The Indiscretion (20 page)

"What did she say?" Liddy asked. "About missing the
wedding, I mean. When she threw the ring at you?"

He shrugged. "Oh … you know. A lot of mean things."

"Such as?"

He sighed, resisted a moment, then told her. "That I was
afraid of marrying, a coward, a cad, twisted inside, that I'd never love
anyone, couldn't, that I'm as crazy as my old man was." He sighed again.
"All of which I worry are true."

Look at the evidence, he thought. To miss one wedding was an
accident. To miss a second might be a coincidence – strange, but these things
happen. But to miss the rescheduled nuptials? Hell, three times was a pattern.
A dismal pattern, there was no doubt about it.

He sat there feeling real poorly about himself, staring at his
knee, then happened to catch a glimpse of Liddy, the movement of her head.

She was shaking it, little, small shakes, smiling at him – it was
that faint line she was so good at, a smile so subtle he had to study it in the
firelight to know it was there. It was, and it contained little judgment and
much acceptance. He smiled back.

And, like that, the bad feeling evaporated.

Liddy knew he had these bends and twists to him: He was as
chambered and convoluted as a nautilus. And she liked him anyway. It was as if
their connection – as if he could touch it somehow – had the power to make the
worst of him acceptable to himself. So what if he was like his old man?

He wished he could like
himself
that way, the way she liked him.

He looked down, not sure where that sort of self-love came from:
only that she had it herself.

In a lot of ways, she wasn't all that different from him. She was
just as argumentative; she was contrary at times, hard to figure out. They were
a pair. The big difference was, for the most part she liked Liddy Brown or
whatever her real name was; she liked the person who was herself. And, to Sam,
for all his thirty-six years of experience with the world, for all the people
he knew, he thought the way she liked herself – the way she marched right into
who she was, hardly any hesitation, at any given moment – was nothing short of
a miracle.

She was something, Liddy. Us.
They
were something. Us-ness. Belonging. Close and real, known and accepted.

When he made love to her right after that, pushing himself inside
her, watching her, touching her, feeling her wrap around him, squeeze him … he
felt a kind of release between them, a relief that was so much more than
sexual. Afterward, holding her as she drifted off, barely awake himself, he was
aware of a calm settling over him, a peace he couldn't remember knowing since
he was sixteen: when he'd first left home. When he'd been full of hope for his
finding a place in the world. For fitting into it.

*

Birds
somewhere knew the sun was rising before
Lydia
did. They
chirped fiercely, awakening her from a groggy state. A dream. She'd been
dreaming. She lay under Sam's heavy arm, remembering it – it was something
pleasant.

Puddings. She laughed. Sam stirred. Noticing his eyes opening, she
said, "I was dreaming of puddings! Can you imagine?"

She reached over her head, stretching, and felt his hand smooth
down the inside of her arm, his palm from her wrist down to under her arm,
along her ribs, into the curve of her waist, out over her hip. He slid his hand
around her to cup her buttock, while he pressed his face, his warm breath, to her
bosom. Oh, yes. She closed her eyes.

Smiling wistfully, she related, "I dreamed of puddings in a
whole parade of fare, all carried on silver trays. A turbot of lobster with
Dutch sauce.
Cucumber. Meringues à la crème."
A feast.
"And rabbit," she added in tribute to Sam, though it hadn't been in
her dream. She recalled suddenly a lost piece of slumbering creation. "And
Clive!" she said with surprise. "My brother was in it." She
laughed outright. "He was making fun of cook's raspberry-claret molds. He
picked one up, dumping it off its dish into his hand, then, quivering it on his
palm, said, 'Look. A living heart.' He did that once and made me roar with
disgust and delight."

Sam murmured into her neck, "You miss your life."

Did she? She arched as his mouth made a wet path down her throat,
downward into the open neckline of her dress. Yes, she supposed she did, but –
aah
– wasn't his mouth on her breast an
admirable consolation, though?

They began the day the way they'd spent most of the night, making love.
In fact, they'd hardly slept, as if each sleeping minute was a wasted one.
Throughout the night, they'd made love till they dozed; they dozed only long
enough to recuperate so they could make love again. They went at it till they
were sore, then this morning ever so delicately went at it some more. Honeymoon
mad: two people gone crazy for want of touching each other.

When they finally arose and got about the business of washing and
finding breakfast, it was to a morning that was exactly as beautiful as the one
before it, giving credence to the notion that their blissful state could last.
The sun shone brightly over the heather in full summer bloom. It encouraged a
generally irrational tenor that posed such questions as, Why say good-bye to
this? Why not have it forever?

Foolishness,
Lydia
thought. The
inquiries drifted through her mind, but she refused to ask them seriously.

It was easy enough to distract herself: easy enough to crowd out
any thoughts but of her lover's physical presence. Sam was an extraordinary
physical specimen – and faintly amusing about it. For all his humility and
insecurity elsewhere, she realized, he knew he was handsome. Overall, he didn't
seem to count it for much, but still he knew it and was willing to display it:
Before breakfast, he and she washed off their busy night and morning in the
river, and he just suddenly stripped down, without saying, just took his
clothes off. Her mouth opened, dry; the sight of him left her speechless. And
riveted.

It was nakedness so clearly for pure male show, for her benefit.
It was this, not his immodesty (though he seemed indeed absolutely careless
about his nudity) that made the impression.
Look
at me
. She did. He swam naked for a while, and
Lydia
simply watched
– with not a blink of maidenly reserve. Why be faint-hearted? When would she
see such a wonder again?

