Nora

Aunt Helen laughed when Melly reminded her that it was the church picnic.

“Oh, how could I have forgotten!” Helen said with a rueful glance at Nora. “My mind is not on the present. I do beg your pardon, Nora, I misled you. I know that you shall enjoy this gathering. There are several eligible and well-to-do young men among the congregation.”

“Including Mr. Langhorn,” Melly added with a strange expression on her face. “He and his son, Bruce, will probably accompany us, since it is Saturday, but perhaps he will be less…antagonistic than usual. And with luck, Bruce will behave better than he normally does.”

Nora wondered a lot about her cousin’s peculiar way of referring to Mr. Langhorn. She hoped that Melly would confide in her one day.

After Helen left to talk to the cook, the two women went outside to sit on the porch. Nora tidied the bow under her jaunty sailor collar. “Will any of the men from the ranch be going?” she asked hesitantly.

Melly grinned. “Not Mr. Barton, if that’s what you meant. He goes to Beaumont this afternoon.”

“Oh. Oh, I see.” She colored a little and lifted disappointed eyes. “Does he have family there?”

“No one knows. He never speaks of the visits except in a desultory way. He is very mysterious, our Mr. Barton.”

“Yes, so I see.”

Melly noticed Nora’s distraction and touched her arm gently. “Mama is so old-fashioned. Do not let her interfere too much. Mr. Barton is a fine man, Nora. Social status is not everything.”

“Alas, Melly,” her cousin said heavily, “for me it is. My mother is exactly like yours. None of my family would countenance Mr. Barton as a suitor for me.” She gnawed her lower lip. “Oh, why must I be so conventional? I feel like a sheep, following the herd. But it is so hard to break away from the past, to stand up to social absolutes.”

“If you love someone, that becomes imperative sometimes,” Melly said sadly.

Nora looked at her. “Does it? I cannot imagine a love strong enough to send me into battle with my peers.”

Melly didn’t reply. There was a very faraway look in her eyes.

NORA BROODED on her predicament for the rest of the day, and finally decided that she could say goodbye to Cal if she wanted to. There was nothing so unspeakable about that. She went looking for him late that afternoon when it was nearing sundown. He was in the barn with his saddlebags packed on his horse, a big bay gelding with a spirited look.

“Is that your horse?” Nora asked from the door of the barn, which was deserted momentarily except for Cal.

He glanced at her and smiled. “Yes. I call him King, because he reminds me of a man I know—one who’s just as impatient and every bit as unpleasant when he’s upset.” He didn’t add that the nickname originally belonged to his eldest brother.

“He’s very…tall.”

“So am I. I require a tall horse.” He finished his tasks with the horse and turned to move toward Nora. For once, he was cleaned up. He was freshly shaven and smelled of cologne and soap. His hair was clean, neatly parted. His clothes were like new, from his long-sleeved shirt to the neat cord trousers he wore with polished black boots. He looked very masculine, and the intensity of his gaze made her nervous. He paused just in front of her, admiring her trim figure behind the china blue bow that hung below the sailor collar of the white blouse. The bow matched her eyes.

“Shall you be gone long?” she asked, trying to sound unconcerned.

“Only over the weekend, perhaps for a day or so beyond, depending on the train schedules,” he said noncommittally. “Will you miss me?” he teased.

She grimaced. “Sir, we hardly know each other.”

“A situation which can quickly be remedied.” He bent suddenly, lifted her clear off the ground in his arms like a baby and carried her behind the open door of the barn, out of sight.

Her mouth was open to protest this shocking treatment when his lips pressed softly over it, teasing the tender flesh until it admitted him. Behind her head, she felt the muscles cord in his arm as he brought her closer so that he could advance the kiss. Her breasts flattened softly over the hard muscles of his broad chest, and she felt her heart beating against them.

Outside, she heard the wind rise, and the metallic sound of the windmill as its arms began to spin. There was a rumble up in the darkening clouds. But she was locked fast in Cal’s arms and floating blissfully in feelings she had never experienced. His mouth was warm and hard and insistent. She had no inclination to fight or protest. He must have known it, because he was gentle, almost tender with her. When he finally lifted his mouth, she was dazed, fascinated. Her wide blue eyes searched his in a silence broken only by the soft movements of the horse nearby.

