Rebel: The Blades of the Rose Read Free Page B

world nor fully Indian. But this guarded woman saw him as he was, without judgment.
    He placed a hand on the reins of her horse. “Don’t leave.” He truly didn’t want her to go. Nathan had a feeling that once Astrid Bramfield left this dingy little trading post, she would disappear into the wilderness and he would never see her again. The thought pained him, even though he’d met her just minutes before.
    â€œI can’t stay.”
    â€œHave a meal with me,” he pressed. He struggled not to seize her, pull her down from the saddle, and drag her to some shadowed corner. He clenched his jaw, fighting the urge. He was civilized, damn it, not the savage everyone thought him to be. But the compulsion was strong, growing stronger the more he thought about her leaving. He switched tactics. “It’s already growing dark. Could be dangerous.”
    She said with no pride, “The dark doesn’t frighten me.”
    â€œNot much does.”
    Her jaw tightened and a flash of something—pain, regret—sparked in her eyes before she tugged the reins from his grasp. She wheeled her horse around, forcing him to step back.
    â€œGood-bye, Mr. Lesperance,” she said. Then she set her heels to her horse, and the animal surged forward, out of the corral. It cantered across the rough trail leading away from the trading post, taking her with it. Nathan battled the urge to grab a horse and follow. Instead, he turned and walked toward where Sergeant Williamson stood holding the box of Prescott’s things, deliberately not glancing back to try to get a final glimpse of Astrid Bramfield before she vanished. His inner beast snarled at him.
    His senses were still unusually keen. Scents, sights, and sounds inundated him until he felt almost dizzy from them. The minerals in the mud. The horses’ snorting and pawing, rattling their tack. A man’s laugh, harsh and quick. And, more than ever, the persistent pull winding down from the mountains like a green surge, drawing him toward their rocky heights and shadowed gullies.
    â€œWhat do you know about her?” Nathan demanded of the sergeant without preamble.
    Williamson seemed more accustomed to the way Nathan spoke. He hardly blinked as he said, “Very little. She comes to the post a few times a year. Never stays overnight.”
    â€œTell me about her husband.”
    â€œAll anyone knows is that she’s a widow.” The sergeant shrugged. “Honestly, Mr. Lesperance, she spoke as much to you in the past fifteen minutes as she has to anyone in four years. Interested in paying court?” Williamson sounded both amused and appalled by the idea that a Native, even one as civilized as Nathan, would consider wooing a white woman. White men took Native wives, especially out in the wilderness, though few genuinely married them in the eyes of God and the law. It almost never happened the other way around, with an Indian man taking a white wife. If he’d been inclined toward marriage, which he wasn’t, Nathan’s choices would have been slim. Still, he didn’t like to be reminded of yet another way he lived on the fringes of society. The idea that a woman like Astrid Bramfield could never be his particularly stuck in his craw.
    â€œI’m leaving tomorrow,” Nathan growled.
    â€œYour guide won’t be willing to leave again so soon,” Williamson said in surprise.
    â€œI’ll find another.” Everything about this place set Nathan on edge, unbalanced him. Victoria wasn’t anything more than a decent-sized town, its ranks swelling periodically when gold was discovered nearby, so it wasn’t wilderness itself that troubled Nathan. What unsettled him, roused the animal within, was this wilderness. And Astrid Bramfield.
    â€œThere’s no shortage of men who’d oblige,” the sergeant said, “if the price is good.”
    Nathan had money in abundance, not only provided by