Perhaps…but Wolfe doubted it.
Jessica’s glance followed Wolfe’s to the station house, but for a different reason. A week ago she wouldn’t have kenneled a dog inside something as disreputable as that sod house, but now it looked like a haven from the bleak landscape. When visiting the prairie with Lord Robert’s hunting expeditions, she had thought the place beautiful with its tall grass and unexpected ponds, its melodious birds and arching blue sky, and its clean, endless vistas.
At the moment, Jessica’s view of the prairie was less charitable. The landscape was in the dying grasp of winter. Mile upon mile upon mile of land lay half-frozen around her. Flat, featureless, treeless, empty of lakes or rivers, inhabited only by the long, low howl of the north wind, the prairie defined desolation; and the sound the wind made was the disbelieving cry of a soul newly damned.
Jessica had heard that sound before in her nightmares. Shuddering, she looked away from the emptiness and knew she had to be out the reach of the wind, if only for a few minutes.
«Wolfe, please.»
«No. It isn’t a fit place for an English lady.»
«I’m Scots,» she said automatically.
Wolfe smiled, but there was no humor in his expression. «I know. Scots or English or even French, that place still isn’t fit for a lady.»
Jessica was very tired of hearing what was and was not fit for a lady, for it seemed those rules always worked against her. On the other hand, losing her temper only caused Wolfe to bait her all the more.
«I’m an American wife,» Jessica said, smiling through her teeth, «not a foreign lady.»
«Then obey your husband. I’ll bring breakfast, if it’s fit to eat. I doubt that it will be. The food here has been passed up by skunks.»
«Nothing can be that bad.»
«This is. If you’re hungry, we’ll eat farther up the line. One of the army wives makes egg money supplying the stage stop with baked goods.»
The wind’s eerie cry raked over Jessica’s nerves. She trembled and looked at Wolfe with an unconscious plea in her blue eyes.
«Wolfe, just this once, just for a few minutes?»
«No.»
Fear and exhaustion shook Jessica. Fiercely, she fought the desire to cry. Her mother’s experience had taught Jessica that tears served no purpose except that of announcing weakness, and weakness was invariably attacked.
«Get back to the stage, your ladyship,» Wolfe said curtly. «I’ll bring you any food that’s fit to eat.»
Jessica’s spine straightened as anger swept through her, driving out fatigue and fear for a few blessed moments. «How kind of you. Tell me, what did you do for entertainment before you had me to torment, pull wings from butterflies?»
«If being an American wife instead of an English lady —»
«Scots.»
«— is such a torment,» he continued, ignoring her interruption, «then you have only to say the word and you’ll be free of this rude frontier life.»
«Bastard.»
«Without doubt, but the word I had in mind was annulment.»
The wind moaned with a chill promise of damnation that made nightmares awaken inside Jessica. When the stagecoach was moving, there was at least the endless rattle and clatter of the wheels to dull the voice of the wind. But now the stage was motionless and the traces empty while the horses were switched. Now the stage shifted and shivered beneath the cruel force of the wind.
Jessica knew if she sat in that fragile shell and heard the wind screaming, she would start screaming, too. Yet she didn’t dare show such weakness to Wolfe. If he understood how much she feared the wind, he would use it against her, driving her back to England and a marriage with the likes of Lord Gore.
Then her nightmares would be real, rather than remaining black dreams she never quite remembered upon awakening.
Without a word, Jessica picked up her skirts and walked past Wolfe, who was staring at the weary saddle horses. As he had feared, some of them bore the marks of horses used by the South in the recent war. More than one band of outlaws had begun in the embittered rabble of a lost cause. Some had come from the North as well, men who had gotten a taste for looting and killing that hadn’t gone away when the war ended.
Wish to hell Caleb or Reno washere, Wolfethoughtgrimly.Icould use a good man at my back right now.
A motion at the edge of Wolfe’s vision caught his eye. It was Jessica’s long skirts being whipped by the wind. She was headed for the station building rather than the empty stage.
«Jessi!»
She didn’t even look back.
Wolfe began running, but it was the stage he headed for, not Jessica. He knew he had no chance of reaching her before she got to the station house. He yanked open the stagecoach’s door and leaped inside with the agility of a cat. The leather presentation case that held the matched rifle and carbine was on the seat.
Just as Jessica closed the station house door behind her, she looked back, expecting Wolfe to be on her heels. When she saw that he wasn’t, she let out a sigh of relief. The sigh turned to a soundless gasp when she turned to face the occupants of the room.
Wolfe had been right. This wasn’t a place for a lady.
It wasn’t the room’s dim, smoky interior, its filth, or its feral smell that put the place off limits for a lady. It was the intent masculine eyes measuring her the way a merchant measured gold dust, one soft bit at a time.
A man who had been sitting apart from the others stood up from the uneven table and swept off his battered hat.
«Something you need, ma’am?» he asked unhappily.
Even in the bad light Jessica recognized the stagecoach driver’s long, bushy mustache. She smiled at him with relief, not realizing how beautiful her smile might be to men who hadn’t seen a white woman for months, much less one wearing a dress that had been sewn by expert seamstresses to fit her breasts and waist like a soft blue shadow. Even wrinkled and mussed from long travel, she was like an exotic flower blooming in the midst of winter.
«I was chilled,» Jessica said softly. «I saw the smoke.»
«Come on in,» one of the other men said, standing. He gestured toward the bench where he had been sitting. «All warmed up and ready to ride, like me.»
Several of the men snickered.
The man who had spoken should have been handsome. He was tall and well-proportioned, with even teeth and regular features. His clothes were frayed but well-made. He wore a heavy split riding coat. He was the only man who wascleanshaven. His posture was as proud as any gentleman’s.
Yet there was something in the young man that made Jessica profoundly uneasy. His eyes were like the wind — colorless, empty, and cold. He was watching her with a reptilian intensity that made the skin on her arms ripple in a primitive comprehension of danger. She longed to be back in the stagecoach with Wolfe at her side.
Jessica would have turned and fled, but she sensed with great certainty that showing weakness to this man would have the effect of dangling wounded prey in front of a pack of starving hounds.
«My name’s Raleigh,» the young man said, tipping his hat in a gesture that was more familiar than polite, «but pretty gals mostly call me Lee.»
«Thank you, Mr. Raleigh,» Jessica said with clipped formality, «but it’s not necessary for you to give up your seat. Just being in out of the wind is enough for me.»
«Nonsense,» he said, coming toward Jessica. «Come over here where it’s warm.» He kicked one of the men’s feet on the way by. «Steamer, get off your butt and get the pretty English miss some grub.»
«Scots,» she said softly, forcing herself to be calm when every nerve in her body screamed for her to flee.
«What?»
«I’m Scots.»
Raleigh smiled thinly as he reached for Jessica’s arm. «Whatever you say, lassie. Now get your pretty self over here and tell me what a girl like you is doing in Cross-Eyed Joe’s place.»