His silver-gray eyes glittered as they traced her mouth and then met her shocked eyes. “You’re very docile for an adventuress,” he whispered deeply. “Do you like lying in my arms?”

She hadn’t realized that she was. He still had her clear of the floor. Her arms were around his neck, holding on, and she never wanted to move. It was a surprise to discover that it felt natural to let him kiss her.

“You’re dazed, aren’t you?” he murmured with faint, tender amusement as he studied her face. “You flatter me.”

“You must…put me down,” she faltered.

He shook his head, very slowly. “Not until I’ve kissed you again.” His lips touched hers, teased, tempted. He nibbled on her lower lip and heard her gasp. “You taste of whipping cream,” he whispered, nudging at her upper lip with the tip of his tongue. “You make me hungry, Nora, for things no gentleman should admit to a lady….”

His mouth crushed down over hers, opening it to the most intimate kiss she’d ever experienced in her life. She cried out and pushed at him, frightened not only by the intimacy of it, but by the sensations it made her feel.

He lifted his head, laughing softly as he saw her eyes. “I thought you were sophisticated,” he chided.

She colored. “Do put me down!” she murmured, struggling and flustered.

He did, holding her until she righted herself and steadied. She pushed at her disheveled hairdo and moved jerkily away from him. He had never seemed taller, more menacing, than he did then.

For himself, Cal was pleased with her reactions. She wasn’t so haughty now, and he liked very much seeing her at a disadvantage. It was going to be fun to bring the so-superior Miss Marlowe down to the level of an ordinary woman. She might even enjoy being human for a change.

He touched her nose with the tip of his finger and laughed again as she looked worriedly around them.

“No one saw us,” he said gently. “Our secret is safe.”

She chewed on her lower lip and tasted him there. Her eyes sought his, full of unvoiced fears.

“What shall I bring you from Beaumont?” he asked.

“I… I need nothing.”

His eyebrows arched. “It’s my experience that women love little presents. Come, isn’t there something your heart desires?”

She was afraid. The way he was looking at her made her knees wobbly, and his kisses had kindled something frightening inside her. She made a helpless gesture with her hands.

“No, there is…there is nothing I want. I…must go inside. Do have a safe trip,” she said.

He just looked at her, aware of new feelings, new curiosities, all of which involved the woman before him. “I shall think of you while I’m away,” he said, his voice deep and slow. “When I look up at the stars tonight, I shall imagine you looking at them, and thinking of me as well.”

She flushed. “You must not!”

“Why?” he asked reasonably, and smiled. “You have no beau. I have no sweetheart. Why should we not be interested in each other?”

“I do not want that,” she blurted out.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Because I’m a poor, dirty cowboy?” he chided. “Am I not good enough for a Marlowe of Virginia?”

She grimaced and he read the truth in her face. No, a poor cowhand would hardly be a suitable match for a wealthy woman from back East. It rankled that she should think that way, that she should be so bound by convention when she was modern and well traveled and outspoken.

She was an adventuress, she said, but she was certainly very conventional in her private life. She gave lip service to the modern ideals, but she did not practice them. She was just one more prisoner of the social conventions of her set. He was oddly disappointed in her. His mother was a frontier woman, a good and decent woman, but one who lived to please her own sense of morality, not flat rules set down by other people. He had thought at first that Nora had spirit and felt the lure of adventure, that she had come West to test her courage and challenge the unknown. But in fact, she was just another bored rich society woman who toyed with men to get her thrills. He mustn’t forget poor Greely.

“Please,” she said nervously. “I must go.”

His face was shuttered, hard. “Go, then,” he said curtly. “It would not be seemly for you to be seen with someone beneath your social station.”

She glanced at him worriedly, guiltily. But she didn’t deny it. That was what damned her in his eyes, what made him determined to show her that feelings were more important than conventions. He would, if it was the last thing he ever did. He would woo and win her as an itinerant cowboy. And when he was through, she would never judge another man by his clothes or his station in life. He would be the sword of vengeance for Greely and all the other men this spoiled young miss had hurt with her thoughtlessness.

He whirled angrily toward his horse, leaving Nora to walk slowly back toward the house with her heart in her throat. She had driven him away, and she should be sorry. But she had nothing to give him. If he thought that it was because of his station and not her own fears about her illness, then perhaps that was as well, too. Perhaps it would spare her any future wooing. The thought, which should have comforted her, was vaguely discouraging.

