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  He moved quickly, taking the pistol from her and easing the mewing baby into her arms, all in one motion. The mountain man’s calloused hands moved over hers, helping her support the tiny body. The baby searched her torn clothing, finding the softness of her breast, nudging it hungrily.

  Tiny and vulnerable, the baby needed shelter and care to survive. The baby, an innocent bit of humanity, nestled and comforted her in the lonely wilderness. Like a flame, the fierce longing rose to protect the child, tearing at the cold and fear deep within her. She wasn’t alone now, if just for an instant with the tiny body cradled against her. Instinctively she gathered him closer, and the man’s hands slid away.

  The baby smiled in his sleep, and for a moment she forgot MacGregor’s demands. The sweet warmth of the innocent child ensnared and soothed her.

  “I’ve got airtights—tins of milk,” the man murmured softly, watching her wrap the skins more closely about the infant. “He can wait a minute while I get firewood. Jack squalls to beat high hell when he’s hungry.”

  His fingertip trailed down her cheek, leaving a warmed path. “Soft as Jack’s bottom,” he murmured softly.

  Regina forced her eyes up to the man. Despite what she had been feeling for the infant, she didn’t owe his father. His heat tantalized her chilled body. She resented him then, the overlord male pawing through the crumbled castles of her dreams, her desperation.

  She resented wanting to rip open his cape and snuggle to the hard warmth of his body. “Mr. MacGregor, your son does need shelter for the night, and you are both welcome. As for your bizarre offer of marriage... I refuse. The idea is absurd. However, I would care for the baby until you take me to civilization.”

  His eyes narrowed down at her, tracing the taut contours of her face. For an instant the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened with humor. Then he lifted her chin with the tip of his finger as though she were a child who amused him and needed reminding of his strength. “You don’t have much to bargain with, ma’am. You’ve got choices. Go or stay. Live or die.”

  She met his stare. The taut moment passed slowly, her fury licking around her like flame. “Dark blue eyes, almost purple. Slanted at the corners,” he murmured slowly. “The color of wood violets.”

  “Damn you,” she said between the edges of her teeth, her anger giving her strength. “You thrust a poor helpless baby in my arms, torment me with his needs, then demand my hand in marriage. You don’t actually expect—”

  His eyes ran over her lips, and Regina shivered, unprepared for the need to wrap herself around him, taking his heat and strength. Then MacGregor looked down at Jack, nestling cozily against her.

  “I don’t want anything happening to my son, ma’am. You’d better sit down now,” he offered gently as he wrapped his robe around her and settled her in a corner by the flickering fire.

  When he stood, Regina looked up. Frozen, near starving, and frightened for her life, she hated the man. She gathered the robe closer about her and glared at MacGregor’s broad shoulders rippling beneath his leather jacket. The leggings had been split to his calves to reveal blue cloth trousers. A yellow stripe flowed straight into his tall, worn boots.

  He’d been in the War Between the States. A foolish war that England would have smothered before it began.

  The scarred wooden grip of the gun escaped the worn holster lashed to his right thigh, the dull sheen of cartridges lining the wide belt.

  MacGregor shifted slightly, resting his hand on the butt of the gun as though it were an old friend. “Army issue, a Smith and Wesson. Weighs about four pounds. If you pointed it at me instead of that peashooter, I’d have worried. Peashooters won’t go through smoked buffalo hide.”

  She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, a habit she’d gotten into in the past four days. What right had this man to march up to her doorstep, issuing his notorious four choices? Rather just two: live or die...

  “Your feathers are ruffled—you’re riled. Out here it’s make do and live, or don’t and die.... If that helps,” he added in a soft low rasp. After watching her glare up at him a moment, he patted her roughly on the shoulder and strode out of the cabin, closing the door softly behind him.

  Regina settled the baby closer to her, and he quieted, dozing. As the warmth of the robe seeped into her, she lifted back a fold of doeskin from the baby’s round face. She traced the tip of her finger over his cheek, wondering how such a small baby could survive in the wilderness without his mother. How could she survive?

  Why had she wanted to throw herself at MacGregor? Why had she wanted those long arms to wrap around her and hold her as gently as his son?

