Читать книгу The Untamed Heart - Kit Gardner - Страница 10

The skillet slammed onto the hot stove. A chair scraped. A cupboard slammed. Butter sizzled in the skillet. Eggs cracked against the side of the pan—plop, plop, plop. Willie stared at the eggs bubbling in the butter and considered reaching for another. Her neck had hurt when she’d looked up and met Devlin’s gaze square. He was taller than Brant by a good three inches, and seemed substantially thicker, despite the elegant drape of his fancy clothes. Brant had always taken three eggs each morning. She cracked another egg into the pan.

Satisfied, she turned to the peeled potatoes, took up her knife and whacked with an efficiency honed by years of serving up fried eggs and potatoes to four hulking brothers. Walt, Wynn, William and Wes. The knife lay idle against the chopping block as she glanced at the table, imagining them sitting there, dust covered, exhausted and ravenous.

Walt, the oldest, had always sat opposite Pa at the far end of the table, straddling his chair, his face stern. Somehow, even then, he must have sensed his tragic fate but he’d never let on, not even to Pa. Buried deep somewhere inside him he’d had other plans, dreams of his own that had nothing to do with the mine and silver and his father’s dreams for Prosperity Gulch. Walt had the simpler dreams of a twenty-four-year-old man, dreams of being a husband to pretty blond Melissa Cutter and following her family out to California for a better life. A new start.

But Willie hadn’t found all that out until the funeral, when Melissa had told her of Walt’s dreams, and the tears had washed over her face without stopping.

Willie gritted her teeth against the burn of tears in her eyes. She wondered if Gramps had told Walt that all dreams shouldn’t be chased. Walt always minded, even when he hadn’t wanted to.

Willie reached for an onion. In a flurry of whacks she chopped the onion into superfine pieces. Wiping a forearm over her eyes, she swept the onion and potatoes into another skillet of bubbling butter then reached into the open neck of her shirt and retrieved the folded bills. Slowly she counted them, then counted them again, rubbing her fingertips over the crisp edges. She drew them to her nose. The bills smelled new, untainted.

Moving to the window, she lifted aside the red checked gingham and peered into the darkness gathering over the fields. Two dense shadows moved through the grass. She watched the taller of the two. Apprehension wriggled in her belly.

Sloan Devlin wanted something from her. No man handed over twelve hundred dollars without wanting something more than a bed and warm meals in return. They’d both known it. So why was she getting all jittery inside wondering what fancy-man Sloan Devlin wanted from her? Maybe because something about him reminded her of Brant Masters. Boot heels thumped on the porch steps. One set of boot heels. And no scrape of a cane. Willie whirled from the window, lunged to the stove and shoved a wooden spatula into the pan of fried eggs just as the door creaked open. She stared at the eggs, working the spatula beneath each one as the door gently closed. The fine hairs along the back of her neck stood up.

Without looking over her shoulder, she jerked her head to the table. “Have a seat, Devlin. Coffee’s in the pot.”

His rumble of thanks seemed to shake the floorboards under her boots. Reaching for a plate, she felt a peculiar chagrin at the crack meandering through the fired stoneware, considered searching for one that wasn’t cracked or chipped, then thought the better of it. Lifting the skillet, she swept the eggs onto the plate, followed that with the fried potatoes, then turned and set the plate on the table.

She glanced up at him through a fringe of loosened curls and felt a jar clear to her soul.

He stood behind a chair and watched her, his eyes mirroring the yellow glow of the single candle sitting on the table. His hair was sleek and short, combed close to his head from an arrow-straight part. For some reason, Willie felt as if he sucked all the air out of the room with his presence. He was oddly compelling and just a bit frightening. Willie was not a woman easily frightened.

He quirked one black brow. “I don’t eat alone.”

“You will tonight.”

“The terms of our arrangement are specific regarding the pleasure of your company.”

Willie felt her belly sink. “You mean at the table.”

“Yes, and elsewhere, of course.”

She swallowed. “Elsewhere.” The word gurgled past her throat. There was only one elsewhere that she could think of when she looked up into his eyes. Without his coat, he seemed massive and possessed of an energy that seemed tightly reined. His voice was laced with the same seductive promise that Brant had used just before he’d pushed her back onto the soft grass. And his eyes bored into hers as if he had the power to read her mind and bend her thoughts to his will.

