Chasing the Sunset

chapter ONE

“Hell and damnation!” roared Nick Revelle, hurling his bowl across the room in a fit of temper. “This is the worst food I have ever been served from my own kitchens, and given the quality of the fare around here for the last few months, that is saying something! Even the pigs would not eat this swill!” He rose to his feet to storm out into his kitchen and confront the person responsible for this affront to his taste buds.

“Jackson!” he shouted. “Where are you hiding, you mangy old bastard?”

Jackson came staggering out of the storeroom, obviously the worse for drink. Nick scowled at him in disgust. Surely the man had not looked this unkempt when he had hired him. He had been clean then, at least. Now, he reeked of harsh spirits and looked as if he had not bathed in weeks. He swayed and stared blearily at Nick through bloodshot eyes, wiping his dirty hands on his already soiled apron. A lock of his dirty, coarse gray hair fell into his eyes and he brushed it back with one wrinkled hand, nearly unbalancing himself in the process.

“Wot does ya want?” he slurred belligerently. “I got a lotta work to do, I ain’t got time to stand around jawin’.”

“I would like to know,” Nick said through gritted teeth, “What kind of damn soup that is supposed to be.” He pointed an awesomely muscled arm to the pot that sat atop the stove. His stomach roiled as he looked at it. A chunk of fat floated on the surface of a cloudy liquid that resembled used bathwater.

“Soup’s soup,” said the man, leaning against the wall. “I run outta stuff, so I threw the rest all together to make soup.”

“Ran out? Ran out?” Nick kept his temper reined in with an almost superhuman effort. “’Tis funny to me that the surplus ran out so suddenly. When I left three days ago, there was a whole garden of vegetables right out the back door, a smokehouse full of meats, and household monies to supplement our larder should there be a need.” He narrowed his eyes and observed the drunken man through slitted lids. “Though I guess I know where some of that coin went.”

“I ain’t no field hand,” declared Jackson belligerently. “I ain’t gonna grub around in no dirt like that slattern Kathleen you got working here. You got other people to do that. Buy some slaves. I am the cook.”

Nick smiled grimly at the hapless Jackson. “Kathleen is not a slattern, she is a lady too fine for the likes of you to speak her name. And you are right, Jackson. You do not need to grub around in the dirt. As of this moment, you are no longer under my employ. Now collect your things and come to the study for the wages owed you, and be thankful that I am not taking the monies that you spent on drink out of that. Or going to the sheriff about the food that you obviously pilfered from my stores.”

“You cannot do that!” blustered Jackson. “I never stole a thing! I worked my arse off here. And wot does I get for it? Kicked out like a nothing? Who’s gonna cook for ya now, Mr. high-and-mighty? Nobody will even set foot on this place except that hoity-toity Kathleen’s family,” he sneered. “Ever’body knows how ya pushed your lady wife down those stairs!” He spit on the none-too-clean floor. His features distorted with spite, and he even went so far as to stick a grimy finger into Nick’s chest. “You will starve to death afore you find anybody else to come and live at this place of sin!”

Nick’s face froze. His posture ramrod straight, he used his impressive height to tower over the smaller man. “Collect your things,” he said quietly. “And get off of my property.”

Nick spun on his heel and left the room, his mouth tight with suppressed anger. Jackson was a drunk, and he was only repeating the gossip he had heard in the town, but it was damned hard not to punch him right in his slack, drunken mouth.

It was true that some thought him the murderer of his wife, and Nick was having a hard time replacing the cook who had just left him to go and live with her daughter in Kansas. The daughter was having another child to go along with the six other children she already had, and Mrs. Clark was worried for her. He did not blame Mrs. Clark for going to her poor daughter, he just wanted a decent meal, and he had not had one since she had left two months ago.

The first cook he had hired was a slattern who had thought her job was to provide him with sexual favors. She had left in a huff when he had kicked her out of his bed where he had found her waiting one night after he had been up thirty-six straight hours helping one of the mares through a difficult birth.

The second lasted two weeks, then left vowing that she had rather starve than put up with his ill-mannered criticism of her culinary skills. Nick, who had found that a steady diet of burned ham and plain boiled potatoes did not agree with him, did not miss her very much.

The next one could not have found her way to the outhouse without a map and someone to read it for her. When he had gone to seek out a reference for her, having learned from his last two mistakes, her most recent employer had warned him off, saying kindly that the woman was a bit . . . and here he had paused and coughed delicately . . . hen-witted. Nick had waved that away airily. He needed the cook too much to worry about her intellect or the lack of it. But he had soon found out that the man had been all too kind in his estimation of her intellect. Hen-witted did not begin to describe that woman’s befuddled mental condition. He had lost count of the times he came in after working all day, his stomach aching with hunger, only to find the smell of something burning. He had let her go after she set the kitchen afire with a forgotten pie. It had taken weeks to get the smell of smoke out of the house, not to mention the expense of ordering new cookware to replace all the ones that she had ruined. Jackson was his latest try at replacing Mrs. Clark, and just look how well that had turned out. His stomach was ready to revolt if he could not find someone to cook very, very soon. Kathleen took care of the noon meal, but he needed someone here full time, to provide the other two meals. He was finding it damned hard to live on only one meal a day, and Tommy, who was a growing boy after all, looked half-starved lately.

After Jackson had finally left, spitting and cursing, Nick poured himself a glass of brandy and stared moodily at the walls of his study. As always happened when his spirits were low, he thought back on the events that had led to the untimely demise of his wife.

Damn Mary and her cheating, lying heart.

Essentially all of his current troubles could be traced back to meeting and marrying that faithless, spoiled little schemer. She was probably somewhere in the afterlife laughing at his predicament in that contemptuous way that she had.

Nick swirled the liquid in his glass, studying it moodily. Two years ago, he had been delirious with happiness, newly wedded, ready to found a dynasty and conquer the world. Well, that had all gone to shit, he thought sourly. His wife had destroyed his belief in women. Before marriage, he had thought all women like his mother; soft, and giving, and faithful. Now he knew the truth. His mother had been the exception, not the rule. Most women just did not have it in them to be truthful. Oh, yes, they were all great actresses . . . until you married them. Then you found out the real truth: Dance to their tune, or spend the rest of your life in misery. Nick’s mouth quirked up, but there was no humor in the expression. In his wife’s case, her lack of morals had been matched only by her skill at pretense.

Mary had thought they would stay in Boston after they married. Oh, she knew that he had a horse breeding farm in the wilds of Missouri Territory, and she knew that he was chafing to go home to take care of matters there, but she thought that she could wheedle him into changing his mind. After all, she had been getting what she wanted from men her whole life by batting her lashes, flattering them outrageously, and giving them a pretty smile. She had no idea it would not work with him. And when she had finally figured it out, it was an understatement to say that she was not pleased, but she was not ready to declare him the winner just yet. Even though she had lost the initial battle with her new husband over staying in Boston, surely it would not be so bad. She had never for one moment thought that her new husband had been going to actually work on his horse farm. They had servants for that. Eventually, Nick would come around, and then they could spend all their time in Boston pursuing hedonistic pleasures, being part of the society she had loved so very much. Mary had absolutely no idea what their horse farm in Missouri was really going to be like because she had lived in staid, civilized Boston all of her life. She had romanticized it and envisioned plantations and servants to cater to her every whim, with a rousing, exciting social life.

