Fletcher's Woman by Linda Lael Miller

forgotten, either; he might as well hand her over to Jonas himself as abandon her there.
    â€œDamn it!” he said, and the words startled him as well as Rachel.
    The girl came bursting out of the shadows suddenly, her amethyst eyes clouded with shimmering tears, her perfect skin pale with outrage. The grief she felt was so tangible that Griffin could feel it mingling with his own.
    â€œHow dare you swear like that—here, now?”
    He started to apologize, but before he could even frame the words, Rachel raised her hand and slapped him, hard. He swayed slightly and stared down into the pinched, furious face, stunned.
    But, then, Griffin understood. He drew the girl into his arms and held her close as she sobbed into his shoulder.
    Something hard and cold within Griffin Fletcher began to thaw. He nearly thrust Rachel away from him, the sensation was so alarmingly familiar; but his need to shelter and comfort her prevailed.
    â€¢   •   •
    Jonas paced the inlaid hearth in front of his parlor fireplace, heedless of the shattered crystal grinding beneath the soles of his boots. He’d beaten the Indian too well; her bruises and cuts were visible, and the sleep that encompassed her now was not a natural one. There were too many catches in her breathing, and when she stirred on the brocade sofa, frightening, guttural sounds came from her swollen lips.
    The slut could die. The thought stalked Jonas like a snarling beast; he could not outdistance it, no matter how much he paced.
    He paused, resting his elbows on the ornate, gilded mantelpiece, and caught a glimpse of his own face in the mirror gleaming above it. He turned from the sight and glared at the woman groaning on the sofa.
    Jonas was a man of almost limitless influence, but if this girl died, he would undoubtedly stand trial for her murder. He might even hang.
    The parlor doors opened with a hesitant creak, and Jonaslooked up to see Mrs. Hammond standing there, her full face etched with furious worry as she studied the girl. “I’ll send for the doctor,” she said, after a long, stiff silence.
    Jonas averted his eyes and walked to the liquor cabinet on the other side of the room to pour himself a generous dose of brandy. “I think that would be a good idea,” he said.
    All the while, Mrs. Hammond’s condemning gaze dug into his shoulder blades like invisible claws.
    â€œYou are a monster, Jonas Wilkes,” the woman breathed, fearless in her long tenure. “A brutal monster!”
    Jonas flinched slightly, but did not turn around to face the woman who had raised him. Hammond would forgive him, as she always had. “That will be all,” he said, with an authority he didn’t feel.
    â€¢   •   •
    Griffin strode up Jonas’s walk, the medical bag swinging in his right hand. He remembered his earlier visit, that morning, and in spite of everything, he smiled. The animosity between himself and Jonas Wilkes went back a long way and was so fathomless that either man would have been wholly changed without it.
    Jonas answered the crisp knock himself, and his bearing was that of a concerned, distracted friend. He led Griffin across the wide hallway and into the parlor.
    The summons had been a brief one, delivered tersely by the henchman, McKay. Griffin had been told only that he was badly needed at Mr. Wilkes’s house.
    Now, as his gaze scanned the massive room and caught on Fawn Nighthorse’s prone, unconscious form, a stunned hiss escaped him. “Jesus,” he muttered, approaching Fawn swiftly and checking the pulse point beneath her left ear. “What did you do to her?”
    Jonas shrugged as Griffin felt the girl’s rib cage with deft, discerning hands. “Didn’t McKay tell you? She fell down the stairs.”
    Griffin suppressed a killing rage as he lifted one of Fawn’s eyelids and then the other. There could easily be internal injuries, and she would