Paint the Wind

  Touch me now and I'm lost, she thought, half wishing he would do so, just to end the agony of indecision. What would become of her if she let herself love him? Years of hardship and babies and burdens. Dreams were fine, but what if she trusted hers to someone who didn't come through?

  And what of her own gifts? Were they to lie fallow forever? Never to sing again for an audience... never to act, or to feel the thrill of applause she'd earned with her own initiative and talent. Always to be only an appendage to a husband... to his success, his needs, his whims, his dreams.

  No. There was no way to say all that to Chance—he wouldn't understand a third of it, even if he wanted to. Hart might understand the conflicts of her soul, but never Chance. That thought startled Fancy, troubled her. So she brushed it aside and kept on walking.

  Chapter 32

  "Get that goddamned jackhammer out of there, bro," Chance shouted irritably. Neither McAllister was irritable by nature, but tensions in the camp were increasing. Hart squinted up at his brother from the bottom of the trench. "You got a burr under your saddle this morning?" he asked, taking his own good time to move the hammer to a different position.

  Chance straightened up and rested his weight on the pickax in his hands. "And what the hell is that supposed to mean?" Chance had a volatile temper, but he seldom vented it on Hart.

  "It means you're being a distinct pain in the ass this morning, and I'll thank you to shape up."

  "Me? A pain in the ass? The real truth is you haven't been worth a tinker's dam all week. If you'd been pulling your weight..."

  Bandana's voice cut in sharp as a new knife; he'd returned to the cabin the day before and been disturbed by the unaccustomed tension he found there.

  "The real truth is you two great horses' asses ain't worth a tinker's dam between you in this cantankerous mood a' yours, which has more to do with spring and Fancy than with jackhammers."

  Both men started to protest, but McBain cut them short.

  "It's real hard to put a foot in a shut mouth," he snapped. "So jes' listen up a minute, both of you. Ever since I got back, you two been like a pair of stump-tailed horses tied short in fly time. I ain't sayin' it's easy havin' a gorgeous little filly like Fancy on the premises, but I'm sayin' it's a hell of a lot nicer than not havin' her around. So, if we're gonna get any work done around here, both you boys better get a grip on yerselves." He paused glowering at his partners. "Now, as my dear sainted daddy used to say, 'A wishbone ain't no substitute fer a backbone!' So I suggest you do your wishin' on your own time and your courtin' too. Put your peckers back in your pants and get to work!" With a snort Bandana turned his back on them and stomped off up the hill, his boots crunching gravel as he went.

  Chance left for their other camp long before sunup. Bandana had insisted he needed an extra pair of hands, as well as supplies —but Fancy suspected he simply wanted to separate the McAllisters for a few days.

  Hart and Fancy rose as usual, ate biscuits and bacon before walking to the mine. The boys had sunk a pit with real promise; already they'd pulled likely-looking shows of color from it, the kind Bandana said were the harbinger of good things to come.

  The day was nippier than usual, a pleasant change that made the sweaty work more bearable; Fancy worked alongside Hart through the morning, but by afternoon returned to her chores at the cabin.

  Hart found himself working hard and happily until a single mighty pick thrust near sundown splintered the north side of the hole. A torrent of dust and rock shattered over Hart and he stared disgustedly at the huge pile of rubble he'd dislodged. It would take another hour to clean up and he'd wanted to get home to Fancy. An unexpected rumble made the earth tremble around him. Before he had time to wonder what it meant, a wall of water shot out through the hole and knocked him violently against the opposite wall.

  Hart cried out as his head struck rock. Fancy, halfway from the cabin, heard the cry and ran toward the sound.

  Hart fought for breath against the rushing water that sucked him down. Jagged quartz ripped his shoulder, tearing flesh, but he was too busy staying alive to pay attention to the pain. He pushed his way upward, despite his injured arm and shoulder. His head broke the surface and he gasped air hungrily; Fancy was crouched at the edge of the pit, frantically calling to him.

