Judith E French Read Free Page A

muskets and everything I had.”
    The gold could be replaced once he got back to Annapolis—if he lived to get back. But my surveying equipment . . . By the bloody wounds of Christ! I’ll not find the match of those instruments in America.
    Leah held out a tiny wooden dipper. “Drink this. I do not know what it is called in English, but it will dull the pain.”
    Cautiously, Brandon accepted the potion and raised it to his lips.
    “Drink,” she urged. “If I wished to kill ye, I’d find a cleaner way than poison.”
    He took a tiny sip; the musty liquid tasted of bark and damp places. Grimacing, Brandon swallowed it in one gulp, and it burned a trail down his throat. “Arrhhh,” he sputtered. “’Twill never take the place of a good brandy.”
    “It will bring healing sleep.” Leah motioned toward a low platform covered with skins. “Lay down there.”
    “You’ve not asked who I am.” For some inexplicable reason, he wanted to hear her say his name in that peculiar accent of hers. “I’m Robert Wescott—Viscount Brandon. It goes without saying that I’m deeply in your debt . . . and if I get out of here in one piece, you’ll be suitably rewarded.” His words sounded slurred in his ears. Deliberately, he continued, speaking slowly and precisely as though to a backward child. “I’m a wealthy man of status . . . powerful . . . in the English colonies and across the sea. You do understand what wealth is, don’t you?”
    “Viscount Brandon? Viscount is a title like earl. Much the same?”
    Brandon lowered himself onto the bed. The dizziness was worse. Had she poisoned him? “Not quite,” he said. “An earl is greater than a viscount. My father . . .” He rested his head against a roll of fur. “My father is the Earl of Kentington. When he is dead, I will inherit the title. For now, I am called Brandon.”
    She snorted. “Ha. So ye be not so important an Englishman. My father also is an earl, an earl of Scotland, and that is much better. Alex said so. He says English titles be for sale like hot cross buns, and English lords be weak and cowardly.”
    Brandon blinked. The softness of the furs and the clean smell of pine and tobacco made his eyelids heavy. “English lords are not . . .” he began, then the absurdity of what he thought he’d heard sank through the layers of cotton batting that clouded his mind. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, chuckling. “I must be hurt worse than I realized. I thought you said that you were the daughter of an earl.”
    “Aye. And he proved as faithless as most men.” Slowly she began to unbind her braids, shaking loose her heavy mass of silken black hair. Next she stood on one foot and tugged off a moccasin, then took off the other. Barefoot, she padded silently close to the bed.
    Honeysuckle, he thought absently. She smells of honeysuckle. He breathed deep of the sweet scent and extended a hand to touch her, no longer certain if she were real or an illusion. “Why are you—”
    In a single fluid motion, she slipped her deerskin dress over her head and stood before him stark naked.
    Brandon’s breath caught in his throat as she let her only garment drop to the floor.
    “I told you,” she said, “I have taken you for my husband.” With a low chuckle, she lay down beside him and nestled her bare bottom against his loins. Before he could utter another word, she caught his left hand in hers and pulled it over her shoulder to rest against a full breast. “Tauwun,” she cried out loudly. “Open the door. Yu undachqui. Come and witness that I have taken this captive as husband.”

Chapter 2
    “W hy did you do such a thing?” Moonfeather’s round-cheeked aunt dipped stew from her cooking pot and ladled it into wooden bowls for her family. “Matiassu is angry with you. You shouldn’t have taken the prisoner to husband after you refused the war chief. The Englishmanake deserved to die for what his people did to the Delaware village beside the Sweet