Waltz with the Lady Page 17

  “Well, you’re a man who can quote the Good Book, Mr. Ransom.” Though Beadle seemed to be taken aback at the words Gat had quoted.

  “Yes,” came India’s voice from the end of the table. “Before the war Mr. Ransom planned to enter the ministry.” She gazed in Gat’s direction in mock loving adoration.

  It was Gat’s turn to cough. “I think the rain’s let up some. I better go see to my horses.” He put on his overcoat and hat and walked toward the door.

  “Wait up, Ransom, I’ll go with you,” said Beadle. “Boys you come on and do the evening chores.” The boys gladly shoved themselves away from the table and followed the two men outside.

  But for the crackling fire, the room was quiet. No sooner had the door shut securely than the little girls began to chatter among themselves. India was still recuperating from the shock that Ransom could quote the Bible when Mary Beadle came over to India and sat down across from her at the table.

  “Mrs. Ransom, you’re the first woman I’ve seen since we came out here,” Mary announced timidly. “I’ve been awful lonely. If you and your husband settle nearby, please come a callin’,” she requested softly.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ll be settling here. But I’ll be sure to tell any other women I meet in these parts to stop by.”

  “Silas won’t allow me to visit.”

  “You better give me your turnip stew recipe. It seems Mr. Ransom…ah…my husband favors it.” India smiled, taking mischief in the idea of Gat being her husband. It would be the only time in her life she could make such a claim. “Let me fetch my recipe book and pen.” India left the table and got her parcel from the saddlebag.

  She opened it to a blank page in the back and dipped her pen in the ink. “All right, tell me what you do, step by step.”

  “You can write?” Mary was staring at the book and pen.

  “Of course, this is a French recipe book. I can write your stew recipe in it and not worry about forgetting it.”

  Mary seemed quite amazed. “Have you a recipe to tell me?”

  “Well,” India fanned the pages. “Do you want a dessert or a main course?”

  “Both!” Mary at last smiled.

  “How about a pound cake with lots of butter and eggs and then a…a”—her eyes scanned the pages for something practical—“a red beet pie?”

  “Oh yes, we have chickens and a milk cow and I have planted beets in the garden.”

  So the ladies bent their heads together and exchanged recipes while the little girls crowded around them, fascinated by India’s pen-and-ink writing. She took a page from her petition ledger and showed each one how to write her name. Then she tore the page into tiny slips so each could keep a copy.

  “Now you keep those hid from your father,” Mary cautioned the girls as she looked nervously at the door. “You better put away your books before my husband comes back,” she continued. Then she reached over and clasped India’s hand and lowered her voice. “You seem to have experience in most things, Mrs. Ransom. I have no right to ask you this, but I am near desperate. It’s that French cookbook of yours that brought me around to thinkin’ on it. I’ve heard tell”—she looked at the door again and then back to India—“I’ve heard there is a way some women know how to keep from getting in the family way. I’ve heard it called the ‘French Secret.’ Can you tell me that secret? Maybe being just married you don’t understand why I would ask, but…”

  “I understand, don’t worry.” India’s heart went out to the poor woman. “But I don’t know what it is myself. Just like you, I’ve heard about it, but not the particulars. I’m sorry.” At that moment they heard the thump of boots and low conversation of the returning men. India quickly swept up her books and pen. With the lift of the door latch the little girls again fell silent and Mary rose to her feet and went to tend the fire.

  The one-room cabin and loft were hardly spacious enough for the Beadle family, let alone visitors. India and Gat lay like a pair of spoons on a straw tick before the stone fireplace. India gazed at the dancing flames, while around her she listened to the settling sounds of the children. Gat had made a gentleman’s effort to keep the proper amount of space between them, and India, in an odd way, was disappointed. His knee was very close to hers, but not touching; his arm, as he shifted to comfortability, brushed her back but never touched.

  Suddenly, something cold and writhing fell across India’s face. She screamed. Ransom jumped up, grabbed it.

  “What is it?” gasped India.

  “Everything all right?” called Beadle from behind the muslin curtain.

