covered in faint beard shadow, pressed against her fingertips as he delved his tongue into the center of her palm. “By that blue-blooded dandy in Philadelphia, huh? The one who broke your heart?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, he broke your heart?”

“No. He kissed my hand.”

“Did he do this?”

Before she knew what was happening he rose to one knee and leaned over her, then sank his fingers into the knot of hair at the base of her neck. She gasped as he gently pulled her head back.

“No. No more,” she begged.

“Just a bit more, Katie.”

He poured some of the brandy onto her neck. Before it could run into the tiny white ruffle around the collar of her dress, he bent down and trapped it with his mouth.

She cried out at the shock of his warm, mobile lips covering the pulse at her throat. It was an alarming sensation that made her heart race, yet at the same time drew away the strength to flee. She felt as if he had stricken her helpless, that perhaps the slow swirl of his tongue on her skin had seduced the part of her that controlled rational thought.

“It’s like the brandy came alive,” he said hoarsely, then drew his tongue up the front of her throat. “The brandy turned into the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Slowly he raised his head and met her eyes. She
blinked at him owlishly, afraid of her reactions and so overwhelmed that she couldn’t speak. She heard herself make a small whimpering sound, half anguish and half desire, as he tipped the brandy glass over her lips.

His eyes gleamed with amusement. “Make a pucker,” he ordered softly, and as she did he filled her lips with the remainder of the tingling liquor. He groaned with delight and covered her mouth with his, licking up the brandy, tugging at her lips gently.

It was an indecent kiss, like no kiss she’d ever seen described in a book or magazine, and it made her ache inside until she couldn’t resist it any longer. She lifted her mouth for more, moving her lips against his, trying to taste him as he was tasting her.

“That’s what I wanted,” he said in a low, rumbling voice so full of emotion that it was nearly a growl. “Give me hope.”

Tears burned the back of her eyes. “Not that. I didn’t mean—”

“More,” he said in a harsh whisper, and sank his mouth onto hers with a possessiveness that demanded response.

Katherine had not known that a kiss could be so many things at once—angry, gentle, unrelenting, tender. She’d never had more than chaste kisses before, and they had made her feel as if she were participating in a frozen tableau, two lovers pressing their mouths together in motionless passion for eternity.

There was nothing motionless about Justis’s mouth. The pull and twist of it made her open her lips. When his tongue slipped inside she was so startled, she touched her own tongue against it. He taunted her, his tongue thrusting slowly, insinuating intimacies that made her feel weak.

She suddenly saw those intimacies in her mind, saw him lying between her thighs, his big, hard-packed body
arching against their softness, and her feet curling contentedly over the backs of his legs.

“It can’t be,” she said out loud, and tried to push him away. “Not between the two of us.”

“It can and it will.”

His face was lined with passion and restraint. He sat back and pulled her to him, sliding one arm around her waist, gently trapping her. Her feet were still drawn up beneath her, and she suddenly felt his hand on her ankle.

His gaze held her immobile. “Just a bit more, Katie,” he promised again. “Just a bit to keep you awake at night.”

“You cannot seduce me. It’s something that happens only to foolish women—”

“You’re not foolish, and it’s all right to be seduced by a man who’d never do you harm.”

“I don’t know that,” she protested, shaking her head fiercely. “I don’t know—Oh, Justis!”

His hand had glided up her leg to where the stocking ended, just above her knee. Now his fingertips caressed the naked skin in slow circles.

His eyes gleamed with pleasure and he lowered his head. “You’d burn me up,” he whispered, his lips almost touching hers. “We’d burn each other.”

“I’m afraid I agree,” she admitted wretchedly.

“Good.”

He slowly trailed his fingers upward, and the sheer material of her long-legged drawers was no protection against his touch. It seared through the cotton, making her shut her eyes and gasp at the fire rising between her thighs, making her breasts swell and grow tender.

She gripped his arm in warning, but her fingers dug in rhythmically rather than pushing him away. His hand slid toward the apex of her thighs. “You can’t touch me there,” she protested. “Even you wouldn’t—” But he did, rubbing his fingers back and forth on the soft mound.
Her head drooped forward and she groaned in defeat. “Damn you.”

“Remember this, Katie. Think about this. I can make you want me just by touchin’ you through your clothes. Think what it’ll feel like when my fingers are on your skin. Even now I can tell that you’re ready for me.”