Cheyenne Wife. Judith Stacy

Fredericks explained. “We’ll give you a room here in the fort. Once word gets out, well shoot, I expect we’ll have men lined up all the way out the gate.”

      “Are you suggesting that I become a—a—” Lily struggled to find her breath. “A—prostitute?”

      “You got any better idea?” Sykes asked.

      Raw fear raced through Lily. She backed up and turned, looking for an escape. But more men had come into the trade room and were blocking the door. And every one of them leered at her, as if contemplating her naked.

      “I—I can’t possibly…” she said, shaking her head frantically.

      “We’ll give you a break on your room rent,” Fredericks told her.

      “N-no, I can’t—”

      “Then you’d better figure some other way to come up with the cash you owe us,” Sykes told her.

      “There must be something else you can do,” Lily insisted. “Please, I can’t—”

      “Get her a room close to the kitchen,” Becker suggested. “More convenient that way.”

      “And I’ll put up a sign,” Sykes offered.

      “Paint it red,” Becker advised.

      “No!” Lily insisted.

      “Don’t worry,” Fredericks said. “You’ll pay off your debts in a couple months’ time.”

      “Listen to me.” Lily clenched her fists. “You can’t force me to do this.”

      “Then how are you going to pay us?” Fredericks demanded, his voice growing angry. “Do you think you can just waltz in here with your high-handed Eastern ways, take everything at your pleasure, then leave like none of it happened? You’ll do as we say, and that’s that.”

      Tears threatened, and Lily fought to gulp them down. “Please, there must be something else I can do.”

      Fredericks gave her a hard look. “Listen up, Miss St. Claire, we’re—”

      “I’ll settle her debts.”

      The three men looked past Lily to the back of the trade room. Lily whirled, her hopes soaring, searching the crowd for the man who’d made the offer.

      North Walker stepped forward, sparing not even a glance at Lily.

      “I’ll trade you,” he said to Fredericks. “For her.”

      Snickers rumbled from the men.

      “Hmm…” Fredericks rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He glanced at Sykes, then at Becker.

      “I guess we can hear him out,” Fredericks said with a casual shrug.

      “All right by me,” Becker agreed.

      North looked at Lily. “Go outside.”

      She couldn’t move. She could barely think.

      “Go outside,” he told her again, more harshly this time.

      Lily’s temper flared. She’d had enough of men today—every single one of them. And she wanted to tell them all exactly what she thought of them, but decided it more prudent to keep her mouth shut for the moment.

      She pushed her chin up, whirled and strode out of the room with all the dignity Madame DuBois had taught her, despite feeling the hot gaze of every man in the room on her back.

      Outside, she eyed the gate and, for a moment, contemplated making a break for it. Right now with her anger up and her heart pounding, Lily thought she might actually hike all the way to Aunt Maribel’s home in Richmond—by sundown.

      That foolish notion left a moment later when Jacob Tanner squeezed through the crowd in the trade room and walked over to her.

      Embarrassment heated her cheeks. Jacob was a nice young man, and he’d been present for her humiliation. He looked as uncomfortable as she when he stopped next to her.

      “They had no right, saying those things and talking to you the way they did,” Jacob said softly, nodding toward the trade room. “It ain’t right, but… Well, that’s the way it is around here.”

      Lily nodded, comforted and mollified somewhat by his compassionate words.

      “Why do people stay here, Jacob?” she asked. “Why do you stay?”

      He gazed thoughtfully across the plaza. “Came out here a couple of years ago with my ma and pa, my sister. We all got sick. They died.”

      “Oh, Jacob, that’s so sad,” Lily said, feeling a new kinship with him. “But why do you stay? Why don’t you go back home?”

      “Got no home to go back to,” Jacob said with a shrug. “My pa sold our farm in Tennessee when he decided we needed to come out here.”

      “Don’t you have any family back there?”

      “Yes, some. But I haven’t heard nothing from them in so many years now—” Jacob stopped abruptly as North walked out of the trade room. “You take care now, Miss Lily,” he said, and hurried away.

      “They can’t do this,” Lily insisted to North, her anger flaring again. “They can’t force me to stay under those—conditions. Where is the sheriff of this territory?”

      “They’re the law around here,” North told her and jerked his chin toward the trade room. “They can do whatever they want.”

      Her boiling anger cooled slightly because she knew he was right. Jacob had told her the same thing.

      “Why are you helping me?” she asked North. “You heard what the other men said about me. I’m of no value to anyone here.”

      He eased a little closer. “I think you’re perfect,” he said softly.

      Her anger dissolved and an odd tingling took its place, deep inside Lily.

      Then his gaze dropped to the hem of her dress and rose slowly, deliberately over her waist, lingered on her bosom, and finally rested on her face.

      “For what I have in mind for you, Miss St. Claire,” he said, “you’re perfect.”