Seven Brides - Fern Part 44

"I'm going to finish what I started eight years ago."

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Belton licked his lips, then pulled them back from his teeth like a wolf about to savage its prey. "After that I'm afraid you'll have to join your cousin."

She could see the tightness around his eyes as he struggled to keep himself under control. He smiled, but it was the smile of a rabid coyote before it strikes. Fern felt cold fear in her belly, but she refused to allow it to overpower her wits. She had been a fighter all her life.

He left the window and approached the bed. Fern almost panicked when she saw the bulge in his pants. He had tied her spread-eagled to the bed. She couldn't even twist away from him.

"You could have bowled me over when I saw you the other night. I had no idea what you were hiding under that vest all these years." He stood next to the bed staring straight at her chest.

Fern wondered if Madison and his brothers had gotten back from Topeka. Certainly they would head for the farm the minute William Henry told them where his mother had gone. They would find Rose. She would be safe, but Madison wouldn't know where to find her. She was on her own.

"Why did you hide yourself?"

"I hid from people like you," Fern answered.

"Then you never should have worn that dress."

Fern didn't trust the gleam in his eye. But even as she made up her mind that she wouldn't let him rape her, that he would not defile an act which Madison had made so beautiful, she realized it was more important that she come out of this alive.

The man might be crazy. If so, the wrong word or movement could cause him to kill her right now.

In a sudden move, Belton's open hand flew toward Fern's breast. Involuntarily her body became rigid. His hand stopped just short of touching her. He smiled cruelly, taunting her, enjoying his kind of torture.

Fern expected waves of suffocating fear to wrap her in its coils, but hatred of his touch no longer had the power to paralyze her. She felt nothing but fury that this man should think he had the right to use her body against her will.

She felt his fingers brush her as they moved from one b.u.t.ton to the other. She fought the rigidity that stiffened her muscles. His gaze bore into her as he chose a b.u.t.ton and undid it. She refused to blink, to back down, to allow even a trace of fear to flicker across her face.

With agonizing slowness, his hand moved among the b.u.t.tons once more, pausing, choosing, then moving on. He was deliberately trying to destroy her self-control. But she was no, helpless teenager now. She was a woman, and more than a match for him. Fern waited.

With a swiftness that caught her completely by surprise, Belton grabbed the yoke of her chemise and ripped it open to the waist. The sound of popping b.u.t.tons and rending cloth covered her gasp of shock, but she was certain he could see the fear in her eyes.

It took all her willpower not to cry out.

A s.a.d.i.s.tic smile played across Belton's mouth as his fingers snaked their way across the torn material, brushed her breast.

Belton sat down on the edge of the bed. He didn't move his hand.

The breath caught in Fern's throat.

"Ever since that night I've been thinking about touching you again," Belton murmured, his eyes on her chest.

His expression frightened Fern. She had seen anger and rage many times, but she couldn't be certain she wasn't seeing madness as well.

Abruptly his hand closed on her breast. He squeezed until the pain brought tears to her eyes. "Your skin is so white."

Through the waves of pain, Fern heard a faint sound coming from outside the soddy. Hoofbeats. Someone was coming at a gallop. Please, G.o.d, let it be Madison. She knew she had to distract Belton. Maybe his head was so full of his crazy thoughts he couldn't hear the rapidly approaching horse, but Fern wasn't willing to take a chance. Swallowing several times, she was finally able to rasp out a few words.

"Why did you try to rape me?" she asked.

At first Fern thought Belton wasn't going to answer her. His grip on her breast loosened; he seemed to be slipping into a world of his own.

"Your skin was so white," he murmured finally. "Why were you at the Connor place that night?" she asked, afraid that if he stopped talking he would hear the hoofbeats coming closer and closer.

Belton's hand moved from her breast to caress her shoulder. "I knew you had to come home that way. I waited for you. Just like I did today."

"But you didn't know me. You'd never seen me before."

His hand moved down her side and across her abdomen. It took all of Fern's self-control to keep from shivering in disgust.

"I saw you in town, parading about in your pants like no decent woman would do. And I saw all those men panting after you. They were afraid to do more than look, but I wasn't. All I had to do was say I was looking to buy some cattle, and they told me anything I wanted to know. Including where you pastured your herd."