The reality of the matter was that small farms were scattered across the wild landscape of Missouri and the nearest town contained only a smattering of buildings. She was used to sweet-smelling gentlemen with soft hands who indulged and pampered her. What she got was a husband who worked harder than a field hand and smelled of horse more often than not. And out here, in the wild, there was no social life to speak of, and what there was had bored her. She had loathed the farm and its isolation; she had loathed the ‘common’ farmers and landowners she encountered. Mary had wanted gay parties and civilized company, and it was simply not to be found in Missouri. It must have come as a shock to her, but Nick could not bring himself to feel any pity for her. She had tried her best to ruin his life while she was alive, and even after her death he was paying the price for his decision to marry her.

Nick had been on his annual visit to his cousins in Boston when he had met the ill-fated Mary. The fortnight he spent there every summer was the highlight of his year. Wild Missouri was dear to his heart and would always be his home, but it had none of the excitements associated with a big place like Boston. Nick was a young man, and he needed to kick up his heels now and then, and Boston was just the place in which to do so.

And he had especially needed the time away from the farm that year. His parents had both died of lung fever not six months earlier and he had been devastated by their sudden deaths. He was, quite simply, lonely for his family. His mother’s family, who had lived fairly close by in St. Louis, Missouri, was all gone except for some very distant relations that he had not heard a peep from in years. Oh, he had people who cared about him at the farm, but it was not the same somehow. Something inside of him had demanded that he be with his kin, and his aunt and his cousins were all the family he had left. He had needed to be with them, needed to be with someone who loved him and who had loved his parents.

In hindsight, he realized that Mary had been an effort to fill the gaping hole in his life that his parent’s death had left him with. He had wanted a family to replace the one that he had lost, and a wife and children seemed like a good idea at the time. Not that he had necessarily thought of it that way when the idea of marriage first came to him. He had been head over heels in love with Mary, or rather the fantasy of her that he had concocted inside of his head. His parents had certainly set a shining example as far as married life was concerned, and Nick had naively assumed that most marriages were as happy. But it was not to be; oh, no, a shining example his marriage was not.

His Aunt Clotilde was a no-nonsense type of woman, brusque and outspoken, but he had been so glad to see her that year that he nearly dissolved into tears right at the train station. Which would have embarrassed them both no end, because his Aunt Clotilde was not a demonstrative kind of person and displays of emotion flustered her. She was a big, bosomy lady with an air of competency that was well-deserved, but he had seen the sight of another’s distress nearly bring her to her knees.

Nick knew that his Aunt Clotilde cared deeply for him, though she had a hard time showing it. She was his father’s sister, and Nick had been told by his father that she had once been very lively and very affectionate but a bad marriage had changed all that. Her husband had died years ago, so long ago that Nick could not even remember him, and she had now become used to doing whatever she wanted and speaking her mind. It could be quite disconcerting at times, but Nick had gotten used to it. To be quite truthful, he quite enjoyed his aunt’s forcefulness, not being particularly fond of mealy-mouthed women. All the women in his life had been rather strong characters, and he gravitated naturally toward that type of woman.

His cousins Joanne and Ronald were twins, just three years younger than he, and they were as spirited and loving as his Aunt Clotilde was reserved. The twins were always laughing, and they enjoyed life. They lived with an abandon that Nick envied. When he thought of them, it was always with a smile on his face.

Joanne, now there was an honest woman. She had no desire to be married and made no bones about it. Her mother’s marriage had been stormy; Aunt Clotilde was a strong woman, and her husband could not ever deal with that. They had been miserable up until the day he died, and they had made their children miserable as well. Joanne swore to Nick more than once that she would never go through all of that. She had had more than her fair share of marriage proposals over the years, and she had turned them all down.

“Why should I get married?” she had said to Nick. “Father left us well off, and I want to go where I want and do what I want. If I were to be married, I would be expected to stay home and have babies and spend the rest of my life in perpetual boredom, not to mention that I would never again control my own money. I shocked people at first, but now they are used to my behavior. My mother’s connections in Boston are so impeccable that no one dares snub me for fear of reprisal, though they call me bluestocking and ‘that appalling woman’ behind my back.” Joanne mimicked the nasal tones of the Boston matron with such devastating accuracy as she spoke the words that Nick had howled with laughter. She had cocked her head to one side and smiled at him while he laughed, fluttering her thick lashes at him. “Besides, then I would not get to flirt with handsome men like you, coz.” Nick had laughed, but he had seen the steely determination underneath her teasing and coquettish ways.

Ronald and Joanne were merry company, and they had many, many friends. Thus, when Nick had accompanied them to a restaurant in a fine hotel after a day of shopping in bookstores and milliners and countless other establishments that they insisted he needed to see, he was not surprised when a comely young woman hailed them from a nearby table. They had joined her and her pinch-faced chaperone and Nick was in love after the first half hour spent in the young woman’s company. The demure young lady was amusing and gay, and he fell more and more deeply under her spell as the days went on. He began to spend every free moment with her, properly chaperoned of course, for Mary was a modest and proper young woman. Or so he had thought at the time.

Ronald had tried to warn him. He had informed the besotted Nick about Boston society and how it worked. Nick, of course, did not believe that Mary was dangling for marriage and that she was looking for nothing more in a husband than a fat purse. If he offered, Ronald told Nick, she would marry him even if he was fat, bald, and fifty as long as his finances met with her father’s approval. Ronald got a bloody nose for his trouble and cried off when his mother and sister begged him to make one more try at dissuading Nick from this disastrous course.

But Nick was on fire for Mary, and he swore to his aunt and his cousins that he had to have her or perish. Reluctantly, Aunt Clotilde had given her public approval. So Nick began the negotiations for the marriage settlement, and had gotten his first glimpse of the true nature of his bride-to-be and her family. Unfortunately, it was only a glimpse, and not enough of one to make him cry off.

Mary’s mother was a timid shadow of a woman who started at every loud noise and fainted dead away at the slightest provocation at least twice a day. Someone was then required to run up to her room and fetch her hartshorn to wave under her nose until she came to. She had a servant who followed her around for just that very reason when she was in residence. When she left the house, which was rarely, it was with a veritable army of servants who fluttered and fussed over her as if she were on the brink of death.

Her mother was delicate, Mary said, blushing, and had never recovered from the birth of herself. Nick was at first sympathetic, then found himself wondering how a woman could be sick for nearly nineteen years after a birth. Why, he had seen farmer’s wives work in the fields up until the day of their birth, then go back out to the fields the very next day. And why did not the silly woman just carry the hartshorn in her reticule if she was going to need it so often? He had a suspicion that she was not nearly as delicate as she pretended. She certainly did not seem to be off her feed any, judging by the amount she put away at dinner every night, and once he had sworn he saw her eyes slit open to peek around the room when she had ‘fainted’. Since the fainting spell had been brought on by a scolding from her husband, Nick was fairly certain that it had been false, leading him to believe that she fainted for her own purposes, and not because she was delicate.