  “It’s nothing. Just a blow snake fell through the rafters,” said Gat matter-of-factly. He stepped over sleeping children, opened the door and threw it out.

  India, still trembling, rubbed the cold clammy feel of the creature from her skin.

  Gat returned beside her. “Lie back down. It’s over.”

  “I can’t.” She sat upright, her eyes roving over the roof above.

  “Don’t worry. It happens all the time. They’re drawn by the warmth. Most folks put sheeting up to catch the critters.” He picked up his blanket. “Put my blanket over you if you think that will help.”

  “But what will you use?”

  “I’ll be fine,” he assured her.

  “You’ll be cold,” India took his blanket. “We could share.”

  “I figure I’ll take the lesser of the two evils and be cold.”

  “Well, I’m not worried. If you came too close, Beadle would read you a few verses of moral scripture,” she whispered.

  “The tempter’s voice must be whispering a lot more to you than he is to me. Tonight, I haven’t got anything on my mind but sleep. Goodnight.” Gat stretched out beside her.

  He had misunderstood her offer. India burned with humiliation with this added insult. Along with the kiss, the events at the mining camp apparently only clinched his idea that she was a woman of easy virtue. How could a man who apparently had his pick of respectable and unrespectable women in the territory have the audacity to think she was the one to have a lecture on morals?

  The man infuriated her to no end. It wasn’t as if she was all withered inside, though she’d spent half of her life repressing her carnal nature. He did have a way of making her terribly aware she was a flesh-and-blood woman, and she knew her very denial of marriage and her dedication to her cause added to her vulnerability. It just wasn’t fair!

  The stillness seemed to magnify small movements, and a tension flowed between their unconnected bodies. As the hearth fire died down he moved closer to her. His body curved with the bends and hollows of her own, very close, but not touching. She sensed him rather than touched him.

  Slowly, a pulse and heat gathered force inside her and she suddenly turned, shifted and rearranged. So did Gat. The current between them was undeniable now. It became a silent flirtation of breath and movement. Curled in the half-moon circle of his body she paced the rise and fall of his chest with the warmth of his breath on her neck. The warmth traveled down her spine like massaging fingers, caressing her secret places. He flowed into her without touching, and the warmth grew between her legs, a little ticking throb started up, which was irrefutably linked with the rhythm of his breathing.

  She wanted him closer: she willed him to touch her. And in the hazy half-sleep of her dreaming, he did.

  She was at Contessa’s again, only this time she was in the main parlor playing the piano for the girls and their gentlemen. A hundred seed pearl buttons bastioned her high-neck snow-white dress, which cascaded in chaste lacy folds around her. The other girls were lounging in various states of dishabille, but not India. But for a red stocking toe which peeked from beneath her dress pressing on the piano pedal, she was pristine, purehearted and unblemished. Her graceful hands danced over the ivory keys and her glass-blue eyes watched the room’s reflection in the gilt-framed mirror above the piano.

  Suddenly, the doors into the parlor opened and Gat Ransom stepped
inside. In desperado stance, he slowly surveyed the room with a dark penetrating gaze. Contessa moved forward, but his interest focused past Contessa’s welcome. India glanced down at the keyboard with a soft-lipped smile of satisfaction, all the while feeling a wild excitement move through her body. Tonight he had come for her and her alone.

  She continued playing, outwardly oblivious to the tall cowboy who now stood behind her. But inwardly she simmered beneath the heat of his black-eyed gaze which ignited a pulsing fire of ripe expectancy within her. She would ignore him for a while, pretending indifference, after all she was the virginal pianist of the establishment.

  Then, with a pretended inconsequential glance she lifted her eyes to the mirror and met the smoldering reflection of his own. Her fingers stumbled over the keys and then halted. He would not be ignored. His dark head lowered and lips warm as Jamaican rum brushed the nape of her neck and then moved to the hollow of her ear with a deeply whispered, “I want to make you a woman.”

  The words no longer affronted her, but filled her with a feathery expectancy, and at last, deep within in the chamber of her hidden secrets, she conceded she wanted him, she had always wanted him. With a demure smile she willingly submitted when he swept her into his arms, and shivers of anticipation coursed through her as he carried her from the parlor and up to Contessa’s room.

