himself touching her name, little caring that the ink smudged on the paper and stained his fingertips. Nathan had the urge to inhale deeply over the affidavits, as if he could draw her scent up from the paper. He shook himself. What the hell had gotten into him? He must be tired. He’d been riding hard for weeks, and it had been nearly two months since he’d been with a woman. That was the only explanation that made any sense.
Once the papers were all signed, Sergeant Williamson examined them. “Everything looks to be in order. The Northwest Mounted Police will be happy to release Mr. Prescott’s belongings into your care, Mr. Lesperance.”
“Am I finished here?” Mrs. Bramfield said before Nathan could answer the sergeant.
Williamson blinked. “I believe so.”
“Good.” She picked up a broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat and set it on her head. Without another word, she strode from the building, but not before stepping around Nathan as one might edge past a chained beast. Then she was gone.
For a moment, Nathan and Williamson stared at each other. A second later, Nathan was out the door and in pursuit.
He caught up with her near the corral. She was already shouldering a pack and a rifle with practiced ease, taking the muddy ground in long, quick strides. Nathan didn’t miss the way most of the men’s eyes followed her. Women were rare sights out in the wild, and trouser-clad, handsome women even more rare. Yet he had the feeling that even if the trading post yard was full of pretty women in pants, Astrid Bramfield would stand out like a star at dawn.
“Douglas Prescott’s family appreciates you giving him a decent burial,” Nathan said, easily keeping pace. “They want to give you a reward.”
She shot him a hard look but didn’t slow. “I don’t want anything.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” he murmured.
They reached the corral, and she walked briskly toward a bay mare. She threw the Indian boy watching her horse a coin. The boy said something to her in his language, glancing at Nathan, and she answered sharply. The boy scampered off.
“What did he say?” Nathan asked.
“He wanted to know what tribe you come from,” she said. “I said I didn’t know.” Without asking for any assistance, she hooked her boot into the stirrup and mounted her horse in a single, fluid movement. She tugged on some heavy rawhide gloves before taking up the reins.
“Cowichan,” he said. “Government people took me when I was small. Raised me in a school. I never knew the people of my tribe.”
Something in his tone had her looking down at him. Their eyes caught and held, and he felt it again, drawing tight between them, a heat and awareness that had a profound resonance. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her simple words held more real sympathy than anything anyone else had ever said to him.
“You could have kept Prescott’s things for yourself,” he said, gazing up at her. “People die out here all the time, and no one ever knows.”
“Those who love him would know,” she said, her words like soft fire on his flesh. “And it was for them I took Prescott’s belongings to the Mounties. They would want something of his to help them remember.”
She spoke plainly, almost without affect, but he heard it just the same, the raw hurt that throbbed just beneath the surface. She’d shown him a small piece of her heart, and he recognized it as a gift.
Looking into her eyes, into the stern beauty of her face, he dove through the surfaces of words and gestures to the woman beneath. Wounded within, a fierce need to protect herself. And beneath even that, a heart that burned white-hot, blazing its way through the world.
He understood just then that Astrid Bramfield spoke to him like a man, not a barely tamed savage or object of curiosity. The only woman to have ever truly done so. Even the Native women he knew could never place him, since he was neither entirely absorbed into the white world nor fully Indian. But this guarded woman saw him as he was, without judgment.
He placed a hand on the reins of her horse. “Don’t leave.” He truly didn’t want her to go. Nathan had a feeling that once Astrid Bramfield left this dingy little trading post, she would disappear into the wilderness and he would never see her again. The thought pained him, even though he’d met her just minutes before.
“I can’t stay.”
“Have a meal with me,” he pressed. He struggled not to seize her, pull her down from the saddle, and drag her to some shadowed corner. He clenched his jaw, fighting the urge. He was civilized, damn it, not the savage everyone thought him to be. But the compulsion was strong, growing stronger the more he thought about her leaving. He switched tactics. “It’s already growing dark. Could be dangerous.”
She said with no pride, “The dark doesn’t frighten me.”
“Not much does.”
Her jaw tightened and a flash of something—pain, regret—sparked in her eyes before she tugged the reins from his grasp. She wheeled her horse around, forcing him to step back.
“Good-bye, Mr. Lesperance,” she said. Then she set her heels to her horse, and the animal surged forward, out of the corral. It cantered across the rough trail leading away from the trading post, taking her with it. Nathan battled the urge to grab a horse and follow. Instead, he turned and walked toward where Sergeant Williamson stood holding the box of Prescott’s things, deliberately not glancing back to try to get a final glimpse of Astrid Bramfield before she vanished. His inner beast snarled at him.
His senses were still unusually keen. Scents, sights, and sounds inundated him until he felt almost dizzy from them. The minerals in the mud. The horses’ snorting and pawing, rattling their tack. A man’s laugh, harsh and quick. And, more than ever, the persistent pull winding down from the mountains like a green surge, drawing him toward their rocky heights and shadowed gullies.
“What do you know about her?” Nathan demanded of the sergeant without preamble.
Williamson seemed more accustomed to the way Nathan spoke. He hardly blinked as he said, “Very little. She comes to the post a few times a year. Never stays overnight.”
“Tell me about her husband.”
“All anyone knows is that she’s a widow.” The sergeant shrugged. “Honestly, Mr. Lesperance, she spoke as much to you in the past fifteen minutes as she has to anyone in four years. Interested in paying court?” Williamson sounded both amused and appalled by the idea that a Native, even one as civilized as Nathan, would consider wooing a white woman. White men took Native wives, especially out in the wilderness, though few genuinely married them in the eyes of God and the law. It almost never happened the other way around, with an Indian man taking a white wife. If he’d been inclined toward marriage, which he wasn’t, Nathan’s choices would have been slim. Still, he didn’t like to be reminded of yet another way he lived on the fringes of society. The idea that a woman like Astrid Bramfield could never be his particularly stuck in his craw.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Nathan growled.
“Your guide won’t be willing to leave again so soon,” Williamson said in surprise.
“I’ll find another.” Everything about this place set Nathan on edge, unbalanced him. Victoria wasn’t anything more than
