Was Nicholas, almost a stranger to her, truly offering her this gift? “My stepfather says readin’ is a skill wasted on women.”
The flash of anger in Nicholas’s eyes was unmistakable. “Your stepfather is a bloody idiot.”
She gasped to hear Malcolm Sorley spoken of with such casual contempt. No one had dared speak ill of him—until now. Why did the words frighten her? Did she expect him to storm through the door to punish her? Malcolm was nowhere near here.
She released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “You would teach me? Truly?”
“’Tis no more than the kindness you’ve shown me, helping me when I was injured, tending my horse, sharing your hearth and home.” His voice was velvet, as dark and deep as midnight.
She felt heat rise into her cheeks. “You repaid that debt many times over the night Isabelle was born.”
“There are no debts between us, Bethie, no ledger to tally ere we leave this valley. You have shown me kindness, and I would but do the same. I’ll teach you to read, and one day you can teach Isabelle.”
She glanced at Isabelle, who slept soundly in her cradle, imagined one day sharing such knowledge with her daughter.
A skill wasted on women.
The thrill of rebellion stirred her blood. She met Nicholas’s gaze. “Aye, Nicholas. I’d be most grateful.”
***
Bethie dipped the quill, which Nicholas had fashioned from a goose feather, into the clay pot of red dye she’d made of madder root, and tried to form the letters that spelled her name.E-L-S-P-E-T-H.
The watery dye sank quickly into the parchment of birch bark Nicholas had prepared for her, but left enough of a crimson stain for him to read what she’d written. She looked up at him, hoping to see in his eyes that she’d done it right.
He sat on her left, his hands busy cleaning his pistol. He glanced down at the parchment, met her gaze, smiled. “Perfect. Now try your surname again.”
His smile seemed more dazzling to her than the warm May sunshine that streamed through the open cabin door, and she felt her breath catch and her own smile brighten.
For two weeks now she’d been studying her letters with Nicholas’s help whenever she found a few spare moments—during the midday meal, after supper, just before going to sleep at night. He’d taught her the alphabet, then shown her how different letters came together to make sounds. Though the rules always seemed to change, she was learning. Watching the letters, before just strange shapes, transform into words before her eyes felt like magic. Never had she done anything so exciting.
She had to admit, if she were to be wholly honest, that it was not learning to read alone that brought her happiness, but the time she spent with Nicholas, as well. The way he spoke to her as if her thoughts mattered to him, the way he endured her many mistakes with good humor, the way he encouraged her with praise—no man had ever treated her like this.
Being near Nicholas made her feel alive in a way she had never felt before. Oh, aye, he was bonny, but he was also strong, almost frighteningly manly. One look from him was enough to make her feel as if her blood had turned to sun-warmed honey. His smiles, which seemed to come more often these days, made it hard for her to think. Even the way he moved, with the confidence and grace of a predator, affected her. She found herself searching him out with her eyes, looking for reasons to cross his path, worrying about the meals she made for him, even fretting over her hair.
Could it be that she was coming to fancy him?
She dashed the thought away, started to dip her quill again, glanced down at Belle, who had fallen asleep while nursing. She set the quill aside, used her little finger to free her nipple from Belle’s mouth. “Come, little one.”
Nicholas watched covertly as Bethie settled little Isabelle for a nap and walked back to the table to finish her lesson.
Blood rushed to his groin.
She’d forgotten to fasten the front of her gown, leaving the silken cleft of her breasts open to his view. It had been difficult enough to sit so close beside her as she nursed her baby, her breasts bared, her nipples puckered like sweet raspberries ripe for the picking. He’d been forced to keep his hands busy cleaning his pistols to prevent himself from touching her.
Touching her? Hell, he wanted to do a lot more than touch her. He wanted to tear off that old gown of hers, to feast on the sight of her body. He wanted to taste her skin, to lick and suck her tenderest flesh until she screamed his name. He wanted to bury himself inside her tight heat, to take her on her bed, on a pile of soft furs, on the sandy riverbank.
His cock hardened to steel, throbbed heavily against the leather of his breeches, and he found it damned near impossible to drag his gaze away from her exposed flesh to the other steel in his grasp. When had he last wanted a woman like this?
Had he felt this way for Penelope? No, he hadn’t, and that was odd, considering that he had respected her wish to remain a virgin until after their wedding and had forsaken other lovers to court her. He ought to have been as randy as a bull around her, and yet it had been easy to restrain himself.
Certainly, months of solitude in the wilderness had often left him longing for the pleasures of a woman’s body. But on those occasions when he had sought out female company, one woman had been as good as the next.
Now he wanted only Bethie.
He’d told himself repeatedly that his obsessive need for her was nothing more than the result of having lived away from women for so long and then having been thrust into close contact with one. He’d told himself that when he left her with her family and disappeared into the wild once more, his life would return to normal. He’d even told himself that he would forget her with time.
He hoped to Satan he was telling himself the truth.
