Gift Of The Heart

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Of whom shall I seek—

Abruptly Rachel broke off, listening. She thought she’d heard a scuffling sound, almost scratching, but as soon as she fell quiet it stopped. Daft, she thought with disgust, she’d gone daft and soft brained as an old rotten log.

So farewell, my dearest Dear, until another year Then the sweet Spring I hope for to—

There, she’d heard it again. Swiftly she moved the milk bucket aside and caught up the lantern. She smacked Juno’s angular hip to make her move away from the wall, and then knelt in the straw with the lantern held low. The scuffling sound was definitely there now, like something digging against the wooden wall, searching for a loose deal. Rats or squirrels, most likely, starving from the snow cover and desperate for the grain in the barn.

Scowling, Rachel rose and grabbed her musket. She’d had to pay dearly for that grain from Alec, too dearly to let it be nibbled away by rats. She stormed out the door with her skirts flying, ready to teach the thieves a lesson.

She slipped once on the ice and swore impatiently. She’d left the lantern inside, but with the door ajar a narrow beam of light slid across the snow. She peered into the shadows where the scratching sound had come from, trying to see as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light. Something moved, something low and dark, and she kicked the door open a little farther.

The pale light washed farther over the snow, down to the corner of the barn and the stone wall beyond. The low, dark shadow rose up from the snow, startled by the light, growing larger by the second. A long tail, the sharp triangles of ears and yellow eyes glowing in the lantern’s light. No scratching now, no digging, only the deep rumbling growl as the wolf drew back on its haunches to face her.

There had been something in the dark. She hadn’t been imagining things. But a wolf, God help her. Not a rat after corn, but a wolf.

He crouched there in the snow, cornered between the barn and the wall, his lips curled from his teeth and the hair bristling on the back of his neck like some mongrel guarding a stolen bone. But the wolf was bigger than any dog she’d ever seen, and she didn’t think he was going to run off if she stamped her foot and shook her apron.

Slowly, so slowly, she raised the musket to her eye and released the lock. Her hands were shaking, making the sight tremble, and she took a deep breath to steady herself. She had to make this single shot count; it could take her a full minute, sixty seconds at least, to reload the musket, and she wasn’t sure she’d have that time.

The wolf angled sideways, closer, testing her, the yellow eyes bright and hard.

She had to do this, shoot him now, before he came any closer. She told herself she couldn’t miss at this range. She couldn’t afford to, anyway. She swallowed hard, whispered a terse little prayer and squeezed the trigger.

She heard the hammer click, the little sizzle of the pan and the bright flash, she smelled the familiar acrid puff of gunpowder, and then—

And then nothing.

No thump as the butt kicked back against her shoulder, no crack from the ball flying from the barrel. Only the flat, worthless silence of a gun that had misfired.

Somehow the animal seemed to know Rachel had lost her advantage and began inching closer. His nails clicked softly with each footfall on the frozen snow, his breath gathering in white puffs around his bared teeth.

With a muffled cry of dismay and fear Rachel dropped the musket from her shoulder, her forefinger tangling clumsily with the trigger as she fought her panic. Eight feet away, maybe six. There was no time to dear the fouled gun, no time to reload, not even time to run back into the barn, not now that the wolf was closer than she to the open door. If she turned and tried to run for the house, the wolf would surely head for the open barn and poor Juno.

Or he could choose instead to chase after her. Forty paces uphill, across a frozen path in the dark where the animal could see so much better than she, chasing after her to seize her ice-heavy skirts in his jaws and drag her down, down.

Suddenly the wolf lunged across the snow and Rachel staggered back, barely keeping from the animal’s reach. Gasping, she slid her hands down the musket to the end of the barrel and swung it as hard as she could. She felt the impact of the butt striking the wolf, and heard the startled yelp of pain. But the same sweep of the musket through the air threw her off-balance, her feet sliding out from under her on the ice, and she pitched forward hard, the musket flying from her hands to spin across the crusted snow.

“No,” she gasped as she tried to scramble away on her hands and knees. “Dear God, no!”

She saw the white fur of the wolf’s underbelly as he whirled through the air, a blur as white against the black sky as the snow she lay upon. The scream she knew was her own, shrill with fear. But the sharp crack of the rifle’s shot made no sense, not even when the wolf dropped lifeless to the snow before her. No sense, she thought, her heart pounding wildly as she crouched on the snow, it made no sense at all.

“Are you hurt, Rachel?” Jamie pulled her to her feet, his voice harsh from concern and strain. “Look at me, lass. Are you hurt?”

