«Noaristocrat, surely,» Wolfe retorted. «But a Western woman would. Ask Willow Black. She and Caleb share the same bed night after night after night, and both of them spend their days looking like they’ve swallowed the sun.»
The naked longing in Wolfe’s voice irritated Jessica so much that she forgot her fear of sharing not only a bedroom with Wolfe, but a bed as well.
«Willow again,» Jessica said, concealing her annoyance beneath a sigh. «What a paragon she must be.»
«Yes.»
«Where do Western women who aren’t paragons sleep?» Jessica asked mildly. «In the stable?»
«Only if they don’t spook the horses.»
«No stable for me, then.» She took off her hat and shook down her half-unraveled braids. «The horses will take one look at my hair and think the hay is on fire.»
Unwillingly, Wolfe’s expression softened. In the days since the attack on the stagecoach, it had become nearly impossible to be with Jessica and not enjoy her company. She had been unfailingly cheerful, agreeable, charming, and witty. With one exception, she had enlivened the long stage ride for everyone.
The exception was the powerful blond stranger who had given them only one name: Rafe.
Wolfe andRafe had tacitly realized they would tangle if they both stayed caged up with a laughing young woman dancing between them. Without a word spoken on the subject, Rafe had spent the remainder of the ride with the driver. At the second stage stop, Rafe had bought a horse and saddle from a homesick Easterner and ridden off toward the setting sun after expressing his appreciation of Jessica’s nursing once again.
Rafehad been much too appreciative of Jessica, as far as Wolfe was concerned. Watching Jessica’s glance follow the soft-spokenRafe until he vanished into the incandescent eye of the sun had rankled Wolfe deeply. He couldn’t help wondering if Jessica would have stared atRafe in fright as she had at Wolfe when she awakened on the stage and found herself in his arms.
«You may sleep in my bed like a Western wife or you may sleep on the living room hearth like a favorite hound,» Wolfe said coldly. «It’s your choice, just as the marriage was your choice.»
Jessica forced herself to smile. «That’s very generous of you. I know how well you like hounds.»
Wolfe’s indigo eyes narrowed, but before he could say anything, Jessica turned away and looked at his bedroom once more. At first she didn’t really see it, but gradually the lines and colors beguiled her as they had at first glance. The room was like Wolfe himself, elegant and very masculine at the same time. It was the elegance of a falcon or a cougar, a matter of balance and strength rather than delicacy.
Like the exterior of the house itself, the room’s walls were composed of peeled logs. The inner face of the logs had been sanded to smoothness and polished to a fine luster, giving a warm, subtly rich feel to the room. Although the furniture had been made by a man who loved the grain and flow of wood, the stark simplicity of the design was almost startling to eyes accustomed to European luxury.
Yet the lines of bed and dresser, table and chair drew Jessica’s eyes again and again, pleasing her in the same way that patterns of geese flying against an autumn sky pleased her. The beautifully colored blankets and the pale, luminous fur throw that had been folded at the foot of the bed were as rich as anything owned by a duke. A sunburst of clear crystals had been placed like a bouquet on the bedside table, but unlike a bouquet, the crystals would never fade and die.
«You have a fine sense of texture and proportion,» Jessica said slowly. «The room is quite beautiful. The furniture is…extraordinary.»
«Sarcasm, Lady Jessica?» Wolfe retorted, looking around his bedroom.
She stared at him, startled by the bite in his voice. Before she could speak, he did.
«The furniture was made by a backsliding Shaker in exchange for room and board over a long winter. The blankets are standard trade goods from the Hudson Bay company. So are the furs.»
«If I intend sarcasm,» Jessica said tartly, «you won’t have to inquire. You’ll know.»
«Will I? Then tell me what you see in this room to please a gently raised lady’s eye.»
«Many things,» Jessica said, accepting the unspoken challenge. «The lines of the furniture are simple to the point of starkness, which emphasizes the appealing warmth of the fire, the rich colors of the blankets, and the inviting texture of the fur. The fireplace is quite clever, for it opens into two rooms at once. And is that a hipbath behind the screen?»
«Yes.»
«It’s quite large.»
«So am I.»
Wolfe watched as Jessica ran her fingertips over the straight back of a nearby chair.
«You have everything you need for comfort, and you have beauty as well,» she said quietly. «Whoever made this was a fine craftsman who loved wood. See how the grain of the wood both matches and repeats the lines of the chair?»
Wolfe saw more than that. He also saw the latent sensuality in Jessica, the sheer physical pleasure she took from the feel of the smooth wood beneath her fingertips.
«And the fur,» she added, walking over to the foot of the bed, «is magnificent.»
«It comes from Arctic foxes. They live at the foot of glaciers whose crevasses are the exact blue of your eyes.»
«Is it a beautiful color?» she asked softly.
«You know it is.»
«It never seemed so to me.»
Jessica’s fingers speared through the thick white fur, seeking and finding its softest textures. The sound of pleasure she made as she stroked the fur brought every one of Wolfe’s hungry senses to alert. The thought of those slender fingers tangling in his own hair sent a shaft of desire through his body. He turned away abruptly.
«I’ll bring your trunks in here. No matter where you decide to sleep, you’ll use this as your dressing room.»
Jessica looked up curiously, caught by the husky note in Wolfe’s voice.
«While I finish unloading the wagon,» Wolfe continued, «you start fixing a cold supper and some hot coffee. The supplies are in the burlap sacks. You might as well put everything away. Then you’ll know where everything is when you need it for cooking.»
«Wolfe,» Jessica said quickly.
He turned around.
She started to explain that she didn’t know the first thing about fixing suppers, whether cold or hot. The aura of expectancy in his stance told her that he was waiting for just such an invitation to bait her again on her inadequacy as an American wife. She wasn’t certain her temper was up to that at the moment.
The long, uncomfortable wagon ride from the stage terminus in Denver had tried Jessica’s resilience and resolve to their limits. She was stiff, cold, bruised, and more exhausted than she had ever been in her life.
But she was expected to cheerfully conjure a meal for that most demanding of all creatures, a Western husband.
«Yes?» Wolfe asked in a silky voice.
«I was just, er, wondering where to put my clothes.»
«As I didn’t know I was going to acquire a wife in England, I didn’t buy any dressers or armoires for your clothes.» His smile was a thin white curve against the darkness of his face. «Not that it matters. You won’t be here long enough to repay the trouble of unpacking even one trunk.»
«Oh? Does that mean we’re leaving on another trip right away?» Jessica asked in an artificially bright voice.
«We aren’t. You are. Back to London.»
«Ah, that trip. Well, you know how foolish it is to countunhatched chicks. I feel the same could be said ofunhatchedtrips.»
Wolfe looked at Jessica’s bright smile and felt his temper fraying. If she had sulked or complained, he could have berated her, but her inexhaustible well of cheerfulness made that impossible.
She knew it as well as he did. Better, perhaps.