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“How do you think I felt last night, knowin’ you were going to lie with him?”
I tilted my head back, looking into his face.
“Lucas—what are we going to do?”
His arms tightened, almost cutting my breath off.
“If you’re sure, woman, you know I ain’t got nothing to offer you. You know what I am, an’ how it’s going to be. Running and hiding, maybe for all our lives. But, God, I want you, Ro. I’ve tried to fight it, I’ve tried to tell myself you’re better off this way.”
“And I—do you think a woman is not capable of wanting as hard and as strongly as a man? I’ve always known I’ve wanted you. If I have nothing else, it’s you I need. I want to be where you are, lie in your arms at night, bear your children—do you think anything else matters to me?”
He laughed softly, but this time it was not the bitter, cynical laughter of a man who had learned to trust in nothing and no one.
“I think you’re crazy. Just like I am for even askin’ you to leave everything and run off with me. Maybe you’ll change your mind, once you’ve found out how it feels. But if you come, I don’t think I’m goin’ to let you go again.” His face suddenly hard, he looked down at me. “Ro—you’re sure? Sure you trust me enough?”
“I love you. Isn’t that enough?”
“Then sit up here an’ stop distracting me. There’s a few things you have to know first.”
The railing was sun-warm beneath me, and wide. But Lucas kept his arm around my waist while he spoke, his voice carefully emotionless.
“You might change your mind,” Lucas said again. “After you talk with Bragg.” He must have felt my stiffening, for I thought I felt the muscles in his arm become taut. “He’s going to be at Fort Selden. He wanted me to bring you there, so he could explain things. That’s what he said, anyhow. You know how he is, Ro, as well as I. Won’t tell any more than he has to. Wasted part of the time I did hunting him up. You put questions in my mind, darn you! And Ro—you better know this—before I talked to him I had it all set in my mind I was goin’ to leave you be; that you’d done what you always wanted to do, marry one of your own kind. But then he started hinting about Mark Shannon. ‘There are some men who are clever enough to plant seeds… and wait for them to take root,’ he said. ‘The patient ones are the most dangerous.’ But right up until the time I saw your eyes an’ the sleep-walkin’ look on your face, I wasn’t sure. Ain’t rightly sure now.”
“And I—I’ve been sure for a long time. I’ve had time to learn… a lot of things.”
Even now, I could not bring myself to talk about Mark. I had married him, and the reasons I had used to convince myself seemed weak and senseless now. But Lucas had looked for Elmer Bragg—had found him. But why, of all places, Fort Selden?
It was a question I was to ask myself many times during the long journey to San Antonio. Lucas knew no more than I of Mr. Bragg’s motives. He was only able to tell me that Elmer Bragg had recovered from his coma after he had been left for dead, and that the use of his legs had been impaired, so that he was obliged to use a wheelchair, or two canes. But his infirmity had impaired neither his curiosity nor his determination to search out facts. And now he wanted to see me, but I must come to him—and at Fort Selden.
I had tried to protest that it was too dangerous; that there would be time later to get in touch with Elmer Bragg. I was relieved that he was alive, after all; but at the same time I wanted only to go as far away from New Mexico Territory as I could—with Lucas. For him to attempt to take me to Fort Selden was far too dangerous.
I suppose that I had forgotten how stubborn Lucas could be. There was not enough time in which to argue with him that hot morning—and we were too busy rediscovering ourselves. Later I would have to face Monique with as much insouciance as she would have faced me after meeting a lover. Later, I would have to face Mark too, and this was easier than I imagined, with Monique as my incongruous ally.
“Tell him you are tired—that you stayed in bed all day with a headache. A woman who is enceinte has all kinds of excuses to use—if she needs them. Pauvre Rowena…” she smiled at me teasingly. “Did you imagine I would not understand? Every woman with a husband needs a lover as well. A pity Mark is not as tolerant as my John. But you—I think you are a femme du monde, just as I am.”
Monique was far more practical than I could ever be. I began to know her better as we sat side by side in the canvas-topped buggy that we were to travel in until we reached San Antonio. As amoral as a cat, she enjoyed thinking that I was the same way too. Mark, it seemed, had confided in her one night, when they had both had too much to drink.
“Your story intrigued me, p’tite. And especially after I had met you. I suppose it is because you are English that you appear to be so cold—on the surface. No wonder you are so good at playing poker!” She laughed, and looked at me sideways. “One gets tired of being made love to before a mirror. All preliminaries, and not enough after. You see, I spent a weekend with your husband in San Francisco once, and I can understand that you might become bored, even if you are on your honeymoon still. Now Lucas—ah, he is still close to being a savage, n’est-ce pas? And a woman needs variety, just as men do.”
I had learned, before we reached our destination that night, that Monique had worked “upstairs,” as she put it, at the Silver Slipper in New Orleans, before she met her husband. That she was in the habit of going after any man she desired, just as a man might do with a woman. I think she enjoyed the chance to speak frankly to another woman, and I had schooled myself well enough not to let my jealousy show when she made it obvious that she still wanted Lucas.
“It is going to be a long, long journey, after all,” she said slyly. “But you and I, if we help each other, can keep from becoming too bored!”
Forty-Five
So Monique made her plans, and I made mine. She was not the kind of woman that I could pity, for she meant to use me, just as I intended to use her sudden alliance. I think it amused her to help arrange matters so that I could spend some stolen moments with a lover, besides putting us both on the same footing. Each time I met her knowing eyes they seemed to say, “So we are not so very different after all, you and I—the English Lady and the girl from the Silver Slipper.”
The heat shimmered like a golden haze over dusty plains, growing even more intolerable as the sun climbed higher. Mark, his fair, flushed face wearing a slightly sulky expression, rode beside us for part of the way, and it was not hard, in his presence, for me to feign illness.
“I thought you said yesterday that you were ready to travel—that you had quite got over your feelings of sickness in the morning.”
“It’s this heat, Mark! Of course Rowena is strong enough to travel. Let her have a good night’s sleep tonight—she shall sleep with me in the wagon, honeymoon or not—and she’ll be fine by morning.”
Yes, I could not help but feel grateful towards Monique for the clever way in which she had maneuvered matters; and even when, a short time later, she began to flirt quite outrageously with Lucas, who had just ridden up, I gave a creditable impression of being completely unconcerned.
I had become so accustomed to the feeling of blank despair that I had carried with me for so long, like a stone over my heart, that I could not help being afraid that things were going too smoothly now.
We made camp a few miles east of San Antonio, just before sundown. A barren spot, I thought, in spite of a small clump of trees some distance away that concealed a small stream—one of the many tiny tributaries of the Rio Grande. And here, with Mark offering to stand guard for us, Monique and I washed some of the trail dust off our bodies.