Or was she imagining it all? She swallowed, remembering how easily Devlin had driven the ax blade deep into the stump. Somehow she’d never expected that of a dandified gent wearing a tall silk hat and soft leather gloves.

She glanced at the open door at one end of the kitchen, the door leading to the bedroom that Sloan Devlin would occupy for at least two weeks. Fury and pride and every ounce of Thorne self-righteousness erupted within her. She’d made a mistake because of blind naivet6 once. She wasn’t about to again, no matter how desperate she was.

Holding out her hand, she loosened her grip on the crumpled bills and they fell to the table like dry leaves. “Take it. I don’t want any of it. We have no agreement, Devlin. After you eat, get the hell out of my house.”

Turning, she shoved a chair from her path, and would have fled her own house if he hadn’t blocked her path. She stared at his embroidered burgundy silk vest.

“Wait,” he said softly. “It’s becoming increasingly obvious that you don’t understand.”

“I understand.” She jerked her chin up at him so vehemently her tightly coiled hair sprang from its knot and fell down her back. “I might not have realized it at first because I was so—so—” Desperate. She set her teeth. “That doesn’t matter, because I understand now, mister. I know damned well what you want and you’re not going to get it here. Try the Devil’s Gold Saloon in Deadwood Run. You can get a room and a half-dozen girls’ company for a fraction of your twelve hundred dollars. And a damned better tasting meal to boot.”

Devlin arched a brow. “What the devil would I do with a half-dozen women?”

Willie’s face went instantly hot. “I—how the hell should I know? But the cowboys always talk about—” Her breath left her in a sharp spurt. “Never mind. Quit changing the subject.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever spoken of pleasure and a half-dozen women in the same breath. You did. My dear girl, you’ve run far afield with this.” He bent to look directly into her eyes. A hint of a smile curved his mouth and for some blasted reason Willie was tempted to believe every word he said. Up close, he looked less like a gentleman and more like a man who’d seen much in his life. He had a weathered, almost beaten look to his face. Much like her own father had.

“Odd as it might seem,” he said, “I’m not after the pleasure of your company in my bed.”

Suspicion narrowed her eyes and thrust her jaw out another fraction. “No man would ever admit that outright.”

“No, I don’t suppose they would. Underhanded methods suit some men far better. I’m pleased to say I know little of that. But, rest assured, if the notion ever struck me, I wouldn’t use either money or underhanded methods.”

“Or a grassy knoll,” she murmured, flushing again when she realized she’d spoken her thoughts. Devlin was watching her with such sudden intensity she wanted to squirm. Instead she turned abruptly for the sink. “You’d best eat before it gets cold.”

After a moment, the chair brushed against the floorboards. Had it not, she might have thought he still stood at her back. He moved as silently as a soft wind in leafless trees. Most men she’d known made constant noise, especially in a house, banging their way around furniture and through rooms and meals, devouring food and tidiness like a pack of wolves. Forks in constant clatter, glasses thudding, knives scraping on plates, all amidst a grunted sort of chewing. When they left, as suddenly as they’d come, the room seemed to expand again to allow fresh breezes.

“Willie.”

She blinked and wondered how long she’d been staring out the window into the darkness. Her reflection in the windowpane suddenly jumped back at her. She looked…haunted.

She uncurled her fingers from the edge of the sink and plunged her arms into the water. “Did you need something?”

“Your name. Wilhelmina, isn’t it?”

“I don’t like it.”

“It suits you.”

Her mother had always said that. Loneliness suddenly crept into her heart. “My mother named me after her grandmother, the notorious Wilhelmina McKenna. According to family legend, she was an Irish hellion who birthed twelve children to three husbands, all of whom died of mysterious causes.”

“The children?”

“No, the husbands. My mother used to say I had Grandmother Wilhelmina’s hair.”

“A blessing, indeed.” Something in his voice made Willie’s hands go still in the water. She listened to the thumping of her pulse as he added, “You could have inherited her tragic legacy with men.”

