Blood and Iron Ch. 02

"Trifle harsh, wasn't it?" James observed quietly after a moment.

"What?" Alice seemed genuinely surprised at the question. "Hell, that's just what you was talkin' about. Treatin' me different, on account I'm...I mean, damn sure he wouldn't've come up like that and asked you to dance."

His eyebrow lifted curiously, even as he chuckled. "Well, no, I reckon not...but that don't mean it's no kind of insult, him askin' you. Fine young lady had come up like that and offered me a dance, I quite expect I'd have agreed."

"That..." She frowned. "It ain't the same thing."

"Sure it is," he affirmed sincerely. "Hell, Alice, everybody dances. Does a man good to get some music in his step - a woman, too. It's a friendly thing. Your own ma and me, you know, we first met when I asked her if she'd like to dance."

"Oh, yeah?" Alice shot back, "And I wager she's real happy she agreed, ain't she?"

She regretted the words as soon as they'd crossed her lips. Silence falling like the blade of a knife as James' expression flattened once again into a dull and distant weariness, the warmth of his gaze extinguished as suddenly and thoroughly as a doused campfire.

"I'm sorry," she volunteered quietly after a moment, words spilling swiftly out with an uncertain, half-formed urgency. "I shouldn'a said that."

"And why not?" A grunt of an answer, slow and tired. The ache of old sorrows, old regrets, ground like mortar into his tone. "True enough, ain't it? Hardly did her no good, dancin' with a stranger." His head shook morosely, gaze drifting out over the crowd. "Maybe you're right. Man askin' for a dance might as well be holdin' a gun on you."

"That ain't so. I know it ain't." Her lips twisted tightly upward with ambiguous discomfort, with apology and chagrin. "Pa..."

Dolor still filled the lines of his expression. But the title, the name at least pulled his eyes back to her, resting heavy and dully questioning in her own. "Truth is," her words had the tone of a confession, slow and reluctant. "I ain't ever been dancing. With a stranger, or with anyone else." The struggling of a tiny, sheepish smile. "Maybe I don't really got the sense of what it means."

His bushy eyebrow was already lifted high and disbelieving with her first sentence. "Well, now how in tarnation do you manage to avoid that?" A bit of life creeping back into his voice.

"I was busy." Defensive, embarrassed. "Didn't have hardly any time to spare, keeping the ranch goin'. What I did have, I spent practicin' my shooting, my riding, things you always said was so important for a gunslinger. And after that...I was tryin' to track you down, didn't want to waste no moments on frivolities." Her eyes flashed into his, muddy emeralds tinged with a faintly self-conscious humor. "Ain't like I was too eager to try, anyhow, seein' as I don't got no real notion how to dance in the first place."

"'ts no good." A quiet muttering, more to himself than to her. His left hand blindly sought out his glass, brought it to his lips to drain out the last dregs of tequila within - but the strong drink little helped his mood. "Girl oughtn't have to toss away her own damn life t'go searchin' after her father." Another tally mark on his soul. Another regret.

"Ain't like it's something I miss," she offered softly beside him. Warm. Kinder than he had any right to expect, after all he'd done, all he'd denied her.

He just snorted, dark and dismissive. "Hell, Alice, if you ain't done it, you don't have no idea if you ought to miss it or not." His fingers curled fruitlessly around the rim of his glass, thoughts circling in the dull, depressing haze of alcohol and and lamentation. No help for the past - it was done, over, fixed. He could not return to right his wrongs. There was only the future. Her future, anyway.

"You ain't busy anymore." A sudden, firm assertion, turning to face her again. "This here's a good chance to try some of them things you missed. You ought to find that boy, tell'm you'll dance with him after all."

Her turn to raise an eyebrow, thin and bemused. "After how I told him off? I don't figure he's still much interested."

"Someone else, then," he persisted. A vague, sweeping gesture across the throngs of gathered people. "I'm sure there's no end to the men out there that'd be happy to accept your invitation. Even if it ain't exactly standard for the woman to offer."

"Hate to borrow a line," she rejoined smoothly, "But ain't you listened? I don't got hardly no notion how to dance, even. And I ain't so much inclined to head out there'n make a fool outta myself, flailin' around in front of some stranger."

