As if this were what she had been waiting for all along, Belle had immediately quit crying and begun to suck her thumb.
Bethie might have voiced her frustration had not the sight of Nicholas doting on her wee daughter stolen her breath. She had marveled that a man as raw as he could be so tender with a babe not his own. What had he done to enthrall them both, mother and child alike?
Somehow she’d gotten dinner on the table—venison stew, corn cakes, field greens, fresh buttermilk. She’d been able to eat despite the distraction of his presence across the table from her. But then he’d brought up the subject of leaving again, of taking her back to her family.
She had tried to ignore him, tried to change the subject, but he had persisted, watching her all the time with that piercing gaze of his.
“The river is still running high and fast, but within a week, perhaps two, it will have dropped enough to ensure safe passage. We’ll stop at the nearest trading post and trade for a wagon so you need not suffer horseback the entire journey. ’Tis a long way to Paxton.”
She had tried to find a way to refuse that would not arouse his suspicion or reveal her secret. “I—I’m no’ ready to leave here yet. My husband—”
“Would want his wife and daughter to be safe.” His blue eyes had seemed to measure her, as if he were probing for the cause of her reluctance.
Did he know she had a secret or was she just imagining it?
“And if I wish to stay longer?”
“Then you lack all sense, madam. You cannot truly wish to remain here when you know full well that you risk death—and worse—for both yourself and Isabelle. Is not the brutality of this war written in me?”
He’d stood so abruptly his chair had toppled backward. Then he’d turned his back to her and left the cabin without a word.
Bethie had felt like crying, though she hadn’t known exactly why.
“Nicholas Kenleigh. Nicholas Kenleigh.” She whispered his name as if somehow the secret to her feelings for him were held within it. She spelled it in her mind—or tried to.
Why did the very sight of him make her feel this knot of longing in her belly? Why did she feel as if her blood were singing when he smiled at her? And the way she felt when he touched her, like snow melting into a tremulous trickle of water—
Was this desire?
Even as she asked the question, panic welled up in her heart at the answer.
“You’ve the heart of a harlot, Bethie Stewart.”
Could it be that Malcolm Sorley had been right about her all along?
She could not desire Nicholas! Why would she desire him? She was not an innocent virgin, but a widow who had borne a child. She knew all there was to know about what went on between men and women, and she had no need for it. Not only did it not please her, but she’d found it painful.
She sank into the water, rinsed soap from her hair, tried to rinse him from her thoughts. She had just stepped from the tub and reached for the linen towel, when the door suddenly opened and Nicholas stepped inside.
Chapter 10
She gasped, clutched the towel to her breasts.
He stood still, frozen in the open doorway. His gaze blatantly traveled the length of her body. “My apologies, Bethie. I thought you were finished. The string was out.”
“I—I must have forgotten to pull it in.”
The door string was their signal. If the string was in, he couldn’t enter because she was in her bath. If the string was out, she was finished and he could come back inside. But she had forgotten, and now he was here, and she was naked, covered only by her hair and the small, threadbare towel.
She assumed he would leave her to dress, so she was surprised when he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Wh-what—”
Nicholas turned toward his bedroll in the corner, tried to act as if nothing earthshaking had just happened, and began to sort mindlessly through his gear. “Take your time, Bethie. You’ve nothing to fear from me.”
He knew she stood rooted to the spot, almost smiled when she finally resigned herself to his presence and began to dress—hastily, from the sound of it.
He had used up the daylight scouting the riverbank and the forest around the cabin for signs of other men, white or Indian, then settled the livestock for the night. He’d been watching storm clouds gather to the north of the setting sun, his mind on the evening reading lesson, when he realized the string was already out. He’d opened the door, expecting to find Bethie sitting before the fire brushing out her long tresses as she usually did after her bath.
Now the sight of her was burned into his memory—wet hair clinging to her body, water running in rivulets down her satin skin, the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips, the wet thatch of golden curls at the juncture of her thighs. The floor had seemed to drop out from under his feet, the air to vanish from his lungs. His cock had risen to stiff attention like a young recruit ready for battle.
