Chapter Six

"D allas? Dallas, I'm scared."

"Don't be."

But Houston was afraid. The clouds passing across the midnight sky reminded him of ghosts, and he imagined that he could hear their tortured cries in the rushing waters of nearby Chickamauga Creek. He drew the blanket up to his chin, but it didn't stop his shivering.

"Dallas, I'm scared about tomorrow." His harsh whisper echoed around him, more frightening because his pa had told him that Chickamauga meant "river of death" in Cherokee.

Lying on the pallet beside him, Dallas rolled over and mumbled, "I ain't gonna hold you, but you can scoot a little closer to me if you want. Just don't let anybody see you doin' it."

Houston inched over until he could feel the warmth of Dallas's body, but not the solidness of his touch. He didn't want his father to find him sleeping right beside his brother.

"What if I die?" Houston whispered.

"You won't. Just stay by my side. I won't let nothin' happen to you."

"Swear?"

"Give you my word."

Amelia awoke to an anguished wail that ripped through her dream into her heart. With trembling fingers, she turned up the flame in the lantern.

Her blood pounded at her temples; her breath came in short gasps. She took a deep breath to steady herself. In her dream, she and a man she wanted to believe was Dallas—but who had looked remarkably like Houston—had been walking through a field of clover. His arm had been around her, and she had felt safer than she had felt in years. She didn't think the cry had come from her.

She slipped off the cot and eased into her night wrapper, drawing it tightly around her as though it had the power to ward off her fears.

She tiptoed across the tent, guided her fingers through the tent flap, and peered through the small opening her narrow fingers created. She could see Houston hunkered down before the fire, wearing his duster, his hat drawn low over his brow as though he had plans to ride out.

She widened the opening in the tent. "I thought I heard a cry," she said, her voice quivering.

He visibly stiffened. "It was just an animal. Go back to sleep."

His rough voice didn't ease her doubts. He reached for the pot of coffee. As he poured the coffee, he trembled with such intensity that the brew sloshed over the sides of his tin cup.

Amelia pulled her wrapper closer, gathering her courage within its folds. Leaving the tent, she padded across the campsite and knelt beside Houston.

"I said to go back to bed," he said gruffly.

"Do you think we're in danger?"

"No."

He gripped the handle of the pot so tightly that his bones were visible against his skin. Reaching out, Amelia covered his hand, her palm cradling his knuckles. He jerked at her touch, but he didn't attempt to pull away.

She rubbed her hand over his, surprised to find his so cold. Slowly he relaxed, his fingers loosening their grip on the handle. She eased the pot away from him and set it near the fire.

He wrapped his hand around the tin cup. She was amazed that the cup didn't dent with the strength of his grip.

"When I was a child," she said quietly, "I used to have nightmares, and I would pray that I would grow up fast so that the nightmares would go away." She gently placed her hand on his arm, hoping to gain his attention. Ignoring her, he focused his gaze on the fire and clenched his jaw tightly. "When I grew up, I learned that nightmares don't go away. They just become more terrifying because we understand so much more."

She worked the tin cup from his grip, held his hands, and willed him to look at her. He continued to stare into the fire. "Do you want to talk about your dream?"

"Nope."

"You don't have to be embarrassed because you were frightened by a dream."

He broke free of her hold and surged to his feet. "Frightened by a dream? Woman, I'm afraid of life!"

"Do you think you're alone—"

"Yes! Goddamn it! I'm alone!"

Houston regretted his outburst as soon as he saw the stricken expression fall across Amelia's lovely face. She looked as though he'd taken his fist to her. He'd had moments in his life when he'd felt small, but he'd never felt this small or this ashamed. Lord knew, he'd done plenty that he could be ashamed of.

