A Wild Yearning, page 9
Lusting after her... He had practically admitted as much. But that wasn't what frightened her. What frightened her was her own heart thrusting heavily in her breast and the yawning ache in the pit of her stomach. What frightened her was the knowledge that she lusted after him.
Delia whipped around and started back down the trail, swatting so hard at the needles and leaves on her skirt that she was stinging her thighs, as if she could swat some sense back into herself.
He had to call out to her twice and even start after her before she would turn around.
"You keep going long enough in that direction," he said, "and you'll soon find yourself back in Boston."
"Oh..." Embarrassment warmed her cheeks. She still couldn't look at him. "These damn trails—they all look alike. Ye'd think somebody'd put up signposts or somethin'."
Ty laughed, shaking his head. "God, Delia, you're a strange one." He took a step back and sketched a mocking bow. "After you, m'lady."
They walked back to the inn side by side, not touching, not speaking. They passed out of the forest onto the road. Their faint shadows stretched out long before them in the dusky twilight, side by side, yet apart.
Through the oiled-paper pane of the dormer window, Elizabeth Hooker looked at black spires of trees silhouetted against a silvery gray sky.
Right now back in Boston, in the parsonage of the Brattle Street Church, her father would be lighting the betty lamp on his desk as he prepared to work on his mid-week sermon. Her mother would be sitting on the settle before the fire, carding wool for tomorrow's spinning. Her two younger sisters would be working on their knitting, chatting between themselves, perhaps about the new silk ribbons they had bought that afternoon or the cakes they would bake for next Saturday's church social.
Elizabeth closed her eyes, picturing the scene as she had seen it so many times. The reflection of the firelight flickering in the silver tea service. Smoke curling up from her father's pipe to form a halo around his head. The swinging pendulum of the lantern clock filling the room with its steady ticking and blending with her sisters' soft voices...
Her lids clenched and her lips twisted. "I want to go home!" she cried aloud, her voice breaking the empty silence of the inn's tiny, shabby room. "Oh, Caleb, please take me home." But Caleb wasn't there to hear her.
After a moment she drew in a deep, shuddering breath. She opened her eyes to the forest beyond the window. She hated it already, and she was sure she would hate Merrymeeting just as much. Everything was so rough, so dirty. Her head throbbed and every bone ached from the constant rattling of the ox cart. Her throat felt parched from the incessant dust. The skin of her face and neck and hands—every part of her that hadn't been protected by clothing—was covered with red weals left by the sucking flies.
The treetops swayed against the lowering sky and she thought that, even through the window, she could hear the lonely sigh of the wind and smell the coming rain. Her stomach knotted as she remembered what that odious innkeeper had said about the savages and their heinous tortures. They could be out there right now, she thought, lurking in the forest, waiting for dark to fall and the storm to come before—
With a hand that trembled so badly she could barely control it, she pulled the shutters closed over the glazed window and pushed home the bolts. The pounding in her head subsided somewhat, but it only brought to the forefront of her consciousness the itching of the welts on her neck.
She balled up her fists to keep from engaging in a bout of furious, unladylike scratching. Turning away from the window, she looked around the shabby room with its low, sloping ceiling. There was a small jack bed built into the corner, its ticking filled with rags and cornhusks. The bedding was no doubt infested with lice and nits, Elizabeth thought with a shudder. At least she was prepared for that, her mother having warned her to pack within handy reach her own clean things.
She went to the chest that Caleb had earlier taken from the cart. He had placed her Bible on top where she would be sure to find it. Kneeling, she ran her palm across the tooled leather binding. Caleb was a good man, kind and thoughtful. Yet there had been times during this long and terrible day when she had thought she hated him for uprooting her from her family and dragging her with him into the wilderness, making her endure the ox cart and the dust and the flies. But they made her feel guilty now, those feelings of hatred that she had harbored against her own husband.
Elizabeth pressed her lips together. She would do better by him tomorrow; she would endure it better tomorrow. It was only because today was the first day that it had seemed so hard.