His lips twisted sourly. "Well, you got to do it sometime, Alice." His eyes on her, dark, heavy, penetrating. A distant memory, a shiver in her heart - she'd seen those eyes before. When she left her chores too long undone, when she tried too far to laugh and distract from his reminders...that gaze had come out, hard and serious as anything in the world, and she could only scurry to obey. "Even if you're quicker with your iron than a bolt of lightning, even if you make a fortune robbin' banks, or stop all the folks who try...that's only half a life. Other half..." His head shook, ponderous and sincere. "Other half is what other folk can give you. What I run off from. Family. Husband. Maybe a child of your own, someday. And I know that maybe sounds a far-off thing right now," he caught the note of rebellion in her eye. "But some time you're going to come across a man that makes all them things sound mighty fine, and when you do, damn sure you'll be glad you can dance with him."

Finality in his tone, the weight and moment that at one time sent the young Alice to beat the dust from old rugs or clean out ash from the fireplace. Something inside of her still felt that compulsion, obedience backed by the kind of nameless, wordless fear that can only come from a man loved almost to the point of worship. He'd never had to threaten, hardly had to spank her more than once or twice. She obeyed because he was her pa, because the fact of his anger at her was more terrifying than anything it might drive him to do.

But she wasn't that child anymore. Reminding herself, fiercely - wasn't lost in blind devotion. She didn't have to listen, didn't have to obey. Didn't have to believe. Some man would come along, and she'd turn into a blushing bride...she'd heard it all before, often with a wink, a leer from some mouldering drunk who thought he might be that man, if only for a night. It was nonsense. Lies - she'd met plenty men in her travels, and never found a one who lingered in her mind once she'd left his presence. Never saw in her dreams any familiar, handsome face, or felt much deeper than a grudging respect for any man she'd ever come across.

...except the one, of course. Her heart beating a trifle faster as the thought drifted in from the back of her mind, a whisper slow and poetic. The man whose memory had so consumed her, who she'd finally found after so long searching. Who sat beside her now, close enough to touch. His hand resting on the table before her, near enough for her to see the veins that ran like rivers beneath his leathered skin, the fine black hairs that sparsely grew almost up to his knuckle. His nails dirty, rough...and the feeling, the memory of that hand on her back, her palm, her cheek...

The words emerged unbidden. "How about you teach me, then?" A tone of almost challenge, only the faintest quaver sounding to betray the emotion beneath, and the rest of her scrambling to catch up with the impulse which had grabbed hold of her tongue. New warmth on her cheeks, beyond the simple glow of alcohol - but she couldn't back out. Only double down. "Seein' how it's 'cause of you that I never learned."

"Hell, Alice, that's..." His own tongue hesitated, caught off-guard by the question. An uncertain frown, meeting her gaze sidelong, discomfort like a shadow on his heart. Part of him wanted to. That was the problem - it was the same part of him that saw so clearly the smooth and healthy bronze of her skin, the supple fullness of her lips, the gentle, compelling curve of her waist...the part of him that noticed things he oughtn't, wanted things he shouldn't, now pulling at him like a dog on a chain. Imagining dark pleasures, all while it tried to soothe his own unease. Just a dance, it whispered, harmless - even as the image slipped in deep and delicious of her body close against him, his hand clutched upon her hip, satisfaction tingling through his stubborn fingers.

Too long in this troubled silence. "Fine," Alice finally spat, bitterness curled in lieu of cheer upon her lips. "I get it, you don't want the trouble. Forget it." Mumbled, as she lifted the bottle again to her lips. The burn of tequila in her throat a welcome distraction from the chill of disappointment she wouldn't dare to admit. "Forget the whole damn thing."

"Hey, now," he demurred softly, torn from his misgivings by the renewed anger in her tone. "Ain't no trouble." A moment more of hesitation, quarrel with the depravity inside...but in truth, this was no surrender. Teaching her to dance - he might have done so without a second thought, if it were not for his departure all those years ago. "Fine idea, in fact. This way, you ain't got to worry about makin' a poor impression." He forced a faint smile to his expression, trying to patch up the offense of his long quiet.