He took a step toward her, his hands moving like a windmill in a slow breeze. He didn't know what to do with them. He didn't want to frighten her, but he was afraid she might grab his hands if he held them still, and he'd end up wrapping his arms around her just so he'd have a tether to hang onto so he'd feel safe. Only a woman shouldn't make a man feel safe. A man was supposed to protect a woman. "Amelia—"

She tilted her head slightly, the wounded expression retreating until she smiled so sweetly that he thought his heart might shatter. Every word he'd ever known rushed out of his head.

"I remember the first time I slept alone," she said softly, her voice drifting on the calm breeze as she shifted her gaze to the fire. "The bed was so large. The night so dark. I thought surely both would devour me. And the sounds. I heard a door creak and a board moan. I felt so incredibly alone." She wrapped her arms around herself and began to rock back and forth. "My father died during the war. And my sisters. Allison and Amanda."

The serenity of her gaze fascinated him. His hands had settled into a stillness as her voice floated toward him. She had a hell of a way of distracting a man. Her remembrances had lulled his memories back into oblivion, his shakes and sweats going along with them. She glanced up at him.

"My mother liked names that began with A. My father's name was Andrew, and I often wondered if that was why she married him."

"That's not a very practical reason for marrying someone," he said.

"Is my reason for marrying your brother practical?"

He stepped closer to the fire, wishing he could attain her composure. She always seemed at peace, relishing each moment as it came. Resting on the balls of his feet, he cautiously bent his knees until his gaze was only slightly higher than hers. "I don't know your reason."

"Because I hate being alone." She closed her eyes. "And because I want to share someone's dream."

"Don't you have your own dream?"

She opened her eyes and smiled mischievously. "A question?"

Lord, he loved the glimmer in her eyes as though she'd trapped him, and he wasn't altogether certain that she hadn't. He lowered his gaze to the fire and watched the orange and red flames writhing in a contorted waltz. "1 had no right to ask." But damn, he wanted to know everything about her, about her dreams, her reasons for traveling such a great distance to marry his brother.

"I dream of not being hungry. I dream of being warm."

He shifted his gaze to her. The smile had left her face.

"I dream of regaining something of what I lost during the war: a family, a promise that tomorrow will come, and that it will be worth living, savoring, and remembering."

"And you think Dallas will give you all of that?"

Her lips tilted up. "Another question. I'm impressed."

He wanted to look away, but her eyes held him captive. At that moment, with those green eyes boring into him, Houston almost had an overwhelming desire to search for his own dreams. "You don't have to answer it."

She scooted closer to him. "I think I do. No, I don't think he will give me my dreams, but I think we'll work together to gain them. I've always believed that dreams were meant to be shared. Where's the joy in reaching for something if you have no one to see you capture it?"

He had no idea. He'd stopped reaching long ago.

She laid her hand on his arm. "I don't expect you to answer that."

"That's good because I wouldn't know how."

She laughed, tilted her head back, and looked at the canopy of stars. "Oh, the sky is beautiful tonight. I almost envy you sleeping outside."

"It has its moments." Just as she did. Sweet moments, gentle moments. Moments that filled him with awe.

She smiled softly. "I should stop pestering you and let you go back to sleep."

He unfolded his body as she rose gracefully to her feet and turned away from the fire.

"Oh, look. I can see the shadow of a moth that's flying inside the tent. Isn't it pretty?" The smile eased off her face. "I can see the moth's shadow," she said in a hushed voice, "and everything inside the tent."

Houston stiffened as her gaze streaked to his pallet. With his saddle at one end, it didn't take much imagination to figure out which way he'd been lying or what had been in his line of sight.

Her gaze flew back to the tent, then to the pallet before she snapped accusing eyes his way. "I can see everything. Everything. Have you been watching me each evening?"

Sweet Lord, he wanted to speak but anything he could have uttered would have condemned him. As it turned out, his silence condemned him.

As she drew back her hand, he forced himself to give her an easy target. The blow came, jerking his head to the side.

She stormed into the tent, the flap momentarily billowing and slapping after her. Her shadow reflected as much hurt and anger as he imagined she felt. Then the shadow disappeared into the darkness as she extinguished the flame in the lantern.

