Suddenly everything stopped. The point of his chin on her breastbone pinned her to the ground as she focused with bewilderment on eyes unquestionably gold in the sun.

"Maybe I'm too tired."

"You wretch!" A hard push on his shoulders, and Cord let her roll him right over. She kissed him as he had her, but he was not as pa.s.sive, his fingers tracing patterns along her spine as she kissed him.

He stilled as she tasted her way from the hard flat nipples along each rib down to the beginning of the seam-like line of hair. Her cheek rested there, as she traced light teasing circles on the lean belly, down corded thighs, returning to stroke the velvety skin of his now rigid shaft. She heard a half-smothered groan, then his hands clasped her around the waist, and she was astonished to find herself astride him, impaled.

Gazing down she was captivated by this view of her husband. Eyes half closed, features softened and blurred with pa.s.sion, emotions were for once easy to read on his face. She moved slightly and saw his pleasure.

Concentrating totally on the effect she was having, she began a slow rolling rhythm, almost intoxicated with her own power. So engrossed in his reactions was she that a spasm coursing through her own body, causing an arching break in the easy cadence, brought a gasp, half from the intensity of the sensation, half from surprise.

He roused then from quiescent acceptance, pulling her down tight against him, reversing their positions, driving into her. She heard her name, low and throaty, then a sound that seemed torn from him.

No familiar skimming waves of pleasure came; instead her body was shattered with an inward explosion that fused them. As if from a great distance she heard a woman's drawn out cry. Surely that could not be her.

The emotional cataclysm left her shaken and uncertain until her eyes locked on Cord's. The words were there for her to read, reflected in his eyes, written on his face, and she could feel them pounding through her with each heartbeat.

She touched his face and whispered, "I love you." He did not pull away, but said nothing. When he closed his eyes and pulled her against his chest, she knew he would not speak the words, but would not deny them either. It was enough for now.

They finished work in daylight for the first time, and it was only full dark as Anne began preparing dinner. Usually Cord was beside her, helping, but tonight he sat at the table, fiddling with a bit of harness, avoiding her eyes, as he had all evening. When he spoke, his words were unexpected.

"How do you feel about my mother, about the Indian blood?"

Anne busied herself checking the food on the stove, trying to think of an answer that would be honest but not too revealing.

"Never mind. Guess I don't really want to hear it."

The bitterness of his tone jolted Anne out of her reverie as she realized what her delay had led him to conclude. "Oh, no, that's not it - it's just that the truth sounds so selfish. I don't want...." She was trapped now. He wasn't going to let her tell less than the whole truth.

"Tell me."

"I'm glad of it. I know it's always made your life harder. That's what so selfish of me, but if it weren't such a...," she searched for the right words, "social handicap, you'd have been married years ago to somebody like Rachel, and you wouldn't have been here when I needed you. Not just today - I mean, even at the beginning - I didn't want you to be hurt so or have your life changed like that, but I can't even wish in my heart it didn't happen because if it hadn't I'd be - I don't know even - maybe living in h.e.l.l, or maybe really dead.

I thought about killing myself once, you know, but I didn't want to be dead. I just didn't want to be married to George Detrick."

Cord totally ignored the part Anne found so excruciatingly embarra.s.sing. "Why would I marry somebody like Rachel?"

"Men always choose women like Rachel. She's pet.i.te and feminine and soft and round."

"Annie, do you see me riding docile fat ponies?"

She giggled at both images his words brought to her mind. "Well, if you'd been able to choose, you would have, and you wouldn't have been unmarried at twenty-eight."

"If I'd gotten to choose, I might have been married to you at twenty, but you probably wouldn't have been too receptive to the idea."

Her heart began to thud again. "That's nice to say, but it's not really...."

"Yes, it is. You were the first girl I ever really l.u.s.ted over, you know. I mean not just a boy's desire to do things to a woman, any woman, but a particular desire to do certain things to a certain woman."

"You're saying that to make me feel good."

"You remember the day I knocked you off your feet - with the packages?"

She nodded.

