A Lady of the West by Linda Howard Page B

with a kittenish sort of sensuality that made him feel hemmed in. He ignored her unspoken invitation for even further dallying and stuffed his shirttail into his pants.
    â€œYou’d better get on back to the wagon before your father misses you,” he said in a flat tone.
    She pouted, but began cleaning herself. “He is already drunk and asleep.”
    â€œHe might wake up.”
    â€œEven if he did, he wouldn’t care.”
    Roper strongly suspected that her “father” wasn’t related to her at all, but it meant nothing to him one way or another. People got by as best they could. When she had dressed, he assisted her to her feet, gave her a kiss, patted her on her round bottom, then sent her on her way. As soon as she was out of sight, a black frown settled on his face.
    Damn it to hell!
    Victoria ran to the house, panting and near tears. Just before she reached it, Emma came to meet her.
    â€œI found her,” Emma reported, her tone amused. “She wasn’t in a hidey-hole at all, she was in the courtyard counting stars.”
    Victoria forcibly regained control of herself and blinked the stupid tears away. Why on earth was she crying? It had been something of a shock, of course, seeing that, but nothing tragic. She wrenched her mind back to Celia, and received another shock when she realized that she’d forgotten her. It wasn’t like her at all to be less than conscientious, and the lapse bothered her almost as much as what she had seen.
    She took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself, gratefully aware that Emma would think her state of upset due to Celia. “Sometimes,” she managed to say in a painfully even tone of voice, “I’d like to shake her.”
    Emma chuckled, and hooked her arm through Victoria’s. “If you did, you’d spend the next month making it up to her, so there’s no point in it,” she said cheerfully. “Celia is Celia.”
    Victoria knew that. Celia never changed, thank God. But when she sought the sanctuary of her room a little later, Victoria stared at her own pale, oval face and wondered why the changes inside hadn’t shownthemselves on the outside. She still looked much as she had at the age of sixteen, but now she had known war and hunger, desperation, a loss of dreams, and the ugliness of a man’s sexuality. For a moment, thinking of the horrible touch of the Major’s hands, she felt nauseated again. Then another picture intruded, and the nausea changed to a moan of pain.
    Jake Roper. His body rippling with muscles in the dim light and his hard face taut with pleasure. That woman’s hands clinging to his shoulders, her head thrown back in ecstasy. For all the violence and power of their coupling, there had been a gentleness in the way he’d handled the woman.
    Victoria buried her head in her hands. God, she was so foolish! Roper was nothing but a hired killer; she had had a few moments conversation with him, had briefly felt his body against hers in an accidental collision, and she was jealous—
jealous!
But not of him, she fiercely told herself. Never of him! She, a Waverly and a Creighton, was jealous of a tinker’s daughter for the pleasure in her life. That wasn’t much better, but she could bear that thought easier than the other.
    She heard the Major moving about in his room, and she froze in dread that the connecting door would open. When the seconds passed and the door remained closed, she slowly relaxed and began to get ready for bed.
    But when she was lying between the cool sheets, she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t get the picture of Roper out of her mind; every time she closed her eyes, she saw his muscled body surging rhythmically. So
that
was exactly what went on between men and women. That was what the Major had tried to do to her. Knowing the basics hadn’t enabled her to picture the scene in her mind, but now she could.
    Her heartbeat was slow