Wanton Angel (29 page)

Eli smiled, knowing exactly what he was doing to her with his touching and stroking, with his mere presence. “Did you? Stay with me tonight, Bonnie.”

“In this house, with all these people? You must be mad!”

He bent and tasted her lips tentatively and even then, for heaven’s sake, Bonnie didn’t have the will or the strength to withdraw from his touch.

“There are lots of bedrooms in this house, Bonnie,” he said against her mouth, “and one of them is downstairs, well away from the others—”

“No!” Bonnie hissed, even while her whole soul and body said yes.

One of Eli’s arms encircled her waist, pulling her close, while his hand caressed her breast with a bold gentleness. And his lips were within a breath of hers. “Very well, but I’ll give you fair warning: don’t come to the party tomorrow if you don’t want me to bring you inside the house and make slow—thorough—love to you—”

“You wouldn’t!” Bonnie sputtered, her lips tingling in anticipation of his kiss.

“You know I would,” he replied, and then he kissed her in a way that gave her a disturbing foretaste of the joys tomorrow might bring. It took all Bonnie’s strength just to keep her knees from buckling, and she was breathless by the time the kiss ended.

The room was growing shadowy, with only a thin shimmer of moonlight to ease the darkness. Eli opened Bonnie’s bodice and untied the ribbons that held her camisole in
place. Gently he bared both her breasts to the cool night air, cupping them in his hands and training their nipples to appease him with just the slightest grazings of his thumbs.

Bonnie could not speak in protest or even move, for his touch felt so good, so wholly right.

“I’ll almost surely do this,” he whispered, speaking of a delicious tomorrow. He bent to take tentative suckle at one well-prepared peak. “And this,” he added, his breath warming Bonnie’s breast.

In time Eli enjoyed Bonnie’s other breast, too, and she was quite dizzy with the need of him. She’d forgotten the people downstairs, even forgotten Rose, but Eli hadn’t. Satisfied, he put Bonnie’s camisole right and then buttoned her dress again.

“Tomorrow,” he vowed.

Bonnie was dazed, her color high. She could only stare up into Eli’s shadowy face in stricken amazement.

“Unless, of course,” Eli went on, in husky tones, “you want to change your mind and stay the night?”

“Never,” Bonnie hissed, furious because Eli could so easily arouse need in her and then deny or fulfill that need, as he so deigned to do. Why, he was every bit as officious as his grandfather had been! “Not tonight, and not tomorrow!”

Eli chuckled and turned away to gather both Rose and her doll up into his strong arms. Had he not been holding her child, Bonnie would have crowned him over the head with the china washbasin resting on the bureau.

“I meant what I said, Eli!” she whispered furiously, as he strode along the hallway toward the stairs, Rose Marie sleeping soundly in his arms. “I am coming to that party tomorrow—nothing could make me miss it—but you’ll not lay a hand on me!”

He smiled. “We’ll see, darling,” he said. “We’ll just see.”

To add insult to injury, Eli insisted on seeing Bonnie home in the carriage. She was glad that Katie was along, for the slumbering Rose was no protection.

When they arrived at the darkened store, Eli accompanied Bonnie and Katie inside, carrying Rose all the way to her crib.

Bonnie stood on the other side, gently removing Rose’s
shoes and covering her. “You may go now,” she whispered stiffly to the child’s father. “You’ve done quite enough for one night.”

Eli executed a half salute and turned to leave the bedroom. Bonnie followed him as far as the kitchen, locking the door the moment she heard his bootheels on the outside stairs.

The nerve of that man,
she simmered, trying in vain to cover lingering passion in a guise of anger. Katie had already retired to her room, weary from a long night of keeping up with Rose, and Bonnie was anxious to go to bed, too. To sleep and thus to forget that Eli had sworn to seduce her the very next day.

“I won’t let that man within ten feet of me,” Bonnie vowed to her reflection in the bedroom mirror. Her reflection looked singularly unconvinced.

Annoyed, Bonnie blew out the lamp and undressed in the darkness. Her breasts felt heavy and their peaks throbbed, and that familiar, warm wanting was pulsing in her middle.

“Damn Eli McKutchen anyway!” she ranted, in a whisper, as she flung back the covers and crawled into bed.

Bonnie slept very badly that night.

