The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) by Sydney Alexander

would always be alone on the prairie, and at times she would have to close her lashes against the suspicious burning in her eyes.
    As neighbors went, then, the Jorgensons were something of a mixed blessing. The food and the comfort were lovely distractions from her own Spartan existence, it could not be denied. The assistance of the eldest daughter, she could see now, was absolutely indispensable. It had been naive of her to think that she could put together a fledgling homestead with an infant strapped to her back, however much she hated to think that her Cousin Anne had been right about that.
    But despite the cookies, Mr. and Mrs. Jorenson’s love affair, carried out in their every move and look and gesture, always sent her home in a funk, leaving her wondering how she would ever make it through the long lonely years ahead of her. She had been groomed her entire life for marriage and wifehood, and her papa had, however unwisely, encouraged her to aspire to a love-match. And when she had fallen in love with Edward Walsall, and confided that he had asked her to marry him and join him in sailing to South America on some scientific exploration he had decided was his newest passion, her father had paled, but had not withheld his blessing.  
    From his deathbed, although no one suspected it at the time, he told his daughter to be happy. And when he had died, succumbing to a sudden fever that set in during what had seemed to be a simple bout of grippe, she had fled the sickroom and the stares and the stern doctor and rushed to the stables, to bury her face and her tears in the mane of her bay mare, and that was when her life’s course changed utterly.
    Because Edward had come before many minutes had passed; he knew her every whim and fancy, after all, and he knew that she would turn to Daisy for comfort, and he knew that the warmth of the mare would not be enough. He slipped into the box, then, unnoticed, and she did not stiffen when his arms slipped around her waist; she knew it was him, as always. His lips were at her neck, only comforting , he thought, only comforting , she thought, and then she was relinquishing her hold on her mare, her pretty maiden mare she had been riding since she was a young girl, and she was leaning back into Edward’s chest, Edward’s hard stomach, Edward’s hard everything , and his hands were sliding up from her waist to her breasts, and his lips ceased to caress and became urgent, feverish against the sensitive nape of her neck, and she turned, sighing, eyes closed and lips parted, and then she was sighing beneath him down in the hay. How how had it come to that, how had the sweet kisses become urgent, how had the gentle caresses become his hands tugging at her gown, her fingers tearing at the buttons of his breeches?  
    She knew not, only that she was writhing beneath his bewitching touch, loss forgotten, propriety forgotten, the world forgotten, darling Daisy forgotten, removed discreetly to the back of the box to avoid the calamity before her eyes, and he covered her lips with his when he slowly slipped inside of her, to mute her cry and atone for her hurt. But she would not accept his sympathy any longer, she did not want it; she bucked her hips up against him and he groaned into her mouth and plunged on, faster and faster, and she clutched at his shoulders through the fine linen of his shirt and welcomed every thrust.
    And when he had found that spot at last, when he was sending her into a frenzy with every stroke, when she was scrabbling with her fingernails against his back and he was clutching her slim white shoulders hard enough to leave bruises, when they had both reached the highest peak, that was when he flung his head back, and loosed her lips at the very moment of her scream.
    They were jolted from ecstasy then, returned to reality and its frights with horrible suddenness, for someone would have heard. Someone would come, and quickly.
    She remembered the calamity with a rose-red