She had changed since the last time he’d seen her. She was rounder, looked more like a woman and less like the frightened girl he remembered. Oh, what a pretty thing she’d been back then! With her big round eyes, her skinny body, her budding breasts, she’d been everything to him.
Bitch!
It was her fault his father had sent him away. She had seduced him, lured him in, tempted him. And he had been helpless.
First, he’d tried to stop the itch by touching her. He would go to her bed at night, clamp a hand over her mouth, let his other hand have its way with her. For a time, that had been enough. Then he’d had to go further. Night after night, he’d held her flat on the bed with his body, forced her legs apart, buried his fingers inside her, and rubbed against her until his seed spilled.
Finally, the itch had grown so strong, and his tadger so hard, he’d known he had no choice but to mowe her, and mowe her good. He’d waited until everyone was asleep, then crept into the loft to her bed. She’d struggled a bit, as she usually did, pretending not to want him, but he’d always been bigger and stronger. He was a man, after all, and ten years older.
But when she’d realized what he aimed to do, she’d fought like a madwoman, and her struggles had awoken them all.
His father had given them both a good thrashin’, called her a harlot, and accused her of putting a spell on his only son. Then he’d married her off to that old fellow from the meetinghouse. Within a week she’d been gone for good.
That would have been the end of it. Except that the fire she’d lit inside him hadn’t gone out, and he’d needed desperately to put it out. When his father had caught him in the woods with a neighbor girl too young for him to marry, he’d sworn the girl to secrecy with many threats, then forced Richard to leave.
And here he was, a soldier in the British army. How his father would hate that, if he knew! His father hated everything having to do with the English.
Now fate had brought Bethie back to him.
He smiled.
He would bide his time, wait for his chance. Then he would pay a call on his long-lost stepsister.
Chapter 19
By the next morning, Bethie felt rested—and strangely out of sorts. So much had happened in the past two weeks. The Indians at the cabin. Nicholas’s confession. Their narrow escape from the fire. Their flight through the forest. The fight in the gully. Riding all night with the Delaware in pursuit. The last, desperate dash to the fort.
She had even killed a man.
She’d grown so accustomed to being afraid and on the run that she scarce knew how to feel now that she and Belle were safe and settled. Anything sudden, even laughter, startled her. She felt restless, wary. It was as if some part of her were still out there, still fleeing through the wild, death but a step behind her.
She gently moved Belle from one breast to the other, glanced across the room to the corner where Nicholas had stashed his gear and bedroll. Near exhaustion, he’d slept on the floor last night, just as he’d done at the cabin. He’d made no move to touch her. He hadn’t even kissed her.
Nicholas. Nicholas.
She sifted through what she’d come to know about him. He had family in Virginia. He could read and write. He’d once been a lieutenant in the Royal Americans. He’d been captured and tortured by Indians. He’d then married an Indian woman, planted a baby in her belly, openly taken other women to bed. Then he had somehow killed both wife and child.
But that was only part of who he was.
He’d helped with Belle’s birth, holding Bethie’s hand, encouraging her, holding her world together through the frightful pain. He’d saved their lives more times than she could count. He’d taught her to write her name, to read a bit. He’d shown her many acts of thoughtfulness. He’d kissed her, made her feel things she’d never felt before. Most of all, when she’d asked him to stop, he had stopped.
And now when they had reached safety and he could easily have left her to find her own way, he’d allowed everyone to think she was his wife to spare her sleeping among the others who’d sought refuge here.
Each of these deeds was a piece of Nicholas. Yet no matter how many times she looked at the pieces, tried to put them together, she came no closer to knowing him. The pieces didn’t fit.
But it wasn’t only Nicholas who confused her. She was a stranger to herself these days. Ever since that first kiss—it seemed so long ago now, though it was really only a fortnight—she’d felt a need for him she could not explain. That need had only gotten worse with time. Like a gnawing hunger it ate at her, pursued her even in her sleep. She wanted him to kiss her, wanted him to hold her against his hard man’s body, wanted him to touch her as he had that night beside the brook.
You’ve the heart of a harlot, Bethie Stewart.
Perhaps she did. But if her desire for Nicholas was a sin, why did all of heaven and earth seem to sing when he touched her?
She felt so lost.
Belle touched her chin with chubby fingers, and Bethie looked down to see her baby daughter smiling up at her. She took Belle’s little hand, pressed it to her lips, kissed it, smiled. “Are you finished, little one?”
She had just fastened her gown when a light knock came at the door and Nicholas stepped inside. He had bathed, shaved, and donned a new shirt of deep blue linsey-woolsey that made his eyes seem even bluer. Just the sight of him made it hard for her to breathe.
She stood, Belle in her arms, feeling suddenly like a silly girl of ten.