Houston felt as though all the light had suddenly gone out of his life. He broke out in a cold sweat as his gaze swept over the camp. He'd told her he was alone, but until this moment he didn't know the true meaning of the word.

She'd shut him out of her life with a single breath. She'd ask no more questions of him, of that he was certain. He should have been relieved. Instead, he thought he might keel over and die. With trepidation, he neared the tent. "Miss Carson?"

A thick heavy silence was her reply. For some reason, he thought he'd feel a sight better if he could hear her sobbing o r throwing things around.

"Miss Carson, you need to step outside and slap me again. The side you hit is mostly dead. You need to hit the other side of my face so I can feel it like I should."

He could hear nothing but the heavy pounding of his heart. He could see nothing but a vast emptiness filling the coming days. Dear God, what words could atone for what he'd done?

"Miss Carson, I know what I did was wrong. It was shameful, and I regretted it even as I did it, but dear Lord, woman, I swear to God, I've never seen a sweeter shadow than yours … and that's all I saw. Just your shadow."

"Without clothes! Washing up! Enjoying a few moments of freedom!"

Sweet Lord, yes, and he'd enjoyed her moments of freedom most of all, but he didn't think she'd appreciate hearing that at this moment.

"Miss Carson, if I could undo what I'd done, I would. But I can't. If you just knew how beautiful—"

"I don't want to hear it, Mr. Leigh. Just leave me alone."

"You have every right to be upset—" He heard a sob. He'd been wrong. Hearing a noise was worse than hearing the silence.

"Miss Carson, I'd do anything on God's green earth to make this up to you. I'd pluck out my eye—"

A light flared inside the tent, and the flap flew open. She stood before him, her eyes rimmed in red, and he could see the faintest trail of tears along her cheeks. In all his life, he'd never loathed himself more.

She sniffed. "Do you mean it? Would you do anything?"

He glanced at her hands, expecting to see the knife she no doubt planned to use to remove his remaining eye. But her hands held nothing but the cool night air.

He swallowed hard. "Yes, ma'am. Anything."

She folded her arms beneath her breasts and swept out of the tent like a queen granting her least favorite subject an audience. She held her chin high with a dignity unlike any he'd ever seen. Dallas had been right to refer to her as the Queen of the Prairie.

She spun about and looked down her nose at him—as much as she was able, considering the top of her head didn't reach the height of his shoulder.

"You may sleep in the tent tonight."

Although her words had come softly, she'd spoken them with the force of a hissing snake. His gut clenched. He wasn't exactly sure where she was headed with this train of thought, and he wasn't certain that he wanted to know, but she appeared to be waiting on him to respond.

"Excuse me?"

"You may sleep in the tent," she repeated slowly as though he hadn't a lick of sense, and he was beginning to think that he might not have any sense at all. "Undress. Wash up. Do whatever it is men do before they go to sleep." She dropped to the log, placed her elbows on her thighs, cupped her chin, and smiled sweetly. "And I'll watch."

"Are you out of your mind?" he roared.

"You said you'd do anything. Well, Mr. Leigh, you have just heard my idea of anything."

He glared at the tent. The goddamn moth was still flying around. If he stepped into that tent, his first order of business would be to murder that pesky critter. He glanced at the woman sitting on the log. "No, ma'am, I can't do it."

"Why not? What's good for the goose is good for the gander."

"It ain't the same at all. I'll know you're watching."

She came off the log like vengeance sweeping through hell. "And you think my not knowing made what you did acceptable?"

No, it didn't make it acceptable at all. "What if I gave you a real pretty apology with some fancy words—" "No."

"If I don't do this, you're gonna stay mad, aren't you?"

"Yes."

Good Lord, based on the delivery of that one simple word, she'd stay angry until they reached the ranch … and maybe beyond that. He'd be traveling through hell when he was just getting used to being near heaven.

