The door to the tiny room opened, bringing a rush of cold air and the rustle of skirts.
Nicholas opened his eyes, watched as she approached him. She was young, not yet twenty, he guessed, and pretty. Her dark hair and skin revealed her mixed ancestry—probably the daughter of a French trapper and his temporary Indian wife.
“Is monsieur finished with his bath?”
“Aye.” Now it was time for pleasure of another sort.
Without ceremony, he stood, dried himself with the linen towel, walked over to the small bed. She had removed her gown and lay passively on her back in her chemise, a tattered bit of cloth that might once have been white. She parted her thighs, bared her small breasts, drew one rosy-brown nipple to a taut peak, smiled. It was a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Then her gaze came to rest on his scars. Her smile faded.
She had, of course, seen his scars when she’d helped him bathe. Then she had averted her gaze. Now she simply stared, clearly repulsed. “Was it terrible, monsieur?”
Nicholas ignored her question, allowed himself to feel only the pulsing need of his erection. How long had it been since he’d been inside a woman? Six months?
He stood at the foot of the bed, grasped her hips, pulled her toward him. Then he lifted her legs, rested her slender calves on his shoulders, filled her with one slow thrust.
It felt good, so good. And he found himself rushing headlong toward completion.
It was over in a few minutes, his seed spilled in a pool of pearly white on her belly. Nicholas lay staring at the timbered ceiling while she washed all trace of him away in the cooling bathwater. Neither of them spoke.
A vague dissatisfied feeling gnawed at his gut. When had he become the sort of man who would take pleasure with a pretty woman, even a whore, without so much as knowing her name?
Normally, he tried to forget the past. But now he wondered when he’d last made love to a woman, when he’d last devoted himself to giving a woman pleasure heedless of his own? His mind stretched back through the emptiness of the past six years, back through the nightmare that was Lyda to Penelope.
Sweet Penelope. Fickle Penelope.
He tried to conjure up an image of her face, failed. They’d been engaged to marry when he’d ridden away to war with Washington, but when she’d learned he had been taken by the Wyandot and was believed dead, she’d waited all of two months before marrying someone else. When he had finally escaped and made the long journey home to Virginia, he had arrived to find her quickening with her husband’s child.
“What was I supposed to do, Nicholas? Was I to wait for you? For how long? We all believed you dead!”
And, indeed, hewasdead.
He had tried to go on as if nothing had changed, to return to his old life. His parents, overjoyed at his unforeseen return, had done all in their power to help him. But nothing had been able to silence the screams that haunted his nightmares or restore the spirit that Lyda had so expertly wrenched from his body. Hatred for the Wyandot had consumed him, but no more than hatred for himself.
And when he’d awoken from one of his nightmares to find his hands fast around his little sister Elizabeth’s throat—poor Elizabeth, only sixteen, had heard him cry out and come to comfort him—he’d known he was no longer fit to live among those he loved. He had packed a few belongings—a bedroll, his pistols, his rifle, a hunting knife, a change of clothes, powder and shot—and had saddled his horse and prepared to ride away, hoping the wilderness would finish what the Wyandot had not.
But his mother had awakened, and standing outside the stables in her nightgown, she had begged him to stay, tears streaming down her face. “Please, Nicholas, don’t go! You’ve just returned! Give us a chance to help you, son!”
Her words, the desperate tone of her voice, had almost been enough to stop him. He did not wish to cause her further pain. But then he had remembered Elizabeth’s frightened face, his hands wrapped tightly around her throat. He might have killed her.
He had climbed into the saddle, steeled himself against his mother’s tears. “I regret to inform you, madam, that your son is dead.”
Then he had urged his horse to canter and ridden west, away from home, away from war, away from memories. He’d ridden over mountains, across rivers, through forest and grassland to the great mountains in the far west that no other Englishman had seen—but never fast enough or far enough to escape himself.
He had not yet found death, but in the vastness of the wilderness and the rhythm of the seasons, he’d found some measure of... if not peace, then forgetfulness.
“Excusez-moi, monsieur.”
The young prostitute. She wanted her fee.
“Pardonnez-moi, mademoiselle.Il est temps de régler notre compte, n’est-ce pas?” It’s time for us to settle up, is it not?
He rose from the bed, still naked, and strode to the corner where his peltries lay in a bundle. Quickly he worked the knots and unrolled the bundle, his hands moving deftly over the soft furs, searching.
“Vous parlez très bien français.”You speak French well.
He glanced up at the surprised tone in her voice, on the brink of saying that he had studied French at Oxford and had traveled extensively in France. But he was struck again by her youth and her beauty, felt a momentary stab of guilt at his thoughtless use of her young body. The words died on his lips.
He released the marten pelt he had been about to give her, pulled free the white wolf instead. Much larger, much more rare, its value far surpassed that of the marten pelt. He stood, handed it to her.
