And then, when she lay sleepy and sated in his arms, what would he do? Call it a fair trade? Turn Zeus’s reins to the west and ride away? Leave her to whichever man claimed her next?
Bethie deserved better than that. She deserved the love of a husband, a man to protect her and watch over her and Belle and the other children she would bear. And Nicholas knew he could not be that man. He did not deserve to be that man. Sooner or later, the darkness inside him would drive him back into the wild, back to the vast emptiness where he could forget.
’Twas far better never to touch her than to risk hurting her.
Yet even as he acknowledged this, he knew that unless she stopped him, hewouldtouch her. He would run his fingers through the sun-drenched silk of her hair. He would kiss her lips, savor their fullness with his tongue. He would feel the velvet of her nipples grow hard beneath his palms. He would part her thighs, taste her sweetness, bury himself in her liquid heat, feel her muscles clench in climax as they milked him to orgasm.
Such thoughts did nothing to quiet his erection, which strained against the leather of his breeches until he felt he might burst. Unable to do a damned thing about it, he strode to the cabin, his arms full, and nudged the door open with his boot.
Bethie sat in the rocking chair, humming a quiet lullaby to the baby at her breast. She did not look up, but gazed down at her daughter, a look of dreamy happiness on her sweet face.
He walked to the hearth, stacked the firewood as quietly as possible, closed the door, drew in the string. Since the night Isabelle was born, he’d taken to sleeping in the cabin again, and Bethie had not asked him to leave. If he’d possessed any sense, he would already have moved his bedroll back into the barn, where the sight and scent of her would not taunt him. Clearly, he was an idiot. Without glancing in her direction again, he strode to his bedroll in the corner and lay down to try to sleep.
But his body was tense with unspent energy, taut with lust, and sleep would not come. Cursing silently, he reached into one of his bags, dug around until his fingers closed over hard leather. Then he withdrew the book he’d purchased on a whim last time he’d been in Philadelphia, the latest satire by that French fellow Voltaire. But though the words danced on the page before his eyes, in his mind he could see only Bethie.
***
Bethie laid Isabelle in her cradle, pulled the soft furs up to her little chin, gazed longingly at her own bed. If she was lucky, Belle would awaken only once tonight and she could get some sleep.
She began to fasten the front of her gown, but stopped. With the arrival of spring, sleeping in her clothes had become uncomfortably warm. When Andrew was alive, she’d slept in her shift. But she hadn’t dared to do so since. First, she’d been alone and afraid to be caught unprepared by some danger. Then Nicholas had come out of the forest, and she’d been afraid to do anything that might draw his attention.
But hadn’t he proved himself to be trustworthy? Hadn’t he slept in the cabin for more than a month now without once trying to creep into her bed? Besides, there was no reason for him to see her. She could disrobe now while he was asleep, then wait under her covers until he had risen in the morning. She would be so much more comfortable without the bulk of her gown, and it would be easier to nurse Isabelle.
Her mind made up, Bethie unbuttoned her gown—she’d had to switch to her old gown of homespun because the fire had ruined her newer gray gown—and draped it over one of the chairs. Clad only in her shift, she turned to check the fire, found it already banked. Next, she went to check the door, found the string pulled in. Fresh water sat in a bucket on the table, ready for her should she grow thirsty in the night from nursing. It seemed Nicholas had taken care of everything before he’d gone to sleep.
Stifling a yawn, she turned back toward her bed, gasped.
Clad only in breeches, Nicholas lay on his side on his bedroll, propped up on one elbow, his blue eyes looking straight at her.
Chapter 9
“I—I thought you were asleep.” Bethie instinctively crossed her arms to shield her breasts, feeling suddenly naked in her shift.
He said nothing, but continued to watch her, the skin of his bare chest golden in the firelight.
Then she saw the book in his hands. For a moment she did not quite comprehend, and then she gaped at him, astonished. “You can read!”
The corners of his lips turned up in a slight smile. “Aye.”
Forgetting her state of undress, she asked the first thing that came to mind. “How did you learn?”
He seemed to hesitate. “My parents wished me to have an education.”
It was the first time she could recall him speaking about his family. She knew so little about him—only that he lived in the wild as a trapper, had been captured and tormented by Indians, and had probably once fought against them. Yet there was clearly so much more to Nicholas than he revealed. His manner of speech, so refined for a soldier and trapper, told her that if nothing else. And now she knew he could read.
Curious, she wanted to know more. “Where did you grow up?”
Slowly, he sat up, his gaze fixed on her, book still in hand, the muscles of his abdomen and chest shifting as he moved. With his long, dark hair spilling over one shoulder almost to the floor, he looked every bit the Indian, apart from his blue eyes.
Bethie took one step backward, forgot her question, alarmed as much by the strange fluttery feeling in her belly as by the heat in his eyes.
“Would you like me to teach you?”
“Teach me?”
“To read.”
Learn to read? ’Twas something she’d never dreamt of doing. Neither of her parents had been able to read, and though her father had often spoken of sending his daughter to the nearby minister’s home for teaching, her mother had needed her help about the farm and had refused to spare her. Malcolm could read and had insisted that Richard learn his letters so that he could read the Bible, but he’d kept Bethie at home because she was a girl.