The hoofbeats rang like thunder in Fern's head. Just a minute longer. Even a few seconds.

"You didn't know me. You couldn't like me. How could you"

"Your skin was so white," Belton crooned, slipping further into a world of his own.

Belton remained so caught up in caressing Fern's skin that he didn't hear Madison until he plunged through the doorway.

Madison struck Belton a vicious blow from behind, but he didn't go down. Screaming like a wild animal, he turned to attack Madison, his fingers curved like talons. Tangled together like two snarling beasts, they lurched around the soddy, crashing into the few pieces of furniture, until they fell through the doorway. In the greater s.p.a.ce, Madison was able to use his boxing skills and quickly reduced Belton to staggering helplessness. One last blow sent him crashing to the ground. "Are you all right?" Madison asked when he reached Fern's side. He began untying the ropes that bound her to the bed. "Did he hurt you?"

"No. I made him so angry he forgot he intended to rape me."

Madison finished untying Fern, and she threw herself into his arms.

"He wanted me because he thought I was pure, untouched. When I told him we had made love, he went crazy."

"He was already crazy," Madison said, holding Fern close.

"One good thing came out of this," Fern said once she was nestled securely in Madison's arms. "I got so furious I wanted to kill him. I wasn't afraid of him at all."

"I'm glad, but"

"Madison!" Fern screamed as she jumped to her feet and pushed Madison as hard as she could. Belton stood in the yard, his gun drawn, pointing at Madison.

Wrapping his arm around Fern, Madison threw them both into the safety of the shadows. But it wasn't completely dark, and Belton charged toward the doorway, gun drawn.

Madison cursed himself for a fool. In his anxiety to reach Fern, he had failed to tie Belton up and he had laid down his rifle. His years in Boston had caused him to lose most of the survival instincts he had developed in Texas.

"Stay against the wall," Madison whispered to Fern. "I'm going to get the rifle."

"He's just outside the door. He'll see you."

"It's our only chance. He'll kill us like fish in a pond if I don't."

Gathering his muscles, Madison lunged across the s.p.a.ce. Guns barked and bullets buried themselves in the walls of the soddy, but Madison reached the rifle. His finger had just closed on the trigger when Belton charged through the doorway, gun blazing. Belton tossed aside an empty gun, drew another from his belt, and turned toward the corner where Fern was hidden.

Madison felt a searing pain in his side. He had been hit, but he had to stop Belton. Even now his gun was pointed at Fern. Bringing his rifle level, he fired into the silhouette in the doorway.

The concussion of the rifle shot nearly deafened him.

The gun dropped from Belton's hand and an expression of incredible agony turned his face into a twisted, horrible mask. Both hands gripped his crotch and Belton staggered backward, screaming over and over again. Stumbling, he fell and lay writhing on the ground; blood stained his pants between his legs.

Keeping a grip on his rifle, Madison helped Fern up. "It's over," he said. "He won't bother you again."

They stepped out into the lengthening shadows of the afternoon. Not fifty feet away Hen sat his horse, an unused gun in his hand.

"Mighty sloppy shooting, brother. What the h.e.l.l were you aiming for?" he demanded, pointing to Belton's b.l.o.o.d.y crotch.

"He caught me by surprise," Madison explained. "I guess my aim was off."

"I'm glad you were better eight years ago," Hen said matter-of-factly. "It's probably just as well, though. He'll live to stand his trial, but he won't be bothering any more women."

Fern felt something wet, warm, and sticky oozing between her fingers. She looked down to find her hand covered with blood. ''You're hurt," she cried, turning Madison so she could get a better look. She felt terribly guilty. This was the second time she'd caused him to be shot.

Madison grimaced as he twisted so he could look down at his side. "I'm either going to have to head back to Boston on the next train, or learn to shoot again."

"Boston," Fern said quite positively. "I'm not going to have you shot again."

Chapter Thirty.

"Stand still," Rose scolded. "You can't get married with your dress half b.u.t.toned."