She had barely made it to the steps when she heard the horse’s hooves sound close by, and then quickly move away. She turned in time to see Cal riding out the gate, tall against the darkening sky, looking as violent as the storm itself.

THE CHURCH PICNIC was a surprise. Nora hadn’t expected to enjoy it, but she was having a very good time. The only fly in the ointment was, as Melly had intimated, Mr. Langhorn’s son, Bruce. The little boy was a holy terror, blond and slight and full of mischief. He’d barely arrived when he put a bullfrog down a girl’s back and spilled lemonade on the preacher’s trousers.

His dad just grinned and watched him, apparently approving his actions. Melly gave the whipcord-lean man with the dark hair and eyes a cold glare, but he ignored her. He was apparently taken with an older woman, a brunette with a plate of cake and a sweet smile.

“There he goes again, playing up to Mrs. Terrell,” Melly said irritably. “Not that I care, but she’s at least five years older than he is, and she’s got three kids of her own. She’s a widow. A rich widow,” she added in a hiss.

As if he heard, Mr. Langhorn looked at her. He lifted an eyebrow, gave her a lazy, dismissing appraisal, and picked up a piece of the widow’s cake. There was something almost spiteful about the way he looked right at Melly while he bit into it.

“Daring me to say something,” Melly muttered. “Look at him! He’s a…a blackguard, an uncivilized boor! She deserves him!”

“But the poor widow is kind,” Nora argued.

“She is a black widow,” came the terse reply. “I despise her!”

Nora was surprised at the poisonous tones from her sweet cousin Melly. It was so out of character.

“He told me that I was too young to give him what a man needed from a woman,” Melly said shockingly. She flushed. “Mama would have a fit if she knew he had spoken to me in such a way. I pretended that it was another man, my best friend’s new husband, who had broken my heart, but it wasn’t. It was…him.” She sounded miserable. Her eyes followed the tall man with the widow Terrell, and she jerked them back around with a faint groan. “My parents would never have permitted anything to come of my regard for him, because he is divorced! What shall I do? It is killing me to see them together! He says that he shall probably marry her, because Bruce needs a mother so badly.” She clenched her hands together. “I love him. But he feels nothing for me, nothing at all. He has never touched me, not even to shake my hand….”

There was a wrenching sigh, and Nora felt so sorry for her cousin that she could have cried.

“I am sorry,” she said gently. “Life has its tragedies, doesn’t it?” she added absently, thinking of Africa and the terrible changes it had brought to her life.

“Yours has been much different from mine, and certainly it has not been tragic,” her cousin argued. “You have wealth and position and you are traveled and sophisticated. You have everything.”

“Not everything,” Nora said tersely.

“You could have. Mr. Barton is sweet on you,” she teased, forgetting her own problems momentarily.

“You might marry him.”

She couldn’t forget the harsh, cold farewell she’d received from Mr. Barton. She tensed indignantly.

“Marry a cowboy!” Nora exclaimed haughtily.

Melly glared at her. “And what, pray tell, is wrong with a hardworking man? Being poor is no sin.”

“He has no ambition. He is dirty and disheveled. I find him…offensive,” she lied.

“Then why were you kissing him in the barn before he left?” Melly asked reasonably.

Nora gasped. “What do you mean?”

“I saw you from my window,” she said with a chuckle. “Don’t look so shocked, Nora, I knew you were human. He is very attractive, and when he shaves and cleans up, he would be a match for any of your European friends.”

Nora shifted uncomfortably. “He is uncivilized.”

“You should spend more time out here. If you did, you would realize that clothes and a fine education do not always make a man a gentleman,” Melly said quietly. “There are men here in Texas who have no money, but who are courageous and kind and noble, in their way.”

“Like the heroes in my dime novels?” Nora chided. “That is all fiction. I have discovered the truth since I have come West, and it is disillusioning.”

“It should not be, if you do not expect people to be perfect.”

“I certainly do not expect it of Mr. Barton. He…accosted me,” she muttered.

“He kissed you,” Melly corrected, “which is hardly the same thing. Let me tell you, many of our unattached women in church would give much to have the elusive and stoic Mr. Barton kiss them!”