"Yeah?" Alice muttered back suspiciously. Her gaze tightened to a glare, mouth pulled into an aggravated frown. Wondering if it was worth the bother, the embarrassment. But there was warmth inside as well, the straining in her heart of an eager excitement. She'd never given a damn about dancing, never seen it as more than another of the world's pointless diversions - fine enough for the simple folk, the sod-busters, but nothing she should care about. Now...her eyes fell across the tight-packed earth before the band, where couples twirled and swayed in a loose but enthusiastic choreograpy. She could see herself there, her pa in the space opposite. Hands linked as they spun together, pushed close by the quick and cheery rhythms of the music. Him beside her, before her, his eyes tender in hers, his smile...the notion glittered in her mind like gold, thumped noisily in her breast with an excited hunger she could not name. Slipped into her voice as she spoke again. "So how d'we get started, then?"

"Well," he chuckled lightly, the rough sound of it scraping pleasantly in her ear. "First thing you got to do is lose them spurs." His gaze sliding down to her sun-beaten boots, lingering brief and guilty at slender waist, athletic thigh.

"What?" A frown, blinking blankly. "Why?"

"Got to move your feet around a lot when you're dancing," he explained, his gaze rising back up to hers. "Pretty close to other folk, too. You get your spurs caught in the dress of the woman behind you...well, the result ain't pretty." A wry little smile, watching as she nodded thoughtful acknowledgement, bent down to detach the muddy clasps of metal from her boots and set them on the table.

"Now," he answered her questioning look, rising to his feet. "I figure we best get out there on the floor. Ain't no better way to learn than to see how other folk do it, give it a try yourself. "

"Right," she agreed faintly, glancing again out into the minor throng arrayed around the band. Plenty of people out there. Plenty to see her flounder, fail, twisting wild in blind imitation. And him, too...her stomach fluttered queasy and tight, and she instinctively reached for the bottle. Hardly much left - another large swig burned its way down her throat, the fuzzy glow of inebriation helping still the butterflies enough for her to smile. "Let's get out there, then."

Whether by chance or by design, the clearing that served as a dance floor seemed to be sorted into three concentric shells, uneven and rough in their borders but still plain to the eye of any who watched a few moments. At the center were the finest dancers, men and women who moved nearly in sync with one another, practiced feet kicking up small puffs of dust as they stepped and spun in dazzling, syncopated rhythm. Outward a bit from them were the larger number of dancers for whom this was more a social occasion than a chance to practice - more sedate in their movements and often out of time with one another, they smiled more as well, many a man's eye on the woman enchantingly twirling a foot or three before him. And on the outskirts, the rest; undecided folk who merely swayed a bit to the music, men without partners, scattered children of eleven or twelve just beginning to learn.

It was to this last area that James led Alice, braving the curious glances from those around as they stopped at the edge of the crowd. An uncertain frown flitting across her features, arms folded protective at her chest as she tried unobtrusively to watch the movements of those in the vicinity. Murmuring, faintly frustrated. "I'm the only woman out here who ain't got on a dress."

James quirked a little smile back at her. "I'd'a reckoned you'd be used to that by now."

"Yeah," she shook her head. "But they're all..." A tiny, errant gesture pointed out how the woman around them danced with the hems of their colorful, ruffled dresses pinched between their fingers, the fabric sweeping grandly through the air like flying ribbons as they spun and tapped their feet. A tightness in Alice's stance, hooking her thumbs awkwardly into her pockets.

James paused himself, realizing the quandry. At least for the folk dances of the area, her attire was as important as her motion - and while she could perhaps learn the man's step, that might be taking things a trifle far. But he did not hesitate long. "Ain't no reason you got to dance the same as them." Encouragement firm on his tongue. "I can teach you a line dance. More popular north of the border, anyhow."

Alice winced a little, frowned. As if she wouldn't already have enough eyes on her, without dancing different from everyone else...but James caught her diffidence, offered gently, "Or if you don't got the nerve for it just yet, we can head back to the table. I reckon there's better times to learn."

That, of course, settled the matter. "I ain't scared a'nothing," she pronounced crisp and rebellious, the green of her eyes seeming to glow as the slight, sluggish fuzz of alcohol wheeled round into rightous pride. "Certainly ain't lost my nerve over somethin' as silly as dancing."

"Well, all right then," he agreed without argument - but with a slender thread of amusement in his smile. "Lift up your hands." He demonstrated, holding his palms out around chest level, and even as she mimicked the action, stepped around half behind her. Raising his arms up over her shoulder to take her hands in his from behind - clasping dry, warm, faintly rough with years of work and sun and dust. A soft shiver running down her spine as his left hand squeezed a little at hers, and sudden relief that she was facing forward, away, that he could not see the color she felt blooming on her cheeks.