  Fancy grabbed for his shirt collar and dragged him toward her at the pit's edge; he was far too heavy for her to hang on to for long.

  She saw Hart fight for consciousness, saw the blood pouring out of the head wound and feared he might go under again. Belly-down on the hard ground, she cursed the water, the stones biting her flesh as she grappled with the nearly unconscious body.

  "Hart!" she shouted. "You've got to help me, do you hear me? I don't know how long I can hold you up."

  "Too heavy," he gasped.

  "No, you're not, Hart! You just have to help me!"

  She could see him gather what strength he had left for the effort to hoist himself out of the pit. Fancy grasped an outcrop of slippery rock with one hand and prayed it would hold against both their weights, as she let him use her body as a rope for the upward climb. She thought she would be rent in half, but clung nonetheless, as Hart drew himself up inch by inch, grasping rock or dirt or root along the way.

  The two sprawled, breathless, on the earth above the hole in a stupor of exhaustion. Fancy was too weak to do anything about the blood flowing from his wounds; still she searched his body with her eyes and saw that none were life-threatening. When she was able to move again, she helped him stagger to his feet and managed to lead him home to safety.

  When Hart awakened, he felt Fancy's presence in the cabin so intensely, it seemed to him the dimensions of the place had grown smaller and shaped themselves around her. She'd saved his life; she'd cried when she thought him doomed... the memory of her hands and face and tears filled him with an unlikely hope.

  Fancy made him sit in the small rocker while she tended to his head and shoulder wounds. "God Almighty, Hart, you scared me silly." She was talking as she worked on his shoulder, he had no idea at all what about. His head, still unsteady from its bout with the rocks, was filled with her.

  Hart felt dizzy and disoriented. He'd seen it unmistakably in her eyes, in her desperation. He should never have abandoned his love for her. He could give her everything she needed for happiness; somewhere deep down inside her she must have always known that. He'd been a fool to let Chance take the initiative, a fool not to let her know how much he loved her. No matter what she believed she wanted out of life, he alone knew what she needed. He could make her feel so loved, she would forget the foolish, unrealistic dreams that had seduced her....

  Hart reached his one good arm around Fancy, so forcefully that he nearly knocked her off her feet. He stood up suddenly, carrying her upward in his arms... she fit so perfectly against his body. All the passion he'd poured out into paper portraits burst like the first flash of lightning from a gathering storm. Hart wanted her, wanted everything they could be together, more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life. He lifted her easily, ignoring the pain in his head and shoulder, and crushed her mouth to his own.

  Fancy, shocked by the unexpected assault, was equally shocked by her own response. Her mutinous mouth wanted Hart's... she wanted his arms around her, his huge, hard body... No. That was crazy! She didn't love Hart. Or did she, at least a little? If she didn't, what was it she was feeling, had been feeling ever since she'd nearly lost him?

  "I love you, Fancy." Hart breathed the words as he kissed her. She knew he was carrying her toward the bed. How could she stop this without hurting him? Loving, kindly, generous Hart, don't you know that I would never want to cause you pain?

  "Hart, no, please!" Fancy's voice pierced the man's passion like stinging nettle. "I love you, but not this way. Please don't make me hurt you!"

  There wasn't nearly enough conviction in the sound to have stopped him, Hart thought later. Had he laid her down on the bed, torn away her clothes, and taken her
body in his hands as he longed to do... had he kissed her just one more time, he could have overcome every one of her doubts.

  But not his own.

  He saw the stricken look in Fancy's eyes and let her slide from his arms to the floor. His hands fell away from her impossible softness, and reality crashed in on him, like the pounding in his head. Stunned at how close he'd come to taking advantage of her innocence, and betraying his brother's trust, he stood for a long moment trying to figure out how the fractured boundaries between them could ever be put right again.

  Hart's head throbbed so, he couldn't think.

  Fancy, horrified by the pain she read in his dear face, reached out to touch him. "Hart, I'm so desperately sorry... I love you both, in my own way. Truly I do."

