Then he had turned on her and driven her toward the very thing that most terrified her.

«I’m sorry, Jessi,» Wolfe whispered finally. «If I had known, I never would have been so harsh. Can you believe that?»

Jessica nodded, her face pressed tightly against Wolfe’s neck.

«Can you forgive me?» he asked.

Again she nodded, and held him even more tightly.

He made an odd sound. «I don’t know how you can. I find I can’t forgive myself.»

Silently, Wolfe held Jessica until at last he felt the violent tension begin to ebb from her body. She still flinched if the wind shook the house, but she no longer trembled like an aspen leaf in a storm. Finally she let out a long, broken sigh and kissed the curve of Wolfe’s neck where her face had been pressed. The skin was warm and wet with her tears.

«I seem to have cried all over you.»

«I don’t mind.»

Jessica tilted her head back until she could see Wolfe’s eyes. «Truly?»

«Truly.»

She smiled with lips that still had a faint trembling. «Does that mean you’ve forgiven me?»

«I told you, Jessi. I didn’t mean what I said about your tears disgusting me.»

«No. I meant do you forgive me for trapping you into marriage?»

There was a heartbeat of silence before Wolfe sighed. «You believed you were fighting for your life. I can’t blame you for that.»

«I didn’t know how unfair it would be to you,» Jessica whispered as tears overflowed again. «I believed I would be a good wife for you, truly I did. I didn’t know how lacking I was in…everything.»

Wolfe’s thumb smoothed over her lips, stilling the words she would have spoken next. «Don’t belittle yourself, Jessi. It’s not your fault that I’m ahalfbreed bastard. You will make a fine wife for a lord.»

«Stop,» she said, pressing her fingers over his mouth.

Gently, he lifted her hand and continued speaking. «It’s the truth. You were born and raised to grace a lord’s castle.»

«The truth is you’re a man to turn every woman’s head, and her heart as well. Surely you know that, Wolfe.»

«I know that looks aren’t much of a recommendation in men, horses, dogs, or women,» he said dryly.

Jessica smiled despite the tears that fell slowly down her cheeks. «‘Tisnot just your looks, my Lord Wolfe, and well you know it. You are so very much a man.»

Wolfe bent and brushed his mouth over the silver trails of her tears. «Stay beneath the covers, Jessi. I’ll be right back.»

As Wolfe got out of bed, he pulled on the dark pants he had discarded earlier. When he stood, he sensed Jessica watching him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the admiration in her eyes as she looked at his naked back. Desire coiled within him, but no anger followed. He finally understood that she wasn’t teasing him just to watch him squirm. Jessica didn’t realize what her look invited. She would have been frightened if she did know. Given what she had seen of sex, he expected nothing else.

When Wolfe returned, he was carrying a small glass of brandy in one hand and a pan of warm water in the other. He put the pan on the bedside table, sat on the bed, and warmed the glass in his hands. Soon the heady aroma of brandy curled upward.

«I want you to think of this as medicine,» Wolfe said. «It will ease the last of the coldness inside you.»

«How did you know I feel cold inside?»

He shrugged. «I’ve known the black ice of fear. It’s not something you forget.»

Startled, she watched him with wide aquamarine eyes. «You?»

Wolfe smiled at her look of disbelief. «Many times.»

«When?»

«One of the worst times was when I saw a bull buffalo thundering toward Lord Robert after his horse stepped in a prairie dog hole and went down. I was the length of the herd from him, riding bareback at a dead gallop. I had seen Cheyenne hunters killed by buffalo. I knew what would happen if I missed my shot.»

«You didn’t miss.»

«No, I didn’t. But sometimes I think it would have been better if I had.»

When Wolfe saw the shock in Jessica’s face, the corner of his mouth turned down. Silently, he encouraged her to take a drink of brandy. She swallowed, grimaced, and swallowed again.

«I didn’t mean I wished Lord Robert dead,» Wolfe said finally. «But if I hadn’t made such a spectacular shot, he would have left me with the Cheyenne. I was thirteen, just coming into the mysteries of being a warrior.»

Jessica watched Wolfe over the rim of the brandy glass, her eyes intent, reflecting the dance of candlelight.

«Maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference if I had stayed,» Wolfe said, shrugging. «I was never fully Cheyenne. Part of me was always fascinated by the land across the sea where my father lived. Yet I was never fully British. Too much of me belonged to campfires and wild lands. The viscount’s bloody savage.»

She made a soft sound of protest.

Wolfe shrugged again. «In the end I became neither Indian nor British. I became a man who chooses his own way, his own rules, his own life.»

«A Western man.»

He smiled oddly. «Yes. A man with neither home nor family, and a past that was too painful to keep.»

For a moment, Wolfe looked beyond Jessica. The sadness in his expression was almost tangible. Tears stung her eyes once more, for she knew what he was thinking: He was a Western man married to a woman who was all wrong for him.

«Wolfe,» she said huskily.

«Finish the brandy, elf. Then I’ll bathe your face and hands with rosewater. Afterward, if you like, I’ll hold you so that you don’t hear the wind while you fall asleep.»

Jessica started to speak, only to have Wolfe’s thumb press gently against her lips.

«Drink up. It will take the knots from your muscles almost as well as a rubdown.»

Memories of the night Wolfe had rubbed scented oil into Jessica’s aching body leaped between them like invisible lightning.

«Don’t worry, Jessi,» he said matter-of-factly. «I won’t ever frighten you like that again. You don’t have to fight for your life with me.»

Eyes closed, Jessica lifted the glass and drained the last of the fragrant brandy, wondering why she felt unhappy rather than relieved.

«Wolfe?» She coughed and swallowed quickly. «Are all — that is — are most —» She coughed again.