Nora glared at her cousin. “I would prefer that, too. He may kiss any of them he likes, with my blessing. I have no desire to become the sweetheart of a common cowboy.”

“Or of any man, it seems,” Melly murmured with a speaking glance. “You are very reluctant to discuss marriage and a family, Nora.”

Nora wrapped her arms around her body. “I have no desire to marry.”

“Why?”

She shifted. “It is something I cannot discuss,” she said, shivering with the memory of how ill she had been. How could she subject a man, any man, to a life of illnesses that would never end? How could she have a baby, and take care of it? “I shall never marry,” Nora said bitterly.

“With the right man, you might want to.”

Nora thought of Cal Barton’s hot kisses, and her heart raced. She mustn’t remember, she mustn’t. She turned in time to see young Bruce Langhorn making a beeline for another young boy perched precariously on a rock, laughing.

“Oh, no!” Melly gasped, and before Nora could open her mouth, her cousin broke into a dead run toward the children.

She hadn’t realized what was going on until she saw the Langhorn boy reach out to push the other little boy, immaculately dressed, into the stream face-first.

“You little heathen!” the boy’s mother cried, drawing everyone’s attention to Bruce. “You shouldn’t be allowed in decent company! The child of a divorced man!” she added with pure venom as she pulled her soaked, weeping child out of the water and began to comfort him.

Langhorn heard. He got to his feet and joined his son, who looked torn between tears and embarrassment.

“I tried to stop him,” Melly said, her eyes eloquent as they looked up at the tall man.

He didn’t look at her, or seem to hear. He put his hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “He’s as good as your boy, Mrs. Sanders,” he told the flustered mother. “Of course, he does act like a little boy instead of a little statue sometimes.”

Mrs. Sanders’s red face went redder. “He hardly has a moral example to follow, Mr. Langhorn.”

Langhorn just stared at her. “I thought this was a church party, where Christian people got together to have a good time.”

The woman froze, and suddenly became aware of people staring at her, and not very approvingly.

“It seems to me,” Nora inserted with exquisite poise, “that none of us is so perfect that he can sit in judgment on others. Or is that not what church is supposed to teach us?” she added with a cool smile.

Mrs. Sanders bit almost through her lower lip. “I do beg your pardon, Mr. Langhorn. I was frightened for Timmy….”

Langhorn’s eyes spoke for him. He turned Bruce away. “You find some other little kid to play with,” he said loudly. “I want you around boys who aren’t made of glass.”

Timmy wiped his eyes on his sleeve and jerked away from his mother with a furious glare.

Melly smothered a grin and followed Nora back to their picnic area.

It wasn’t long before Langhorn and Bruce joined them. Both were grinning, and Melly was more flustered than Nora had ever seen her.

“You’re a haughty one,” Langhorn told Nora with pursed lips. “I don’t know that I like being defended by eastern aristocrats with toffee noses.”

Nora liked him at once. She grinned at him. “I don’t know that I want to associate with a heathen,” she returned.

His eyebrows went up and he looked at Melly, who colored prettily.

“I can see that my reputation has preceded me,” he said heavily. He sat down on their cloth and lounged on his side. His dark eyes smiled at Nora and then slid reluctantly to Melly, who was trying to dish up chicken and rolls. “Am I invited to dinner?” he asked her softly.

Melly’s hands shook. “If you like,” she stammered. “There’s plenty.”

It was nothing tangible, but Nora felt herself wondering at the tension between this man and her cousin. She had told Nora that he wasn’t interested in her, but he looked at Melly just a little too long for politeness, and she was shaken—more than shaken—by just his presence. He was attracted to her, but obviously he wasn’t going to let her get any closer than this.

“Me, too, Melly,” Bruce pleaded. He grinned at her. “Were you gonna stop me? I saw you running my way.”

“I wasn’t quick enough,” she muttered. “You’re just impossible, Bruce. Really…!”

“Timmy pushed me in last time we went on a picnic,” Bruce explained. “I was just going to get even, that’s all. His mom didn’t say a word when it was me dripping wet.” He glowered. “I don’t like her. She says I’m not good enough to play with Timmy.”

“Like hell you aren’t,” Langhorn said easily. “Pardon my language,” he added politely to the ladies. He looked back at his son. “You don’t judge people by their kin.”

