“How many of these thorns are sticking in you from the waist down?”
“Not enough to make me strip off in front of a lady.”
“How ridiculous. Especially after the way you sneaked into my tent wearing practically nothing the night you were trying to scare me.”
“Little did I know that an attack of Blackfeet couldn’t frighten you.”
“There you’re wrong. Bug’s Boys scare me to death. Take off those trousers and let me see. I promise not to be shocked at the sight of your bare backside.”
He stood up and grinned down at her. “I hate to disappoint you, but I have on underwear. And it’s a good thing, too, since otherwise I might have frozen to death in the last few days while chasing you around these mountains.” He unbuttoned the fly of his trousers and, after removing his boots, dropped them and stepped out of them. He wore long, red summer underwear under his trousers, and when he turned his back to her, there were several long thorns sticking out of his legs.
On her knees, she began pulling the thorns from his legs. He stood quietly and she became aware of her hands on his body. He’d said that she’d never allowed people close to her. Always, there had been the knowledge that if she’d allowed herself to love anything but her singing, she would have to give up too much. Over the ten years that she’d been singing professionally, she’d seen so many good singers give up a career to marry a man and have babies. Maddie had never wanted to have to make such a choice, so, by necessity, she’d kept to herself. And John Fairlie had helped a great deal by keeping her so busy with lessons and rehearsals and performances that she’d had little time for a social life. What little social life she did have had been booked by John. He had always arranged for her to socialize with rich, influential people who could further her career.
But now, in these mountains where she’d grown up, in this wild and beautiful country, the drawing rooms of the East and Europe seemed far away. She’d bragged to Captain Montgomery that she’d had hundreds of affairs, yet the truth was that she’d had none. Her fingers tightened on the muscle of his leg.
“There,” she said at last, and then, to make sure that he had no more thorns in him, she ran her hands up and down his legs. She had never touched a man like this before and, if the truth were known, she’d never had an urge to, at least not since she was sixteen years old and had fallen for the cowboy. At that time Madame Branchini had made it so clear to her that it was either singing or men, Maddie had made her choice and had never once regretted it.
Now, as she touched him, it was as though she were in a trance and couldn’t stop herself. He stood perfectly still as she ran her hands over him, down the back of his heavy, muscular legs, down his calves, then to his heels. She wished he weren’t wearing the underwear so she could feel his skin. Vividly, the memory of the night he’d appeared in her tent wearing only the loincloth came to her. She hadn’t paid much attention to him that night, but now she remembered the color of his skin.
Still silent, she stood, letting her hand trail up his body, over his buttocks to his naked waist. With both hands she touched the smooth, warm skin of his back, traced the faint white scars, the red places the thorns had made.
It was as though she’d never seen a man’s body before, although she’d grown up around men who in the summer rarely wore much besides a breech cloth. But at that time music had meant more to her than any well-put-together male.
Her hands went to his shoulders, to the round strength of them. She moved to the right and ran her hands down his arm to his hand, then back up again. She didn’t look at his face; for all she cared, he could have been a warm, living statue. When she reached his shoulder again, she moved her hands over his chest. He was hard and muscular, a body used to exercise, to a life spent outdoors. Her fingers entwined in the hair on his chest, then moved down to the hard flatness of his stomach.
When her hands lingered at his waist, he caught her wrists. “No,” he whispered, and she looked into his eyes.
His eyes broke her trance, and she pulled away from him, terribly embarrassed. She turned away. “I…I was looking for more thorns.”
“There are no more thorns,” he said quietly.
“I…I have to go now,” she said, and ran down the hill as fast as she could. She couldn’t bear to look at him again.
Chapter 8
When Maddie awoke the next morning, she knew that something was wrong. At first she wasn’t sure what it was, but then she vividly remembered her embarrassment over Captain Montgomery.
Edith brought her washing water. “You two were sure up there a long time last evenin’. And you sure came down that hill in one big hurry. He try somethin’ you didn’t like?”
Maddie recalled all too well that nothing had come from Captain Montgomery in the way of an improper advance, but she’d certainly made a fool of herself. She could still hear him saying “No” to her when her hands had strayed too far.
She turned to Edith. “Absolutely nothing happened. Captain Montgomery was a perfect gentleman at all times.”
“So that’s what you’re so mad about.”
“I am not angry in the least,” she snapped. “Don’t you have a breakfast to cook?”
“You want me to feed him?”
“If you’re referring to Captain Montgomery, you’ll have to ask him if he wants to eat with us. Whether he eats or not is none of my business.”
Edith left the tent, chuckling.
As Maddie washed herself and dressed in her sturdy traveling clothes, she told herself that she wasn’t angry, that Edith was a stupid woman with no morals and even less sense. But the more she thought, the more the muscles in her body began to tense up. How dare he treat her like some woman of the evening? All she was doing was removing thorns from him, yet he’d thought she was trying to make advances toward him. Of all the presumptions of any man, this was the worst. She wasn’t interested in him. If she was going to be interested in a man, it would be in a man who was…was more romantic. A man who gave her a compliment now and then—at least a compliment better than “You’re not painful to look at.”