Mary’s father, on the other hand, was as loud as her mother was quiet. Mary had described him as handsome and charming, but Nick was damned if he could see either quality in the man. He was a dissolute old blusterer who might have once been handsome, but he had a taste for liquor, and his face was beginning to show it. His nose was bright red and bulbous in his lined face, and Nick found it hard to stand close to him. The man’s breath stunk of whiskey so strongly that whenever he breathed Nick’s way, the fumes made him woozy. His rheumy old eyes were always bloodshot, and if one did not see him before four of the clock it was a lost cause, for he would be the worse for drink after that. And when one did get to see him, it was often not a pleasant experience. He swilled down the whiskey at an incredible rate, and the more he drank, the more raucous, boastful, and irritating he became.

But Mary doted on her father, and Nick vowed to at least tolerate the man for her sake. Thus the negotiations dragged out much longer than they would have ordinarily, with Nick chafing at the bit at every delay. It was only later that he had come to realize that the old man had done it apurpose, hoping that the infatuated Nick would give in to his unreasonable demands out of sheer, desperate lust for his daughter.

When Nick had demurred at paying for the wedding, putting his property in Mary’s or her family’s name, and providing his soon-to-be-parents with a quarterly income, the old goat had the temerity to suggest that Nick was cheap. He had implied, hell, he had come right out and said that Mary could do much better than him, and that he should consider himself lucky that Mary had agreed to the marriage at all. After all, he had said, shaking his head sadly, his daughter had her pick of suitors. He could not let her go to just any old horse farmer without making sure that she was well settled in her new life, and that meant making sure that she had plenty of money in the event that anything untoward happened. Of course, if Nick did not want to pay the price . . .

Nick propped his feet up on his desk and drank deeply. The shrewd old bastard had played him like a finely tuned instrument during the negotiations. He had been so desperate to have Mary that he had have agreed to nearly anything at that point. Aunt Clotilde had warned him to bring along the family lawyer, but he would not listen.

He had paid for the exorbitant wedding, and he agreed to provide his parents-in-law with an income for as long as he and Mary were married. He had even agreed to stay in Boston for six months after the wedding, though he felt an urgent need to go home, to let Mary ‘get used to the idea of being married before she leaves the only home she has ever known’, in the words of her drunken father. The man had been so overcome with alcohol-induced emotion when he had said this to Nick that he had broken down and actually sobbed all over his waistcoat. Nick had balked, however, at staying in the same house with his in-laws and had rented a lovely house right down the street from Aunt Clotilde and his cousins.

On one point, however, Nick had stood firm. None of his property had been deeded to Mary or her family. It was to be held in trust for any children that he had, and it was not to be put to any other use. And thank goodness for that. Only look at how it had all turned out. He shuddered to think what would have happened to his farm if Mary’s parents had their fingers stuck in that pie. They had given him enough grief about stopping their income after Mary’s death. But when the marriage agreement was finally hammered out, he had not been thinking about any of that. He had only been thinking that, at last, he had his Mary.

Nick barked out a short laugh that had nothing of humor in the sound. He'd had her all right. She had been hysterical on their wedding night when she found out what Nick wanted to do with her, and he had at first put it down to virginal shyness. It would get better, he was sure of it. She'd get used to the intimacy. Or so he told himself over and over in the first weeks of his marriage.

It never got better. Mary hated everything about their sexual congress and wanted nothing more to do with it. Her mother had explained to her that it was her duty to submit to her husband, she informed him, but good women did not enjoy the act, and considerate husbands did not want to sleep in the same room with their wives and they did not try to force their wives to do . . . that . . . during the light of day. It was shocking! As a matter of fact, her mother had also told her that considerate husbands only wanted that one or perhaps two times per week, not every single night. She had to sleep, did she not? Why, she was beginning to look positively haggard!

Whenever he tried to make love with her, Mary lay upon the bed like some pagan sacrifice, her beauty at first motivating Nick to try to get her to relax and enjoy the pleasure that they could give each other. He was absolutely convinced that his love would conquer her fears. Finally, after a period of some months, he realized that Mary was not fearful of his caresses, she was disgusted. She found it all repulsive and beneath her dignity, and she only let him sleep with her because she believed she had an obligation to do so as his wife. After they had arrived back at the farm, she had informed him that she wanted a separate bedroom and Nick had obliged her. He had visited her nightly for a while, then when she realized that this was going to be nothing like Boston and her tongue became a fine weapon, the visits had tapered off and finally died, just like his love for her did. A year into the marriage he realized that not only did he not love his wife or she him but that their mutual feelings came perilously close to hatred. His bitterness grew with each tantrum she threw, with each casual cruelty she inflicted on everyone around her. Mary began to ask him repeatedly to let her return to Boston without him, and when he refused, the whole household paid for his refusal. She embarrassed him in public, harassed him in private, and made his life a living hell. He took to sleeping in the barn at least twice a week because she had a frightful habit of coming to his room and starting arguments and he got tired of going without sleep.

He also made a weekly visit to a responsive widow woman who received him with great pleasure into her bed. And afterwards, Sally Henderson always gave him a smile and a thank you for the ‘gifts’ he brought her. The arrangement suited them both. Sally was discreet, as was he and Nick liked her and enjoyed her company both in and out of bed. He believed from her behavior that she felt the same way about him. Of course, he was not quite sure about any woman’s true feelings anymore, but Sally appeared happy to see him whenever he visited, and went out of her way to make him welcome and comfortable. He could sleep with her whenever he needed to, and he did not have to pretend to love her in order to do so. And she did not have to pretend she needed anything from him except the pleasure they found together in bed and the pretty fripperies she now did not have to buy herself.

Then Mary had met Kenneth. An older, wealthy man visiting relatives in ‘the uncivilized wilds’ as he called it contemptuously, with no obvious means of support and no explanation as to why he, who professed to hate the country life, stayed. He was everything that Nick abhorred and everything Mary admired.

"Kenneth knows the proper way to hold eating utensils, the proper way to excuse oneself from the table, and the correct way to address a lady," Mary said to Nick in the midst of one of their fights about him. "He is mannerly and refined. I can see why you do not care for him."

Nick thought him both a dandy and a braggart, and he had heard rumors about the reason Kenneth was spending time here with his relations in the ‘back of beyond’ as he so disdainfully put it. When Nick tried to warn Mary away from the man, she threw a fit to rival all fits. He was jealous, Mary said with a sneer to her husband. Kenneth was her only friend, and he just did not want her to be happy. Nick gave in to her, as always, though he knew that he should not.

Mary began to spend a lot of time with Kenneth, and Nick tolerated it for some while. But when Mrs. Clark told him with a red face that Kenneth had spent several nights in the house while he had been away looking at some prime horses he was thinking about adding to his stock, he had finally put his foot down. He had told Mary not to see Kenneth again, and if he came to the house he was to be turned away. If they saw him in public to be polite but distant. They had a screaming fight that all the household help had heard, and Mary told him she was leaving him to go back to Boston with Kenneth, who was a gentleman and not some glorified farmer. Nick told her that he would kill her first.

