A Touch of Frost Page 19

  The boot thumped to the floor. This sock also stayed on, although for a long, painful moment it appeared she was reconsidering her decision. Remington was tempted to thump his head against the mattress. He could make at least as much noise as the boot had and probably feel better for it.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, turning her head to look at him.

  “Fine.” He wondered if his voice sounded as strangled as his throat felt. “Fine,” he repeated and it was marginally better this time. “Are you going to take those off?”

  “My socks?”

  “No. God, no. The pants.”

  “Oh, I thought I’d let you.”

  He had to roll out of the way when she flopped backward. The mattress was narrow and he spilled right over the edge. It was only a few inches to the floor but he landed with a satisfying thump. He rolled right back on, sat up and straddled Phoebe, and then worked the trousers over her hips. He inched lower as he tugged the pants past her thighs, her knees, and finally pulled them away.

  “The flourish was nice,” she said. She imitated it, raising her arm and rotating her wrist, then letting the invisible pants in her hand fly. “Very theatrical.”

  Remington hadn’t given any thought to what she might be wearing under her trousers. If he had, he would have supposed she had on a pair of long flannel drawers similar to his—and he would have supposed wrong.

  She wore a pair of split-crotch, white cotton knickers with three fussy tiers of ruffles where they ended just below her knee. He had seen fancier. Dance hall girls wore knickers with ruffles over their backsides and all the way down to the hem, and sometimes there were cascades of delicate lace, but this was the first time he’d seen feminine wear exposed after the removal of a pair of men’s trousers.

  When he realized those little ruffles had been hiding there all day, it was nearly his undoing. Now when she wore trousers, he would always wonder.

  He bent his head, put his mouth close to her ear, and whispered, “Witch.”

  There was no way Phoebe could hear that as anything but a compliment. She turned her head, lifted it to find his mouth, and kissed him for a deliciously long time.

  He ended up removing his own trousers because they were both impatient by then. There was no repeat of the theatrical flourish; he simply shoved them out of the way. They rearranged the blankets, tugging and yanking until one mostly covered the mattress and the other covered them. Their bedding was musty, smelled of horses and sweat and wood smoke, but that was of no account when their senses were teased by the fragrances of musk and sex.

  Remington nudged her knees until they made a V for him. She raised them on either side of his hips; he levered between them and supported himself on his forearms. He brushed her lips, gently pushing them apart to tease her with his tongue. “Do you want to help me?” he asked against her mouth.

  Phoebe took a shallow breath and whispered, “Tell me how.”

  Her answer surprised him, but he didn’t reveal it in any way. What he did was tell her in terms both plain and temperate what he wanted her to do, and if he surprised her, she also did not reveal it.

  Phoebe reached between their bodies, found the opening in his drawers, and slipped her hand inside. She closed her hand around his erection and felt his blood surge. She remembered the thrum of his heart against her palm. This was like that, only stronger, more insistent, and Phoebe’s fingers began to uncurl.

  “No,” he said.

  Her fist tightened reflexively. When he groaned, she understood that it was pleasure that pushed the sound past his throat. She lifted her hips and guided him to her. She expected there to be pain, had prepared herself to accept it as the natural consequence of the intimacy she wanted with this man, but then he was inside her and she realized that she had never known intimacy with any man. In every way that mattered, he, Remington Frost, was her first.

  His hips fell as he settled in her. He could have prepared her better, he thought, taken more time to make certain she was ready. She was tight, tight as her fist had been, and he wanted to drive into her as deeply as he could. He held back because the pleasure he felt was not shared. Not yet.

  “All right?” he asked.

  She nodded because she believed it was true, and she continued to believe it right up until the moment he proved to her that it wasn’t.

  “Come here,” he said. “Another riding lesson, I think.”

  She didn’t understand, didn’t pretend to; she simply followed his lead. With some adjustment, some awkwardness, he turned them so she was straddling him and very much riding tall in the saddle. “I suppose you should let me have the reins again,” she said.

  And he did, letting her establish the rhythm. She leaned forward, made her breasts available to his lips and tongue. His hand slid between her legs, parted her lips with his fingertips, and stroked that other rosebud until it was wet with her dew.

  He watched her pupils darken, grow larger, until her gold-flecked green irises were only thin rings of color. Sometimes the tip of her pink tongue would appear at the corner of her mouth. She unlocked her back, rose and fell with him, swayed. Her cadence matched his and she began to take increasing short and shallow breaths as the rise and fall of her body quickened.

  Remington recognized her rising pleasure. He felt it, too. He grabbed her thick mane of hair when it fell over her shoulder and hung on until she came. The shudder that rocked her, rocked him, and he bucked sideways, toppling but not dislodging her, and finally drove into her as deeply as he’d wanted to from the first. Four hard strokes and he came to the same noisy end that she had.

  They were no better than half on the mattress. Remington’s head and shoulders rested against the rough wooden planks of the floor while the small of his back was curved uncomfortably at the mattress’s edge. Phoebe had it better because she lay on Remington, and while he was smoother than the floor and less lumpy than the mattress, he was only marginally softer than either.