She stripped the bed and remade it with her own sheets and blankets. She herself had spun and woven the wool and the linen cloth they were made of, and she was proud of their quality. They were part of her trousseau when she had married two months before. She had shown them to her husband on their wedding day, and he had claimed no man could have been more fortunate in his choice of wife than the Reverend Caleb Hooker. She often wondered if he still felt the same—now that he knew her better.
She smoothed the blanket flat, tucking it under the ticking. The combination of the lengthening shadows and her thoughts of Caleb brought on a sick feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach and she felt sweat bead on her forehead. Once, she had welcomed the coming of darkness as a quiet time, sitting around the fire with her family. But since her marriage she experienced such fear as the day ended and night fell, the dread of whether this night Caleb would want to exercise his husbandly rights on her.
She always submitted, when he insisted, for it was her duty. And she was grateful to Caleb for not asking too often because she suspected he derived pleasure from their coupling, although he had never said so. It wasn't right to take pleasure from it. The Book was clear on that. Although it was necessary, of course. Necessary to procreate mankind, and a wife must submit. The Book was clear on that as well.
Her mother, on the night before she married, had warned her about a little of it and had told her she would hurt and bleed some. Although the bleeding had stopped after the first two or three times, it still hurt; it hurt dreadfully. Oh, there were parts of it she actually liked. He would always kiss her once and stroke her a few times before he mounted her. Afterward, he usually whispered that he loved her. But she hated the penetration. Oh God, she hated that. It hurt so and she felt so invaded... yes, that was the word. Invaded.
She hurried to get undressed and into her nightrail before Caleb came up. She had just sat down on the room's only chair to pull the bone pins from her hair when the door opened and he came in with a cool draft of air.
"I brought a light," he said. His cupped palm protected a sulfur wick and he lit the tallow dip with it. He turned and smiled down at her.
She smiled back at him and said before he could ask, "I'm all right now, Caleb."
He took the hairbrush from her hand. "Here, let me do that for you."
She leaned against the chair's ladder back. Caleb lifted the fall of her fine, silver-blond hair and pulled the brush through it. She closed her eyes and sighed.
"What do you think of Dr. Savitch?" Caleb asked.
"He's a good man," she answered readily. Good and kind like Caleb. He had charming manners, and she sensed he had gone out of his way to put her at ease. But for all his civilized ways he seemed too much like the wilderness he came from— beautiful to look at, but savage underneath.
"That Delia is something else again though," Caleb was saying. "A real scrapper. It's going to take a lot of praying on our part to get that girl to see the light of our Lord." He stopped brushing Elizabeth's hair and came around to kneel before her, placing his hands on her lap to gaze up into her face. "She's been hurt, I think, Lizzie. Hurt badly. She's going to need a friend."
"I like Delia," Elizabeth said, and found as she said it that it was true. But she envied Delia as well. She remembered the way the girl had walked beside the oxen that day with her fearless, long-legged strides, the way she had taken such delight in all they had passed. The dust and the flies had not seemed to bother Delia.
Elizabeth got up from the chair and went to the bed. She slid beneath the covers and scooted over to the far edge of the ticking against the wall. As she watched Caleb undress, the dread within her grew.
He brought the tallow dip over and set it on the floor by the bed. Its flickering light threw his shadow up huge against the wall in back of her.
"Lizzie..." He cleared his throat. "How are you feeling tonight?"
She knew what he was really asking and her whole body tensed. She swallowed, wet her lips. "I'm very tired tonight, Caleb."
She saw his disappointment plainly in his face. But then he said, "Yes. Of course. It's been a very tiring day for you." She felt relief as the tension eased from her.
He got into bed. He lay stiff beside her in silence for a moment, then groped for her hand. "This is hard on you, Lizzie. Don't think I don't know how you hated to leave Boston and your family. How much you'll miss them..."
Elizabeth heard the doubt in her husband's voice. He didn't understand, not really. She had him now and he thought that should be enough.