That night, while Nick paced a hole in the floor of the stables, Mary fell down the front staircase and broke her neck. They found her valise on the stairs, packed with her jewels and a few personal items. At the inquest, the only thing that saved Nick from the hangman’s noose was the testimony of Ned, his head stableman. He swore that Nick was in the stables all night and could not have pushed Mary down the stairs. He, Ned, would swear it on a stack of Bibles, because did he not suffer for years from not being able to sleep nights himself and did he not hear the master walking back and forth and cursing all night long, and had he not gone down to comfort the man with some manly talk and a dram of whiskey or two?

Still, the incident gave rise to a lot of gossip, and old Kenneth had fanned the flames, playing the heartbroken lover with consummate ease. Nick could have forgiven Kenneth had he not come to the house and coolly demanded a large sum of money to stop feeding the rumor mill. Nick had thrown him out on his languid, skinny behind, and the rumors had increased in viciousness.

Because of all this, Nick had been having a hard time replacing the illustrious Mrs.

Clark. He was going to write her a heartfelt letter of thanks for all the years she had kept his house running smoothly and put palatable dinners on his table.

Just as soon as he got something in his belly beside greasy soup.

**************************************************

The leather of the saddle creaked as Nick dismounted. He patted the black hide of the heavily sweating stallion affectionately.

“We blew out the cobwebs, didn't, Jet?” he murmured. Tommy, the stableboy, scurried over to take the horse from him. “Walk him for a while and cool him off gradually,” he told him. “Give him a handful or two of sweetfeed when you put him back in his stall.”

“Yessir, Mr. Nick,” Tommy said, his gap-toothed smile lighting up his freckled face. Nick tousled his hair affectionately as he walked away. Tommy was just another example of the havoc women created. His mother had been a barmaid at the Red Horse, a local inn with a bad reputation. She had been little better than a prostitute, drinking and carousing with whoever picked up the tab. When she had got pregnant with Tommy, she was not even certain who his father was, and it had not slowed her down any. She had kept right up with her old ways until the moment Tommy was born, and Nick knew that having Tommy hadn't changed her at all and she'd made the poor boy's life a misery.

When she had died in a drunken accident two years ago, Nick had gone to town and taken Tommy home with him. He had known the boy for years and the two had a friendship of sorts; Tommy had been doing little jobs for Nick since he was barely out of diapers, and Nick had always found something to pay him for, even if he had had to invent an errand. Something about Tommy had always pulled at his heart. Maybe it was his eyes; they had too much knowledge in them for one so young.

Whatever it was that drew him to Tommy, it had been a good decision to put him to work at the farm. He adored Nick and Ned, and if they had told him to walk down into the bowels of hell, Nick was sure that he would do it cheerfully, without question, and with that crooked little grin that seemed never to leave his freckled face.

Nick began to hum as he walked through the stables, looking with pride at his horses. He breathed deep of that special smell stables had, enjoying the odor. It was hay and sunlight and warm horse combined, and to him it was the sweetest perfume ever created. It was the smell of prosperity. His father had bought this land right after his marriage and built the house and stables here. He had brought with him two mares and a stallion he had won in a card game, and that stallion’s blood now ran through nearly every horse in the stables.

Geddes was the nearest town, and it consisted of four streets of residences and one main street containing businesses. Most of the population in this county was widespread, because the majority of the families around owned small farms, though there was a big manor house or two scattered around. You went to town to buy supplies, to get liquored up, or to see the doctor. But most of the time, you stayed on your own property.

Several families of Germans had settled in the area just a few years ago, after the failed attempt to establish a republic in their native country. It was a good idea, in theory; the republic was based on the ideals of Washington and Jefferson, but theories and realities didn’t always harmonize.

The German immigration to St. Louis had begun in the late 1820's following letters home from Gottfried Dude, who visited the area and compared the Missouri River valley with the Rhineland. These early German immigrants had consisted mainly of farmers and workmen, but there were also scholars and artists, writers and lawyers, ministers and teachers. The amount of knowledge that the political exiles brought with them made them valuable to any settlement, and they were in fact now the backbone of the community.

The Germans were commonly called Forty-eighters, and the greatest majority of them had settled in St. Louis, but a goodly amount of them had trickled down the Mississippi and settled here, which accounted for the abundance of blond hair and blue eyes in the countryside. It certainly made Nick, with his black hair and brown skin, stand out in the crowd. And it was certainly a funny thing to see a family in which the elders spoke with a distinct German accent and the youngsters with a slow Southern drawl.

One family had immigrated to this particular area, and then written to his friends and relatives still in St. Louis about the paradise to be found in this part of the country. The rest had all traveled here together, and they were a close-knit bunch who made good farmers and good neighbors. They were on the whole moral, friendly, and loyal. And they believed firmly in minding their own business, a fact which had definitely served Nick well after Mary had died.

Some of the local farmers who could afford it, and even some who could not, owned slaves that helped to work the land. In order to make a profit off of the cotton and tobacco that they grew here, they had to employ cheap labor. And slaves were as cheap a labor as you could get. All you had to do was feed them a minimal amount and give them a place to sleep at night, which in many cases was little better than the pen that the animals lived in. Some owners treated their slaves well, but those were the same people who treated their livestock well. They considered it a good investment.

But some, especially the more recent of the German immigrants, had refused to use slave labor on moral grounds, preferring instead to employ locals and have family members work alongside each other in the fields, oftentimes from sunup to sundown. Nick’s father, though not German, was one of that minority.

His father had traveled here more than thirty years ago with his young wife right after their marriage, promising her that they would not stay if she was not happy there. After the Lewis and Clark Expedition used St. Louis as the jumping off point for its explorations, the city had grown quickly into an important center of commerce and trade, attracting thousands of immigrants eager to find a new life on the edge of the frontier. St. Louis had just that year been incorporated as a city, and Missouri had become a state via the Missouri Compromise just three short years ago.

Obadiah Revelle had felt stifled by the burgeoning population. He had begged the young Frenchwoman Louisa Girardot to marry him and settle far away from the city where they had both been born, and as far as Nick knew, his mother had never once been sorry that she had done so.

Nick remembered asking about his father’s view on slavery once. A lot of their neighbors owned slaves and he had wondered why they did not, and why his father always seemed to be busy doing something, unlike some of the fathers of his friends. He was expected to work, too, and he had been resenting it that day. There was no sitting around in Obadiah Revelle’s house. No, sir. Nick had been oiling the leather of a saddle, and his father had grinned and turned to look at him when he had asked the question, leaning against the shovel he had been using to clean out a stall.

“Well, Nicky,” he had said, taking off one his gloves and scratching the back of his head. “A man with nothing to do is a dangerous man. Boredom is a terrible thing, and it kills more good men than the cholera every year.” He had looked around his stables with pride, the sunlight delineating his sharp cheekbones. “And there is nothing better than looking around at something of yours and thinking ‘I did that. With my own two hands and my sweat, I helped make this possible’.”