  Phoebe’s cheek was pressed to his shoulder. She raised her head, regarded him through eyes that were vaguely unfocused, and immediately dropped back to his shoulder. “I’ll move,” she said. “Soon. I promise.”

  “Don’t. Not yet. I can’t.”

  She smiled because it required too much effort to laugh. She closed her eyes. “Neither can I.”

  In the corner of the cabin, the roof continued to leak. The steady drip had the excellent timing of a metronome. In minutes they were both sleeping.

  Chapter Twenty

  “I’m worried about her, Thaddeus.” Fiona made full use of the front room, pacing the length of it from the upright piano at one end to the gun rack at the other. Sometimes she circled, but mostly it was a straight line back and forth.

  “Fiona.” Saying her name had no impact. She did not turn in his direction and she did not slow. Thaddeus watched her from his perch on the wide velvet arm of the sofa. He was sitting hipshot, one leg stretched out for balance, the other slightly bent. She disliked it when he sat on the arm of any piece of furniture instead of the seat cushion, so he had chosen to roost here hoping it would distract her long enough to get her to listen to reason. Thus far, it had not worked. “I understand you’re worried, but you have no foundation for it. I swear to you Phoebe is safe and she will return no worse off than when she left.”

  “You don’t know that. You can’t know that.”

  “I know my son. He will see it as his duty to keep her out of harm’s way. You have evidence to prove that he has done it before and no reason to think he will not do it again. Besides, Fiona, it is rain, not robbers.”

  She turned her head to glower at him, but there was no pause in her step. “It is a storm, Thad. Phoebe is afraid of storms. She used to hide in a trunk when she was a child. A trunk. She hasn’t outgrown the fear, only the trunks.”

  Thaddeus admitted he didn’t know about Phoebe’s
fear, but rather than mollify Fiona with the modest apology, it froze her anger. The glare from her amethyst eyes was glacial. He faced it head on. “She has good instincts. So does Remington. They’ll seek shelter.”

  “Where?” she demanded. “Where will they find that? I don’t understand why they left at all. Why couldn’t he give her a riding lesson right here? Taking her away from Twin Star on horseback is not my idea of keeping her safe.”

  “I believe Phoebe had the impression you would not approve of her learning to ride.”

  Fiona stopped, set her hands on her hips. “That is not an impression. That is a fact. Learning to ride serves no purpose. It is an unnecessary risk for her to take and for the rest of you to support. She’ll have no use for it in New York.”

  Thaddeus tilted his head, regarded her as he had not done before, and saw what he had only suspected. “Is that why you’ve never wanted to learn?”

  Fiona’s hands fell to her sides. “I don’t know why you would say that. I am talking about Phoebe.”

  “I thought we were,” he said. “Now I’m not so sure.”

  Fiona resumed walking but without the anxious edge. Her steps were slower, more deliberate. “And I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Hmm.”

  Fiona changed course and went to the window. She drew back the curtain and looked out. Rain cascaded from the porch roof and made a second curtain that was almost impenetrable. When the storm stopped, there would be a moat around the house, and that struck her as oddly perfect for her husband’s purposes. Without the requisite drawbridge, she was effectively his prisoner.

  She let the curtain fall and turned her back on the window. “Where did he take her? You must have some idea.” Before he could answer, she added, “Please don’t tell me they went into town. I know Ellie prepared food for them. That suggests your son had something else in mind.”

  “I wasn’t going to lie to you,” he said. “I don’t know if they got there, but they were headed to Thunder Point.”

  Fiona leaned backward, pressed her hands flat to the roughly plastered wall. “No,” she said, although the word was hardly given sound. “Why? Why would he take her there? Isn’t that where . . . I don’t understand. Why would she agree?”

  “Remington wanted to have another look around; he thought Phoebe could help. Neither of them has been back there since that night. It was time.”

  “It was time? Time for what? For Phoebe to be reminded of every awful thing that happened to her? There is no sense in that. She needs to put it behind her; that’s what you do when terrible things happen. You put it behind you and walk on.”

  “Has that been your experience?” he asked quietly.

  Fiona gave a small start. She pushed away from the wall and took a step forward. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Putting bad things behind you and walking on. It sounded as if you were speaking from experience.”

  “Did it? I was speaking from common sense. What is the point of dwelling when nothing can come of it? What kind of life can Phoebe make for herself if she is forced to confront the consequences of her past?”

  “She wasn’t forced, Fiona. She wanted to go.”

  “You have that from Remington, I suppose.”

  “I do, and I have no reason to doubt him. I want to hear about these consequences. What is it that you think Phoebe is confronting out there?”

  “She’s confronting what happened.”

  “I understand, but what is it that you think happened?”

  “What do you mean? She was held against her will in that cabin. Tied like an animal. Bound to a bed. What do you think happened?”

  “Not what you’re thinking. Did she say something to you that she did not say to anyone else? Do you know she was raped?” He observed Fiona flinch, but he did not call the word back, did not try to soften it. “Do you have reason to suspect? Remington did not.”

