Mountain Laurel Read online

  “I trust you with my life, but—” She broke off, the emotion of the night too much for her. “Leave me for a while, please.”

  He walked behind her, then turned her and pulled her into his arms. She struggled against him. He wouldn’t touch her when she wanted him to, but the minute she couldn’t bear the sight of him, he held her close. “I hate you.”

  “No, you don’t.” He stroked her hair. “You have no idea how you feel about me.”

  “But I guess you do know?” she asked angrily.

  “I think I know better than you do.”

  She pushed away from him. “You say that I’m vain, but it’s your vanity that knows no bounds. I imagine you think I care about you. Well, I don’t. I care nothing at all about you.”

  “You sure looked like you cared nothing about me when I plowed my way through those men to get to you tonight. I never saw such joy on a person’s face as when I held up my arms for you and you fell into them with absolute and total trust.”

  “I would have gone to any man I knew. The men who were carrying me didn’t have me balanced properly.”

  “Oh? From the moment the men picked you up, Sam was not a foot from you, and since he’s somewhat taller than I am, why didn’t you see him and go to him?”

  “I saw him,” she lied. “I just didn’t choose to go to him, that’s all.”

  The way he grinned made her turn away.

  “I wonder if we could stop arguing just long enough for you to patch me up? I’m bleeding.”

  She whirled on him, immediately putting her hands on his waist and turning him about. “Where?” There was a large bloody patch on his back and at the top of it his shirt was cut. “Oh, ’Ring, you fool. This looks serious. Why didn’t you say anything? Did someone use a knife on you?” She glanced up at him and saw the way he was smiling. “Not that I care in the least. I don’t. I would help anyone in my employ, even men I don’t like. Oh, do stop smirking and take that shirt off. I have bandages in the trunk.”

  “You will do anything to get me undressed, won’t you?”

  “Truthfully, I like the look of you better than what comes out of your mouth.”

  She saw him wince when he moved his arms out of his shirt. “Sit,” she ordered, and he did.

  She’d bandaged men before and knew something about wounds. The cut wasn’t deep, and she didn’t have to sew it, but it looked grimy. “What did you do, roll in a pigsty after you were cut?”

  “More or less. Somebody hit me in the knees and I went down, then about thirty or forty others decided to walk across me.”

  “I saw you go down, but there was nothing I could do.”

  “And I heard you call out to me. I’m sorry I couldn’t get to you,” he said softly.

  She looked back at him, but his eyes were on the part of her anatomy that was bulging over the top of her corset. Now he looks at me, she thought angrily, and poured whiskey onto the cut.

  He sat up straight, drawing in his breath. “A little gentler, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’m being as gentle as you deserve.”

  “Then I deserve the best. If it weren’t for me, you’d probably be in some miner’s tent right now, at the mercy of half a dozen men.”

  She stepped away from him. “At least they’d know that I was a woman. At least they wouldn’t look at me on the sly.”

  He put his hand up to the side of her face, burying his hand in her hair, his thumb at the corner of her mouth. “Don’t you understand anything? Anything at all? You’re the most desirable woman I’ve ever met in my life. Between your body and that voice of yours, I—Never mind what I feel, but I don’t want you if you want just any man. I want you only when you want me. Me, ’Ring, not Captain Montgomery, not a man you don’t trust, not a man you consider an enemy. You’re much too important for anything less than that.”

  There was too much of him unclothed, too much of her uncovered, and they were too close together. She backed away from him. “You want information from me.”

  “I want a lot more than that from you.”

  “To sing for you?” she whispered.

  He sighed and turned away. “Do you think this cut needs sewing?”

  “No.” She was confused by his words, didn’t at all understand what he was saying. In fact, the more she was around him, the less she understood about him. She didn’t want to talk anymore about whatever it was that they were talking about.

  “Who was the man who sang with me?” she said as she began bandaging the cut on his back, winding clean strips of linen around his shoulder, under his arm, and across his back. She tried to ignore the way her nearly bare breasts rubbed against his bare back and chest as she reached around him.

  “I didn’t have much time, and, if the truth be known, I could hardly take my eyes off the spectacle you were making of yourself, but, from what I gather, he is the town drunk of a town of drunks. Comes from a place called Desperate.”

  “Not a bad voice. I can’t imagine where he got the music to Carmen. I wouldn’t have thought it had come west yet. There, that should hold you.”

  He caught her hand. “Thank you.” He looked at her hand, then turned it over and kissed the palm, holding it for a moment against his lips. She put her hand on his thick, dark hair. When he looked up at her, she felt a little weak-kneed. “You were great tonight. I imagine you changed a few minds about opera.”

  Now she was far enough away from her performance to remember it with embarrassment—including her performance in the tent with him. “I’m afraid I went a little too far in the other direction. I’m afraid they’re going to have a new opinion of opera that is as bad as their old one.”

  “They are certainly going to think of opera singers in a new way.” He looked pointedly at her bosom which was about three inches from his face.

  Maddie nearly jumped away from him and pulled her dress together. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Carmen did,” he said, then stretched, his hands touching the canvas of the tent. “But I’m glad you’re back. Carmen’s not the kind of woman I’d choose. Tell me, what happens to her in the opera?”

  “Don José kills her.”

  “That would have been my guess. You ready to go to bed? You may be willing to stay up all night, but I need my sleep.”

  She was staring at him. What did he mean by, “the kind of woman I’d choose”?

  “You plan to wear that to bed?”

  That shook her out of her trance. “You expect me to undress in front of you?”

  “From what you were wearing tonight, I expect you to put on more clothes to go to sleep. Want me to help you with your ties?”

  “You lay one hand on me or my undergarments and I’ll give you a wound that’ll make the one on your back look like nothing.”

  “It might be worth it. I’ll have to consider the matter.”

  “Get out of here and call my maid.”

  “I’m good with corset ties.”

  “Go!”

  “All right, but when you’re ready for bed, I come back in here. Understand?” He didn’t give her time to answer before he left the tent.

  Maddie sat down on the cot. She didn’t understand the man at all. One minute she was practically throwing herself at him and he was ignoring her, then the next he was offering to take her clothes off for her.

  It was several moments before she realized that Edith was standing over her and whispering.

  “I got it.”

  “Got what?” Maddie asked.

  “The fruit you asked for. I had to pay a lot for it though.”

  Maddie still wasn’t thinking clearly and just looked at Edith.

  “He make you forget your little sister again? If a man could make a woman forget, he could, but I can’t tell that he’s interested in women.”

  “Because he’s not interested in you?”

  “Jealous, are you? I haven’t seen you wakin’ up happy after a night with him. Or is tonight the first? You