"You'll be fine once we get to Merrymeeting," he went on. "Ty says the folk there have already built us a parsonage right next to the meetinghouse and we're to have our own plot of land. There'll be neighbors and you'll make new friends." He squeezed her hand. "It's my duty to go and minister where I'm called. You understand that, Lizzie, don't you? It is God's will."
"Yes. God's will."
Caleb, hold me, she wanted to say. But didn't for fear he would think she wanted the other, the coupling.
Rolling away from her, he snuffed out the candle. He was silent for so long she thought he had fallen asleep. Then he spoke into the dark. "Lizzie? Do you think we could be having a baby soon? You'd like that, wouldn't you, a baby of our own?"
She stiffened, sure now that he would turn to her and roll up her nightrail.
"Lizzie?"
She forced out her pent-up breath. "Yes... yes, of course, Caleb. A baby would be nice."
He sighed. After a while she heard his soft snoring and she relaxed, for she knew that he slept.
Tyler Savitch didn't give Delia a chance to argue with him about the horse the next morning. He grabbed her and tossed her into the saddle while she was still stretching and rubbing her back and complaining loudly, and profanely, to the innkeeper about the condition of the ticking she had been forced to sleep on.
She clung to the saddle pommel with both hands and looked down on Ty with surprise at first, and then he could see the coming explosion building on her face.
"Don't you say a word," he warned. "Not one word."
Her mouth had fallen part way open, but she shut it with a click of her teeth. Then she smiled. "I was only goin' t' say good mornin'."
Ty's answer was a growl.
He was not in a good mood. For the second night in a row he had gone to bed sexually frustrated, to be beset by nightmares filled with a husky voice and a pair of full, high breasts. It was bad enough to find himself attracted to the little tavern wench, but that she had actually spurned his lovemaking... he couldn't believe it. He had thought she'd taken a fancy to him, that she wanted one last bit of fun before she settled down to married life. Naturally he had assumed—hell, up until the second before she'd slapped his face, he'd have staked his last shilling that she wanted to have that bit of fun with him.
It had rained during the night, and now low clouds clung wetly to the sky. Water dripped from trees and the roof eaves to form pools in the muddy yard. Water dripped down Ty's back as he settled the innkeeper's tally. Elizabeth already clung to her perch on the cart, waiting for Caleb to finish yoking up the team. There was a mulish set to her mouth as she hunched her shoulders and drew the collar of her cloak beneath her chin.
Caleb motioned Ty over to the cart after he had finished with the innkeeper. "How far do you figure we have to go today?" he asked. He stood next to his wife's legs, one hand on the seat rail, the other holding up the goad.
"I'd at least like to get across the Merrimack," Ty said.
Caleb threw a glance at Elizabeth, then turned back to Ty. He let go of the rail, scratched the back of his neck, shuffled his feet, cleared his throat. "Yes, but how long will we be on the trail? Elizabeth is, uh..."
Ty repressed a sigh. At this rate they would be all summer getting to Merrymeeting. "We'll take it easy today," he said.
Caleb visibly relaxed. He patted his wife's knee, giving her a cheerful grin. "See, it won't be so bad today, Lizzie."
She looked up at the soggy blanket of clouds overhead. "It's probably going to rain all day."
Caleb's smile faded only a little. "Well, at least we won't be bothered by the flies."
Ty went back to Delia and the horse, and as he approached she smiled at him. The way her incredible eyes shimmered like golden coins did a funny thing to his chest, so that for a moment he found it difficult to breathe. If he hadn't caught himself just in time he would have smiled back at her.
He scowled instead. He tied her grist sack to the cantle of the saddle, then took the pacer's reins to lead him onto the road.
"Ye're not ridin' along up here with me?" Delia asked.
Ty snarled a negative reply as he tried to imagine how long he'd last with her riding double, rubbing those magnificent breasts against his back, breathing hotly against his neck, her hands clinging to his waist, pressing into his stomach, drifting lower and lower until—
Christ! Just the thought of it made the sweat start out on his face, and his groin begin to swell uncomfortably. He'd be having to stop every other mile to take a dip in a cold creek.
