Texas Trio Ch. 01-03

She barely had a moment to draw breath, never mind time to scream, before he put his hand over her mouth. He hadn't been rough, by any means; she could have merely turned her head and hollered, he was touching her so gently, but Catherine had been too terrified to move in that first instant, giving the burglar an opportunity to speak.

She didn't know what surprised her more, the burglar's words, the fact that she hadn't screamed, or the blue of his eyes.

At least she thought they were blue. She'd seen little of him, silhouetted as he was against the dying flames. When he glanced toward the door, though, firelight caught his irises from the side and she swore there'd been a flash of deep cobalt blue. She'd never seen eyes that color before. Not that she'd seen much of them last night, either, with the black silk scarf covering almost everything from his hairline to the tip of his nose.

Uncharacteristically quiet while Nanny undressed her, Cat let the older woman's commentary roll over her unimpeded, paying little attention until she heard the word "marriage".

"....and what that man is doin', offerin' you up like that, is shameful. Miz Harrison woulda never put up with his talkin' bout you girls in public that way. She woulda smacked him into next Monday for even hinting you need a husband. Missus Simmons upstairs maid said no one told Miz Clara or her momma yet, but that's coming, too. I don't know what's got into that uncle of yours-- "

Catherine summoned the breath to cut her off and change the topic, too. "Well, whatever Uncle Harry said to the men at his club, Mr. Lloyd Severn, Mr. Saul Francis, and two or three other gentlemen seemed rather taken with the idea of marrying me."

"And well they oughtn't. You're the finest young lady at those parties. You ain't flashy lookin' like some 'a them girls you know, and Lord knows no one can match up to Miss Becky, but you got your momma's looks and she had the kind of face that ages into beauty. Just like you. Plus you're smart and honest. Mosta those gents should be asking whether they good enough for you, Miz Cat."

And so on and so on.... Nanny would talk your ear off enumerating the charms of "her girls", especially when she was stirred up, like tonight. Catherine merely murmured assent until Nanny tucked her in, extinguishing the lamps as she left Cat's suite.

Cat lay awake, her mind torn between the mystery of the handsome burglar and the misery of her uncle's demands.

She mulled over the gentlemen she'd danced with at the party, searching for a spark of promise, but none were any more compelling than they'd been a year ago. And it wasn't that she hadn't tried.

When Aunt Frannie flatly refused to consider allowing her niece to attend college, where she would no doubt sully the purity of her feminine mind, Catherine had resigned herself to a more traditional path, but she'd been holding out hope that she'd find a husband who could stimulate her mind as well as make her heart go pita-pat, as Nanny said. Unsympathetic though she'd been to Cat's desire to further her education, Frannie hadn't pushed the marriage issue, and Catherine went on as before: reading everything she could lay her hands on while she contemplated her prospects for the future.

While there were quite a few eligible bachelors in her social set-- several of them kind and even personable-- none of them were any more likely than the others to want a wife with brains. At one time or another, she'd tried talking to all of them, mentioning the interesting discoveries she'd read about in periodicals from London and New York. She'd learned that Mr. Lloyd Severn, the most-pursued man in Galveston, was also one of the most narrow minded when it came to appropriate subjects for a woman's contemplation. Mr. Saul Francis, the fair-haired scion of a Massachusetts family, was remarkably intelligent, but when Catherine discovered they'd read two of the same articles theorizing that insects carried disease, Saul laughed it off, suggesting she save her eyes for embroidery. Mr. Frank Taylor, who'd made his fortune inventing fantastic devices, couldn't quite imagine listening to any woman talk. And so on and so on and so on.

Cat had no idea what she was going to do. The situation was dire and inescapable. Even if she and Becky had other relations, Catherine could only gain access to her inheritance through Uncle Harry or her future husband. In order to care for Nanny and Becky, she'd be forced to wed, and Catherine was terrified of choosing poorly. She'd seen enough loveless marriages and heard enough servants' talk to know that what a man said in a ballroom and how he acted at home were two different things.

How Uncle Harry expected her to find a husband in two weeks was beyond her, but he clearly wasn't toying with her. Unlike Aunt Frannie, Uncle Harry had been hinting since she turned fifteen that she should start looking for a mate, becoming progressively more insistent during the last few months of her aunt's life. Since the funeral, he'd made it clear that no further delays would be tolerated. Catherine would find a husband or accept one of the "gentlemen" he'd been throwing at her, and he was deadly serious about the deal.

Her hand crept up to cradle the heat in her cheek, which was mild in comparison to some of the pain she'd felt over the past six weeks.