The sunny weather held and, when Bonnie arrived at Genoa’s house with Katie and Rose Marie, there were already a number of buggies and wagons parked along the driveway. There were so many, in fact, that boys were marking them with chalk numbers in order to keep track of which rig belonged to which guest.

“Miss McKutchen must have invited everyone in Northridge,” Katie observed as they walked around the huge house and into the side yard, and she was glowing with a young girl’s pleasure in such merry events.

The decorations did give the yard a festive look. The colored lanterns swayed in the mild breeze and there were guests everywhere, some in elegant clothes and some in the shabby calicos and cambrics of Patch Town. Bonnie had struck a diplomatic medium by wearing the summery dress of floral lawn left over from her time in New York.

A juggling clown had been recruited from the vaudeville circuit to entertain the children, and Katie took Rose Marie
to watch him. Just for this day, Rose had been persuaded to part with her splendid new doll.

Genoa approached, looking almost pretty in her dress of bright
blue
eyelet. Her wheat-gold hair was fetchingly arranged and she even wore a bit of lip rouge on her mouth. “I’m so glad you’re here, Bonnie,” she trilled. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

Bonnie had considered staying home, because of what Eli had told her the night before, but in the end she’d decided that parties such as this one were too rare and too delightful to be missed. Besides, if she’d remained in the store, Eli would probably have joined her there. “I had to have some alterations on my dress and it wasn’t quite ready when I sent Katie to pick it up,” she explained.

Genoa took her arm in a gloved hand. “Come and speak with Mr. Callahan,” she pleaded in an odd and breathless voice.

Bonnie had been presented to Seth Callahan years before and, of course, encountered him many times since, but it would have been silly to point up so obvious a fact, so she kept her peace and allowed herself to be dragged across the lawn.

Genoa propelled her past a rousing game of croquet and four tables burdened with refreshments. “I’ve got to distract him,” Genoa hissed. “That hussy Eva Fisher has been flirting with him ever since she arrived!”

“If you think Eva’s a hussy, why did you invite her?” Bonnie asked reasonably.

“Hush!” replied Genoa, shouldering her way between the widow Fisher and Mr. Callahan and pulling Bonnie along with her. “Seth, doesn’t Bonnie look wonderful today!”

The twinkle in Seth Callahan’s bespectacled blue eyes told Bonnie that Genoa’s tactics hadn’t fooled him. Nonetheless he went through the motions of greeting Bonnie formally, even going so far as to kiss her hand. Genoa maneuvered Eva Fisher away to one of the refreshment tables, and Bonnie again puzzled over the announcement that hadn’t been made.

“It’s grand to be sought after,” Seth confided, ruddy with self-consciousness and a certain pleasure in Genoa’s obvious favor.

Bonnie smiled, but her words were serious ones. “Do be very thoughtful, Seth. Genoa is a very special woman and it would be unkind to trifle with her affections.”

Seth went redder still, and his chest swelled.
Men,
Bonnie thought wryly. That scoundrel is pleased that someone considers him capable of trifling with a spinster’s heart. “You may be sure, Mrs. McKutchen,” he finally said in a very hoarse and earnest voice, “that I hold your sister-in-law in the very highest regard.”

By this time the croquet match had caught Bonnie’s eye, and she excused herself to go and watch. Lizbeth Simmons, dressed quietly but attractively in a black sateen skirt and white shirtwaist with a bib of ruffles, was being taught the proper way to swing her mallet by an attentive Forbes Durrant.

Despite the lingering discoloration of his bruises, Forbes looked handsome in his dark trousers and open-throated white shirt; he had already discarded his jacket. And how he was enjoying standing behind Lizbeth, his arms around her as they shared a grip on the mallet’s handle.

Bonnie shook her head, amused at yet another display of masculine ego.

It was then that she spotted Eli, standing behind Earline Kalb and demonstrating repeated croquet strokes in the same intimate manner. This time Bonnie was not amused.

Eli must have felt her gaze, for he immediately looked up from the back of Earline’s neck. The brazen wretch, he actually winked!

Bonnie turned in a whispering whirl of lawn skirts to look in vain for Webb. When she failed to find him among the many guests, she went to watch the juggler, who was really very deft, keeping no less than six rubber balls coursing through the air while balancing a seventh on the tip of his nose.

