LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

had nothing to do with the snow. As isolated as she was from the war, she still had heard of Walter Butler and the hellish pact he’d made with Joseph Brant, the chief of the Mohawk nation. Together Butler’s Rangers and Brant’s braves had cut a ruthless, bloody swath through to the east in the name of the king.

      But, God help her, how could the man with the summer blue eyes, the man whose smile had haunted her loneliness as she’d drawn him back from death—how could this same man be so heartlessly cruel?

      “They’re offering twenty dollars,” continued Alec. “Double the usual rate for a white man’s scalp. Of course, Butler’d rather have the man alive to deal with properly, but Brant and the rest of his savages aren’t inclined to be overnice with traitors.”

      Rachel swallowed her revulsion, imagining all too vividly the stranger’s long, chestnut hair trailing from the belt of some Seneca brave. “I still don’t see what this has to do with me. This land here belongs to the Americans, not the British.”

      “Only this, you foolish chit. Butler swears the man was shot before he fled, and in this weather he wouldn’t go far. If you find him on your land before the wolves do—or even after they have, as long as you can take his scalp—then we can claim the reward.”

      Appalled both by his suggestion and that he’d make it before Billy, Rachel stared at him. “What kind of woman do you think I am, that I would use some wounded stranger so cruelly?”

      “Oh, I think you’re a decent, loyal woman who loves her country and the sweet cause of liberty,” said Alec, his sarcasm unmistakable. “You wouldn’t want people thinking otherwise of you, would you? Whispering that you’ve forgotten your husband and gone over to the king? You’d learn soon enough how short tempers are in this county, Rachel, you and the boy both.”

      “But I couldn’t—”

      “You can do anything if your life depends on it,” said Alec firmly. “You’ve skinned game. Taking a scalp’s not much different. A tall man, they’re saying, name of Ryder, with coppery hair and a bullet in his shoulder. Shouldn’t be too hard to mistake, eh, sister?”

      But to her dismay she felt Billy begin to shuffle and tug at her skirt. “Mama?” he began, unable to contain himself any longer, “Mama, why—”

      Instantly she crouched down to the child’s level, praying that her voice alone could silence the damning question. “Hush, now, Billy,” she said urgently, resting the musket in the crook of her arm as she brushed her fingers across his cheek. “Mama’s talking with Uncle Alec.”

      “And she’s not done talking to me yet.”

      Before she realized it Alec was beside her, seizing her arm and dragging her to her feet so roughly that the musket slipped free and fell with a soft swoosh into the snow. She gasped with surprise, but didn’t fight him or struggle to free herself, instead going perfectly still. She wouldn’t give Alec that satisfaction, nor did she wish to frighten Billy any more than he already was, his fists locked tight around her knee.

      “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing, Alec?” she said as evenly as she could. Lord, how had she let herself be so careless? “This is ridiculous!”

      “Not as ridiculous as you pointing that damnable musket at me,” he said, his face near enough to hers that she could smell the rum and stale tobacco on his breath. “Perhaps next time you’ll remember that I don’t like to be kept out in the snow at gunpoint like some gypsy tinker.”

      “There won’t be a next time, not if I can help it!”

      “But there will, Rachel.” For a moment that was endless to her, Alec’s grasp seemed to turn into a caress that burned through her sleeve before his fingers tightened once again. “I swore to William I’d look after his pretty little wife, and look after you I shall.”

      “I never asked you for that!”

      “You took my food and my firewood when I offered it, didn’t you?”

      “Because you were my husband’s brother!” she cried, her bitter anguish still fresh after so many months. “You were all the family I had for hundreds of miles, and I trusted you!”

      “Then I’ve every right to be here, haven’t I? You can’t order me away, Rachel, not for wanting to offer you advice and comfort.” He let his gaze slide boldly down her throat to her bodice, and chuckled as Rachel self-consciously clutched the front of her cloak together. “The whole county knows what I’ve done for you and the boy. I’ve made quite certain of that. And if in return I ask some small favors, some little indulgences, why, there’s none but you who’d begrudge me that.”

      “‘Small favors’!” Unable to bear his touch any longer, Rachel finally jerked her arm free, rubbing furiously at her forearm as if to wipe clean some invisible stain. “What you ask, Alec, what you expect—William would kill you if he knew!”

      “We’re discussing my brother, Rachel,” he said with insolent confidence, “and I’m not so convinced that he’d mind at all.”

      And neither, thought Rachel miserably, was she. With William, she never did know for certain. In humiliated silence she watched as Alec fished her musket from the snow where she’d dropped it. Slowly he brushed off the snow that clung to the stock before he held the gun out for her to take.

      “I’ll be back, Rachel,” he said softly. “Be sure of that. And mind you keep your eyes open for Ryder. I wouldn’t want the talk to start about my brother’s wife.”

      Rachel snatched the gun away from him, her eyes blazing with shame and anger. “Just leave, Alec,” she said. “Leave now.”

      He laughed and lifted his hat again with mocking gallantry, then turned away to retrieve his horse, his boots crunching heavily through the snow. Rachel wasn’t sure which hurt her more: that parting laugh, or the way he was so infuriatingly confident that she wouldn’t shoot him in the back.

      She felt Billy’s grip on her leg beginning to relax as he peeked around her to see if his uncle had left. She pulled him up onto her hip and with a trusting little sigh he snuggled against her body for warmth and reassurance.

      “I hate Uncle Alec,” he muttered into her cloak. “He’s bad.”

      “I don’t much care for him, either, love,” she confessed, pressing her cheek against the little boy’s soft curls. When she held him like this, wrapped up in the quilt with his bands curled against her breast, she could imagine he was a baby again, when she was all of the world he knew or needed. But sorrowfully she knew in her heart that that time had already come to an end. Now it would take more than a hug and a kiss and a spoonful of strawberry jam on a biscuit to make things right in a world that included both Alec Lindsey and a violent war that had suddenly come to their doorstep.

      She watched Alec’s horse pick his way through the snow, her brother-in-law’s red scarf the single patch of color in the monochrome landscape. Without mittens, her fingers were growing stiff and numb from the cold, and she shouldn’t keep Billy outside any longer.

      Ryder, that was the name Alec had mentioned, and she sighed unhappily. That was the name—J. Ryder—elaborately engraved on the brass plate of the stranger’s rifle, and the hem of his checked shirt had been marked with the same initials in tiny, flawless crossstitches. She had tried so much to distance herself from the stranger, to keep herself apart from whatever had brought him here. She hadn’t wanted to know his secrets any more than she wished to share her own. Now he had a name, a past and a price of twenty dollars on his head, while she’d lost every notion of what she’d do next.

      “I’m cold, Mama,” said Billy plaintively, “an’ I want t’go inside.”

      That at least would be a start, and with another sigh she wearily headed back to the house, the musket tipped back over her shoulder. She pushed open the door, already framing what she’d say to the wounded man waiting in the bed.

      Except

Скачать книгу