“So you mean, you miserable wretch, that I didn’t have to get kn
ocked off my mare by that damned tree branch?”
“No, that was very well done of you, and probably sealed my fate. Once I saw you in my bed, I was ready to surrender unconditionally.”
“You didn’t show it.”
“I had to win Mary over first.”
“You did. I spent a great deal of time angry at her for her defection to the enemy. Del, do you think it possible that Chatca could have tracked me?”
He stiffened, his jaw tightening. “No,” he said after a brief pause, “I don’t believe so.”
He saw that she would keep probing, and quickly got to his feet. “Now, little one, I’m going to change that bandage. Then we’ll have another grand feast of roast rabbit.”
Chauncey left off her questions, for her shoulder was throbbing again. It took all her resolution not to cry out when he bathed the wound. “Much better,” she heard him say. “No sign of infection. Another day, love, and I’ll let you do the hunting.”
It rained throughout the night, a hard, pounding rain that, strangely enough, soothed Chauncey. She slept deeply, unaware that Delaney held her close against his body.
The next day he allowed her to sit up, braced by a rolled-up blanket against the wall. She watched him clean his rifle and his handgun. She found her eyes drawn again and again to his hands. Strong hands, tanned and callused, his fingers long and blunt. He spoke of his brother and sister-in-law in New York.
“Giana is a woman after your own heart, Chauncey. She hasn’t a dependent bone in her body and gives my proud and dominating brother quite a time. I do believe though that she turns into a proper submissive woman in my brother’s bed.”
“How did they meet?”
“I know the story they gave out, but I don’t believe a word of it. Alex hinted to me once that Giana had enjoyed quite an unusual experience in Italy and that was where he had first met her. If they visit us, I hope to get Alex drunk and pry out the whole story. You will like both of them, I think. Alex is a charming dog and Giana is a little whirlwind.”
“When you visited them, did they introduce you to all the young ladies in New York?”
“A goodly number. There was one woman whose company I truly enjoyed. She was a friend of Giana’s, and married. Her name was Derry Lattimer. Alex wrote me last year that she’d finally given birth to a son, after some five years of marriage.”
“I trust your heart wasn’t broken,” she said somewhat sharply.
“No. Well, perhaps for just a while.” He raised his head and grinned wickedly at her. “Then there was her stepdaughter, Jennifer.” Before Chauncey could take him to task, he said, “What a shrew! I couldn’t believe it, but some six months after I left New York, they’d even managed to marry her off. To a tobacco planter in Kentucky. The poor fellow’s probably become a drunkard by now.”
Chauncey laughed. “I don’t deserve you,” she said suddenly, tears springing to her eyes.
“True, but you will have years and years to come about. I plan to give you every opportunity to become worthy of me.”
“Less than an ounce!” she exclaimed, sniffing.
“Less than an ounce of what?”
“Of wit!”
“Such a mouthy little wench,” he remarked to his rifle. “I think, madam, that soon you will need another kind of attention. If you are truly winsome this evening, I shall consider shifting all your feelings and sensations a bit lower.”
“Is that a promise?” she asked softly, aware that her heart had begun to thump erratically.
“Only if I can convince you to bathe first.”
“Del, you just wait until I am well again! And what about you? You aren’t exactly like the sweetest rose of summer!”
“You are the rose, love. Think of me as the stem.”
28
Chauncey awoke early the following morning feeling more human than she had since before Chatca abducted her. She lay still for a while, not wanting to awaken Delaney. She was pressed against the length of him, her cheek on his shoulder. She wriggled her nose against a tuft of soft light brown hair. Her shoulder was only a dull ache, and she set her mind to ignoring it. She slipped her hand down his chest to his belly. She loved the feel of him, the texture of his flesh, the ridges of muscle over his stomach. He’d become thinner too, she realized as she lightly stroked her fingers over him. Her hand moved lower, and she entwined her fingers in the bush of thick hair at his groin.