Swiftly Willie worked a rag against the bottom of the skillet. “It’s too soon to say. I’ve never married.”

Willie glanced at Devlin. He pushed back his chair and, with empty plate in hand, moved toward her. Her throat seemed to close up.

“Coffee?” she asked, turning away from him and snatching a rag from a wall peg. She moved around the table and reached for the coffeepot on the stove beside him.

“I’m in your way.”

“No—you’re not.” She just hadn’t wanted to move between him and the table to reach the stove. There was something oddly disturbing about being in close proximity with this man. Aware that he watched her and that he had guessed at her reason for avoiding him, she poured two cups and slid one toward him on the wooden counter. “I hope you like it strong and black.”

“It seems de rigueur.” He caught her quick glance over the rim of his cup. A disarming smile deepened the creases around his eyes. “Local custom. I haven’t seen tea since I left the steamer in New York, and the only words spoken in this country after the word coffee are ‘strong’ and ‘black.’ I’m pleased to say there’s remarkable variation in the taste. You outdo the Pullman Palace car, Wilhelmina.”

She hesitated, pondered her pinkening cheeks, then lifted her chin. “That’s no compliment.”

“It should be. The berth in first-class cabin accommodations aboard a Cunard steamer are less comfortable than the berth in a Pullman Palace car. It seems Mr. Pullman has taken as much care in the decorating and furnishing of his railcars as French decorators do in decorating the dwellings of the very rich. Were he up to dealing with the shoddily laid track in England, Mr. Pullman could revolutionize railway travel there and at the same time enrich himself beyond the dreams of avarice.”

“Then he will. All Eastern capitalists want richness beyond the dreams of avarice. All men do.”

“Not all men. To some, the ultimate rewards lie elsewhere.”

“Ultimate rewards begin to mean very little when food is scarce. Noble dreams die swift deaths when there’s no money and no work. Just ask any miner.” She stared up at him, realizing he was waiting for her to continue. Something about him made her want to keep talking, as if what she said and felt and thought was valid, worthwhile. And she wanted to spew it all out for him, all the misery, the loneliness, the guilt and the inevitable despair.

For one startling moment she knew a vulnerability that she hadn’t felt since the day her mother had died.

“I’ll show you where you’ll sleep,” she said, her voice taking on a chill. With head lifted, she led him to the front bedroom as if she were Mr. Pullman himself, stopping just outside the open doorway. Her first thought as she glanced into the room was that Sloan Devlin’s feet would hang off the end of the bed.

“Breakfast is at six,” she said as he leaned past her to peer into the room. Pressing herself against the doorjamb, she drew in her breath just as his sleeve brushed against her bare forearm. “Supper at one. Dinner at six. There’s a water pump out back for washing up.” She stared at the back of his head where a dark leather cord bound the thick length of his blue-black hair. Unbound, she imagined it would fall past his shoulders.

He turned and faced her and her knees gave a sudden wobble. “Where do you and your grandfather sleep?”

Her eyes skittered across the kitchen to a shadowed corner and the narrow steps there. “I sleep upstairs. There’s three bedrooms there. Gramps sleeps in his chair in the front room.”

“You’re alone here.”

Damn his gently coaxing voice, smooth as warm honey. Brant’s voice had been even smoother, when he’d wanted it to be.

She lifted her eyes to his and gripped the doorjamb at her back. “My mama died when I was ten. My pa and my brothers all went when the Lucky Cuss blew last year. Now it’s just me and Gramps and Huck, the dog. And the boarders.”

“Do you get many?”

“We get some.” It wasn’t a complete lie. They got a boarder every six months or so.

“People must not know what they’re missing.”

Something inside her went weak. Smooth as honey, just like Brant. So much like Brant and yet somehow so different Hadn’t she lingered just like this outside the room with Brant that first evening, mesmerized by his charm, captivated by his smile? Less than a week later she’d lain beneath him on the soft grass and watched him lean over her, blocking out all the sun.

Like a frightened rabbit she scooted past Devlin, tossing over her shoulder something about seeing to Gramps. Devlin’s softly spoken “Good night, Wilhelmina” followed her out onto the porch and halfway across the yard before it leapt up into the starry sky and vanished.