  The heavy fur brushed her cheek, and Regina remembered MacGregor’s touch. Hewn from mountain rock, he had touched her softly, almost reverently.

  Pain ripped through her again, tearing at her heart. In her lifetime not another man had touched her cheek as gently.

  The baby nestled closer, his tiny hands reaching out with long fingers.

  A baby! Regina breathed lightly as she watched him. As a girl, she’d wanted a whole brood of children tagging after her, and the emptiness had stung her like a nagging sore. Now, abandoned in the great American wilds, a rough mountain man presented her with a baby.

  Regina smiled whimsically. “No doubt you’ll grow up to be a scoundrel just like MacGregor, arriving on a poor unsuspecting woman’s doorstep and demanding her hand in marriage, but for now....”

  The baby was a soft, warm piece of civilization nestling sweetly in her arms.

  While Jack was sweet, MacGregor lacked chivalry. The choices he’d offered her were not appealing: Whoredom, death or marriage to him.

  “Marry him?” she asked Jack in a whisper. She stroked his plump cheek with the back of her fingers. “Impossible... MacGregor’s woman, indeed. I am no such thing and he had no right to tell anyone that!”

  She eased back a silky strand of hair from the baby’s forehead, stroking it gently. Regina cuddled Jack’s little body against her and nourished her dreams. With each dawn her hopes had risen, only to fade by afternoon. Her fiancé’s henchmen had chosen the cabin well. “Well, Jack, I don’t have a chance in Hades to wander out of this wilderness.”

  Closing her eyes, she sighed slowly, too tired to stir her dreams of a warm English hearth and the knight sweeping her to safety.

  A shot rang out, and Regina tensed instantly, her arms tightening protectively around the baby. The sound sliced through her like a cold, dull knife. Was the man dead? Had he killed? Were the kidnappers coming back for her now, the mountain man’s body stretched out on the frozen ground?

  Her quickened heartbeat lifted the fur near the baby’s face, and the infant squirmed slightly. She forced herself to breathe slowly, waiting for the fear snaking through her body to still.

  Then the solid thud of an ax chopping wood sounded outside. The rhythm of a familiar sound comforted her slightly. Jack yawned, exposing toothless gums and raising a tiny arm as he stretched. Regina gently tucked the baby’s arm beneath the buffalo robe.

  “Marry me,” she repeated, smiling softly at the baby. “The idea. He’s hardly my dream of a rescuing knight saving a lady. Your father has a lot to learn about the proper mode of courting a lady. If he weren’t your father, sweet one, I would call him a brainless, mountain-size oaf.”

  Oddly content with the little body sharing the lush fur warmth, she rocked the baby. “When you’re grown, don’t go about demanding marriage from every lady in need. Act nicely. First offer your help and then pursue your romantic notions—gently, my boy.”

  Suddenly the door crashed open, and the mountain man entered the cabin, bearing a huge armload of wood. Regina noted the way those long legs moved like a hunter stalking deer. Or men. He kicked the door shut, and the baby jumped and began to wail, thrashing his tiny limbs.

  She rocked the infant against her, quieting him. She resented MacGregor interfering with the only peace she’d felt in days. “You blackguard,” she said
quietly, scowling up at MacGregor. “Your baby was sleeping.”

  MacGregor’s intent stare skimmed her rigid face, then he drawled almost pleasantly, “You remind me of a setting hen ready to defend her nest. Jack will go back to sleep. He’s used to noise.”

  “Well, I am not,” Regina snapped, rocking the squirming, crying infant. “I am certainly not used to being compared to a chicken—”

  “Setting hen, ma’am. One who takes good care of her chicks.”

  He crouched, stacking the wood on the stone hearth carefully. Lady Regina had never been ignored in her life, but as she watched the man’s large hands tend the growing fire, she decided not to confront him. After all, there would be time enough later, when the blessed warmth seeped into her bones....

  Jack’s small lips worked in a sucking motion, causing a twinge of piercing emotion to race through Regina.

  MacGregor pitched pinecones on top of the coals and stirred them, then turned toward her. He stared at her, a strand of waving black hair crossing his broad brow. “Females always have questions, woman. I’ve got a feeling you’ve got more than most. What are they?”