“You shouldn’t,” Nora corrected. “Unfortunately, people do.”

Langhorn studied Melly carefully as he accepted a plate from her unsteady hands and nodded his thanks. “You came to Bruce’s rescue like an avenging angel. Thanks.”

Melly shrugged. “Mrs. Sanders is…a bit overbearing at times. She’s overprotective, too. Timmy is going to wish she hadn’t been, one day.”

He smiled. “Maybe not. Your parents have protected you. It hasn’t hurt you.”

“Hasn’t it?” Melly asked without looking at him. She felt bitter, fiercely bitter, because if her parents hadn’t smothered her with concern, she might have had some hope of a life with Langhorn. But that was in the past. He thought her too young, and perhaps she was.

Mrs. Terrell came sidling up a minute after Langhorn finished his chicken, smiling from under her lacy parasol. “I do hate to disturb you, Jacob, but I’m feeling just a bit faint. Would you mind very much driving me home?”

“But we only got here,” Bruce wailed. “And I haven’t got to play with the other kids. There’s a sack race…!”

“He can stay with us and we’ll drive him to your place on the way home,” Melly offered, angry at the widow—who was obviously jealous—and hurt for Bruce. “Oh, do let him stay,” she pleaded when he hesitated.

He looked at his son quietly. “You mind her.”

“Yes, sir!” Bruce beamed.

Langhorn glanced at Melly with an unreadable expression and bent to pick up his weather-beaten hat. “I’ll expect him home before dark,” he told Melly. “You have no business driving around the country in the dark.”

“Yes, sir,” Melly murmured demurely, peering up at him impishly.

His face froze, as if her teasing had an unwanted effect on him. He whirled on his heel, taking Mrs. Terrell’s arm bruisingly to herd her down the path.

“Thanks, Melly!” Bruce said enthusiastically, grabbing for a slice of fresh-baked apple pie. “You’re swell! That’s twice you saved my life. Honestly, isn’t Mrs. Terrell a hoot? She wants Dad to marry her, but he doesn’t like her that way. I heard him talking to himself about her.”

Melly smiled to herself. It was nice to know something so intimate about Jacob Langhorn, even if it was only that he talked to himself. She glanced at Nora and sighed at the sympathy and caring in those deep blue eyes. She smiled at her cousin and shrugged.

The rest of the picnic was fun. Melly and Nora cheered Bruce in the sack races and watched him beat the others in the egg carry. There were horse races between the men, which Bruce said his dad was sure going to hate having missed, and music as well, because a couple of the men brought their guitars.

If Cal Barton had been around, Nora would have thought the picnic perfect. She wondered what he was doing, on his mysterious weekend absence.

DOWN NEAR BEAUMONT, TEXAS, a grimy Cal Barton was helping his drill foreman put the final touches on their newest rig while his brother Alan looked on. Immaculate in his suit and tie, Alan wasn’t about to get himself dirty. Irritably Cal thought that the snooty Miss Marlowe would have found Alan just her cup of tea.

“That should do it. Let’s get started,” Cal told the other man, climbing down to join his brother on solid ground.

“You hit a dry hole first time,” Alan reminded him. “Don’t get too optimistic.”

“It’s my money, son,” Cal reminded him with a cool smile. “Aunt Grace’s money, actually, but I was her favorite and she had a passion for oil. That’s why you and King were left out. She thought I had the touch.”

“Maybe you do. I hope you don’t run out of money before you hit the big one.”

“That geologist said the oil is here,” Cal reminded him. “I’d have come three years ago if I’d had the backing, but none of you believed I knew what I was doing. Least of all King. He made his opinion of foolish ventures crystal clear before I left home.”

“King has mellowed just recently, thanks to Amelia,” Alan mused. “You really will have to come home long enough to meet her. She’s quite a girl.”

“She must have a backbone of solid steel to cope with our brother,” he said flatly.

“She threw a carafe at him.”

Cal’s eyes widened. “At King?”

“He’s still laughing about it. She’s more than a match for him. One shivers to think what sort of children they’ll have. I want to move away to a safe place before the first one comes along.”

Cal chuckled. “Well, I’ll be. I thought he was going to marry Darcy, and there were times, mind you, when I thought he deserved to marry her.”

“Shame on you. I wouldn’t wish such a cold fish on King. Amelia is much more his style.”