She was lying. That caught him off guard. She didn’t look like the kind of woman to prevaricate about anything. “And your parents let you go?”
“They. accepted my decision.”
There were a lot of things she wasn’t telling him. He sensed that leaving home had been painful for her.
“And your husband?” He was baiting her now, and he knew it.
She puffed up like a furious little red-feathered bird.
“I do not have a husband.”
“Fiancé?”
“That is hardly any of your business, Mr. Youngblood.”
“Call me Logan,” he commanded softly. “I intend to call you Victoria. It’s only fair I allow you the same privilege.”
She blinked at him. She’d done that before when something he said surprised her. The very feminine gesture appeared to be her way of getting her bearings.
“How do you know my first name?”
“You must have written it in every book you own.”
“Oh.” She studied him gravely. “Under the circumstances, I suppose it would be foolish not to be on a firstname basis.”
Such a well-bred, reluctant concession.
He liked the way her lips shaped her words—so precisely, so daintily. They were inviting lips—shaped with delicate fullness. Despite her mouth’s soft beauty, she didn’t look like the kind of woman to invite a kiss. Instead, she projected a directness that dared a man to cross the boundaries she’d set.
He pulled his gaze from hers before he did something totally asinine, like find out how those delectable lips tasted.
“Well, Victoria, what’s your answer?”
“My—my answer?”
“Are you engaged, married or widowed?”
Has any man been able to break through that formidable facade of yours?
“Mr. Young—”
“Logan,” he corrected firmly.
“Logan, ours is strictly a temporary association, and as I stated before, there’s no reason for you to know whether or not there’s someone. special in my life.”
“When this is over, suppose a man shows up, claiming you belong to him, and he demands to know what happened between us?”
“First of all, no such person exists.” Exasperation laced her cultured voice. “Second, the only thing that’s going to happen is that we’re going to reach Trinity Falls alive.”
It was hard to accept that the woman next to him was bound to no man. It was obvious from her independent manner that she felt no need to justify her single state. He tried to guess her age, which was no easy accomplishment.
A frown scrunched her lips. Her delicately proportioned chin was thrust at a disapproving angle. Her lashes were a golden red, reflecting the same tawny highlights that burnished her bound hair. She might have been eighteen, but her bearing was that of someone older, maybe twenty-four or twenty-six.
He scowled. She had no business being on her own, in the Idaho Territory or anywhere else. She was too attractive not to have a father, brother or husband watching over her. She was also too headstrong to be left to her own devices. Her present situation proved that. Good Lord, what if Windham had left a real hardened criminal locked up in the stockade? Victoria would have freed him and then been at the brute’s mercy.
His scowl deepened. For her own good, she needed to learn that a lone woman couldn’t go traipsing across the country as she pleased. Logan realized his sense of outraged possessiveness was illogical. Yet he couldn’t seem to help himself.
It had been this same sense of heretofore-unacknowledged protectiveness that resulted in his accepting Madison Earley as his ward. When a prospector showed up at the bank with the story that a white girl was living with the Shoshones, Logan had taken it upon himself to ride to Night Wolf’s camp and retrieve her. It had turned out that Madison’s mother had died a long time ago, and the child had been raised by her father, who’d been working a small gold claim.
Bushwhackers had murdered the man for his small cache of gold dust. Night Wolf’s tribe had sheltered Madison for a while, but dearly her place was with her own people. Logan could easily have sent her to an orphanage in the East, yet something within him had balked at casting her adrift in the world.
He shook his head. It was hard to believe he’d lived thirty years without knowing he had this lamentable streak of sentimentality coursing through his veins. It had been this same latent sense of caring, no doubt, that sent him to the fort to deliver Night Wolfs warning about the attack.
And now he was saddled with a woman who cherished her collection of rare books more than she valued her own life. She was wrong if she thought he’d yielded to her insistence to keep them. Tonight, when she was asleep, he meant to lighten the load the oxen were struggling with to get over the next small rise. By the time they reached Trinity Falls, she would be lucky to have one book left.
He leveled a hard glance at her. All right, maybe he would be selective. He’d let her keep Cooper’s ridiculously romantic yarn about the Mohicans. Louisa May Alcott was going to go, though. Little Women was a new novel and could be purchased at any bookshop.
His dark mood was appeased by the knowledge that the domineering woman would ultimately be put in her place. Logan visualized their arrival in town. He could see Victoria marching him off to the sheriff’s office, all self-righteous and determined to have him get his just punishments. It would be a pleasure to watch the entirely too smug woman discover that her prisoner was none other than the acting mayor and the president of Trinity Falls’s largest bank, along with a dozen other financial institutions.
He decided watching her eat crow would be the most satisfying thing he’d done in a long time. When the oxen seemed to hesitate cresting the next pine-covered slope, Logan reached for the whip to offer them a little encouragement.
His thoughts turned from Victoria to their immediate destination, a small tributary feeding into the Ruby River. They should reach it before dark. Once there, he might believe they had a chance of making it to town alive. They would be in Night Wolfs domain, and that much closer to keeping their scalps.
She’s not a complainer.
Logan’s mind again filled itself with thoughts about Victoria Amory. One way or another, he decided, he’d find out why she’d left Boston and what she planned to do in Trinity Falls.
Everything about her manner bespoke Eastern refinement.
There wasn’t a single reason for her to be running loose in the Idaho Territory. He knew one thing for sure; she wouldn’t be looking for work at Jubilee Joe’s or any of the other saloons dotting Main Street.
A grin caught him by surprise as he visualized the prim and proper Victoria Amory serving drinks at a local saloon. She’d probably present each glass of whiskey with a linen napkin and a severe warning about the moral dangers of intemperance.
The image of Victoria in a spangled red gown rose fully blown in Logan’s mind. The dress was low-cut, and short enough to show her knees. Her perky little breasts would be all but spilling out of the tight-fitting bodice and her ankles would be trim and well shaped. There would be a scattering of golden freckles across her creamy flesh, he was certain. Surely those impudent little spots wouldn’t stop at the high collar of her conservative green dress.
Logan swallowed, trying to curb his runaway imaginings. He couldn’t believe he was sitting next to this prissymannered female, seeing her in a flashy outfit that she’d probably rather be shot in than be seen wearing. It was the time he’d spent in the