His stomach was knotted so tightly that he didn't know if he could even walk into the tent. But it was the tear shimmering in the corner of her eye that decided him. The firelight caught it, and he could see himself as she must see him: a man who had shattered her trust.

Without another word, he flung back the tent flap and stormed inside, allowing the flap to fall behind him, encasing him in the golden haze that filled the tent.

He could smell her sweetness surrounding him. He couldn't identify the scent. It wasn't horses, or leather, or sweat. It was soft, reminding him of something so far back in his memory that he didn't know if he could pull it forward. His mother, perhaps, leaning over him, brushing the hair off his brow, telling him not to be afraid.

"You can't just stand there, Mr. Leigh. You have to wash up!"

Her voice penetrated his memories, reminding him more of his father than his mother. "Don't just stand there, boy! When the battle starts, you march into the thick of it."

And he'd marched, while everything inside him had screamed for him to run.

He took a step toward the small bucket and glanced at the water. With no steam rising up, it looked cold, but he'd taken cold baths before.

"Mr. Leigh!"

"All right!" Damn impatient woman. He tore his hat off his head and tossed it onto the rumpled covers of the bed where she'd been sleeping before he'd cried out like a baby. He was tempted to place his palm on the bed and see if it still carried her warmth, but she was watching him now, watching him as he'd watched her. Damn his eye for remaining open when it should have been closed.

Rolling his shoulders, he worked his way out of his duster and laid it beside his hat. He sat on the edge of the cot and discreetly placed his hand near her pillow. His fingers lightly brushed the area, searching for her warmth and finding only the cold.

She wouldn't be giving off any warmth until he'd done what she asked. Anything, he'd said. In the future, he wouldn't use that word around her.

He jerked off his boots. Unbuttoning his shirt, he stood, pulled it over his head, and dropped it on his duster.

He turned, presenting the silhouette of his backside to the front of the tent. Praying that she wasn't circling the tent, he began to unbutton his trousers.

Amelia watched, mesmerized. The shadows were distorted, not nearly as clear as she'd imagined, but that didn't change the fact that he'd wronged her. Considering the slowness with which he was removing his clothing, she assumed he was beginning to understand that.

With a quickness she wasn't expecting, he dropped his trousers. She buried her face in her hands. Dallas would no doubt send her back to Georgia if he found out what she'd required of his brother. It didn't matter that she couldn't actually see his flesh or the rigid contours that probably ran along his body.

He was standing inside her tent, buck naked. Whatever had she been thinking to require such a thing of him? She had wanted him to experience the humiliation that she'd felt when she'd discovered that he'd been watching her.

Only now mortification swamped her. The warmth flamed her cheeks as her mind brought up images of Houston washing himself. She couldn't bring herself to look, but in her mind's eye, she could see the glistening drops of water trailing down his throat, over his chest, along his stomach, traveling down …

She doubled over and pressed her face against her knees, but she couldn't block out the images. She had always been a dreamer, but no decent woman would conjure up the fantasy swirling inside her head.

Had he been content to stare at her silhouette or had he imagined the drops of water—

"I learned my lesson."

Amelia screeched and shot off the log, but not before she caught sight of a knee resting above a hairy calf. She hadn't heard him kneel beside her, but she was listening now, listening hard for his approach as she stood near the edge of the shadows, within the ring of light that the fire created. "I said you were to sleep in the tent," she reminded the man behind her, grateful she couldn't see him.

"I don't think you're really interested in watching me sleep. I gave you your show. Now, get inside the tent and get some sleep. We'll be leaving at dawn."

"That wasn't the bargain."

She heard his knee pop and assumed he'd risen to his feet. She was tempted to step beyond the light, to disappear into the night, but she feared the darkness while she was only wary of the man.

"I'm used to sleeping outside. I'm not sure you'll know what to do if you wake up with a snake coiled on your chest."

"A snake?" Without thinking, she spun around and found the breath knocked out of her. He stood stiffly beside the fire, his clothes bunched before him offering him some protection from her wandering gaze.

