Chapter twenty one

JESSIE PULLED THE buckboard up behind the Schroeders' house as the sun dropped low, a fading fireball almost ready to disappear behind the distant hills. She turned on the seat to look at Kate.

"I don't want to let you go," Jessie said softly. Kate's hand had rested on her thigh the entire hour it had taken Jessie to drive into town, and Jessie didn't want her to move it. Ever. She questioned the rightness of being with Kate no more than she questioned the rightness of rising each morning to work her land. The places in her heart that had lain empty and waiting were filled. Her life seemed whole and all of a piece with Kate by her side. For her it was simply the truth of things, and she thought no further than that. Loving Kate was right.

"I don't want to leave you either," Kate answered quietly. Of that she was certain. "I need to say hello to Hannah, so that my day won't be a lie, but I'll come back to the ranch as soon as I can get away again. My mother is starting to get used to me driving into town alone. She doesn't need to know I'm coming to you."

Kate's eyes were luminous, and her face flushed with more than the August heat. She couldn't think yet, her body was still too stirred. She had never experienced such an awakening of self, so suddenly, in both body and mind. She had known when barely in her teens that she did not desire the future that was expected for her, but try as she might, she could not picture another. Certainly there were women who struck off on their own, many of them traveling into the western territories as teachers and seamstresses and laundresses, but Kate had not seen herself among them. She had not been raised to envision independence and had only managed through her love of words and her endless curiosity to discover that there were worlds beyond her own socially defined sphere. Still, nothing had ever prepared her for Jessie, nor for what they had shared.

She knew little of what physical intimacies men and women enjoyed, having heard only veiled references from her mother and wild speculation from her girlfriends, but she knew what Jessie Forbes stirred in her. She knew what she held in her heart for Jessie, and when that ardor echoed in her body, she welcomed it. Jessie's tenderness and answering passion fulfilled her. Why it was so, she could not say.

"I'll come as soon as I can," Kate repeated firmly, needing to reassure herself as well as Jessie. She was already missing her.

"It will be a trial waiting," Jessie stated, her voice low, her fist opening and closing on her thigh as she struggled to describe her desire. She wanted Kate in her arms again; she wanted to hear Kate's cries of abandon as she touched her. She shuddered with the memory. "It's like I'm hungry for you, Kate."

"Jessie," Kate breathed, the wanting starting again. "I don't know what it is, but I can't stop thinking about being with you." She blushed. "Like we were today."

Jessie looked away, watching night approach as the blue sky flamed into purples and pinks and deep oranges with the dying of the sun. She spoke quietly. "I don't have words for what happened, Kate. I don't know if there are words for it." She gazed at Kate, her eyes burning brighter than the dazzling colors that surrounded them. Her body rippled with tension. "But I know that I love you. Life wouldn't mean much to me now without you. That won't ever change."

Kate smiled, her heart filling with the tenderness of Jessie's sweet, sure vows. "I love you, too."

For the moment, that seemed enough.

 

Hannah rinsed out the dishtowel and hung it over the wooden rod inside her back door, watching the two women in the buckboard through her kitchen window. They were only talking, and she couldn't hear their words, but she didn't need to. She was watching their faces. Jessie had that solemn, serious expression on her face, the one Thaddeus had worn when he was working his way up to proposing, and Kate gazed at Jessie the way every young woman in love looks at her beau. Hannah wondered why she wasn't more surprised by it. She supposed it was because she had lived more than half her life on the frontier, and she had learned that city ways didn't count for much out there. There were women without husbands due to famine or fancy or fate, and they did what they had to do to get by. Some married for safety, forgoing love; some stepped up when widowed to fill their men's shoes, managing families and farms on their own; and some came west with no intention of being anybody's wife right from the start. Living close to the bone, with death a constant shadow, you learned fast to take what goodness life sent your way when you could, because sorrow was just over the horizon.

She looked at the two of them and couldn't see much harm to the caring. She sighed, wondering what Martha might think if she was ever to be faced with it.

"Hannah," Kate said breathlessly as she came through the door, "I'm so sorry I'm so late. I met Jessie and-"

Hannah smiled, shushing her with a shake of her head. "That's fine, Kate. I like your company, and I'm always happy to see you, but you don't need to feel obliged to spend your time over here. I don't expect there's anything you'll need to know that you won't find out when the time comes."

Kate nodded, only half-listening as she watched Jessie untie her horse from the back of the buckboard and prepare to leave. Every movement of her graceful hands reminded Kate of the way they had felt on her body, and her head grew light with the memory. Jessie swung into the saddle, turned to the house, her eyes searching for Kate, and then she was gone with one last smile. Kate finally turned away to find Hannah regarding her speculatively. Kate's face flamed because she was certain that Hannah could read every thought.

Hannah pulled a tray of biscuits from the oven, sliding the metal onto a cooling stone on the counter. "Jessie Forbes is a fine young woman. Works hard and turns an honest profit," she remarked, her back to Kate.

"Yes," Kate said cautiously.

Hannah wiped her hands on her apron as she turned to regard Kate steadily. "Next time you should invite her in for a drink before she has to ride all that dusty way back to the ranch."

Kate struggled for words, and finally whispered, "Thank you, Hannah."

 

"You're a sight for sore eyes, Montana," Mae said as she stepped up to the bar beside Jessie. "Seems I only see you when someone's plugged you full of holes."

Jessie grinned sheepishly. "Hello, Mae. I was hoping you'd be around.

Mae studied her quizzically. "The sun's just set, Jess. The varmints won't be out for a while, so I'm not busy. Why don't you come sit down and tell me what brings you into town in the middle of the week."

"How about you let me buy you dinner?" Jessie countered, wanting company. She had resisted going home because she knew the house would rattle with loneliness, and she already ached for Kate.

"I believe I'll take you up on that," Mae said, threading her arm through Jessie's. When they had moved into the dining room, she once again regarded Jessie curiously. She didn't think she'd ever seen Jessie look moody before. "What're you fretting about, Montana?"

"Hmm? Oh! Why nothing, Mae," Jessie said quickly, blushing. She'd been thinking about waking up and feeling Kate's hands on her thighs, and about the way Kate knew just how to touch her in those spots that set her head to spinning, and how just when she didn't think she could stand another second without some part of her bursting, Kate had done just the right thing and she had exploded. Remembering it brought the feelings back so strongly she almost gasped.

Mae leaned back in her chair, watching a flood of emotions play across Jessie's expressive features. How Jess ever managed to win at poker, she didn't know, because Jessie's face was an open book. And what Mae saw there made her heart sink. Jessie's eyes were a little hazy, and her skin was flushed under her tan. Her body almost quivered. Mae thought she could feel the heat radiating from her. Jessie Forbes looked like a woman who had been well loved, and recently.

Mae knew better than to ask, because Jessie was too honorable to tell. She said casually instead, "What brings you in here today, Jess?"

"I drove Kate Beecher over to the Schroeders'," Jessie replied. She wanted to tell Mae about the extraordinary thing that had happened to her, but she barely had words for it herself. Plus, it was so intensely personal, so special, that she couldn't imagine sharing the details with anyone. "She was out my way and it was getting late."

"Visiting was she?" Mae probed.

Jessie smiled, and nodded faintly. "Yes."

"How nice," Mae remarked coolly. She hoped that Kate knew what she was doing, because she was willing to bet that Jessie didn't. From the looks of her, she was too far gone already to see trouble coming.

"Well, Jess," Mae said softly, laying her hand on Jessie arm. "You know you've always got a friend here if you ever need one."

Jessie looked at her quizzically, then took Mae's fingers lightly in hers. "I'll remember, Mae."