He had grinned again, his eyes twinkling. “Besides, if I ever owned a slave, your Mother would kill me. You know how she is, Nicky. She has got the softest heart of any woman I ever met. Remember when your cousins sent her that songbird? She nearly fretted herself to death over having it in the cage. She never slept all night the day it showed up here, and she turned it loose the day after that. It had always lived in a cage, and it flew around inside the house for weeks, probably afraid to go outside, and even after it decided to live out in the wild, it came in and out of the house at will. I found bird droppings in my sheets, it got me on the head every time I got near it, and it near ruined my favorite pair of boots. When I asked her why in the hell she had to let the blasted thing out of the cage, she told me that some things aren’t meant to be owned.”

He grew serious for a moment, his fine dark eyes on Nick’s face. “Well, people aren’t meant to be owned either, Nick. You know what I saw once in a town I was passing through? A man on the street was viciously beating a man on the ground with a whip, and when I intervened, I was almost jailed. The man that he was beating was his slave, and they said that he could do whatever he wanted with his own property. His property, Nicky. We live in a place where killing a man, if he is a slave, takes no more thought than what shirt to wear that day. It is wrong, Nick, and I am never going to pretend that it is not. I am sorry if that is going to make trouble for you or shame you, but not sorry enough to compromise on this.”

He had put his glove back on and went back to shoveling horse manure matter-of-factly. “Better get to oiling that saddle, son. There is plenty more when that one’s done.”

Nick had grumbled, but he had never forgotten that conversation. If he closed his eyes, he could still see the way his father had looked that day, hear his resonant voice echoing through the stables, see the way the sunlight had outlined him. He had come to agree with his father, and he had never been embarrassed by the old man’s views. On the contrary, he had admired the hell out of him. His opinions were not popular ones, but that did not matter to him. If he thought it was right, hell would freeze over before his father ever would bend on the issue. To Nick’s way of thinking, that was a good quality in a man.

The local gentry had called his father crazy but he had refused to listen. He ran his breeding farm his way, and it had turned out well. Now, they lined up at the doors to buy one of these horses. They were the best stable in all of Missouri territory, and people came from all over the country to buy his horseflesh. Some had even been shipped to England by a Duke that took a fancy to a couple of his pretty, high-stepping mares. The Duke had seen some of Nick’s horses in St. Louis and he had traveled all the way out here just to buy a horse. Nick now had ten full-time employees, plus Tommy and Ned, and there was plenty of work for them all. He was proud of his stables.

“Nick,” someone called. Nick turned, and smiled as Ned limped into view.

“Hello, Ned,” he said warmly, with real affection. He was fond of the old Irishman who babied his horses more than some people babied their children. “What can I do for you?”

Ned looked uncomfortable. His wizened old face twisted up in a grimace that Nick had trouble interpreting. He stared at Nick intently, studying him as if he were a horse he was considering buying. Nick wondered what he thought when he looked at him; he knew what he saw in the mirror every day. He saw a man who used to be young, starting to gray around the edges of his dark hair. He saw lines around brown eyes that used to sparkle with fun and now were dull and somber. He walked slower, he thought long on things that used to be instant decisions. Did his bitterness show on his face? What did Ned see?

Whatever Ned saw, it seemed to reassure him. The frown disappeared from his forehead. “I hear tell you fired your latest cook,” he said abruptly.

“You heard right,” Nick said grimly. “He was the worst one yet, and he was stealing the household money to buy corn likker.”

“I might know someone who would be interested.”

The words were diffident, and Ned dropped his head, scuffing his booted foot in the soft

dirt. It was not like Ned to be so hesitant, and Nick frowned. He could see Ned’s scalp through his thinning white hair. It gave him a shock sometimes to realize how old Ned O’Roarke was getting. He had been here all Nick’s life; he had to be at least sixty. His father had told him once that Ned had just showed up at the horse farm one day and informed him that he had heard tell of his fine stables from a mutual friend in St. Louis and he was a damn fool if he did not hire him right now to run them. His father had always laughed when he told that story, his eyes crinkling up and dimples creasing his handsome face.

“I figured anybody with that much nerve was going to be good to have around, even if it was just for a laugh,” he always said. He had hired him on the spot, and Ned began to advise him how to run his stables from that moment on. They did not know where he came from; his father had never even inquired as to who the mutual friend might be. Obadiah Revelle had never regretted hiring Ned, and he had never felt a need to know anything about Ned’s background that he was not willing to share. Ned had become part of their family, and his family was accepted just as they were. If Ned wanted him to know something, why, he would tell him. Was no use trying to pry anything out of the stubborn Irishman.

“It’s me niece,” said Ned hesitantly. “My brother’s girl. She needs a job, and I talked with her about it.”

“I didn’t know that you had a niece,” said Nick, taken aback.

“Why sure I do,” Ned said somewhat indignantly. “I had a mother and father just like everyone else. I also had a brother, God rest his soul. Maggie is his only child.”

Nick grinned. “Calm down, old man. I wasn’t trying to insult you. You just surprised me. Tell her to come by and talk with me.”

Ned dropped his head again and studied the ground. “She is a mite shy.” He looked Nick in the eye. “Fact is, she is as skittish as a beaten horse. Do not take it personal like. Matter o’ fact, she would prob’ly feel better if I came along while she talked to you.”

“Bring her, by all means,” Nick said quickly. “I am heartily sick of my own cooking. You know Kathleen fixes us all a lunch when she comes for the day and she leaves me a supper, but it is either cold or hard as a rock by the time I get to it. Either that or Tommy eats half of it before I can get to it.”

A grin nearly split Ned’s face in two. “Can’t leave any food laying around in front of that boy." The two of them laughed, because Tommy’s prodigious appetite was a source of great amusement. "I will bring her over this afternoon.”



*************************

Nick frowned as he studied the columns of numbers in his accounting books. Sometimes it seemed as if all he did was figure. He hated this part of the business. He rubbed his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose. Lately, it seemed that even the most mundane of chores, the ones he used to breeze through, took him forever. Everything dragged him down. He used to be happy to sit in his study and do his books. He was proud to look at his bookshelves and to breathe deeply of that dry, musty smell that old books have. He had loved to figure out profit and loss, to decide which monies went where, to decide what repair would be his priority. Now, he just felt tired. He felt older than his years. When he read letters from Joanne and Ronald, he sometimes felt such an overwhelming sense of grief that he had to put the letter away until later. His life was so different from theirs. They lived in a bright world of laughter and gaiety; his was dark and damp and cold. He flung his pen away in disgust, then cursed when ink splattered onto the oak of his heavy old desk. The knock at the door came as he scrubbed at the ink with his fine lawn handkerchief.

“What is it, Kathleen? Haven’t I told you a thousand times not to bother me while I am doing the books?” he shouted impatiently, hastily looking for somewhere to put the soiled handkerchief before Kathleen saw it and scolded. When no one opened the door, he gave up the hunt and threw open the heavy door with a dark scowl on his face, expecting Kathleen to be standing there bristling over his rough tone, ready to backhand him if he got any more out of line. A slight figure jumped out of the way with a startled squeak.

“May I help you with something?” he asked more gently, his black brows drawing together.

“I was told you need a cook and housekeeper,” the woman said quietly. “Ned sent me. I am Maggie Reynolds.”