The firelight played over his flesh like a lover's caress. He had additional scars on his left shoulder, healed flesh that trailed down his chest toward his stomach and finally blended into oblivion. Old wounds the water may have kissed on its journey.

He shifted his stance, and his muscles rippled with the slight movement. He appeared much stronger than she'd imagined. She lowered her gaze as his hands tightened their hold on his clothing. She could see the veins and muscles in his arms straining with the force of his grip.

"Git inside the tent," he growled in a low, warning voice, "or you're gonna see a lot more than my shadow."

With a quick nod, Amelia scurried into the tent.

Houston fought to hold back his laughter. The woman was precious. Bold as brass one minute, ordering him into her tent; timid as a mouse the next, with wide eyes and a blush that just begged a man to touch her cheek.

Dropping to his pallet, he worked his way back into his clothes. Inside his cabin, he did sleep without a stitch of clothing, but not out here where a man could wake up with a snake curled over him.

He hefted his saddle to the other end of his pallet and stretched out, his gaze focused on the mules instead of the tent. He should have done it this way the first night.

He chuckled low, remembering the relief he'd experienced when he'd peered out the tent and seen Amelia crouching on the log, her face hidden. He wondered at what point she'd covered her eyes. Maybe he could have spared himself the cold wash-up. He'd done it so quickly that his body had barely noticed the touch of the cloth. He supposed out of fairness, he should have let the cloth caress his body the way she did when she washed. He should have slowly removed every speck of dust and every remnant of dried sweat until he could have come out of that tent smelling like she did: clean, pure, and tempting.

How could a woman be both pure and tempting? A decent woman shouldn't wash herself the way Amelia did. A decent woman shouldn't travel halfway across the country to marry a man she only knew through letters. Maybe Amelia Carson wasn't a decent woman. Maybe—

"Mr. Leigh?"

Her soft, gentle voice brushed over him like the finest of linen rubbing against his coarse body, sending his thoughts to perdition where they belonged.

Rolling over, he came up on his elbow and met her troubled gaze as she knelt beside his pallet, her hands folded primly in her lap. "Amelia, don't you think after what we learned about each other tonight that we can call each other by our first names?"

Even in the night shadows, he could see the flush in her cheeks as she lowered her gaze to her clenched hands.

"That's what I wanted to explain. I didn't watch for very long so I just … I just didn't want you to think I was wanton."

He didn't know what possessed him to slip his finger beneath her chin and lift her gaze back to his. He could feel the slight quiver beneath her soft skin and hated himself because his weakness—and not hers—had brought them to this moment

"I don't think that."

Her green eyes held a depth of sadness. "Dallas might feel differently if he were to find out about tonight."

"He won't hear it from me."

His fingers ached to spread out across her face, his palm to cup her cheek, his thumb to graze her softness, his hand to draw her heart-shaped mouth to his. In all his life, he'd kissed only one woman—a whore whose breath had carried the stench of all the men who had come before him.

He had a feeling that the first time Dallas kissed Amelia, he'd taste nothing but her sweetness … as he should. Dallas had earned the right to nibble on those tempting lips because he'd dared to offer her a portion of his dream.

Houston drew his hand away before his fingers stopped listening to his head and started listening to his erratic heart.

"You'd best go back to bed now," he said in a rough voice he hardly recognized as his own.

"I don't like to be inside the darkness, but if I keep the lantern burning, I'll create shadows."

"I won't be lookin'."

"Promise?"

He deserved that hesitancy, that lack of trust. Dallas had told him once that if a man went back on his word one time, his reputation as a man of honor became little more than dust. He'd never known Dallas to break a promise. The strength of his word had laid the foundation for his empire. "I give you my word."

She pushed to her feet. "Sleep well."

Nodding, he settled back against his saddle, resisting the urge to watch her walk into the tent, knowing if he did, he might never find the strength to look away.