By the time she was dressed and left the tent, she was no longer embarrassed, but good old-fashioned angry at Captain Montgomery for taking advantage of her and misunderstanding her intentions. Outside, Edith had fried eggs and ham, and had thrown slices of stale bread in the grease and fried them too. Frank, Sam, Toby, and Captain Montgomery were all sitting on the ground and eating heartily.
The first one to meet her eyes was Captain Montgomery. To Maddie’s mind he gave her a look of smug knowing. So, she thought, he thinks I’m one of his women, does he? He thinks that I’m one of those weak-headed, simpering females who follows handsome men around and begs them for attention.
She put her nose in the air and looked away from him, but she smiled at the other three men. “Good morning,” she said cheerfully. “I hope everyone slept well. I know I did. Not a care in the world.”
She sat down at the table and looked at the plate of greasy food Edith had put in front of her and lost her appetite completely. She pushed the food around for a while, then looked at Frank. “Did you look at that music I gave you?”
“Yeah,” he said without much interest.
“Did you like it?”
“It’s all right.”
She looked back at her food. So much for conversation with Frank. She turned to Sam. “How are the horses faring on the trip?”
All Sam did was nod at her, so she looked right past Captain Montgomery as though he weren’t even there and smiled at Toby. “How’s your breakfast?”
“Beats army food.”
She took a small bite of egg. “Toby, tell me something about yourself.”
“Ain’t much to tell. I got born and I ain’t died yet. Ain’t been much in between.”
With great concentration she avoided Captain Montgomery’s eyes on her and looked back at her plate. She was not going to try to make conversation with him. From now on she
was going to let him know that she had no interest in him whatsoever. None. Not any.
After breakfast, as Edith was clearing up the dishes, packing Maddie’s china in its special case, and the men were taking down the tent, Edith said, “I thought you were gonna be real nice to him so that he’d let you go the next time you have to meet that man about your little sister.”
“I do not have to ask anyone’s permission to go wherever I want to go. Neither Captain Montgomery nor the entire army has any right to tell me what I can and cannot do.”
“But he thinks he has the right. It’s been my experience that men take what they want and do what they want. If a woman stands in their way, they consider that about as much hindrance as a mosquito flyin’ around ’em”
“Captain Montgomery isn’t like that. He’s an educated man. He’s a sensible man. I shall explain to him that I have to go somewhere and I need to go alone.”
Edith’s reply was a great howl of laughter as she turned away. “If he won’t listen to reason, then there’s always more opium,” she said under her breath.
As the crow flies, it wasn’t more than fifteen miles to the next town where Maddie was to sing, but it was difficult going. Riding inside the coach was dreadful, as she was flung from one side to the other, her head hitting the frame, her back bouncing on the hard, horsehide seats, her knees banging into the side panels. Once Captain Montgomery asked her if she’d like to ride his horse with him, but she’d haughtily refused. Edith had spent an hour in the coach and decided that walking was the easier way to travel, so she’d left Maddie alone. Maddie wouldn’t walk because she was sure that Captain Montgomery would ride beside her and laugh at her, and she was mortified at the thought that he might remark on her behavior of the day before. She repeatedly practiced what she was going to say to him when he did mention the event. Every phrase she rehearsed was guaranteed to give him the setting down that he so richly deserved. Several times she wished she’d left the thorns in him. But twice she remembered the feel of his legs under her hands.
Not long after noon they had to stop the coach to ford a branch of the Colorado River. Frank came to tell her that she’d better get out in case there was some trouble and the coach turned over. With Frank’s help, she gracefully stepped down from the high step and climbed the rutted trail that served as a road.
At the top of the ridge she turned and looked back to watch the men trying to get the coach across the rocks and through the water. When the coach got stuck in the rocks, she watched as Captain Montgomery dismounted, took off his shirt, tossed it inside the coach, and went to help Sam turn the big wheel.
“He’s one mighty fine-lookin’ male, ain’t he?” Edith said from behind her.
Maddie stared at the man’s broad, tan back.
“Fair makes a body’s teeth hurt, don’t he?”
“Can’t you find something else to do?” Maddie snapped, making Edith glare at her and walk away.
Maddie thought she should use the time out of the coach to get some exercise, but she stood right where she was and watched Captain Montgomery’s every movement. She watched the play of muscles under his skin as he strained against the wheel, saw his leg muscles bulge as he pushed. Once, he paused and looked directly at her, as though he knew she was watching him. She looked away quickly, but not before he’d seen her.
When the coach was across the water, Captain Montgomery turned and motioned for her to come down the hill. She looked the other way, as though she hadn’t seen him, and started walking off into the woods.
Within minutes he was beside her, on his horse, his shirt still off. “I’ve come to give you a ride across the river.”
She had been so absorbed in watching him that she hadn’t thought about how she was going to get across the water. “No, thank you. I’ll walk.”
“You can’t across that river. It’s too deep and too slippery, as well as being too cold.”
