Bride of the Wolf

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His gaze had met hers, and she’d felt as if he were stripping off her clothing, dress and corset and petticoats and undergarments, to reveal her quivering nakedness. For one awful moment she had imagined what it might be like to give herself to such a man, feel his long limbs and hard muscles moving against her body.

She closed her eyes. No matter how resolutely she tried to shut the memories out of her mind, no matter the terrible consequences that had come from her one and only indiscretion, she could still feel it. Feel the ecstasy of Louis lying over her, inside her, arousing such painful joy that she had become a wanton, lost to all reason.

That wanton should no longer exist. She should have died on the day her aunt had cast her, penniless, into the street. When the life sheltered within her, the fragile flame sparked by what she had thought was love, flickered out.

But that shameful other self had outlived the infant Rachel had wanted so badly. Oh, she had managed to believe herself cured during the hard years that followed, through Jedediah’s epistolary courtship and her journey from Ohio. She had told herself that what she must do with Jedediah would be only a way of making him happy, a task no different than sweeping the floor or washing his shirts.