«Slow down, elf.» Wolfe eased Jessica back onto the pillows and tucked the fur blanket up over her breasts. «Let yourself relax.»

He reached into the basin of warm water, retrieved a linen cloth, and wrung it out. Gently he washed her face, removing the trail of tears.

«Wolfe?»

He made a questioning sound that was rather like the purr of a very large cat.

«I thought all marriages were like my mother’s,» Jessica said.

«I realize that. Now.»

«But they aren’t, are they?»

«No.»

«Even in the marriage bed?»

«Especially there,» Wolfe said, wringing out the cloth. «If there is affection between husband and wife, the marriage bed is a place of pleasure for both of them. If there is love…if there is love, I suspect that paradise holds no greater joy.»

The cloth moved gently down Jessica’s arm. For long moments, the scented cloth lay over the sensitive inside of her wrist, where life pulsed softly beneath fine-grained skin.

«Most men,» Wolfe continued as he smoothed the cloth over her palm and fingers, «aren’t drunken or cruel. They take no pleasure in a woman’s pain.»

Jessica watched Wolfe with wide, intent eyes.

«Any man worthy of the name knows his own strength,» Wolfe continued. «He knows that women are more delicately made, more slow to burn with passion; but once a woman burns, there is no fire to equal it, not even a man’s. She will share that fire generously with a careful partner.»

«Despite the pain?»

«An aroused woman feels only pleasure when she holds a man inside her body. That shared fire is the sweetest kind of burning. For both of them.»

«Fire without pain,» Jessica whispered, remembering.

A wave of desire went through Wolfe, but nothing of his response showed as he turned away to rinse the cloth once more.

«Yes,» he said, as he bathed Jessica’s other arm. «Fire without pain.»

Motionless, she watched Wolfe with clear, steady eyes, loving the black angles of his eyebrows, the slightly shaggy thickness of his hair, the bottomless indigo twilight of his eyes, and the sharply defined peaks of his upper lip.

«When the fire is finally quenched,» Wolfe continued, drawing the cloth down Jessica’s arm, «there is the serenity of lying together in the dark and knowing you have found your true mate. There is a rightness in being joined that goes all the way to the soul. There is power as well, the power of being able to summon ecstasy at will. It’s a godlike power. It’s the power of creation, of life itself.»

«Have you —» Jessica’s voice broke as sadness overwhelmed her. When she spoke again, it was a bare whisper. «Have you known that with a woman?»

«I’ve had lovers. Surely that doesn’t surprise you.»

«I wasn’t talking about your penchant for duchesses.»

Wolfe looked up from the slender fingers he wanted to kiss and saw tears magnifying Jessica’s eyes until they were extraordinary gems.

«What are you trying to ask me?» Wolfe said.

She closed her eyes and whispered, «Have you lain in the darkness with your true mate and felt the rightness of it all the way to your soul?»

«If I had, I would have married. Yet I know that kind of closeness can exist between a man and a woman.»

Jessica started to ask how Wolfe knew if he had never experienced it, but the answer came from her own knowledge.

«Caleb and Willow.»

«Yes,» Wolfe agreed. «Caleb and Willow.»

Sadness caught in Jessica’s throat. «Is — does — that is — oh, blazes,» she said despairingly, unable to order her scattering thoughts.

Wolfe’s thumb pressed lightly against her lips. «Slow down, elf. You’ll get yourself tied in knots again. Would you like more brandy?»

«I’ll get muzzled,» she muttered beneath his thumb.

He smiled gently. «I don’t think so. You’ve had only a teaspoon or two.»

When Wolfe started to get up from the bed, Jessica’s hands closed around his powerful wrist.

«Wolfe? What if — that is — do only people like Willow and Caleb find pleasure in — in touching?»

A slow, very male smile was all the answer Jessica needed.

«You don’t have to be a paragon, if that’s what you mean,» Wolfe said.

«Would you —» Jessica’s voice broke. She took a deep breath and held onto Wolfe’s wrist as though it were a lifeline. «Touch me. Teach me.»

Wolfe’s eyes widened, then narrowed in response to the elemental tightening of his body. «I won’t take you, Jessi. That would make annulment impossible. I’m the wrong husband for you. You’re the wrong wife for me. Lying with you would be the worst mistake of my life.»

For an instant, Jessica’s nails bit deeply into Wolfe’s wrist. Then she released him and lay back with her eyes closed, too ashamed even to look at him any longer.

«Sorry,» she said tonelessly. «For a moment I forgot what you thought of me. You should have let me go to the wind. It would have been kinder. But then, you haven’t felt kindly toward me since the night I ran to your room after Lord Gore attacked me.»

«Jessi, you aren’t thinking at all,» Wolfe said. His fingers went from Jessica’s pale cheek to the soft curve of her mouth. «Or have you decided you want to be pregnant?»

Her eyes flew open. They were dark with fear, haunted by nightmare.

«Don’t panic,» he said calmly. «I said I wasn’t going to take you. I meant it. We’re just wrong for each other as man and wife.»

«I can’t let you go. I’m sorry, but I can’t. The thought of lying beneath the likes of Lord Gore…» Revulsion rippled visibly through Jessica’s body.

«Not all lords are brutal sots.»

She simply shut her eyes and shook her head. Candlelight twisted and ran through her hair like threads of fire. Wolfe’s fingertips traced one of the long locks so softly that Jessica didn’t feel his touch.

«There are young, handsome, decent lords in Britain,» Wolfe said, lifting his hand. «I’ll see that Lady Victoria finds one for you.»

«I would sooner marry the wind than suffer a man’s touch.»

«And ahalfbreed is somehow not quite a man, is that it?» Wolfe asked harshly.

Her eyes flew open in astonishment. «I never said that or anything like it!»