  Upon entering, the rose patterns of the bed curtains bloomed to brilliance in the soft lamplight while the room’s atmosphere radiated the sultry sheen of a faceted ruby. Gat’s arms loosed around her as he placed her beside the bed and with the alacrity of a magician his adept fingers had quickly cast off his own shirt. The resulting sight of his sun-bronzed torso mesmerized her. Seeing this, he smiled a hunter’s smile when a long-stalked quarry has been captured. His fingers caressed her throat and slowly moving downward, miraculously unfastened the hundred seed pearl buttons of her spotlessly white dress. The gown fell about her ankles unveiling her splendorous breasts enshrined in the vigilant constraints of an alabaster corset. Another pass of his hand and the corset fell, releasing her breasts to the soft folds of a red-lace camisole. He became her liberator, each touch of his hand untying, unbinding, unshackling, over her hips down her long sylphine legs to the ivory garters of her red silk stockings. At last, he stepped back letting out a slow breath as his eyes drank in her unbound beauty, then he fell to his knees in homage before her, saying abjectly, “I am unworthy of you.”

  “No, no…” India mumbled herself awake to the stillness of night and the dying embers of the fire. Inwardly, she struggled to linger in the dream and hold the warmth of anticipated fulfillment. Fighting back the disappointment, reluctantly, her eyelids flicked open and she found herself facing Ransom. That his face was inches from her own was shocking but not so shocking as the flashing images of her dream. Her breath caught in her throat and she feared he might be awake, but from the steady ebb and flow of his breathing it was apparent he still slept deeply.

  By firelight she watched him in sleep, studied the rough texture of his jawline compared to the swelling softness of his lips. Without touching him she lifted her fingers and let them hover above his black-thatched brows over to the long scar running down his cheek. If she touched him he would wake, and so instead, savoring the sensations of her dream, from the depths of her heart, she entreated, Why did you stop? Moisture gathered at the corners of her eyes. He was not her misfortune. She loved him.

  The commotion of a child’s crying and the shout of loud voices brought India rudely awake.

  “You and your woman are about the devil’s business, I’ll not have it in my house!” yelled Silas Beadle. He’d snatched Ransom’s gun and pointed it at him. “I have ways of taking care of your sort. Matthew, go build a fire under the tar pot.”

  India looked about in confusion. Beadle’s other two sons leaped forward to hold Ransom.

  “Outside, you devil.” They pushed Gat out the door.

  “What’s happening?” India turned in confusion to Mary. “What is wrong?” Mary held her youngest daughter, who sobbed hysterically.

  “Oh, something awful! Rachel here sneaked into your pen and books this morning while we were all sleeping, and Silas discovered her. Oh, he’ll whip her good, and he’s got something awful mean in store for you and your man.”

  “But why should he be so angry about a child playing with a pen and paper?”

  “It wasn’t that so much as something he read on the paper.” She rocked back and forth in distress.

  India hurried over to her saddlebags and gathered up her parcel. “The petition. He must have read the petition.” There probably wasn’t a greater sacrilege than women voting, as far as Beadle was concerned. “Mary, what is he going to do?”

  “You heard him, he’s going to heat up the tar and he’s going to tar and feather you and your man. Oh, I’m mighty sorry, Mrs. Ransom, but I can’t stop him. He’s done it before to folks when he gets riled.”

  India ran to the door and barred it, then she peered out the window. They’d tied Gat to a fence post while one of the boys stirred the tar. Silas had torn off Gat’s shirt. India’s mind whirled. What could she do? “Mary, is there another gun in the house?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t be part of that.” Mary shook her head and clutched the little girl closer to her, but then her eyes moved slowly and rested on a battered traveling trunk in the corner.

  India ran over to the trunk, fell to her knees and pulled open the lid. Inside she discovered a shotgun. It didn’t matter to her if it was loaded or not. She’d just have to bluff her way through. A quick glance out the window told her there was no time to spare. The Beadles had already begun their foul work. Gat’s chest was a mass of sticky tar and feathers. She unbarred the door and with gun in hand, rushed out of the cabin.