Nick felt instant regret for his harshness; he could see her hands trembling as she held her brown shawl together in front of her. Her hands were thin, with long fingers, and he could tell even from here that they were chapped from hard work and rough use. She was taller than most women of his acquaintance, the top of her head reaching his chin. She was dressed in a high-necked, long sleeved, brown cotton dress that clearly had seen better days. Her lank brown hair was scraped ruthlessly into a bun at the back of her head, but wisps had escaped to frame her gaunt face.

She had the face of a shy elf, with a tiny, upturned nose, huge green eyes fringed with thick black lashes, a pointy chin and high cheekbones. She was achingly thin; she looked as if a high wind would blow her away, and still for all that, she was one of the most striking women he had ever seen. Nick felt a quick attraction that left him feeling as if he had been punched in the gut.

He forced the feeling down and studied her with unease. This woman looked to be one step away from starvation. The work here on the farm was hard and constant; he was not sure she was up to the job. She was also much younger than he had supposed. She did not look to be much above eighteen, and she was disturbingly attractive. With the exception of Ned and fourteen- year- old Tommy, who both lived in rooms above the stables, nobody else lived in on the farm. They all preferred to go home to their families at night. This girl was obviously nervous just standing in the same room with him. He regarded her dubiously.

“Hello," he said warmly, trying out his most charming smile. "I am sorry to be so rude. I am in the middle of doing my accounts, and that always makes me beastly,” He took a step forward and she instantly took a step back, her pale skin going even paler. He frowned. “I thought Ned said that he was coming with you.”

“He was,” she said softly. “But that chestnut mare has an inflamed hock and he needed to look in on her, and . . . and I decided to come on over without him.” Her pointy little chin rose

up a notch.

She swallowed visibly, and her eyes darted to him when he moved infinitesimally. He began to feel it was a cruelty even to stand here with her.

“Will you sit down?” he asked gently, indicating the chair in front of his desk. He backed away from her slowly, feeling a wave of unwelcome pity, opened the door to its widest point and then realized he was still clutching his ink-stained handkerchief. He sat down behind the heavy desk and dropped the soiled handkerchief onto the cluttered top of the handsome oak furniture.

She perched on the edge of her chair like a bird ready to fly away.

“Have you ever held this type of position before?”

Some strong emotion flickered across her face, much too quickly for Nick to get a grasp on it.

“No,” she said. Her voice was pleasantly husky and melodic. A soothing voice, he thought. “But I as much as ran our household from the time I was a child." She smiled a luminous smile that made Nick catch his breath. "My mother was an artist, and she often forgot about mundane things like food and laundry. I have been cooking, cleaning, and instructing others in their household tasks for all of my life."

"An artist," Nick said, intrigued. He had never heard of a woman who was an artist. Of course, his cousin Joanne was always telling him that women were able to do most anything that a man could. "What kind of artist?"

"Family portraits, mostly. Her father was an artist, too, and many of his patrons began to come to her after his death. She built a good reputation and had a small following. She was well thought of, and she took commissions as far away as Boston. "

Nick hesitated. "Miss Reynolds,” he began gently. "I am not sure that you are . . .”

But she interrupted the beginning of his polite speech to decline her services. "Mrs. Reynolds," she said, her voice firm despite the trembling of her chin. "I am a widow. And, of course, I also ran my household for my husband for the three years of our marriage."

Nick was taken aback. A widow! Involuntarily, he glanced down at her left hand to look for the ring. The glint of gold on her finger reassured him. This did change things. His neighbors would not accept a young, unmarried girl living in his household, but a widow was a horse of a different color. Mentally, he upped the age that he had given her in his head. If she had been married for three years, she must be older than he imagined.

“I am sorry about your husband,” Nick told her. "How did he die, if I may ask?"

“A tragic accident,” she said, and something in her voice made him glance up sharply. Her fine green eyes were filled with soul-deep despair. Nick felt his heart skip a beat and caught his breath in empathy, then her thick black lashes swept down to hide her expression. When she looked back up, her face was carefully blank. He wondered if he had only imagined the depth of emotion that made her eyes seem a bottomless well of swirling dark water. And if all of that turmoil of spirit had been there in her eyes and not his imagination, what had taught her to hide all that feeling behind a mask?

Maggie was shaken to her very soul. She was finding it very hard to look away from Nicholas Revelle. When Uncle Ned had told her about the job, she had not pictured this man at all. He was easily the most handsome man she had seen in her life. If her mother had been alive to see him, she would have been instantly motivated to paint his portrait.

His features looked as if they were carved for a sculpture by a master craftsman. The lines of his straight nose and firm jaw were perfect, and his cheekbones jutted high and proud in his dark face. He had eyes so dark they appeared black in this light, and his lashes as thick as paintbrushes. His mouth was long and perfectly shaped and Maggie wondered for an instant what his lips would feel like against hers and was shaken by a soul-deep sensual desire to run her hands through the rumpled black silk of his hair. Her thoughts and the compulsion scared her nearly into panic; she had had no desire to touch any man since her disastrous marriage. She studied him with wide eyes, because it was not only his face that so compelled her.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, his crisp white shirt emphasizing his dark tan. He was wearing tight black breeches and the most disreputable riding boots she had ever seen. She stared at him, at his broad shoulders, at the powerful muscles in his biceps, his muscular thighs and narrow hips. This was a man who obviously worked in the out of doors a great deal, and he did not fit her preconceived notions of him at all. She had expected an effete dandy who let others do all the work while he kept all the profit.

This is a mistake, she thought in panic. I cannot stay here. She could hear him speaking, and mentally shook herself. Pay attention! she hissed silently. She could feel sweat dripping down from the high neck of her dress to pool between her breasts. She forced herself to concentrate.

“You would live in, of course. Kathleen Donaldson, a young woman from a neighboring farm, comes by days to help with the heavy work and anything else you need, but the bulk of the housework would be yours. You would be responsible for stocking any household items that we need and I would provide you a budget which we would go over monthly, altering as we both see fit. You would have to cook three meals a day for me and two others and a noontime meal for a staff of twelve.”

He grinned, unexpectedly, showing white, even teeth, and Maggie felt a jolt in the pit of her stomach. “If you could provide cakes and pies, that would be a bonus. I have a terrible sweet tooth, and I have a stableboy who is growing so fast he is about to eat me out of house and home, and I am sure he would appreciate it, too. Occasionally I have dinner guests and you would have to prepare a larger meal in the evening.” She nodded firmly. That was no problem. “Now about salary . . . “ He mentioned a sum that made her gasp. He looked at her quizzically. “If it is not enough, I could go a little higher, but not very much.”

“No!” she said quickly. “No, that is fine.”

“Let me show you where you will stay.”

He moved to take her arm without thinking and she jerked from his grasp so quickly that he found himself stumbling.

“Sorry,” she stammered. “You startled me, that is all.”

“Excuse me,” he said politely, and Maggie flushed when she saw compassion in his steady gaze. She mentally berated and called herself coward. Could she not even bear the feel of a man’s hand on her arm for mere moments?