  She threw up her hands. “How would he know? If he asked her if they violated her, she would deny it, but I know these things. I know them, Thaddeus, and I know Phoebe. She could drink hemlock and would only admit to a mild case of dyspepsia.”

  Thaddeus stood and went to her. She did not pull away when he gently took her by the wrists and lowered them. He held her hands loosely. She cast her eyes downward and watched the sweep of his thumbs across the pale blue veins. Her breathing slowed.

  “Will you say it now?” he asked, his voice calm, barely a whisper.

  She shook her head, unable to look at him.

  “There should be at least this much trust between us,” he said. It was the wrong thing to say, but Thaddeus didn’t know that until it was said. She wrested her hands from him and stepped away, and now that she was looking at him again, he wished she weren’t. The icy rage was gone. Her eyes burned hot. Angry tears hovered but did not spill, and he was helpless in the face of them, not because a woman’s tears had ever undone him, but because he did not understand what he had done to provoke them.

  “You should never speak of what you don’t understand.”

  Thaddeus did not try to call Fiona back as she walked away, and he harbored no hope that she would return. He was not even sure she would hear him. He stood just as he was, hands at his sides, lips pressed into a grim line, until he heard Ellie bang a pot in the kitchen. The sound jerked him out of his stillness. Turning on his heel, he went to seek her out. After more than a score of years living in each other’s pockets, he could depend on her to have something to say. He might even listen.

  • • •

  Remington opened the saddlebag that Ellie had filled for him and began to unpack it. “Come away from there,” he told Phoebe. She was standing at the door poking her head through the small opening she’d made. “It’s finally decently warm in here and you are letting in both the cold and the damp.”

  She was reluctant to step away and it showed in how long it took her to close the door. “I think the rain is slowing.”

  Remington cocked an ear toward the roof. “I can hear.”

  “I needed to see it with my eyes.” Phoebe crossed her ankles, folded her legs, and gracefully lowered herself to the mattress so she was sitting opposite Remington. “The stream’s still rising, though.”

  “And it will continue to rise for a while after the rain’s stopped.”

  “You don’t seem to be concerned. Water is lapping at the smokehouse.”

  “We’re going to be fine, Phoebe.” He held out a chunk of bread to her and a slice of ham. “I couldn’t find any plates. Old Man McCauley took everything his pack mules could carry when he left.”

  Phoebe took Remington’s offering, tore off a smaller portion of the bread, and put it in her mouth. “Did you know him?” she asked around that bite of food.

  “No, not so I could call him a friend. He was hardly an acquaintance. We crossed paths in town, but out here I gave him a wide berth. Everyone did.”

  “So this place is known. If people avoided it, it’s because they knew it was here.”

  “Yes.” He rolled his slice of ham and bit off the end as if it were a cigar.

  “It follows, doesn’t it, that Mr. Shoulders is likely from the area, not from Frost Falls specifically, but from somewhere close by.”

  “It’s possible. Northeast Rail’s detective is working from that assumption.”

  She nodded. “I don’t think you are, though.”

  “How’s that?”

  When Phoebe shrugged, her unbound hair fell over her shoulder and she swung her head to toss it back. “I’m not sure. I think you have other ideas that you don’t want to share.” She watched him take a second large bite from his ham cigar and knew he had no intention of responding. “That’s what I thought.”

  Remington slid one of the canteens toward her. “There’s cheese in the bag, if you’d like that.”
>
  “Not just now, thank you. In the event we could be here for days, I think rationing is in order.”

  Laughing, he shook his head. “If you don’t eat it, I’m sure the mice will. We’re leaving tomorrow morning. First light. I promise.” He used his chin to point to the window. “I don’t anticipate the rain letting up completely until dark, maybe not then. Better if we wait.”

  Phoebe set the ham and bread on her knee and tightened the knot at her breasts. Remington’s dark eyes had been following its slow descent. He actually sighed when she secured it. “Uh-huh,” she said. “I know when you have ideas.”

  “I don’t mind sharing this one.”

  She waved him off and picked up her food. “We are done with that.”

  “You sound definite.”

  “Oh, I am.” He probably didn’t believe her, she thought, because she had already shown him that she had the spine of a slug where he was concerned. She needed to keep that rather unpleasant image in her mind when she felt herself being drawn to him. And she was drawn. There was no accusation she could lay at his feet, not when the attraction was so clearly mutual that no seduction was required.

  After they had lain together, they had slept deeply but not for long. They were still drowsy as they roused, he first, and then she after a few nudges. It was the act of settling themselves on the narrow mattress that roused them again, this time in a different way.

  “My leg won’t go there,” she had said.

  “Yes, it will. Here, give me the blanket.”

  “No. I want to keep it.”

  “It’s tangled. That’s why you don’t fit.”

  Phoebe felt her cheeks growing warm as she remembered how he had yanked the blanket from her fist and pulled her bottom hard into the cradle of his groin. She was still wearing her knickers. He, his drawers. Except to call attention to a barrier that was flimsy at best, their clothing was of no significance.