AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But although most women would die for such an opportunity to live the life he described, the thought sickened her.
She could not get this man’s words from her mind about how much he hated Indians and how he hoped to kill as many as he could before he died . . . especially Brave Wolf!
“That sounds wonderful,” she said, hating being caught up in more and more lies.
But for Brave Wolf, she would do anything . . . except go to bed with Colonel Downing. She would have to achieve her goal before Colonel Downing—no, William—caught on to her plan, for he would surely expect her to share his bed before too long.
“You don’t need to return to the cabin,” he said thickly. “Everything you will ever need is right here for you. Let me show you to your room, and then I shall bring my wife’s trunk of clothes there for your perusal. You can choose from her dresses and diamonds.”
He glanced down and saw her moccasins peeking out from beneath the hem of the dress. He smiled at her. “Surely you can find at least one pair of my wife’s shoes that will fit your lovely feet,” he said. “We just didn’t try hard enough the other time. We must get those buckskin things off your feet.”
Mary Beth had to force a smile, while inside she was dying a slow death. She hoped she had not started something she could not stop.
“Come, my sweet,” Colonel Downing said, placing an arm around her waist and leading her down the corridor. When he opened the door to a bedroom, she gasped at its opulence. She could hardly believe her eyes. If this was a spare room, she was surprised. The smell of the colonel’s wife’s perfume was much stronger here.
Had the colonel and his wife slept in separate quarters? She gave him a sideways glance. Perhaps this man was not as successful in bed as he would wish to be. If so, he might be even more anxious for a woman than a normal man.
Mary Beth hoped she had not started something she could not control. A man’s hungers could go so deep, there might be no stopping him once he had even a tiny taste of a woman’s sweetness.
Mary Beth had to make sure he did not get any taste of her “sweetness.”
She was afraid that her life depended on it!
Chapter Twenty
Give me a kiss,
Add to that kiss a score;
Then to that twenty
Add a hundred more.
—Herrick
A bugle had just blared, sounding officers’ call. As the morning sun streamed through the bedroom window, Mary Beth brushed her hair with a gold-plated hairbrush that had belonged to another woman . . . the colonel’s wife.
She gazed at her reflection in the mirror that hung above a lovely oak table. Today, even dressed in an expensive silk dress, she felt out of place.
It was apparent that the colonel’s wife had been a much different breed of women from Mary Beth. She had been a society woman, whereas Mary Beth had lived a much simpler life on a farm.
She knew that many women would welcome the chance to enter such a glamorous world. But all Mary Beth wanted was to be with Brave Wolf.
She even looked forward to living in a tepee, keeping it clean and neat for her husband once she became Brave Wolf’s wife.
A knock on the door made her flinch, for she knew whom to expect when she opened it.
No doubt the colonel had came to invite her to breakfast in the dining room, for surely he would not ask her to join the soldiers in their dining hall. She knew that he would not want to flaunt her there for all of them to see.
“Mary Beth?” Colonel Downing asked from outside the door. “Are you awake?”
“Yes, I’m awake and dressed,” she said. She sighed, for she dreaded being with him again.
But she had to see her plan through to fruition. Somehow she must find a way to discover his complete plan against the Crow so that she could warn Brave Wolf beforehand.
She placed the brush on the table, then went to the door and opened it.
Colonel Downing was freshly shaved and smelled of aftershave lotion. His uniform was neatly pressed and his hair was combed.
