Wild Abandon

A quiet panic seized her.

Lord. Her uncle was stranded without the buggy.

Then she looked past Paul and saw another horse and buggy approaching. Dr. Kemper was driving it, her uncle on the seat beside him. It seemed she did not have to go after her uncle after all. He had surely realized that something had happened for her not to have arrived back at the hospital as expected. The doctor had delivered him to his doorstep.

Dr. Kemper and Abner left the buggy. They stood side by side as Lauralee rushed into explanations.

Everything was quiet for a while after she was through.

Then to her relief her uncle and the doctor went and helped Dancing Cloud from the horse and up the front steps. Her uncle had given Dancing Cloud permission to stay at his house. The doctor saw no harm in Dancing Cloud completing his recuperation period there.

And even though she knew her uncle’s resentment toward Dancing Cloud over being a Rebel, and perhaps even over being an Indian, he had pushed that resentment aside in favor of pleasing Lauralee.

Lauralee went to Paul. She took the reins to the horse and buggy. As they gazed silently at each other she could feel the tension between them. It was as tight as a rope.

She started to apologize but he didn’t give her a chance. He gave her a mock salute and rode away.

Sighing, then taking a deep breath, Lauralee gathered the reins of all of the horses but Dr. Kemper’s into her hand and led them to the stables.

She looked around and heaved another sigh. James wasn’t there to ready them for the night. It was all up to her.

She stared at the horse that Dancing Cloud had stolen. She would see to it that it got returned. She didn’t want Dancing Cloud to be arrested for horse-stealing. He could tell her approximately where he had found the horse. She would tie it at a hitching rail and the owner would surely soon find it.

Lauralee lit a kerosene lamp. As she worked with the horses in the semidarkness she kept peering over her shoulder. She would never be able to feel safe. Not as long as Clint McCloud was out there somewhere, a threat to her well-being.

But at least everything else seemed on the right track again.

But she could not feel comfortable with it. She still felt like that young girl at the orphanage who loved and lost more often, than not.

Chapter 18

The angels not half so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me.

—EDGAR ALLAN POE

It was way past the midnight hour. Everything was quiet and serene in the Peterson House, yet it thrilled Lauralee to know that just down the hall from where she lay was the sound of someone else’s breathing besides her own and her uncle Abner’s.

Dancing Cloud.

He was in her bed.

She ached to be there with him. Sometime ago she had heard Uncle Abner retire to his own bedroom.

Breathless with anticipation of going to Dancing Cloud, Lauralee slipped from the bed and crept quietly to the door.

She held her breath as she slowly opened it, glad that it made no squeaking sounds that her uncle might hear. If he caught her with Dancing Cloud he would get the wrong impression. She certainly did not intend to have a sexual encounter with Dancing Cloud.

No. She just wanted to cuddle next to her beloved and whisper sweet nothings t

o him, hopefully erasing all thoughts of Paul from his mind.

Seeing no lamplight spilling beneath her uncle’s closed bedroom door, Lauralee lifted the hem of her frilly silk chemise into her arms. She tiptoed, barefooted, down the carpeted hallway, the light of the moon reflecting through the window at the end of the hall paving her way.

Her pulse racing, she stopped outside her bedroom door and wove her fingers through her hair. She had taken pains tonight with her bath. She had washed her hair with a fragranced piece of soap. Her skin smelled sweetly from the tiny perfumed bath beads that had evaporated into a silky oil through her bath water. She smiled when she smelled the sweetness of the talcum powder that she had patted across her flesh.

Lauralee inhaled a quavering breath, then slowly opened the door and peeked inside.