She stared at him, uncomprehending, her eyes still wide with terror and her breath coming in short little gasps. Her braid had come unraveled, her hair hanging half-loose around her face, and when she lifted her hand to brush it back he saw the raw scrape across her knuckles where she’d fallen on the ice. But nothing worse, thank God.

He glanced again at the lifeless body of the wolf, then slung his rifle on its strap across his back and set his hands gently on her shoulders. “You’ll be fine, Rachel,” he said, forcing her to look at him and listen. “The animal’s dead, and can’t harm you.”

“Yes,” she said hoarsely, nodding her head even as she searched his face for reassurance. “Yes, I’m quite fine. Quite.”

It was Jamie Ryder, of course, Jamie who had saved her. With the light from the open door behind him, his face was dark in shadow, but she would have recognized his voice anywhere. And who else, really, could it have been?

Yet even as she realized what he’d done, she wished it hadn’t been so. She wanted to be like all the other women in her family, her grandmother and her mother and her older sisters. She wanted to be strong, independent, able to take care of herself and Billy, and this winter, before this man had come, she’d thought she was. But then she remembered how the wolf had sprung toward her, and she didn’t feel very strong or brave at all. What she felt was weak and weepy, and if he said one more kind word to her she knew she’d shatter at his feet.

Instead she drew away from him, smoothing her hair from her face as if her fingers still did not shake, and bent to pick up her musket.

“It misfired, you know,” she explained, almost grudgingly, as she peered at the flintlock, poking the bits of snow away from it. “Else I would have made the shot myself.”

“True enough. But ‘twas a good thing my rifle didn’t suffer the same ill.”

Frowning, she glanced up at him without raising her chin. “How far were you from—from me?”

“Not far.” He shrugged carelessly, but Rachel saw how he favored the wounded shoulder. “I’d just stepped outside the house.”

“That’s forty paces, and in the dark, too.” She was impressed, as much by his modesty as by what he’d done. She’d never known another man who’d have been able to resist such an opportunity to boast. “You said you could shoot the seeds from an apple, and you weren’t bragging.”

She heard his smile without seeing it. “That old wolfs a sight bigger than an apple.”

For the first time Rachel forced herself to look at the dead animal. The sky was beginning to pale with dawn, and the gray shape of the wolf was clear against the snow, framed by the darker puddle of its own blood. Only luck and Jamie had saved her from lying there instead, stiffening on the snow, in the blood. She looked, and could not look away, any more than she could stop the trembling that suddenly racked her or the tears that blurred her eyes, and this time when Jamie reached for her, she crumpled against him, her musket slipping forgotten from her hand.

“There now, lass, I told you you’d be fine,” he murmured as he folded his arms around her. “I’ll grant you it was a close thing, but you’ll be fine.”

And she was fine, thought Jamie, fine and soft to hold against his chest, the way he’d known she would be. Her hair slid like silk across his wrists as she pressed her cheek against the fringed yoke of his linen Ranger’s shirt, her hands curled loosely together like a child’s. He’d heard once that the fringe was meant to draw rain away from a man’s shoulders, to scatter the drops where they’d shake away. Would they work the same way now, he wondered, to draw away a woman’s tears?

Instinctively he tightened his arms around her and she burrowed closer. The image of her bravely swinging the musket at the wolf was burned forever in his consciousness, along with the sickening lurch he’d felt deep inside when he’d realized what it would take to save her. And he’d done it; he hadn’t failed her. But he couldn’t remember the last time a woman had turned to him like this, and he longed to give her the comfort she needed. Aye, that was all, comfort, to ease her fears like a brother or a friend.

Like hell that was all, he thought wretchedly, as if he could ignore her womanly scent or the soft warmth of her breasts pressed against him. Like hell was exactly what it was. He’d warned her not to trust him. Why the devil hadn’t she listened?

“I thought—thought I was going to die,” said Rachel raggedly, hiccuping with her sobs. “I thought everything was—was going to end, and I was so seared, and—and oh, I’m such—such a silly coward!”

He smiled in spite of himself. “Oh, hush, that’s nonsense. Whatever else you are, Rachel Lindsey, you’re no coward.”

“No?” Her voice squeaked upward, and she pulled back to look at him, but not so far that she’d be free of his embrace. Furiously she dashed at her tears with the back of her fist. “Then why—why else am I crying so?”

“Because you’re wise enough to know you’re mortal,” he said as he gently traced his fingers along her cheek, her face so close to his. “Frightening thought, that. Because you know how sweet life can be.”

He kissed her then, and she didn’t stop him. The wolf, and the gun misfiring, and now Jamie’s lips on hers—none of it was real. Swiftly she parted her lips for his, swaying into him as she let herself become lost in his kiss. This was the sweetness he’d spoken of, the dizzying richness of pleasure and life that she hadn’t wanted to abandon.