Rose Marie and all the other children were delighted by this feat, while Bonnie saw wry similarities between the juggler’s act and her own hectic life. Wasn’t she performing a sort of emotional sleight-of-hand, keeping everything moving?

She sighed, turned about and came up hard against a broad masculine chest.

“Care for an hour of concentrated croquet instruction?” Eli asked.

Bonnie’s every nerve leaped in response to his presence, but outwardly she appeared calm, even flippant. “I already know how to play croquet,” she said. “Whyever should I want instruction from you?”

Eli smiled, yet for all the merriment of the day, Bonnie knew that deep inside he was no more whole than she was. She recalled what Seth Callahan had said about her former husband’s emotional state and wondered what could be done to heal him. Indeed, how could she herself be healed?

The silence lengthened and Eli’s smile faded away. “About what I said last night—”

Bonnie thrust out her chin, braced to deal with an indecent proposal. “Yes?”

Eli lowered his head for a moment, as if shamed by what he’d said and what he’d done, and Bonnie was surprised to find that she had mixed feelings about his remorse.

“When it comes to you, Bonnie,” he said, “I’m forever doing and saying the wrong things. I forget that you’re no longer my wife and act accordingly.”

Bonnie understood what Eli was saying. Intellectually, she knew that the marriage had ended. But her body and spirit seemed bonded to him, as much as if there had been no divorce. A remnant of Scripture ran through her mind.
What God hath joined together…

She opened her mouth to admit to a similar failing but, before she could speak, Tuttle O’Banyon thrust himself into the invisible circle surrounding both Bonnie and Eli and squawked, “Ma’am—Mr. McKutchen—somebody’s got to help—”

Eli took the gangly young man by the shoulders and gave him a gentle shake. “Calm down, boy, and tell us what’s wrong.”

A flush moved up Tuttle’s face. “Somebody’s gone and beat Mr. Hutcheson senseless! I ain’t sure he’s alive!”

Bonnie’s knees weakened and she swayed slightly before catching herself. “Dear Lord—” she breathed, on the verge of real panic.

Eli spoke calmly. “Where is he?”

“At the office!” Tuttle cried, fitful in his despair. “The presses are turned over on their sides—”

Eli had heard enough; he was striding toward the front of the house, where horses and buggies were readily available, and Bonnie hurried behind him after a hasty word to Katie. By the time she reached the driveway, her former husband had commandeered a dapple gray gelding from someone’s team and purloined a bridle from one of the wagonbeds as well.

“I suppose you want to come along,” he said, extending a hand to Bonnie even as he spoke.

She took the offered hand and allowed herself to be swung up behind him. The gelding danced nervously beneath its double burden, tossing its head.

“Hold on,” Eli said, and they were off at a gallop.

Bonnie clung to Eli’s solid midsection, her forehead tucked between his shoulder blades, her breath sawing at her throat. She had never been a horsewoman, but this was no time to give in to fear. Reaching Webb was all that was important.

She pictured his house and the garden plot behind it, and she despaired.
Oh, Lord,
she prayed silently, as they raced through the main part of Northridge and down the great hill,
let Webb live to marry and father children.
He wanted a family so much!

Suddenly the horse came to a stop and Eli dismounted, lifting Bonnie down after him. She felt a stinging ache in the balls of her feet as they struck the ground.

The door of Webb’s newspaper office stood open, as Tuttle had probably left it, and Eli bolted through the shadowy chasm. “Hutcheson?” he called.

Bonnie followed, pausing to grip the door’s framework with both hands and draw a deep, steadying breath. The instant it took for her eyes to adjust to the dimness seemed like an eternity.

The presses lay on their sides, and type was scattered everywhere. Ink drenched the walls, like blood, and Eli was crouching beside a body lying prone on the floor.

“Is he dead?” Bonnie made herself ask. Her heart was pounding in her throat; she’d had to force her words past it.

Eli shook his head. “He’s alive, but not by much.”

Tuttle had apparently spread the word among Genoa’s guests, for there were wagons approaching and Bonnie could hear men calling to each other. She moved out of the doorway and went to kneel beside Webb.

His face was streaked with blood and so battered that Bonnie could barely recognize him as the Webb she knew. His clothes were in a like state, and his skin was gray as paraffin wax.

She gently stroked his hair off his forehead, her tears falling unchecked and unheeded. “Webb? Webb, it’s Bonnie —can you hear me?”