Fern studied herself in the mirror. She was wearing the second of the dresses Madison had bought her, and she didn't like what she saw. "I can't marry Madison in an everyday dress. I bet Samantha would have ordered her dress straight from one of those fancy foreign places Madison is always talking about."

Fern couldn't entirely keep her mind off the fact that Samantha and Freddy Bruce had returned to Abilene for her wedding. She knew people would make comparisons. Try as she might, she couldn't help but worry that Madison would, too.

Not that she worried he would change his mind. Despite a wound that made it very painful for him to get around, he had been positively foolish over her these last several days. Even George had commented on it. She didn't want to remember what Jeff had said. She could easily understand why people didn't always like Jeff very much.

She wasn't even sure that Madison remembered Samantha was here. He hadn't had a thought for anyone but Fern. She had tried to understand it. She'd spent hours cataloging her attributes, positive and negative, and she couldn't figure out why Madison should be so crazy about her. She finally decided there was no reason. He just did, and she would have to accept it.

So she had, and she'd never felt so happy in her life.

"Madison isn't marrying Samantha," Rose said patiently. She had been calming Fern's fears all morning. "And I'm sure he won't care what you're wearing." Rose finished the b.u.t.tons up the back.

"That yellow dress would have been just perfect," Mrs. Abbott moaned, "but there was a rip right through the bodice. I couldn't do a thing with it."

Mrs. Abbott hadn't ceased to bemoan Fern's destruction of the dress she'd worn to Mrs. McCoy's party.

"I should have gone to Kansas City," Fern said. "Maybe even St. Louis. I knew there was nothing in Abilene I could wear." She had bought six dresses and decided against all of them in favor of the one Madison had bought.

"Stop worrying," Rose said, giving Fern a kiss on the cheek. "You look lovely."

"I'd have ordered a dress from Chicago if my catalogs hadn't been blown away."

"Madison would probably marry you in your pants and sheepskin vest if necessary."

"He wouldn't!" Mrs. Abbott exclaimed, horrified.

"You think so?" Fern asked hopefully.

"You've spent years hating dresses, but here you are wishing you could go shopping in half the cities of the world just to please him. Don't you think he could put up with your pants for the same reason?"

A blissful smile transformed Fern's features.

"I guess you're right. He doesn't seem to mind a thing I do."

Rose made a last-minute check on her own dress, and turned back to Fern.

"You're going to have to have more confidence in yourself."

"That's what Madison keeps saying, but it's hard. Everything feels so different, it's hard to get used to."

Rose smiled. "I'm sure it is, but you'll have a wonderful time learning."

Fern paused at the threshold of the tiny church. Madison had had a piano brought over from the Old Fruit Saloon and the pianist was regaling the audience with a selection of Stephen Foster's most romantic tunes. She doubted that "Beautiful Dreamer" was the most suitable tune for a wedding, but it exactly reflected her mood. She was living her dream, the most beautiful dream any woman could have.

At the front of the church, Madison stood waiting for her, George at his side. Just like when she'd first seen them. Hen and Jeff were there, too. The boys from Texas had been invited, but they hadn't made it in time.

"See you in a minute," Rose whispered, then started down the aisle to the front of the church. The babies were two weeks old, and Rose was her pet.i.te, trim self again.

As Fern waited for Rose to reach the altar, her gaze narrowed until she saw no one but Madison. No one else mattered today. Or tomorrow. Not ever. He was the center and the outer limits of her universe. She still found it difficult to believe she was standing in a church, mere seconds away from starting down the aisle to be married to the man who waited for her.

But it was even harder to believe it was Madison who waited.

"It's time to go," Mrs. Abbott whispered. "Now make sure you walk slow. It'll give everybody a chance to see how pretty you look."

But Fern didn't care about everybody. Only Madison. And as she started forward, it was all she could do to keep from running to him.

"p.i.s.s and vinegar!" she muttered. "I'm crying."

At the reception in the churchyard, Fern thought she had never spoken to so many people in her life. They couldn't have all been in the church. It wasn't big enough. Marshal Hickok must have emptied every saloon on Texas Street. She'd have sworn she'd shaken hands with every cowhand in the state of Texas.

"Where are you going on your honeymoon?" Hen asked.