Noble dreams die swift deaths when there’s no money.

Sloan looked up from his journal and stared out into the moon-splashed darkness. The field of grass rippled like ocean waves in the milky moonlight, extending from the porch to a sweep of trees more than a mile out. Beyond that, rising from the earth like a majestic beast, loomed the blue-white peaks of the mountains. The moon seemed to hang just inches above the tallest peak. Sloan listened to the rustling of the grass, breathed in the scent of wildflowers and scanned the horizon from east to west before again lifting his pencil.

The senses are at once quickened and overpowered by thelimitless space. Those who people these vast tracts of land should enjoy a freedom far better than that of a wanton breeze, balmy with perfume. I feel a deep longing that the thousands who earn a precarious livelihood in England by tilling the soil of their taskmasters and lords could somehow come to a place where the strength of their arms would win them a comfortable subsistence and would enable them to possess the land which yields them their daily bread. But here, too, noble dreams die.

He lifted his head and stared at a tree standing alone in the field. Its branches glowed with silvery light What dreams remained unreachable for Wilhelmina Thorne? She was far too young to spend the rest of her life with a look of haunted longing in her eyes, far too compelling to live out her days here, a treasure hidden and undiscovered where the grass met the base of the mountains.

There was a loneliness about her that reminded him of the tinners’ widows. But where despair would have found a comfortable home long ago grim determination resided. Willie was searching for something, something to squelch her discontent. He wondered what her broken heart had to do with it.

A dim light from above cast a sudden splash of gold onto the porch. Sloan looked up at the window and watched a slender shadow move behind sheer curtains. Above the rush of the grass he heard her humming, husky and low. The curtain billowed, whispered apart, and he glimpsed pale womanly roundness and white skin as she leaned near the window, unaware.

The curtain stilled, but her shadow remained. Her humming seemed to swell and fill the air. Sloan felt his breath compress in his lungs as the breeze again stirred through the curtains.

He saw a splash of white lace, a cascade of copper curls and then the lamp was snuffed.

He didn’t realize he’d held his breath until it left him in a wheeze. Despite the cool breeze, perspiration suddenly dotted his forehead. He swept his palm through his hair then stood, pencil and journal gripped in one hand. He pondered the darkness. His room had smelled like citrus, the sheets like hot sun and starch. He wondered if Willie’s room smelled the same.

A young heart was broken on a grassy knoll in Prosperity Gulch.

Turning, he climbed the creaking porch steps to his room.

Willie awoke before the cock crowed, when dawn had barely lightened the night’s mantle a shade. Toes curling against the chill of the planks, she scooted from her bed, moved to the window and pushed the curtain aside. Something besides the creeping of dawn had awakened her. Her eyes probed the gloom. Her ears strained above the predawn silence. The moon had long disappeared over the mountains. Stars still hung low in the sky, winking at the morning. All was as it should be. Her eyes shifted and sought movement among the shadows.

She saw him the instant she heard him. Or was it him? Something moved in the far corner of the field where she’d chopped wood. A man, tall and shirtless, stood motionless at the edge of the woods, staring out into the trees. But the sound echoing out over the valley and up into the trees was inhuman, primal, savage. Like the haunting cry of a wolf.

Gooseflesh swept over Willie’s arms and prickled at her cheeks. Strange though it might be, a man howling into the woods was hardly reason to be frightened, especially since she’d chased wolves off her property many times over the years. But she understood the wolves and their reasons for venturing too far from the thicket She knew nothing of Devlin, or his howling. Surely he wasn’t howling at the wolves? Talking to them…

She gritted her teeth, appalled at the odd turn of her thoughts. Men didn’t talk to wolves, not even peculiar Englishmen out to see the elephant. No man would be so foolish as to attempt to lure a predator out of its den. Then again she’d seen no fear in Devlin’s eyes when Reuben Grimes had threatened him or when the cowboy had attempted to draw his gun. She suddenly wondered if anything would scare Sloan Devlin.

Or was he simply ignorant of the harm that could befall him at every turn?

Whirling from the window, she yanked her night rail over her head and reached for the Levi’s and shirt folded over the back of a chair. Before she left the room, she grabbed the repeating rifle in the back corner.