Her palms flattened against his chest, pressing against his shirt to feel the steady beating of his heart. She was glad his was steady, for her own was racing like a rabbit across a meadow. The taste of him, the maleness of his desire, stole her breath away and made her limbs turn to butter. His hands slid lower, following the curve from her waist to her hips, and she shuddered as he pulled her closer against his long, hard body.

Yet she wanted this; no, she needed it, more than she’d realized was possible. This fire of a man’s kiss on an icy morning and the heady security of his arms around her proved that she wasn’t alone, that someone cared whether she died or lived.

The same pleasures she’d once believed she’d find with William. With her husband.

With a shudder she shoved herself back, tucking her wayward hands beneath her arms. “I didn’t mean anything by that,” she said with a swift, ragged urgency. “Nothing, you understand?”

He didn’t move to reclaim her again, instead standing impossibly still before her. “Nothing at all?”

“Nothing,” she declared, the lie so great she nearly winced.

“Then that’s a great pity,” he said softly. “Because I did.”

She prayed the same half-light that masked his expression would hide her own guilty flush, as well. “That’s—that’s not possible.”

“Aye, it is.” He turned away and went to prod the dead wolf with his toe. “Kissing you could never be meaningless, Rachel Lindsey. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. Nor, I think, would you.”

Some place near her heart tightened in her breast. “You must not say such things.”

“Even if they’re true?”

“They can’t be,” she said, bowing her head beneath the weight of her shame. “You forget that I’m married.”

“True enough. I kissed the woman, not the wife.” He sighed deeply, staring down at the dead wolf instead of her. “But if it displeased you, I’ll try not to do it again. I can’t swear an oath to it—I’ve kept that much of my father’s beliefs—but I will give you my word. That should be enough.”

The tears smarting behind her eyes were dangerously close to spilling over. What else had she expected from him? That the foolish dreams she’d whispered to him when he’d been delirious would turn real?

He’d saved her life just as she’d saved his, with the same justice and decency that ruled the frontier. She was the one who’d erred by falling into his arms, and he could hardly be faulted for expecting more. Men always did. Hadn’t she learned anything from William and Alec? At least Jamie Ryder was simply doing what she’d claimed she wanted, to be left alone as any decent married woman would wish.

Kissing you could never be meaningless, Rachel…

Fiercely she rubbed her sleeve across her eyes. If he could be so unbearably calm about this, then she could, too. She’d just survived being attacked by a wolf. She wasn’t going to let herself be felled by her own misplaced emotions and a handful of empty compliments.

“Billy must be stirring by now,” she announced in a voice as loud and stilted as a town crier’s. “He’ll be wanting breakfast. I’d best go.”

“Not until you tend to your stock, you shouldn’t,” said Jamie. “That’s the whole reason you came out here, isn’t it?”

“But Billy—”

“When I left Billy he was sleeping as deep as a boy can, and I’d wager he is still.” He bent to slide his fingers along the weathered gray deals of the barn, seeking and finding the loose board that the wolf had been digging at. “You look after your milking, and I’ll mend this.”

Silently Jamie counted to three, then ten, putting off the inevitable moment when he had to turn and face her. He had no choice, not with her standing between him and the barn door, but he still wasn’t sure he could do it. Once he’d had her in his arms, he’d forgotten every vow he’d sworn to himself.

A woman as good and honorable as Rachel Lindsey didn’t deserve to be handled like some backwoods strumpet. It shouldn’t have mattered one whit that she was also one of the loveliest creatures he’d ever seen. She had trusted him and he’d taken advantage of that trust until she’d been forced to remind him she was married, and even then she hadn’t berated him the way he’d deserved.

But what was worse, what disgusted him more, was that he knew he’d kiss her again in a moment. Even now he could feel his body grow hard at the memory of how her soft lips had parted for him, innocently welcoming his intrusion just as she’d welcomed him into her home.

But no more. If he’d a mite of decency left in his weary soul, he’d never touch her again. Swearing to himself, he gave one final desultory kick to the loose deal on the barn with his moccasin and slowly walked toward her.

“Come along, now,” he said as he tried to smile. “I’ve no mind to cross Billy if he’s expecting a cupful of that milk when he wakes.”

How it pained him to see the way she stepped back, away from him!

“You’ve shaved,” she said, her voice oddly breathy.

“Aye, this morning.” He held the barn door open for her to slip inside. “I didn’t know when I’d next see a mirror or hot water, so I took advantage of the kettle on your hearth while I had the chance.”

Her eyes were round, her tongue clearly speechless, so much so that his smile turned lopsided from uncertainty. “I hope the results aren’t too dreadful.”