“The cold doesn’t seem to bother you,” she said, giving him a sideways glance.
He followed along beside her. “What is wrong with you this morning? Yesterday you couldn’t stay away from me and today you won’t get near me.”
She turned and gave him a look of such anger that Buttercup took a sidestep away from her.
He tried to make a joke of it. “You’re scaring my horse.” When she didn’t react, he sighed. “Whatever I’ve done this time, Maddie, I apologize for it. I never meant—”
“I prefer Miss Worth. I have never given you permission to call me Maddie.”
“Oh, hell,” he muttered, then leaned over and grabbed her just under the arms and lifted her off the ground. “Everyone’s waiting for you.”
“Put me down! You’re hurting me. I’ll walk back to the coach.”
“You cannot walk across that river, and there isn’t time for you to try it so that you can prove to me that you can do it. Besides that, I don’t trust you not to go wandering off into the woods. Either I carry you like this across the river in front of the others or you ride with me.”
“Captain Montgomery, I don’t like you at all. Not one little bit,” she said as she allowed him to help her onto his horse in front of him. She could feel his warm, bare skin through her cotton blouse.
“That’s odd,” he said into her ear. “Yesterday I got the impression that you liked me a lot. A whole lot.”
Maddie’s entire body turned red in embarrassment, and she did her best to sit up straight so that she didn’t touch him, but that was impossible to do on the ride across the river. She could swear that he led his horse into every hole so that she was thrown back against him.
Once, when Buttercup’s front hoof slipped, ’Ring’s arm tightened around her rib cage. “I don’t care how mad you are at me,” he snapped. “Lean back against me and don’t risk falling.”
She had sense enough to obey him. She leaned back and found that she fit against him as though her body had been made for his.
On the other side of the river, as she dismounted, she didn’t look at him. “Thank you,” she murmured, and went quickly to the coach. His shirt was on the seat, and she sat as far away from it as possible.
The coach had just started rolling when the door was thrown open and Captain Montgomery entered.
“This coach is the heaviest thing I’ve ever tried to push. What’s in those trunks of yours? Lead?”
“I don’t want any company,” she said, and looked out the window.
“Well, I do. Both Frank and Sam leave something to be desired as conversationalists, and Toby mostly complains, and that maid of yours is…”
She looked at him and wished she hadn’t, because he still wore no shirt. “What’s wrong with Edith?”
“She keeps offering herself to me, that’s all. Said that for me it would be free.”
She turned angry eyes to him. “And we know you’re much too good to take her up on the offer, don’t we?”
He rubbed his arms against the cold, then looked for his shirt, which he was sitting on. He withdrew it and began to put it on. “I don’t know how I’ve come to be classified as a prude but, for the record, I’m not.”
She didn’t look at him, but she snorted.
“Should I throw myself on a woman to prove that I’m not?”
“I don’t know what gives you the idea that I care what you do. Except that I wish you’d ride somewhere else. I didn’t invite you into this coach with me, nor did I invite you on this trip. I really wish you’d go away.”
He didn’t say anything for a while. In fact, he was so silent that Maddie turned to look at him. He was watching her intently. “Do I have dirt on my face, Captain?”
“No,” he said slowly. “Not dirt.” He didn’t say a word more, but opened the door, grabbed the outside overhead rail, and pulled himself out of the coach, going up to ride on the top with Sam and Frank.
Maddie lectured herself for the next hour for being such a fool. She was making an ass of herself and everyone was taking note of it. Sh
e vowed that she’d keep her feelings to herself from then on. Captain Montgomery meant absolutely nothing to her. She wasn’t interested in him in any way, shape, or form, and the sooner he understood that, the better. From now on she was going to be polite to him and nothing else. He was no different, of no more interest to her than Frank was.
“You can’t go out there,” ’Ring said softly. “I mean it, you can’t go out there. Those men are drunk. They’ve taken days to get drunk and they’re getting mean.”
They were in her tent that they’d set up outside the only building in the little town of Pitcherville. When they’d arrived in the dirty little camp a few hours before, every man and all the women who serviced them had come out to meet the singing duchess. Word of LaReina’s impending visit had reached them the previous day, and everyone had taken time off from the monotony of trying to find gold to get drunk in anticipation of hearing the opera singer. Six men had even made the trek back to Denver City to get the piano for her. They’d hauled it up the steep mountain trail, dropping it three times, and now Frank was trying to put it back together.
“Of course I can sing for them,” Maddie said, turning away from him, trying to sound confident. But she could hear the shouts and the occasional gunfire from the men.
He caught her arm and turned her to face him. “What’s wrong with you? What’s made you so angry at me?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I am the same as I’ve always been to you. Nothing’s changed.”
“Yes, it has. For a while there I thought maybe we could be friends. I know I certainly enjoyed our conversations.”
“Conversations? Is that what you call them? Where you tell me what I can and cannot do? Where you ask me questions about every aspect of my life?”
He took a step back from her. “I beg your pardon. I guess I was under the wrong impression.” He took a breath. “But forget our differences. Those men out there are getting mean and I’m afraid for you.”