**Thanks to the wonderfully encouraging reviews, I have decided to continue this story on instead of it being a one-shot. I hope you will continue to read and enjoy it! There will be some pretty steamy moments; our two main characters are adults who are engaged and have been separated for a long while. I will warn at the top if it is anything too crazy. Thanks for the support!**
Chapter 2
He finally had to part from her. He was breathing too fast, his heart was pumping too hard. Lord, he wanted her and he wanted her badly! He had never been quite so uncomfortable in his clothing as he was at that moment: They were tight, he was hot and he definitely was bothered. He ran his hand down her side and wondered how on earth she could still be in her corset and not pass out. It seemed as if the collective body heat from the two of them would ignite the settee at any second.
"Elizabeth, I have to go!" he told her, forcing himself away from her.
"Not yet," she mumbled, her lips traveling down his neck. He closed his eyes in ecstasy. When her lips got as far as his shirt collar, he gently grabbed her shoulders and held her at arms' length.
"Really, Lizzie, I can't take much more of this!" he begged her, surprising himself by using a name for her he had never used, but his mother had. Well, that certainly did it; nothing like channeling his mother in the heat of the moment to bring him back to reality!
"I am not kidding, Jack. I am never letting you go!" she told him, her eyes darkened by her dilated pupils. She was no where near ready to stop.
"Four years!" she continued slowing down and giving him a kiss from his ear and down the side of his neck between each individual word, feeling herself getting heady off of the faint musky odor his body was emitting. "Four long, impossibly frustrating, sometimes terrifying, years!"
"Elizabeth…," he started, but she stopped him by kissing him hard on the lips.
"My horse," he mumbled against her mouth.
"What?" she said while she looked up in surprise.
"My horse! He is still outside. Oh, Lord! I don't think I even remembered to tie him up!" he exclaimed as he jumped up off of the settee, leaving her feeling alone, cold and lonely.
He made it to the front door in record time, leaving it open as he looked around. She could tell he was worried, wondering where the horse had taken off to, when he looked down and saw that there was a note on the top step where the horse had been, held there by a rock. He picked it up and read,
Jack,
I figured you would be otherwise occupied for awhile, so I took the liberty of taking your horse to the livery. Welcome home!
-Bill
Jack sighed with gratitude and hurried back inside. "Bill's got him," he told her.
"Good!" she nodded, ready to pick up where they had left off and beyond.
"But, sweetheart, I really need to go. I don't want to, but really, I have to."
"Jack, it isn't even all that late. Please stay with me! I am not ready to let you out of my sight yet."
"I need a bath! I can barely stand myself!"
"So, take one here!"
"Elizabeth...," he warned.
"I have a washtub, towels, water, soap and a stove."
"I don't have any clean clothes!"
"That's unfortunate!" she said, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
He smiled as he shook his head. "You are impossible, you know that? I swear, you are the most tenacious, stubborn woman in the world!"
She tilted her head as she told him, "You say that like it is a bad thing!"
"No, not a bad thing," he quipped back. "It's an impossible thing. I am trying to do the right thing here, but you are not making it easy!"
"Who says it is the right thing?"
"Everyone! You know that!"
"I think we can decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong, don't you?"
He groaned in response. He was in agony.
"Will you let me go if I promise to come back?"
"No."
"No?"
"No!"
"Elizabeth, what do you want from me?"
"I don't want anything from you; I just want you!"
He closed his eyes and sighed in frustration. She was killing him. She truly had no idea the effect she was having on him and how he hard he was fighting himself from grabbing her and running up the stairs to her room.
"What if you come into town with me and stay with Abigail while I bathe and get cleaned up?"
"Perhaps," she answered, thinking that she wished he would just take her upstairs already, but never would be brazen enough to suggest it herself.
"Now we are getting somewhere!" he responded, as he extended his hand to her to help her up.
He went to get his bag, but she stopped him. "Leave it!" she told him. "I'll take care of it for you."
"Elizabeth, it is full of dirty, nasty clothes. It is pretty hard to do laundry when it is 30 below and a battle zone."
He saw the look of horror sweep across her face. "You mean you haven't washed your clothes in 10 months?"
He laughed at her expression, "Welcome to war, sweetheart. Not quite as romantic as everyone thinks!" he paused, before continuing. "But, yes, I have washed my clothes a few times in 10 months. We were lucky that some of the native women in the nearby villages were willing to wash our clothing in return for some of our supplies. It was a good trade, especially once their men were out working the trap lines. Things can get pretty lean for them sometimes in winter."
"Oh!" she said. "That was nice of them."
"I wouldn't say it was nice," he told her. "The soap they use is made with bear lard and it smells pretty hideous. I am not so sure that cleaning the clothes was ultimately that much better than us just wearing them for 10 months. I kept one shirt out of rotation the whole time until I headed home, because once I was out of there, I didn't want to smell that smell again!"
"Jack?"
"Yes?"
"You do realize that we are engaged, right?"
"Of course! I was there when I put that ring on your finger, if you remember."
"Well, don't you think that I am going to do your laundry once we are married?
"Wait! When did you start doing laundry? I remember that was the one thing my ma said about me marrying you. She asked if I knew you sent your laundry out to be washed." He chuckled at the memory of his mother's horror that someone would actually spend money to do something so basic. That, above all else, despite all of Elizabeth's fancy clothing, shoes, jewelry, hair combs and hats, had made her think that perhaps her soon-to-be daughter-in-law was a spendthrift in accordance with her elite upbringing.
"Ten months is a long time, Jack. I had a lot of opportunity to learn how to be a wife in your absence. Having Abigail teach me what I need to know was the best way I could think of to fill my time while you were away."
"Even so, I love you way too much to subject you to what lies in that bag! In fact, I love you entirely too much to have you clean any part of my uniform ever. My job can be messy and disgusting and you shouldn't have to deal with the fallout."
"I don't care," she insisted.
"Well, I do!"
"Well, I don't. It will serve as a great reason to get you out of it!" she looked up at him coyly through her lashes.
"To town! Now!" he ordered, grabbing her hand and then reaching down for his bag.