Sam swam as sleekly as a fish: an angular, limber, long-limbed
fish with wide, square shoulders and a strong, muscular back that narrowed in a
neat V to tight, bunching buttocks – hard buttocks that showed pale white for
an instant when he bent to dive beneath the water. When he broke the surface
and walked out of the river, what a sight. Water poured off the breadth of his
shoulders, sheeting down the sinewy brawn to his arms, so round, sculpted… He
had a powerful chest and abdomen. Everything about him was long – his arms, his
fingers, his slender, graceful hands. He stepped onto dry land on tall legs.
His thighs were chiseled, his calves cut with muscle; his legs flexed as he
walked. High insteps in his bare feet, high arches, long toes. The muscular
definition and proportion of Samuel J. Cody was so perfect that Michelangelo's
David
might have despaired, could he
have seen.

And
Lydia
was slightly
baffled to confront another fact: What swung between Sam's legs was
considerably more than what
David
had, also. She wondered if sculptors, in an effort to be discreet, minimized
the sexual apparatus of their stone men – she had never noticed anything the
size of Sam and had been somewhat unprepared for it. Or was Sam simply … large?
Impossible to say, other than he was longer and thicker, whether at rest or
erect, than she had come reasonably to expect from textbook or art.

For breakfast, they ate a rabbit and two trout, then, after,
returned to the riverbank, where they celebrated so much water by washing their
hands of food. This time, Sam scrubbed his arms to his elbows, his shirtsleeves
rolled back, while
Lydia
, folded down
onto her knees, splashed her face in the clear, icy-cold river.

As she sat back onto her heels, wiping her face with her
petticoat, she said, "It's a shame your superior will hold your personal
life against you. What is it you were going to do? Seriously. What do you mean
by gun fighting and talking sense into people?"

He laughed at himself. "I negotiate things. Or was going to.
It was sort of a new job for me, something different. And I have a lot of
bosses, not just one. It's political. An appointment I wanted."

An appointment? She raised her head, frowning, an inquiring look.
"An 'appointment' to a post?" She smiled. Perhaps she'd heard wrong.
"Or an appointment to see someone?"

"Sort of both, I guess—" He was about to say more, then
stopped, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter. I didn't get either, I
promise you." He sighed, reluctant to speak of his failure. Then he
appeased her curiosity with something even more personal. He laughed and
offered, "My pop never liked a thing I did. I didn't catch on quick enough
or else I was too damn sharp for my own good. I was too young or too old or too
sissy or too stubborn. I couldn't win.

"But he would love this: I can't get a job I want because I
jilted one woman, I'm starting to think, I don't want. While I can't have the
one I do because I've been too damn good at keeping her alive." He gave a
sarcastic smile and said, "I don't figure, in your dream, you sat me down
beside your brother?"

"No." She blinked. "You weren't in my dream, that I
remember—"

He snorted. "If you'd been out here with the Prince of Wales,
you know, you'd have died."

Lydia
laughed a
little uncomfortably. It was not far from true. Though the aging, portly prince
was an avid sportsman, between the two of them, she and Bertie had roughly
enough skills that, out here alone together, they both would likely have perished.

"Yet, if I happen to stay in
London
, just sort of
hung around, I couldn't call on you, could I?"

She met his gaze, taken aback: He was serious. "You – you
could—" she stammered.

No, he couldn't, she realized. Try as she might, as generous as
she'd like to be with a man who fascinated her, who had helped her, saved her,
she could not envision a future for herself and an American roughrider where
his calling on her would be anything but painful.

He saw her answer in her confusion and let out a laugh, ending it
suddenly when he bent over and plunged most of his head into the river. After a
second, he lifted it again, slinging an arc of water off his hair as he wiped
his face. Then – as abruptly – changed the subject. He smiled wanly over at
her. "I figure, tonight you'll have yourself a regular bath."

"A regular bath?" Tonight? Tonight, she'd imagined,
she'd be lying in the warm circle of his arms again, up against his amazing
bare chest. Why would she be taking a bath?

"Sure," he said. "In
London
. Or wherever
the train takes us today."

Ah. The train. He expected it to keep a daily schedule, and it
might. "What will you do?" she asked. "Where will you go?"

He shrugged as he slicked his hair back. His washed, unshaven face
looked lean and stark – he grew handsomer by the day as his features took on
their normal proportion. "Back to
Texas
, I guess.
September's hot as blazes, but October starts to be nice. I haven't been there
in a while." He pulled on one ear, fingering water from it, a quick,
subtle movement.

"You'll herd cattle?"

He laughed as he rolled his shirtsleeves down over his thewy
forearms – a smattering of fine black hair covered the backs of them, silky,
she knew, to the touch. "Well, I'm too old for bronco-riding or
bulldogging," he said, "so I guess it's plain old cowpunching, if I'm
to be of any use." He paused to look at her. "Truth is, I sort of
like it. I've found that piece of myself out here again. I liked riding the
range, staying out all night when it suited me. I liked watching out for the
animals under my care." He let out a self-critical breath, a man who found
his own his tastes insufficiently noble. Or perhaps he thought she would and
wanted the preemptive victory of deriding himself before she did. In either
event, after a minute, he went with the notion anyway. Matter-of-factly, he
added, "Yep, that's where I guess I'm licking my wounds, out on a
Texas
prairie
somewhere."

She nodded. They understood each other, though she had to admit it
was a melancholy understanding. At some point – today, tomorrow, certainly by
the end of the week – she'd be home too: returned to London society, where
"cowpunching" or building fires, chasing horses, roasting rabbits,
so much of the kindness Sam had shown her, would fall under the heading of
"service" or "manual labor": worse than being in trade. Two
worlds. Sam's competence in the wild, the physicality of his existence, drew
her, excited her, even as she knew socially it put him beneath her. He was a
working man, though for the life of her, there seemed something … uncommon
about him. Still, his competence lay in the realm of her footmen and gardeners.