at his shoulder.
“Sorry,” the sergeant gulped. “I called your name several times, but you didn’t hear me. Mrs. Bramfield is waiting.”
Shaking his head at his imagination, Nathan followed Williamson into the low building. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the changing light. Small windows cut into the west-facing wall allowed watery sunlight to wash into the single room. A heavy, crude table and several chairs composed the room’s sole furnishings. Primitive as it was, there were homes in Victoria equally simple, especially belonging to the Indians and Chinese laborers. Once his vision cleared, Nathan barely noticed any of this. His attention was claimed entirely by the woman standing on the other side of the table.
From Sergeant Williamson’s description of Astrid Bramfield, Nathan had expected a much older woman, someone well on the other side of middle age, with the rough features and sturdy build of a female living alone in the wilderness. Beauty, youth, and femininity could not survive out here. He’d met fresh-faced girls going out to live pioneering lives with their husbands, only to return a few years later, haggard, weathered women with girlhood left long behind. Mrs. Bramfield would likely be much the same.
Yet Astrid Bramfield took his few preconceptions and obliterated them. She was much younger than he’d believed, closer to his own age of twenty-eight. She wore men’s clothing—a heavy coat, jacket, shirt, and slim trousers tucked into worn boots. The hilt of a stag-handled knife peered above the top of her boot. Despite the coat’s bulk, her figure revealed itself to be an elegant collection of curves, her waist narrow, the flare of her hips tapering down into long legs. A gun belt hugged her hips, a revolver holstered and ready for use. Her hair, the color of wheat in high summer, had been pulled back into a long braid, revealing a face of pristine, solemn loveliness. The golden freckles playfully dotting the bridge of her nose contrasted sharply with her gray eyes.
Those eyes. They burned him and would leave an afterimage branded into his mind. Never had Nathan seen such eyes, the hue of clouds just before a storm. It wasn’t their color so much as the depth of feeling he saw within them that seared him. Haunted, hunted. A feral creature, trapped within the body of a striking woman. That creature called to him, even more than the wilderness outside. A kinship there. Something dark inside of him stirred and awakened as he gazed into her eyes.
An animal within himself. He’d always felt it, fought it down every day. White men thought Indians were animals. He would prove them wrong, even if it meant brutally tethering a part of himself. But that hidden beast recognized her, saw its like within her. And demanded.
He felt his senses sharpen almost painfully, becoming aware of everything in the room—the fly buzzing in one corner, the sap smell of the wooden table. Most of all, her.
She stared at him with equal fascination, her hands spread upon the table as though leaning toward him without thought. Her breath came faster, her ripe pink lips slightly parted. He heard each intake and exhalation, saw the widening of her pupils within those storm eyes of hers.
A deep, barely audible growl rose in the back of Nathan’s throat as he started toward her.
The sound seemed to rouse them both from a trance. Nathan forced himself to take a step back, cursing himself. Hell. He wasn’t truly a damn animal.
Astrid Bramfield curled her hands into themselves and glanced away. The next time Nathan saw her eyes, they had become as remote and cold as a glacier.
“Mrs. Bramfield,” Sergeant Williamson said, entirely unaware of what had just transpired, “this is Nathan Lesperance. He is an attorney from the firm that represents Douglas Prescott.”
She gave Nathan a clipped nod but said nothing. He returned the nod, wary of her silence. Some white women found his presence to be an affront, the savage aping the dress and manners of a superior race; others thought him dangerously intriguing, like a pet wolf. How did Astrid Bramfield see him? And why did he care?
Despite her reserve, something charged and alive paced between them in the small room. They continued to regard each other across the table.
“Why don’t we sit?” the sergeant offered.
“I’ll stand,” Mrs. Bramfield said. Her voice was sensuous and low, unexpectedly cultured. She was English. That wasn’t entirely surprising. Canada was full of Britons, both English and Scottish. Why Astrid Bramfield’s Englishness, out of everything, should surprise Nathan, he had no idea, but the thought of a well-bred Englishwoman living the life of a solitary mountain man caught him off guard. He wondered what had driven her to seek isolation in this untamed corner of the world. At some point, there had to be a Mr. Bramfield.
The sergeant shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Very well.” He gestured toward a small wooden box on the table. “Would you be so kind as to confirm that the items in that box are the same you found on Mr. Prescott’s body?”
Mrs. Bramfield opened the box and, as she did so, Nathan noticed her hands. At one time, they might have been a lady’s hands, slim and white. Now they were still slim, but they looked far more capable and used to hard work than any other lady’s hands. His vision, still sharper than he could ever remember, noted the calluses that thickened the skin of her fingers and lined her palms. For some reason, he found the sight arousing. A plain wedding band gleamed on her left hand.
One by one, she took items out of the box and laid them onto the table. A pocket watch. A battered book. Packets of letters. Nothing of real value. Nathan ground his teeth together. For this he had traveled hundreds of miles? Damn overzealous Mounties, taking their new responsibilities as peacekeepers too seriously. But then he watched Astrid Bramfield as she removed the dead man’s belongings from their container, and couldn’t feel that this journey had been entirely worthless.
“Yes,” she said after examining everything in the box. “These are the same items. Nothing is missing.”
“Very good.” The sergeant handed her several pieces of paper, as well as a pen and bottle of ink. “If you’ll just sign these affidavits, we can release the items into Mr. Lesperance’s custody.”
Wordlessly, she bent over the papers and signed them. The only sound in the small building was the pen’s nib scratching over the paper. As she wrote, Nathan saw that, in the pale sunlight, a few glints of silver threaded through her golden hair. But her skin was unlined and smooth. Something had marked her, changed her, and he wanted to know what.
“Please countersign the documents, Mr. Lesperance,” Williamson said when Mrs. Bramfield was done.
Nathan reached for the pen to take it from her. Doing so, his fingers grazed hers. A brush fire spread from his fingertips through his whole body at the brief contact. She drew in a shaking, startled breath. The pen fell to the table, scattering droplets of ink like dark blood across the papers.
Sergeant Williamson darted forward, quickly blotting the ink with a handkerchief. “Not to worry, not to worry,” he said with a nervous laugh. “If you like, I can have Corporal Mackenzie, our clerk, draw up some new affidavits.”
“No need,” Nathan said. At the sound of his voice, Astrid Bramfield pressed her lips together until they formed a tight line. She suddenly paced over to where a Hudson Bay blanket was tacked to the wall as a gesture toward décor, and became deeply engrossed in studying the woven pattern.
Nathan could practically see her vibrating with tension. She wore it all around her like armor. He knew she didn’t want to be at the trading post, but there seemed to be more to her sense of unease. He was unsettling her. Well, now they were even.
Intrigued,