She'd never been struck at all until after her Aunt Frannie died, but Harrison's harsh slaps had become more frequent over the past month, in concert with his escalating anger over her unmarried status. He'd introduced her to a long line of unsavory friends from his club, and his fury grew with each of Catherine's rejections, until the night Monsieur Louis joined them for dinner. All through the meal, the rude man had disregarded their lavish surroundings in favor of staring at the upper slope of Catherine's bosom, exposed by her low-cut satin gown. Her chilly attitude and firm refusal of her elderly suitor's invitations enraged her uncle. By the time they arrived home, Harry was completely livid, ranting about the expense of keeping her and her sister. Catherine's innocent question about the stipend her parents provided was what pushed him over the top. He'd slapped her half a dozen times that night, lecturing her about rising costs and the stupidity of women in general. She'd been cowering by the time he stormed off to his rooms.

Hissing Cajun curses, Nanny had iced her split lip right away, but Catherine still hadn't been able to leave the house for three days following the incident.

Last night, he'd promised to arrange a marriage with Monsieur Louis if she couldn't find a groom on her own, gripping her wrist so tightly she thought it would snap and repeating the same vile threat he'd used to get her to the ball last night.

After weeks of silently pledging to be more cautious, Catherine had instead answered flippantly that she'd never utter vows to that horrible man, and Uncle Harrison had slapped her harder than ever before. Catherine wasn't given to tears and hadn't shed a single one since the first time he struck her, but last night she'd been overcome. With no one to turn to for assistance or advice, she'd cried herself to sleep, only to be woken by a burglar.

Alone in bed, she remembered the way his touch made her skin tingle. The contrast between her uncle's poorly constrained violence and the gentle fingers of the criminal gave her chills, too, but there was something else....

Cat shifted restlessly beneath the covers.

Even if the man hadn't touched her, Cat suspected the sparkles of sensation inching their way around her body would have been the same. Something dangerous had filled the air between them, dancing in the firelight like unseen lightning, and she'd felt a ridiculous urge to nip the side of his hand, just lightly, as he lifted it from her mouth.

The memory sent Catherine's own hands roaming under her nightgown. She knew it was wrong, and she knew Nanny wouldn't approve, but sometimes this desperate yearning overcame her and she thought she'd die just to feel a man's hands on her. But she was as alone as she'd been since her parents' death, unmarried despite her uncle's most enthusiastic efforts.

Catherine shivered as her palm ran across the soft curve of her belly, and one slender finger crept lower, dipping into the moisture there to slick it over the little nub of flesh, aching so divinely above. She ran a finger down either side, drawing them up ever so slowly. She loved the delicious friction it created. Sometimes she did that for five or ten minutes, until she thought she'd cry if something didn't happen, but nothing ever did. She ended up with a stomach-ache was what happened, and was cranky from dusk to dawn the following day. Nanny had never mentioned anyone feeling anything like that, and Cat certainly couldn't ask-- Nanny would kill her if she found out.

Though how she'd have the nerve to criticize me! After all the things she's been telling me these past three years!

Nanny had a notion that girls were better off knowing what they were in for on their marriage bed, so she'd been giving Cat pieces here and there since she turned sixteen. She might not have learned everything a man and woman could do together, but she had a pretty good idea about most of it, she thought. Way more than any well-bred girl of her age and social status had any business knowing, that was certain.

"He'll want you real bad right before and fall asleep right after, so if you got a husband who's stingy with his coin, you ask nice before, or get you up and steal some after."

"No matter what no man tell you, you ain't gotta touch his thing 'less you married to him, and even then you ain't got to. All you got to do is lay there and let him put it in you. Don't go believin' you got to kiss his thing to make babies. That thing don't need any kissing to get its job done."

Catherine gave up, sighing heavily and jerking her nightgown into place. She'd never seen a man's "thing" before, she'd heard the grooms in the barn call it other words when a stallion had his out, nosing after a mare. They didn't know she was listening, of course, and Cat didn't know if it was called a "sticker", a "cock", or "Sir Thomas" if it was on a man instead of a horse, though.

That horse's thing was terrible to see. Nanny told her not to get a husband with a big thing and Catherine certainly hoped it wasn't anywhere near the size of that stallion's thing. She'd never had anything inside of her except an inch at the end of her own finger. And the one time she did that, she got scared and pulled it out right away.

Catherine rolled onto her side, sighing again. She wondered what it would feel like to have a man inside her like that, maybe that man downstairs tonight. She liked the way his hand felt on her mouth. She wondered how it would feel in other places, how his body would feel to her hands, if he'd be smooth and satiny like she was or rough like his jaw looked. She fell asleep thinking about those blue, blue eyes and his fingers on her lips. ->->->->->->--<<O>>--<-<-<-<-<-<-

If you've enjoyed Texas Trio and my other stories and would like to read more, please consider writing a review. Check out my bio for more information, or email me if you'd like a free copy of my favorite story, "The Wolf and the Irish Woman." Thank you again for the hearts, stars, & comments, and I'll see you in 2 weeks for the next installment! Love-- Stefanie Olsen