  He forced himself to move, grabbed his shirt and jacket from the chair where Fancy had placed them, and lunged from the house.

  "Hart!" Fancy called after him, frightened by the look on his face. "Hart. Please come back!"

  The injured man mounted his horse with difficulty and turned the dun toward the trail. This is the moment you get hold of yourself, Hart McAllister, or you get the hell away from both of them, he told himself as he kicked the horse into motion. Whatever relationship there could ever be between him and Fancy, it couldn't be behind his brother's back and it couldn't bring her to harm.

  Hart gritted his teeth against the jarring of his injuries and felt the blood begin to flow afresh as the horse made tracks across the rocky terrain. He would get control of himself or he'd never go back to that goddamned star-crossed cabin. He gouged his heels into the dun's flanks and the startled horse lengthened his stride wildly, kicking up a cloud of dust and gravel in his thundering path.

  Fancy spent the day in a state of agitation. Hart was in no condition to ride around alone; both the shoulder and the head injury could turn mean if they weren't cared for.

  She'd handled his advances so stupidly—but what else could she have done? She knew he loved her. Why, in her own desire for Chance, had she so neglected him? And what could she have done for him that wouldn't have made things ten times worse?

  She brooded through the day, took up one task after another, then abandoned them. She even saddled up a horse toward noon, with the intention of riding after Bandana to ask his help, but Chance was with him. It was her own fault for having stayed too long where she didn't belong. She must leave this place before she destroyed the men's love for each other, and whatever they felt for her, in the bargain.

  Chance had never asked her to marry him—even if he had, she couldn't say yes. There was nothing left to happen among them all that wouldn't bring somebody to injury. Fancy cried until she thought she had no tears left, and she wasn't in the least sure which of the three of them she cried for most.

  A hundred times she thought she heard the sound of distant hoofbeats; running to the doorway, she would scan the horizon to see if Hart had come back. Each time she was uncertain if she felt relief or sorrow that there was no sign of an approaching rider.

  Hart didn't return that night. Instead, it was Chance who walked into the cabin and found Fancy sitting by the fire, wrapped Indian-like in an old blanket.

  "Hart's gone," she said.

  "Gone? What do you mean gone?"

  "We had a quarrel," she said hopelessly, not knowing what else to say. "I'm so sorry, Chance, I don't know what to do to fix it. I've just messed everything up so badly for all of us..."

  Chance crossed the room in a single stride. He knelt beside Fancy and scooped her into his arms. She looked so sweet and vulnerable, so in need of being loved. And they were alone at last.

  Fancy laid her head on Chance's chest and cried. He understood her need to be comforted, she could see it in his eyes, feel it in the strength of his caress. He was kissing her as she talked and sobbed, he was whispering words she couldn't quite understand. All the longing rebelled against, reveled in, welled up in a torrent. Chance's strength was touching, awakening—and she was too tired to struggle any longer. Chance kissed her with all the exquisite passion of a man who has what he wants at last within his grasp.

  His hand slipped inside her shirt and she felt the careful intimacy of strong hands on tender places, and the touch was gentle. There was no roughness to the urgency in Chance... no clamorous, breathless, palpitating madness as there'd been in Hart. There was something else entirely... a wildness held in check, a power so defined, so confident, it had no need for recklessness.

  What did it matter, in this one glorious moment, that Chance was unpredictable? He would be lucky instead—lucky enough for both of them.

  "It's all right, Fancy," he whispered, his lips caressing her ear as he spoke. "I'll make everything all right. Don't worry..."

  "We shouldn't, Chance..." she murmured.

  "But you want to..." he answered, and with practiced gestures, far stronger than before, he spread her body open like a flower. He was not like his brother. Chance would take what he wanted without thought of consequence. The knowledge both repelled and excited her.