"Might want to take a look down at my feet," he continued - and she swiftly obeyed, glad to further hide her features from view. "Least while we're gettin' started. We'll be steppin' together, so for now, you ain't got to do nothin' more than copy me. I'll take it slow, so you can see."

It wasn't easy. Trying to find the rhythms of it, to duplicate even his careful, demonstrative pace, stepping forward and back with a jaunty shuffle between, the turn and kick to the sides...Alice had to struggle not to stumble, her legs feeling suddenly clumsy and uncoordinated beneath her. Suffering the frustration of effort - desire abruptly so strong inside her to be smooth, elegant, controlled, everything she figured a dancer was supposed to be, even as she stopped with the wrong foot, or nearly tripped, turning before it was time. The drink in her belly hardly helped matters - while far from drunk, she nevertheless found her balance wavering with the heady haze of alcohol, threatening to tip her unceremoniously over as she tried to step backwards, to spin in place, guided by his hands.

That was the greater distraction. His hands. His presence behind her, beside her, this almost-embrace of his arms over her shoulders...it was so hard for her to concentrate on the dance, on moving her feet just so, when she could hear his breath so close beside her ear between his gently encouraging instructions. When she could feel the sometimes brush of his chest against her back, the warmth of his body mixing, blending with hers in the little space between. His forearm rested on her right shoulder, and as they moved she could feel it sometimes softly tremble, mute testimony of the injury so long ago that had taken him from her. That had ruined everything.

So many years. So long without. It was impossible to think about, to face, to bear all the accumulated moments of wishing he were there with her. All the dreams and memories, when she set her mind to drift - of his arms closed tight around her, of laughing eyes and that slight, whiskery smile. Bristly hairs between her exploring fingers. Of his lips, touched brief and loving at her forehead, at her cheek. Or on her mouth, lingering...and her heart beating faster, the swiftly spreading bloom of heat beneath her skin as the fantasy pulsed soft and breathless at the back of her mind.

Not the first time she'd thought such things. Far from it - guilty images from nights alone, urgent as they were uncertain. Yearning, vague and inchaote, half-formed with her fuzzy knowledge of the things men and women did behind closed doors. A kiss, an embrace. Skin touching skin, with nothing between. His body next to hers, his strength, his weight, his scent...sometimes she'd squeeze her thighs together in the middle of these thoughts, let her hand down there to brush upon herself, and the sensation that boiled up would roil through her nerves like water in a kettle, wild and hot.

Now, though...she dared just to push back a trifle against his chest, shifting her left hand to hold his closer to her shoulder. Not quite wanting to let go the nervous thrill of feeling that cascaded tingling down her spine, even as she struggled to follow his movements. His murmured instructions blurring in her ear into intimate whispers, half-understood. Emotion chaotic within her, frustration vying with a dozen nameless wants.

Error was perhaps inevitable, in the midst of this distraction. It was but a few minutes in when she stepped backwards at a time when she was supposed to turn...her foot, unsteady already with feeling and with drink, catching on the front of James' boot. Though he tried to catch her, she tumbled ignominiously to the dry and hard-packed earth, landing on the seat of her jeans with a jolt that ripped the quiet fantasy from the back of her mind, leaving only a sudden swell of humiliation as those around them glanced over with varying degrees of subtlety.

"You all right?" Gentle concern in James' eye, in his tone, as he extended down his hand.

"I ain't no good at this!" The words quavered slightly with upset, louder than she intended them. Her brow low, jaw tight as she slapped her hands clean on the leg of her pants, sending out little puffs of dust. A glare in her gaze like that of accusation. "I told you I didn't have no notion how to dance!" She rose up on her own, ignoring his outstretched hand, and was hardly to her feet before beginning to to stiffly head back towards their table.

"Hang on a minute." She did not obey him...but neither did she resist as he stepped quickly after, grabbed for her hand to stop her. Just turned around at his tugging, her features flushed and unhappy. Her breath swift with a struggling of bitter emotion, eyes evading his to lodge themselves in the dusty ground. "Hey, now." His voice scraped gently at her ears, but she still didn't look at him. Not until his hand caught softly at the bottom of her jaw, raised her chin up straight and level. His fingertips rough against her skin, her heart bobbling up into her throat as her startled gaze finally lifted up into warm brown eyes. "You're doin' fine." His tone sincere, if somewhat bemused.