Gramps stood at the foot of the stairs, coffee cup in hand, staring out at the field. He didn’t look up when she bounded down the steps. “What the hell’s he doin’?”

“Howling at the wolves.”

“The hell he is. I heard a bear once sounded like that. He was dyin’, real slow. He cried just like Devlin’s cryin’.”

Willie checked the rifle, aware that her limbs felt jittery. Tossing her hair over her shoulder, she glanced at Gramps. “He’s not crying. He thinks he’s talking to the wolves.”

“You goin’ to kill him?” A strange twinkle lit Gramps’s eyes. “Or you gonna try to scare him?”

Willie set her jaw. “I haven’t made up my mind.”

“He’s like the wolves. He won’t scare easy.”

“I know.” Tucking the rifle under one arm, she pushed open the door. Huck awaited her at the foot of the porch steps, shaggy black tail pumping back and forth, tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth. She didn’t pause to ruffle his ears. “C’mon, boy.”

In long, loping strides, she set out across the field, Huck hunkering low into his trot right at her side. Dew clung to her boots and dampened her pants clear to her knees. The air hung still, chilled and eerily calm, the silence broken only by the swishing of her boots through the grass. And then he howled again and the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up. The sound echoed up into the trees like the wail of a dying animal.

She quickened her pace, bursting into the clearing with the rifle gripped at the ready. She went instantly still. So did Huck beside her.

Devlin stood with his back to her, straight and still as a hundred-year-old sycamore, swathed in some mysterious cocoon of unawareness. He wore nothing except a pair of very tight black pants that looked as if they had been cut off to grip just below his knees. His legs were exceptionally lean and long muscled, nothing like the tree trunks that had powered her father and brothers through the mines for years. But though she’d seen her brothers in all stages of undress throughout their youth and into manhood, she’d never been so suddenly and completely fascinated with the shape of a man’s legs, the tapering breadth of his bare back or the meaty muscles of his buttocks.

Not even on the knoll.

The sun rising over the treetops colored his skin coppery gold and set his unbound black hair aflame with blue. Despite the air’s chill, his shoulders glistened with a smooth, dewlike sheen.. All along the curve of shoulder and bicep, his muscles rippled below the thinness of skin even as he stood motionless. Willie bit her lip, disturbingly aware of a desire to feel the heat of all that skin and sinew beneath her palms. Her blood hammered a pulse in her ear. Her mouth went dry.

Lightning quick he moved. One leg arced up at an inhumane angle toward the nearest thick tree, stirring the leaves that hung above his head. It was an explosion of energy and movement in the span of one heartbeat. Had she blinked she would have missed it. Had he misjudged his distance or his angle, he would have driven his bare foot into the thick, gnarled trunk.

She didn’t breathe. He paused, again motionless, soundless, and yet he stood as if every muscle poised at the ready to respond to some invisible enemy. His scream erupted, blood chilling and eerie. And then in an explosion of movement, he lunged at the tree, legs arcing, arms firing. With fists and feet he beat into the bark, spun, then jumped in a frenzied attack, punctuating each blow with a low, guttural shout that seemed to bring a surge of power to each strike.

Willie watched in horror, expecting blood to be streaming from his hands, legs and feet. But there was none. The man was crazy. Still, as Willie watched, her horror became fascination. There was a mystical beauty to his movements, something she couldn’t comprehend or define. He was more animal than human, more mysterious than the wolf, more dangerous.

Willie drew the rifle against her chest. She took one step back. A twig cracked beneath her boot. She froze.

Devlin spun toward her and went instantly still. Hell’s fire blazed in his eyes. His chest barely moved with his breaths. Fists clenched against his thighs. Arm muscles popped. His legs braced wide, gripped and taut, ready to strike again.

In that moment, he was everything wild and hungry and beautiful that Willie could have ever imagined. And he was all male, his masculinity so blatantly displayed by his skinmolding britches she felt her legs turn to water and the blood rush in her ears. The rifle slipped from her hands.

He moved toward her with great powerful strides and all she could see was the sun reflected in his eyes and the curl of his lip, like that of a ravenous wolf. She whirled, tripped and felt the ground tip under her feet.