He deliberately took her to a bedroom door at the back of the house, the room farthest from his. A musty smell came from the room; the furniture was covered with sheets.

“You would have to clean this up,” he said dubiously. “But this is your room. It has not been used in a long time. If it does not suit, you have your pick of four more.”

“This is fine.”

“Good,” he said much too heartily. She inched away from him again, and a sudden realization hit him with the force of a sledgehammer between the eyes. She was keeping herself just beyond arms reach. He turned away from her to hide the anger rising in his eyes. He found himself fervently wishing he could meet the person who had taught her to fear so deeply that she flinched away from his slightest movement. “When can you start?”

She made a surprised sound and looked at him with her downy eyebrows raised halfway to her hairline.

“You . . . do not want a reference?”

He smiled. “Ned is the best reference you could ever have. I do not require another.”

“I . . .I will be here tonight with my things. I have to settle my bill at the Red Horse, and I can begin in the morning.” She looked down as she said it, fidgeting with the fringe on the bedspread.

Nick’s mouth dropped open. The Red Horse had a couple of rooms to let in the back of the tavern. Tommy and his mother had lived in one them. They were better than sleeping out in the weather, but just barely, and he was shocked that she was staying there. Prostitutes usually used them to conduct their business.

“The Red Horse?” he said incredulously. “You have been staying at the Red Horse? What does Ned think about that?”

She turned to face him almost belligerently, forgetting for a second to be afraid. Nick could see her emerald green eyes flashing defiance at him.

“I am a widowed woman,” she said tartly. “Uncle Ned does not control my behavior, and his opinion does not sway me. He wanted to ask you if I could stay in his rooms, and I would not let him.”

He grinned at her, and tugged at an imaginary forelock. “Yes’m, Miss Maggie. I am

sorry, Miss Maggie.”

She flushed a dull red from the neckline of her ugly dress up to her hairline and then the color receded to leave her paper-white. He lost his grin when he saw fear begin to etch deep lines around her mouth. She began to tremble, and crossed her arms across her chest, backing as far away from him as the constraints of the small room would allow.

“I . . . I am sorry. I did not mean to be disrespectful.” Her eyes were as big as saucers, and she forced the apology out through stiffened lips.

“I was only concerned with your safety,” he said softly, in the same low croon that he used to good effect on hurt animals and frightened children. “I was teasing you a little, too. I did not think you were disrespectful. I am not that full of my own importance.” He watched some of the tension drain from her carriage. “The Red Horse is not the safest place, and I was surprised that you were there. I will send a carriage and a man with you to collect your things. Unless . . . do you have a carriage waiting?”

“I walked from the inn,” she said softly.

The Red Horse was a good seven miles away. Nick was silent for a moment, thinking about how long it must have taken to walk that distance, and how warm a June day could be, and how her feet must feel in those ill-fitting boots she was wearing.

“Have you eaten?”

“No . . . no, I had not thought about it.”

“Well, come to the kitchen, girl,” he said strongly. “I will fix you something to eat and you can see just how badly I require the services of a cook.”



Maggie sat down gingerly on the bed, tiredness seeping from her very pores. She looked around at the room she had been given, unable to believe that it was all for her. At the Red Horse, she had made do with a corner room no bigger than a closet, and spartan did not begin to describe the furnishings. The mattress on the rope bed had been made of corn shucks, and the only other furniture was a small table to hold a pitcher and bowl for water. And before the Red Horse . . . She deliberately blanked her mind of anything before the Red Horse.

This was luxury. She had a feather mattress. A bureau and a wardrobe, intricately carved and gleaming from the vigorous polishing she had given it that afternoon held her meager belongings. She had only one change of clothing, a gray percale in just as worn condition as her brown, a nightrail so old and thin you could read through it, a chemise in the same condition, a pewter brush and mirror, and a brooch her mother had painted for her. They barely took up a corner of one drawer.

“But you are free,” a voice whispered in her head. What need had she of possessions? She had the greatest possession of all, her freedom. Uncle Ned swore that she was safe here, that Nick Revelle was a man of honor and compassion and that he would not harm her in any way, but Maggie could not let go of her fear completely. Even Ned did not know all of her secrets, and he was her family. She admitted reluctantly to herself that she found Mr. Revelle disturbingly attractive. He was tall and well built, his black hair flopped over his forehead so endearingly that she had nearly reached to push it back, and his eyes were gentle, though Maggie could see the pain swirling behind his smiling demeanor.

But men were not to be trusted, she reminded herself, no matter how kind they looked. She had found that out, much to her sorrow. He would never be able to touch her again. The errant thought sent jubilation singing through her veins.

She would never tell Nick Revelle anything about her life before she stepped over his threshold and she would live in this house, happily obscure and alone. Alone forever. She wondered why that did not have quite the same satisfactory ring that it had yesterday.

She had turned down Mr. Revelle’s offer of a meal that afternoon, preferring instead to take the bread, cheese, and flask of water that he had wrapped for her when she balked at the idea of sitting and eating in his presence. Maggie knew that she would have been unable to choke a bite down her dry throat, though she had torn into it greedily enough in the privacy of the carriage he had provided her with. He seemed kind, but so had . . . Again, she firmly turned her thoughts off. She did not need to dwell on her past in every waking moment. Memories came unbidden to her in the middle of the night, came to wrap her in the nightmare of the old life she used to live, but she would not relive them in the daytime too.

She fell backward onto the bed, sinking into the softness with a sigh. She felt muscles relax that she had not known were tensed. Her days would begin early from now on. She had better go to sleep. Sleeping did not seem like a hardship here, it was not like the Red Horse, she could sleep without a chair jammed under the door. She did not have to worry about someone creeping into her room in the middle of the night. Her eyes drifted closed and a yawn split her face unexpectedly. She did not have to worry . . . no, she did not have to . . .

Nick opened his eyes and sat up in bed. Something was wrong. A wailing scream came from the back of the house and he jumped up and ran toward the ululating sound, heedless of his nudity. The sound came from Maggie’s room, and he hesitated only briefly before throwing the door open and going inside. Muffled sobbing came from underneath the bed and he dropped to his knees and lifted the coverlet to peep underneath. She lay curled in a fetal position in the furthest corner, her hands covering her mouth to stop the cries. He started when he saw her eyes wide open and staring blankly at him, then realized she was still caught in the grip of some terrible dream. His heart twisted inside his chest and he slithered under the bed with her and the dust.

“No,” she moaned and wiggled farther back into the corner. “Please, do not . . . I beg you, I will do anything you want . . . “

”It is okay,” he said gently. “Maggie, it is okay.” He reached out a hand and she flinched back. He carefully wiped the dust off her forehead and stroked a strand of her silky hair behind her ear. “I will help you, Maggie. Come out and I will help you. I want you to come out now, Maggie.”

She let him pull her out from under the frame of the bed, swaying in front of him. She

leaned on him, briefly, and he felt the softness of her breasts brush against the hair of his naked chest. A shock jolted his body at the contact and traveled straight to his groin. He cursed himself then, fluently and passionately, in the same low soothing murmur that he had been using to speak to her. He led her to the bed and lay her down, staring at her, feeling an unwanted surge of lust roil through his body.