"Before I recognized you I was waiting for the screaming and trouble, but when I saw it was you, I started to notice the shape of your legs and the way the lace on your underclothes looked so much better than the stuff on my sisters'. And how good you looked laying on your back looking up at me."

"You mean I was impressed with how polite you were, and that's what you were thinking?"

"You should be more impressed with how polite I was now you know what I was thinking." There was a wicked grin in his eyes now. "But I never had the same effect on you, did I?"

"No, but n.o.body did. I never knew women had feelings like that until the first time you kissed me."

"Come on, you were going to marry that Richard person."

"If I'd married Richard, we could have been married fifty years, and I'd still never have known women had feelings like that. He did kiss me, you know. So did a few others. It was just - lips. I was so insulted because you were surprised I hadn't - been with him that way. I couldn't understand, but I did later. Four years - if I'd been engaged to you my virtue might have lasted four days, but never four weeks." She grinned at him. "One kiss, and I'd have been lost."

"Wouldn't have helped much that I'd have spent every waking hour plotting ways to besmirch you."

"But in the beginning, when we were first married, you didn't even - I mean - but you didn't."

"I thought you wouldn't like it. I thought you wouldn't like it a lot."

"Oh. I thought I wasn't supposed to like it. I thought there was something the matter with me because I didn't dislike it the way I was supposed to." She laughed out loud. "I'm sure glad we both got older and wiser."

She actually saw one corner of his mouth curl upwards. "Mm. Me too."

Later that night his voice pulled her back from the edge of sleep. "I've been thinking."

"Umm."

"Tomorrow I've got to fix the thatch on those hay stacks against the rain and catch up on some other things, and I guess you do too. How about after that we take a some time to ourselves and do whatever we feel like? Seems we worked hard enough we're ent.i.tled."

It was a grand idea, and she told him so.

CHAPTER 33.

ANNE THOUGHT OF EACH ONE of their ten days off as a separate gold and blue treasure. Sometimes a slight breeze stirred the trees and gra.s.s, but it never became a full force wind. The temperature was neither too hot nor too cold, and only an occasional fat, fluffy, white cloud scudded across clear skies of the deepest blue.

Cord showed her all of the Bennett Ranch. They looked over the big house from a distance, but avoided other people. They played games on horseback, swam and bathed in the creek, lazed over picnic lunches, and made love in one secluded spot after another.

They came together with smoldering intensity and with teasing laughter, each time different, each time glorious.

She loved him openly and without reservation. She knew he would never be so open, but little by little the impa.s.sive mask slipped for longer and longer. Laughter might still only be in his eyes, but traces of expression began to animate his face.

The terrifying, b.l.o.o.d.y day of their marriage was less than a year ago. If they had come so far in this time, Anne believed she would in the end hear the words she, like all women, longed to hear, but if he never spoke of it, she would be content with this. He loved her, and she knew it, and he was capable of such tenderness it left her trembling, overwhelmed by her own love for him.

When the morning of the eleventh day dawned unseasonably cold with intermittent drizzle, they reluctantly returned to the demands of everyday life.

Between the showers, Anne cleaned all the overripe, rotting and tough fruit and vegetables from the garden. The pigs would feast for days. She began harvesting the last of the ripe produce for preserving, and tucked vegetables like squash away in the root cellar. Even with the weeks of neglect, there should be more than enough of the garden's bounty to provide for a varied diet through the winter.

Cord spent the day bringing in the two-year-olds to start working and checking fence, but when the weather persisted dreary and cold on the next day, started helping with mounds of fruit and vegetables in the kitchen.

Shortly before noon Foxface sounded a warning and Frank, Luke, and Pete rode into the yard. Soon the pegs by the door were covered with slickers and big blond men seemed to fill the kitchen.

Anne knew that Cord hadn't said more than h.e.l.lo and goodbye to his brother since the morning after the race, and he barely looked up for a greeting now. She wasn't any happier to see Frank, but she was growing fond of Luke and Pete. So she gave all three of them a warm welcome.

She couldn't get any of them to sit down until they brought the rocking chair into the kitchen and she perched on it for a few seconds, but then she hopped up and went back to what she had been doing, although she chatted with the visitors over her shoulder.

