A Lady of the West Read online

  It was Roper, leading his horse across the yard. She was too distressed to realize he could easily have avoided her and instead had deliberately put himself in front of her. She backed up, not looking at him. “I beg your pardon,” she said tonelessly.

  Roper glanced to where Angelina still lounged against the wall, smirking her triumph, and guessed what had happened. The shock was plain on Victoria’s white face.

  He felt an unaccustomed impulse to comfort. “Don’t pay any attention to Angelina,” he said. “She’s a vicious little bitch.” He wanted to put his arm around her, feel the softness of her against him again. God, she had smelled so clean and sweet. A fire smoldered low in his belly, swelling his groin.

  If anything, Victoria went even whiter, but she lifted her head with a proud motion and stepped away from him. “Thank you, Mr. Roper,” she said steadily. “I’m quite all right.”

  He watched her walk away again, then went over to Angelina. She straightened, her red lips assuming a seductive smile. It was wasted on Roper, Angelina had been trying to get him into bed with her since he’d come to the ranch, but he wasn’t interested. Angelina couldn’t believe any man could be unresponsive to her beauty, and Roper had resisted her longer than any man she’d ever wanted. But it was not, she thought, because he didn’t want her. He was jealous of all the others who enjoyed her favors, she was certain. He was just being difficult. She didn’t mind; it made him more attractive in her eyes, and she was certain that sooner or later he’d come to her. His difficultness would make his surrender that much sweeter.

  She thrust her breasts out for him, but he didn’t even glance down. His cold eyes never left hers. “What did you say to her?”

  “The fancy lady?” Angelina shrugged and pouted. “Nothing. I don’t like women. I like men.” She tried another smile on him.

  Neither his expression nor his tone changed as he repeated, “What did you say to her?”

  Many men before her had felt afraid when Roper spoke like that. Angelina felt a chill and straightened with a jerk. “I told her that the Major came to me the night after her wedding,” she replied sullenly, then insisted, “It was the truth! You know that.”

  He did know it. Everyone on the ranch knew it and had snickered about it, joking that the Major’s high-nosed lady must have near frozen him to death, and Angelina had had to thaw him out. Roper had been glad that McLain hadn’t found any pleasure in his wife’s bed, glad that she hadn’t clung to him in ecstasy. He was sure Victoria hadn’t been spared her husband’s attentions, but he’d been relieved to think that, though the Major would occasionally bed Victoria out of duty, Angelina would still bear the brunt of McLain’s perversions.

  But what had it done to Victoria to discover that her husband had deserted her for a whore’s bed one day after their wedding, and that everyone on the ranch knew it? She was a proud woman, and while she couldn’t care about McLain, his actions must have wounded her all the same. No woman would like being the butt of raunchy jokes and sniggers, but for a woman like Victoria …

  To Angelina he said, “McLain’s mighty proud of his wife.”

  She spat on the ground. “If he cared about her, he wouldn’t have come to me.” She started to say that McLain hadn’t been able to do it to his wife, but caution stilled her tongue. No man liked for it to be known that he’d failed so intimately; McLain would likely have her killed if she told.

  “She’s his wife, like Rubio’s his stallion. What do you think he’d do if you let his stallion go, or if his wife left because of you?”

  Angelina blinked her great dark eyes, for the first time realizing that her gloating triumph hadn’t been very smart. She wasn’t intelligent, but she was cunning in her self-interest. She remembered how the Major had bragged for months about the real Southern lady coming to marry him, and shivered, thinking of how brutal the Major could be at times, when it seemed as if he enjoyed sex more if he could hurt her in some way. She knew he liked to hurt her, and she didn’t want to provide him with any excuses to do so.

  Her lips trembled, and she moved closer to Roper. “Will she tell him?”

  He was unmoved by her distress, for he’d noticed that she took advantage of her nearness to rub her breasts against his arm. “She might,” he said to make her worry about it, and mounted his horse before she could rub anything else against him.

  Roper shook his head at himself as he rode off. He was a hard man; he’d seen his father murdered, his mother raped and killed when he’d been only thirteen years old. Roper had killed his first man when he’d been fourteen, when the man had tried to rob the two boys of their pitiful store of food. For twenty years the brothers had worked for their revenge, biding their time, gathering money and making plans. Nothing had been allowed to stand in their way. Nothing had mattered but putting Frank McLain in the ground and reclaiming their heritage. Roper kept his nose out of other people’s business and expected them to keep theirs out of his. That was why it was so out of character for him to interfere, and he’d done it twice in a matter of minutes, all for the same woman. What did he care if Garnet got in the little sister’s bloomers? He’d never have interfered if Victoria hadn’t tried to face Garnet down, but she had, and he hadn’t been able to stand by and let Garnet abuse her. He was the one man on the ranch Garnet wouldn’t stand up to, but now he’d have to watch his back every minute.

  All for a woman. He’d had women since he was fifteen, but they were always casual encounters that had never meant more to him than the temporary easing of his sexual needs. He loved women, though he’d never been in love; he loved their softness, the sweet musky scent of their skin, their lighter voices and smaller bodies, the clinging of their hands around his strong neck and the way their legs locked around his hips, their soft cries as he gave them pleasure. He always tried to please his woman, no matter how casual the bedding; it was a reflection of his own strong, sure sexuality that he enjoyed the act more when the pleasure was mutual.

  But of all those women, he’d never wanted one the way he wanted Victoria. It was more than physical, though God knew that was strong enough and getting stronger. He wanted to see her smile. He wanted to protect her. He didn’t know what made her different, but she was. She was also forbidden to him. She was a lady, and the wife of his enemy. He had blood on his hands, and would have more: the blood of her husband.

  He found that it didn’t matter. He thought of the way she’d lifted her chin with evident pride even though she had just been slapped in the face with her husband’s infidelity. He thought of the way she protected her sister, and of the way she looked him full in the face when so few people did. She was alone and vulnerable, trapped in an unhappy marriage, but she had courage.

  Damn it, why didn’t she go back to Augusta where she belonged? Maybe if she was out of his sight, he wouldn’t think about her, and she couldn’t threaten his plans.

  Victoria went straight to her room and sat on the chaise, forcing herself to take slow, deep breaths to calm herself. She had never before felt so angry and humiliated. Gradually she realized that she was angry because of the humiliation, not because she had learned that her husband had been unfaithful. She didn’t care that the Major had gone to another woman; in fact, she was grateful, if it would continue to keep him away from her.

  But the public nature of his betrayal upset her deeply. He had gone to that—that whore— barely twenty-four hours after their wedding, and everyone on the ranch knew it. She wouldn’t have believed Angelina’s word, but she’d seen the truth in Roper’s usually impassive eyes.

  The house staff knew, of course. The ranch was a small world in itself, so insular that everyone knew what everyone else was doing. No wonder Carmita had been so solicitous this past week.

  She was Victoria Madelyn Marie Waverly; her mother was a Creighton. She had learned that lineage and tradition counted for little without money behind it, but pride had been bred into her as surely as the aristocratic bones of her face. Her husband had offen