It was, in fact, a river that brought their journey to an abrupt halt early that afternoon. The Merrimack was too deep and wide to be forded by an ox cart. There was no ferry in sight, but a bell hung from a pole at the landing. Ty gave it a hard yank. When no one came after five minutes he hallooed across the water, but he knew it was hopeless. The old rascal that ran the Merrimack ferry did so at his own whim and on the basis of whether the fish were biting well that day.
"Looks like we'll have to camp out on this side of the river," Ty told the others. The remains of old campfires strewn along the grassy bank attested to the fact that they were not the first to have to spend the night on the west side of the Merrimack.
Delia slid off the horse onto wobbly legs. She rubbed her bottom and sighed loudly. "Lord above us, I think I've worn blisters on my arse..."
Her husky voice trailed off and she blushed. Then she looked down, sucking on her lower lip, and Ty thought about how it had felt to kiss that lip, to taste it. He had some salve in one of his haversacks, but he didn't say anything. The mere thought of rubbing it on that pert little bottom of hers almost made him groan aloud.
Ty jerked his rifle from the saddle holster. "I'll scout around and see if I can rustle us up some supper. Delia, make yourself useful for a change and gather some wood for the fire—"
"I'll do it," Caleb said hastily. "I feel the need to stretch my legs." He helped Elizabeth down from the cart as Ty disappeared into the woods. "Remember that feeder stream we passed a few yards back, Lizzie? I noticed it formed a pool by that patch of hemlocks. I was thinking maybe you might like a wash-up."
Elizabeth looked around her, swallowed, nodded. "Yes, I would. A wash-up sounds nice, Caleb."
Delia saw Elizabeth start back along the road and she ran after her. "Mrs. Hooker, wait! I thought maybe I'd go down t' that crik along with ye."
Delia fully expected to be rebuffed, but instead Elizabeth smiled brightly at her. "Oh, yes. Please... But you must call me Elizabeth," she said as Delia came running up.
They found the grove of hemlocks easily. The shallow pool looked cool and inviting, and Delia immediately sat down on the bank to soak her feet. Last night's storm had broken up and blown away, and now the sun was out. The air smelled fresh and green from the rain and drops still occasionally splattered onto their heads from the sodden trees.
Kneeling on a mossy slope before the pool, Elizabeth rolled up the sleeves of her frock and splashed water over her face and arms. "I should have brought some soft soap with me," she said. "It would be nice to have a bath."
"I took a bath early yesterday mornin'," Delia said, feeling smug about her new, clean self. "I even washed my hair."
Elizabeth dried off her face and hands with her petticoat. "Well, of course. But after the dust yesterday, and the flies, I was dying for a bath last night." She smiled shyly at Delia. "But can you imagine asking that horrid old innkeeper at the Blue Anchor for a tub of hot water?"
A startling thought occurred to Delia. "How often do ye take a bath, Elizabeth?"
"Oh, at least twice a week, sometimes three in the summer."
"Twice a week!" Delia gaped at her in disbelief. "But that's not healthy!" Why, as frail-looking as she was, Elizabeth Hooker was lucky she hadn't sickened of the lung fever and died long before now.
But then Delia remembered how Ty had complained about the way she had smelled the other night. Perhaps bathing once a month or so wasn't enough. She stifled a sigh. Evidently she was going to have to take a bath twice a week, in spite of the risk to her health, if she was going to make herself into a proper lady.
Elizabeth sat down on the bank, wrapping her arms around her folded-up legs. She glanced around nervously, and Delia couldn't help doing the same. But all Delia could see was a patch of bloodroot blooming nearby and a brown frog corpulent with Mayflies sunning itself on a rock.
"It's pretty here, don't you think?" Delia said.
"Yes... nice and peaceful."
That reminded Delia of the promise she had made to Ty.
"Elizabeth..." Delia paused and searched for the right words. This wasn't going to be as easy as she had thought. She drew in a deep breath. "I'm sorry about what I did last night, tryin' t' scare ye. 'Twas mean of me and, well... I'm sorry."