  Beadle still held the gun, but less guardedly. “Mr. Beadle, drop your gun!” India commanded with as much bravado as she could muster.

  Though taken by surprise, he didn’t drop his gun, but Gat’s reflexes saved the moment. The second India distracted Beadle he lifted his foot and kicked the gun from Beadle’s hand.

  “Hold it right there, Mr. Beadle.” India moved forward, still holding the shotgun. She stooped for the gun. “Now untie Mr. Ransom.”

  The boys looked to their father and he gave a slight nod. Once untied, Gat left India to hold the Beadles at bay and went inside the barn and brought out their horses. He hastily saddled them and then, to India’s relief, finally took the guns from her. He herded the Beadles inside the barn and barred the doors.

  “Go get your things from the house and give the shotgun to his wife. Tell her not to let them out for at least an hour. I doubt they’ll follow us.” Ransom had taken his shirt and was attempting to scrape off the tar and feathers. India ached for him, for it looked painful. Quickly she rushed inside the cabin.

  “I’m sorry, Mary, but we had to do it. Please give us a head start before you let them out of the barn.” She laid the gun on the table and gathered up her belongings. “Goodbye,” she said sadly, then she moved quickly to Mary’s side, gave her a warm embrace and ran out the door.

  Mary Beadle followed India, her head turning to the demanding calls of her husband and sons from inside the barn. Then her eyes moved to India as if to say it was a relief to have them locked up.

  “I’ll tend to my chores first,” she said and stepped back inside the cabin and closed the door. Riding off, India felt a sharp pang of remorse, for she knew that later Mary would pay dearly for their freedom.

  Chapter 12

  By the time India and Gat saw the corrals and barns of the Hedemen ranch, shadows had fallen and the sunset cast a golden glow across the tops of the great bare buttes. They spurred their horses forward on the last stretch of a long day’s ride.

  Barking dogs and a passel of excited children ran out to greet them. The children squealed, giggled, pushed and jostled one another to surround Gat—an obvious favorite among them—as he swung down off his horse. He came
prepared, quickly searching through his saddlebags for the sack of horehound candy. On his command the children lined up with outstretched hands and he filled their open palms, not forgetting the two hiding in their mother’s skirts in the cabin doorway.

  “Eugenie, how you doing?” he asked their smiling, pregnant mother.

  She pushed back a loose strand of black hair and sighed. “If you want to know the truth, I feel as bloated as a month-dead carcass. I’m due anytime now.” She patted her large belly affectionately. “Russ will be glad to see you.” Her sparkling green eyes settled in a friendly welcome on India. “Who’s this you’ve brought with you?”

  “Well, I’ll let her introduce herself,” Gat said.

  India, still up on her horse, gave Eugenie a smile. “I’m India Simms.”

  Eugenie stepped from the doorway. “I’m glad to meet you, India. I suppose I should introduce my brood here to you while they’re all standin’ still. Elizabeth, the eldest, Emma, Cora, Jacob, Samuel, Florence and Sarah here, the youngest.”

  “Happy to meet you, children,” India greeted, more concerned about Gat’s condition than introductions.

  “Eugenie, I could use lye soap and some mineral spirits if you could see your way clear to provide them. We had a little run-in with some of your new neighbors.” Gat began unbuttoning his shirt, and all the children’s eyes opened wide as he revealed his tarred-and-feathered chest.

  “Good heavens, Gat! What happened to you? You standing there like as nothing is wrong! You’ll be blistered and sore for a week,” gasped Eugenie. “Come in. You need more than lye soap and mineral spirits. Elizabeth, see to their horses,” she ordered, hustling Gat inside the cabin.

  India slipped down off her horse and began helping the young girl unstrap the gear and unsaddle the horses. She wanted to follow Gat inside to ensure that Eugenie would take proper care of him, but she didn’t want to appear overattentive. On the trail he had declined her offers of help, saying he’d be fine. The man was impossible.