Twin of Ice (Montgomery/Taggert 6)

As she started to open her mouth, Kane closed it with his own. “You scream here, Ice Lady, and you’ll get us some unwanted visitors.”

Houston had no idea what he was talking about and had no intention of wasting her time finding out. Yet every few minutes, Kane would clamp down on her mouth with whatever was handy and Houston kissed whatever he placed there.

She had no idea of time or of how long they were there, because her thoughts were taken up with Kane’s body that was sometimes on top of hers, sometimes under, beside, sitting and, even once, she thought, standing. Her hair was plastered to her face with sweat, hanging down her back in wet tendrils—and everywhere she was surrounded by Kane’s skin: hot, damp, moving, delicious skin that was hers for the tasting and the touching. Her long-stored desires, her nearness to losing the man she loved, made her insatiable. They came together, then broke apart, reunited and at last came together for the last final, paralyzing thrust.

They slept for a few minutes, locked together, their skin fused.

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Kane roused after a while and pulled the end of the canvas over them and snuggled his jacket about Houston’s bare upper body. He looked at her for a moment in the moonlight, at her sleeping face, smoothed back her drying hair. “Who woulda thought that a lady like you . . . ” he whispered, before trailing off, pulling her to rest on his shoulder and lying back on the canvas.

Houston woke an hour later to Kane’s hand running up and down her body, his thumb playing with the pink tip of her breast. She smiled at him in a dreamy way.

“I got all a man can ask for,” Kane said, moving to his side. “I got a naked woman in my arms and she’s smilin’ at me.” He put his big thigh between hers. “Hey, lady, you wanta get tumbled by the stableboy?”

She rubbed her hips against his. “Only if he’s very gentle and doesn’t frighten me with his barbarian ways.”

Kane gave a grunt as his mouth followed his hand. “When a man wants somethin’, he uses a gun or a knife, but, honey, the weapons you use scare me to death.”

“You look terrified,” she said, as she took his ear lobe between her teeth.

This time they made love leisurely, taking their time, and not feeling frantic or rushed, and when they were finished, they lay still, in each other’s arms, and slept. Sometime during the night, Kane rose and unhitched the horses from the wagon. When Houston sleepily asked him what he was doing, he said, “Once a stableboy, always a stableboy,” before coming back to the canvas that was their bed.

Before the sun came up, they stirred and wakened and began to talk. Kane lay on his back, Houston draped around him, and talked about how much pleasure he’d had in seeing the children with the toys that he’d given them. “Why do some of the boys look like raccoons?”

It took Houston a while to understand what he meant. “They work in the mines and haven’t yet learned how to wash the dust out of their eyes.”

“But some of those boys were just babies, or at least not much older. They couldn’t . . . ”

“They do,” Houston answered, and they were silent for a moment. “You know something I’d like to do for all the mines instead of just one?”

“What?”

“I’d like to buy about four wagons, something like a big milk wagon, but inside would be shelves of books, and the wagons would travel to all the camps and would be a free lending library. The drivers could also be librarians or teachers, and they could help the children, and the adults, too, to choose books.”

“Why don’t we hire men to drive the wagons?” Kane asked, with a twinkle in his eye.

“Then you like the idea?”

“It sounds fine to me, and a few wagons have to be cheaper than that train I bought your mother. How’s she doin’ with that thing, anyway?”

Houston smiled at him in the growing light. “She says that you gave her the idea. She had it moved to her backyard and now she uses it for her own personal retreat. I hear that Mr. Gates was so angry that he could barely speak.”

As the sun lightened the sky, Kane said they should return home before the morning traffic started. All the way home, Houston sat close to him and, several times, he stopped and kissed her. Houston told herself that the Fentons didn’t matter and that she would love Kane no matter what he did to take his revenge.

At home, they took a bath in Houston’s big, gold-fixtured tub and ended with more water on the tile floor than inside the tub. But Kane absorbed most of it when he covered the floor with twenty-one thick white Turkish towels, then laid Houston on the floor and made love to her. Houston’s maid, Susan, nearly walked into the room, but Kane slammed the door in her face and they laughed together as they heard the girl run across the hardwood floor of Houston’s bedroom.

Afterward, they went downstairs to the biggest breakfast two people ever ate. Mrs. Murchison came out of the kitchen and personally attended them, grinning and smiling and obviously pleased that Kane and Houston were reconciled.

“Babies,” she said, on her way out the door. “This house needs babies.”

Kane nearly choked on his coffee as he looked at Houston with terror on his face. She refused to look at him but smiled into her own cup.

Just as Mrs. Murchison reentered the room bearing a platter of pan-fried beefsteaks dripping brown gravy, they heard the rumble. It felt as if it came rolling under their feet, something deep and dark and evil. The glasses on the table rattled and, from upstairs, they could hear the sound of breaking glass.

With a scream, Mrs. Murchison dropped the platter.

“What the hell was that?” Kane asked. “An earthquake?”