  The tone of a lordly male addressing a servant slid along Regina’s neck like the scrape of nails across slate. “In good time. My first question will be why you scouted Lord Covington’s camp and why you didn’t appear to save me from those brutes—”

  “That’s two questions, ma’am. The answer to both of them is that I do what suits me.”

  “What suits you!” she snapped just as Jack began crying again. Without thinking she rocked and kissed him, and the baby instantly quieted. Over the little cap of straight black hair, she whispered fiercely, “This poor child. I suggest you get him a proper home. If left to you, he’ll have no idea of sanity or of a gentleman’s behavior.”

  MacGregor lowered his brows, staring at her intently beneath them. “Maybe I know that, ma’am. Maybe that’s what I’m wanting him to learn from you.”

  “Good Lord,” she managed after a moment, trying not to startle the baby.

  A muscle high on MacGregor’s cheek contracted beneath the dark skin. “I know women who’d want me and Jack. But they... they’re not what I’m wanting for my boy. The kind of woman who’ll take any man for two dollars or a good plew. I’ll teach Jack what I know... hunting, trading, surviving. But the country is changing, and he’ll need to change with it. You’ll teach him....”

  MacGregor swallowed. “I’m wanting him to know something I don’t. Something that will make him fine and special. Has to do with the soft things. Like talking to a fine woman without offering her two dollars’ blanket money. Then he can take a settler woman, make a home for himself—when he’s old and hurting.”

  MacGregor’s deep voice was quiet, and Regina caught the wisp of regret lingering in the silence.

  He shrugged, watching the flames. “I’m not fancy with words. I’ve talked more to you than most, trying to explain how it is... how it’s going to be. A mix of white and red blood, I’ve lived hard, and now I’m doing the best for my boy, staking you out. In the mountains a man lays out a woman’s path for her. Just like I’m doing for you. It’ll work out between us. You’ll see.”

  “I doubt that, MacGregor. I’m not one to be pushed into any arrangement.”

  He snapped a dried branch easily, the crackling flames lighting one side of his face in the shadows. A sheen the color of polished leather slid along the high bones of his cheek, his jaw hard and shadowed with a black beard.

  “My boy likes you,” he murmured quietly, turning back to the fire.

  “Mr.—MacGregor,” Regina began helplessly, sensing his deep commitment to his idea of claiming her. “If you would just escort me to the nearest settlement, I’ll tend your child on the journey and see that you are well paid. However, your demands for marriage are—”

  “Jack needs a woman’s soft body holding him.”

  MacGregor placed wood on the fire, then rose to his full height, studying Regina and the child. “He likes you,” he repeated softly, as though satisfied. “That’s good. Jack’s had a hard time. You just sit there while I settle the animals and bring in my packs.”

  Regina’s muscles stiffened instantly. “I resent being ordered about....”

  Walking over to her, MacGregor let a warm finger trail down her cheek again, the gentle touch stilling her protest. “I know,” he said quietly. “Your tongue throws out fancy words like flaming arrows. Those purple eyes are spitting mad, ready to fight.”

  His finger slid across her lashes and over her brows. “Black as a crow’s wing, tips catching the light like blue fire.”

  He reached into his pocket, and then handed her a brown paper parcel. “Food. You’ll be hungry, I expect. It’s jerked buffalo, so don’t eat too much... or your belly will hurt. There’s a fresh deer kill outside.”

  Her stomach knotted as she carefully unwrapped the hard, dried meat with one hand. Regina clamped her teeth on the leathery strip and tore off a small piece, chewing with effort. The tough salty meat tasted heavenly.

  ~**~

  Chapter Two

  “Chew a while before you swallow. I’ll bring in your things,” MacGregor said quietly, watching her.

  “My things?” she repeated slowly around the hard lump of meat.

  “Picked them off the bushes when I followed the men back to the Duke’s camp.”

  He paused as though placing his thoughts in order. “Had to shoot those three men, miss. They got liquor and supplies... started back for you.”

  He shrugged, and the fringes bordering his long arms danced. “You wouldn’t have wanted to... keep them company.”

  “You murdered three men—” Regina managed around the meat, her eyes wide.

