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She arrived with forty pounds of luggage and an entirely new steamer trunk overstuffed with fans, vases, china dolls and various sweetmeats. It took her hours to set out the various trinkets and toys she’d brought across the great sea with her, and then take an ice-cold bath in a tub half-filled with milk preparation. She had her hairdresser set her hair and did her own make-up before stepping into her traveling coat – something she could straddle in, riding side-saddle was not an option.
Brisco came by just after five to escort her out for dinner, with a very large bouquet of Gerber daises. He actually took off his hat and rested it upon the bed, which was enough to draw a raised eyebrow out of Dix.
“I thought we were going out?”
He gave her a small grin and sat gingerly on the edge of his bed. “I was thinking of ordering in,” he admitted.
“I have to admit that sounds tempting,” she agreed. “Just a nice cozy fire, a big ol’ bottle of French wine and you…and ONLY you,” Dixie smirked.
“Who else?” he teased. “Unless you’re smuggling somebody in that frilly thing…” He eyed her décolletage playfully.
She shoved at his arm, and then shook her head. “You never know when Comet might learn how to climb up the back stairs.”
“That was one time,” he said. “And it was my fault for leaving an apple in my back pocket.”
She smiled. “He’s not the only one who’d rather hang on you.” With a sigh, she reached up to stroke his cheek. Brisco, as always, was bristly to the touch, but smiling down at her winningly.
“You look amazing,” he said, all schoolboy innocence. She remembered how different he could be when he wasn’t in a courting mood and smirked to herself. Did he ever see it himself, the difference between how he’d been then and the way he was now? She recalled the man he’d been in the beginning, all sexual taunting and condescension, lowering himself to sleeping with her because she had information he coveted. The actual act of sex between them had changed it all, made her different to him, somehow vulnerable.
He was touching her now. Dixie thanked her lucky stars that her hair had held up through the heat; he’s playing with her curls, and not the set she wishes to have fondled, and touching her face. Without further thought, she reached up and started removing clothing.
The reddish marks were the first thing she noticed, and immediately her fingers curled in protective pain against her mottled palms. “What did they do to you?” she coos.
Immediately he tells her about the treason charges, how he was nearly hanged (again), how he and Bowler had been forced to escape from certain doom.
And now he was working for the government – in a real job. She was proud, if not a bit wary.
But the important thing – the most important one – was that they had one another. “Isn’t it good to be home?” she asked him again, kissing his neck, the band of red about it, and the tip of his lips. Meaning: wasn’t it amazing to be home and safe at last, the ocean crossed, the journey at an end, but the adventure just was beginning?
THE END