  Was it arrogance or knowingness, or simple lust she saw in the violet eyes poised above hers on the bed? There was nothing left in the universe except Chance's mouth and Chance's hands and Chance's probing body. She felt hard chest and belly against her own, the thrusting strength of manhood and nothing else mattered in all the world. For the first time in her life she belonged to someone... someone wilder, freer, infinitely more knowledgeable. She was sucked up into darkness and blinding light. There was no thought or sound or world or understanding. This was being a woman. There was pain, but it didn't matter. Chance was everything she wanted and there was no past or future, only now. She was stifled against his hard body and couldn't breathe. She screamed and he muffled the scream with his kisses. Fancy twisted and turned beneath his thrusting body but he pinioned her with the all-knowing strength of manhood and she was lost in velvet darkness, wetness, fierceness, light. A swirling, endless light that enveloped them in ecstasy before the brilliance faded.

  Neither of the lovers on the bed heard the hoofbeats near the cabin at a walk, or saw Hart's stricken face turn from the window, streaked with tears.

  Fancy wondered ever after about the exigencies of fate that had caused things to happen exactly as they did. Had Hart's accident and its aftermath never occurred, would she have been so vulnerable to Chance that night, or would she perhaps, instead, have found the courage to leave both brothers behind her forever?

  The weeks after her seduction passed as a blur. Hart returned, but nothing was ever the same among them. "Once you eat the apple, you cain't live in Paradise no more," Bandana had said, and he was right.

  The easy camaraderie they'd all shared had vanished, replaced -by embarrassment, awkwardness, bitterness, and regret. Uncomfortable silences replaced their stories of the future... Hart and Chance brooded separately, but Fancy could see that the rift between them was eating into each man's soul. Chance never spoke of marriage, and if he had, she would have said no.

  Even before she realized that her monthly showing would not come, Fancy knew she would have to leave the mountain.

  She hadn't thought of pregnancy until the morning after. Sometimes, she felt glad of the defiant bliss that had been consuming enough to blot out even fear, for one glorious moment of communion. Sometimes she thought she had been a fool.

  Bandana tried to speak of what troubled her, but she couldn't find the courage to tell him, so eventually he abandoned trying and left the camp entirely to go back to the claim on the other side of the Gulch.

  Fancy had used the age-old dandelion test of pregnancy, when first she'd suspected her condition. With trembling hands she'd dropped the fresh-picked dandelion stem and leaves into a puddle of her urine; she'd watched the telltale red color suffuse the leaves and had felt so faint, she had to sit on the ground until the weakness passed.

  She had knowledge of how to end a pregnancy; all herbalists knew that goldenseal or quinine could cause abortio
n in the early stages. But she also knew how deadly such ministrations could be; if they were performed incorrectly, she could die an agonizing death.

  She had thought of telling Chance about the baby, but his behavior since their lovemaking had been in no way reassuring—and besides, once she told him, her fate was sealed; no longer would decision making be in her own hands.

  She had awakened this morning to acid nausea that ate into her body, just as remorse now etched her mind. The thought of Magda came to her as she retched behind a bush on the outer edge of camp. Magda would know what to do.

  Fancy made her preparations for leaving the cabin with a troubled heart. She tried to imagine how to say good-bye, but no words seemed right, so she decided to consign her good-byes to paper. It would be best if the men had no inkling of the trouble she was in, best if they could remember her as she'd been in the flower of their friendship. She hadn't lied to Hart at the end of it, she thought; in her own way, she did love them both. Fancy wrote as resolutely as her heart would allow:

  "Dear Both of You,

  Time to go, I'm sad to say. I guess I don't have to tell you how grateful I am to you—not just for saving my life, but for giving me back my dreams.

  Now that I remember them, I've got to go after them. I guess all those years on the road left me restless so—it wouldn't be fair for me to wait around for you two to give me what I long for.

  I've got to make my own fortune and judging from the way lightning tends to strike my life, I'd best get at it as quickly as possible.

  I love you both. There, I've said it right out loud. It's clear to me now that I'd come between you if I stayed. I'd hate myself for that and you'd hate me for doing it and then all the good we've done each other would be forgotten. I love the memories we've shared more than you know—I intend to keep them tucked away inside me, always.