  “Shot them, ma’am. There’s a difference between hitting a man in the leg and in the heart. I’ve never gut-shot a man in my life.”

  MacGregor’s face darkened, his eyes snapping at her. “I said it was a fair match. Told them to leave you alone, that I just wanted your things—my woman’s things,” he corrected, then shrugged. “They wouldn’t turn back. Gave them an honest chance on the draw.”

  He rolled a broad shoulder slowly as though it ached.

  The dried meat stuck in her throat, and she coughed. Moving quickly, the big man crouched to pat her on the back. “You get used to gunfire out here, ma’am. But you don’t have to worry. I’ve always been fast.”

  Unable to speak, Regina covered her mouth with her hand. MacGregor glanced at his sleeping son, then back at her. “You’ve got real soft ways about you. You’ll be good for Jack.”

  MacGregor touched her hair, moving a strand back from her face. He touched the colored bruise on her jaw briefly, his expression grim. “They didn’t have to do that,” he muttered, rising to his feet. “I’ll fix Jack’s milk. Then if you’ll feed him—use your finger, a cloth, and a spoon— I’ll set up camp.”

  “Outside?” Regina’s breath caught. MacGregor reminded her of a fast, dangerous wild horse racing across the mountains toward freedom.

  “No, ma’am. I’ll be sleeping near my boy and my woman,” MacGregor stated quietly. “You and Jack need a few days’ rest, then we’ll be moving on before hard winter sets in.”

  Despite the warm robe and the glowing fire, her flesh raised with a deep chill. Was her destiny to live as a white captive on the American frontier?

  Instinctively she cradled Jack closer, and the baby nestled to her, giving a long, contented sigh.

  “I could use the rest myself. Jack wakes up in the night, hungry as the devil. He’s tough, though, and he’s mine, the same way as you are... if we agree on the bargain.” MacGregor’s fingertip slid down her throat and away in a heartbeat.

  She raised her chin, meeting his eyes. “I haven’t agreed to your proposal, MacGregor. There’s little chance that I will.”

  “You will,” he said with that deadly certainty. “I always get what I go after.”

  He gripped the edges of the rob
e, gathering it closer to her throat. His hand swept down quickly, tracing the slope of her breast, easing the fur away from Jack’s face. “Don’t be scared, ma’am,” he murmured gently, cradling Jack’s head in his palm. “The way I see it, there’s those behind you who want you dead or worse. You can’t go back—so that leaves me... if you want to live.”

  Too hungry and worn to fight him now, she closed her lids. “Leave me,” she whispered wearily.

  Regina stared at the fire, unable to move from the warmth surrounding her like a velvet blanket. Dozing, she was startled when MacGregor eased Jack from her. “His milk is ready, ma’am. I’ll feed him.”

  She rubbed her eyes and yawned. “I can do my part, MacGregor. After all, you’ve been quite busy.”

  She had awakened to a warm cabin and the enticing aroma of food— a huge roast sizzled over the fire, dropping fat into the flames. Her mouth watered, but she stiffened her shoulders, her pride returning. “I’m quite capable of feeding the baby—Jack.”

  MacGregor allowed her to resettle the baby, setting the airtight tin beside her. He nudged Jack’s small lips with a cloth saturated with the warm milk. Instantly the baby tensed, his mouth searching. MacGregor’s large fingers moved over hers teaching her how to tempt the baby with milk on her finger, then on the cloth.

  “A big, strong son,” the westerner whispered reverently. “When there’s a woman who will take pay for her milk, Jack likes that fine. But he’s already taking milk from a spoon sometimes and a little gruel, too.”

  The baby grunted and sucked greedily, his tiny hands lashing the air. He gripped Regina’s little finger tightly. MacGregor smiled, running his finger across the baby’s small tight fist and across the back of her hand. “Like I said, Jack likes you.”

  “I return the feeling. Such a warm, cuddly lad.”

  She quickly tore off another piece of jerked meat, then continued to feed Jack. Chewing slowly, she watched as MacGregor stirred a small iron pot over the fire and unwrapped his packs. The man struck quickly, a featherlight touch running across her flesh. As though he were tasting her....