He started to cover her solicitously with the sheet, but could not help but notice how the shape of her showed through the worn cotton of her thin chemise. Her breasts were high and firm and surprisingly voluptuous for her thin frame; he could see the aureole and her puckered nipples through the transparent cloth and he ached suddenly, unexpectedly, to wet them with his mouth, to dampen and warm the cloth covering them with his hot breath. The hot shaft of desire took his breath away, and he let his eyes roam over the rest of her, his heart beating harder and harder in his chest and his breath beginning to whistle between his clenched teeth. She had a high, arching rib cage and was so thin he could count her ribs and see the indentations between. Her waist was small he could have spanned it with his hands and still have room left over and her hipbones thrust out sharply. She needed weeks of good food and rest and he found himself wondering idly how big her breasts would be then. Nick felt his blood surge through his veins and grow hotter. His hands trembled on the sheet, and he hurriedly covered her.

You are a beast, he thought disgustedly. What is wrong with you? She is in the grip of something horrifying and all you can think about is fornication. He smiled wryly. He was standing stark naked with an attractive, nearly naked female and he wondered why he was lusting after her. Maggie whimpered again, and all levity fled from his mind.

“Ssh,” he whispered. “Ssh, it is okay.”

“Papa?” she whispered. “Make him go away. Do not let him hurt me anymore.”

“I will not, sweeting,” he whispered back, and stroked her hair back from her sweaty forehead. "He will never hurt you again." Tenderness threatened to consume him as she turned her face blindly into his palm. Nick felt something twist in his gut as she pressed her lips against his fingers and then gripped his hand with her smaller one.

“Do not leave me,” she begged.

He sat on the edge of the bed. “I will not,” he said. “I will stay with you until you go to sleep.” He picked up the coverlet. “Let me tuck you in.”

Maggie curled up under the warm blanket and he watched her drift back into a peaceful sleep. He determinedly kept his eyes on the delicate lines of the features that were delineated by the soft moonlight seeping through the window in her room, and tried to ignore the desire raging through his body. He stroked her hair one more time, his fingers going unbidden to the slippery strands, and she murmured something as she cuddled her pillow. Nick had a sudden deep urge to be a pillow. He damped down his desires and watched her until he was sure she was deeply asleep, and then left the room, taking great care to be quiet.

In his own room, he lay on the bed with his hands behind his head and stared broodingly at the ceiling, trying to ignore the pulse that still thumped in his groin. This is going to be trouble, he thought grimly. Maybe a trip to see the widow Henderson was in order. He had just been too long without a woman, that was all. He would talk to Ned about moving into the house, too.

*********************************************************

“Good morning, Maggie,” he said quietly to her back. She shivered with a remembered terror, then made her hands stop shaking through sheer effort of will.

“Good morning, sir,” she replied calmly, turning from the oven to wipe her hands on the apron she wore. The garment dwarfed her slender figure and Maggie knew she must look ridiculous. She wrapped dignity around herself much as she had wrapped the apron strings around herself thrice.

“If you would seat yourself in the dining room, sir, I would serve you your breakfast,” she said smoothly, her eyes lowered. She was a perfect picture of servility, and she should be, she thought bitterly. She had had three years to practice that emotion. A quiet chuckle brought her head up sharply.

“No need for that.” A grin crinkled the skin at the corners of his brown eyes.

He had beautiful eyes, she thought detachedly. They were the rich deep brown of strong coffee and they were framed with long, curling lashes. The twinkle in them invited her to share in the joke. His smile was gorgeous, exposing his white teeth and one deep dimple. Do not waste your time trying to charm me, she thought silently, suddenly angry with him. It will not work.

“I do not stand on such ceremony. I will just take a plate here in the kitchen.”

She watched dumbfounded as he poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot she had brewed and left to stay warm on the back of the iron cookstove, then seated himself at the rough table, folding his long legs underneath with the effortlessness of long practice. Her mouth trembled as he brushed past her, his sleeve just catching hers. She felt seared at the contact and jerked her arm away, staring at him.

“Whatever you have cooked smells wonderful,” he told her cheerfully. “I am so glad you have come here. My breakfast for the last month has been strong coffee and hard biscuits.”

“I . . . I m..made porridge and, and . . . bacon.” His brown eyes regarded her over the rim of his coffee mug. She composed herself with an effort. “Eggs, if you want them. There are biscuits, too. Not hard ones,” she could not resist adding, and cringed at the tone of her voice. Had she not learned her place yet? Were not the lessons in humility she had received strong enough? No, she must always assuage her need for a tart answer and get herself in trouble.

“I am glad to hear it,” Nick said gently. “I would like two eggs, please, with my breakfast.” He studied the rigidity of her figure as she turned away from him and busied herself placing items on the table. He noted with displeasure that she still kept a respectable distance between them and seemed to stop breathing when she came in close. When she was forced to move in closer to put his plate in front of him, he surreptitiously closed his eyes and breathed in her warm scent. He could smell the soap she had used that morning, and bread dough, and an underlying, spicier scent that enticed him to lean closer, close enough to feel the warmth rising off her body. He wanted to lay his head on the pillow of her breast, he wanted to . . . He snapped his eyes open and shifted uncomfortably on the wooden chair. She would not welcome anything he wanted to do, he reminded himself harshly. He looked at the lovely curve of her back as she leaned over the stove, thumped his cup down hard and was instantly sorry as she jumped. He cleared his throat.

“May I have some more coffee, please?” I would get it myself if I did not have the biggest erection of my life, he thought sardonically. At least she has to get close to me now, he thought, then hated himself when she filled his cup and moved quickly away, still watching him warily from the corners of those remarkably beautiful eyes. He ate his breakfast without words, without tasting anything, mumbled something he hoped was appropriate, and left in a daze.

What is wrong with me? he asked himself as he went through his morning schedule on automatic. I have seen women’s breasts before. I have had unrequited lusts, and even some who haunt my dreams still. None had the power to disrupt quite the way that this one had. None had made him act in quite this manner. He had spent the rest of last night lying awake, frustrated. Even satisfying himself had not cured the ache he felt. He had imagined her when she had wakened and tormented himself with visions of her washing herself before she dressed, had imagined the droplets of water beading on those perfect breasts, the cloth rubbing lovingly, sensually, along the sinuous curve of her body. He wanted to press his face into her stomach and warm her cool skin, lick the water from the silken hair between her thighs.

He had lain in bed, trying to get himself under control, now here he was, only to find his blood quickening and his body hardening at the slightest glance from her. Fearful of him or not, she had him down on his proverbial knees and she did not even know it. Nick pressed his lips together firmly and made a sudden vow to himself. Maggie would never know how vulnerable he was to her. That kind of information in the hands of a woman was dangerous; his marriage had hammered that point home time and again. He had to find out what she wanted. She could grow to trust him, and he could help her to heal whatever wounds she carried. And she could do it without ever understanding the power of his lust for her. He would gain her trust and her bed and put out this fire that raged in him. Once he had her in his bed, his lust would eventually go away, just like it had every other time. Or so he told himself, ignoring the voice inside his head that told him this time was different.