Frank explained the visit.

"Your mother knew you wouldn't be in town during haying, but it's been almost six weeks now. She's worried, and I promised her I'd stop by and check on you. The boys are going to town tomorrow for supplies, so they'll let her know you're all right."

"Pete and I stopped by a couple of times, but n.o.body was here." Luke obviously didn't want anyone thinking things had gotten to the official inquiry stage without an effort on his part.

Anne turned slightly and smiled at them, hands busy. "The haying took almost four weeks is all, and then we took some time to ourselves. We'll be in next Sunday - if it isn't still so miserable out."

"We'll make sure your mother gets word," promised Pete.

Cord saw no reason to be sociable with his brother, and the way Frank and the boys were staring at his hands as he cut the vegetables wasn't softening his att.i.tude. The kitchen table was piled high with green beans, and he was cutting them to the length Anne wanted. He ignored his nephews and his brother and kept the knife flashing. As fast as Anne filled a group of preserving jars, he had another pile of beans ready for her to scoop up and start again. The uncut pile diminished steadily.

Without raising his head, Cord watched Frank watching. He wondered what Frank would come up with to explain the sight of a knife in his hands and no dead men in evidence.

Tearing his gaze from the table, Frank addressed Anne again. "Sure smells good in here. That can't be beans."

"No, before any peaches went into jars, I filled a pie with them." Anne pointed to the jars of peaches on the floor. "If you'd like to stay for lunch, it's almost done and should be cool enough for dessert."

Luke and Pete accepted with enthusiasm, leaving Frank tight-lipped with displeasure.

He turned to Cord. "How come you stacked hay outside this year?"

Cord wasn't any more pleased about the accepted lunch invitation than Frank was.

"Barns are full."

"Full of what?"

"Hay."

"How the h.e.l.l did you manage that by yourself?"

"Didn't. Anne helped."

It was common enough for wives of small farmers and ranchers to help with anything they could. It just was not common for Bennett women. Cord waited for Frank to make a critical remark. With any luck Anne would lose her temper and run the lot of them out of the house. But Frank paused and gave Anne a considering look.

As Cord finished with the last of the beans, Luke and Pete began regaling Anne with stories of their exploits on the range and in town and asking her opinion of one girl after another they fancied or thought they might. Frank was studying Anne covertly over the rim of his coffee cup. The dismal gray day made the light poor in the kitchen, but Anne glowed with her own inner light. Frank Bennett knew better than most men what made a woman look like that, but there was only a puzzled frown on his face.

Still, Frank looked back at Cord and made an effort. "You must be low on supplies.

You want the boys to pick you up anything in town? There'll be room in the wagon."

Cord's irritation with his brother was fading to amus.e.m.e.nt almost against his will. He said, "Annie?"

"That would be nice. I used almost the last of the flour in the pie crust."

Over lunch Cord joined the conversation to some extent. When everyone was replete after sandwiches and pie, he wordlessly fished a cigar out of Frank's breast pocket. Frank finally relaxed then too. "Why the h.e.l.l don't you buy your own?"

"Filthy habit, hate to start." Cord lit the little black cigar and leaned back. It was a comforting routine that went back over a decade. It wasn't a peace treaty, but it was a truce, and it was a start.

CHAPTER 34.

BY EARLY OCTOBER ANNE HAD been keeping a secret from Cord for almost a month.

She just wanted to be absolutely sure she told herself. After all it wasn't supposed to happen. In a tiny corner of her mind, however, she knew she was afraid of his reaction.

She kept remembering what he had said about feeling trapped when Rosa had conceived his child when he was in Texas. Finally, curled on his shoulder one night after particularly sweet lovemaking, she summoned her courage and said the words.

"Cord?"

"Mm."

"We're going to have a baby."

His shoulder turned from a warm pillow to a hard rock in the s.p.a.ce of those words.

Her heart leapt to her mouth.

"You heard what Craig said, Annie. It can't be. You're imagining something."

"I have every sign I've ever heard women talk about."

"Like what?"