Chapter 10

"This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," Drew grumbled as he guided his horse toward Lila Wilcox's cabin the following morning. "No one with sense goes on picnics in the winter." Drew had had plenty of "winter picnics" with the army and spoke with some authority.

Cassie glanced across at him, silent and adamant. She'd come out of the bedroom this morning, announced that they were taking Meggie on a winter picnic, and he hadn't been able to change her mind. Drew supposed he should be glad that Cassie had come up with something to do. After the way their wedding night had ended, with her alone in bed and him painting until almost dawn, he wasn't sure what she would say or do this morning.

He scowled, thinking back on the night before. He hadn't realized how much he'd hoped that once he and Cassie were married they could recapture some of what they'd felt for each other years before. Last night he had determinedly shut his eyes and drawn on his memories of Cassie, of the simple wonder of their love, of their first erotic discoveries.

Yet from the moment he touched her, Drew had known this Cassie was different from the Cassie he had known when they were young. She was stronger and bolder, more skilled at making love. Her passion and willingness to offer herself for his pleasure had shattered any illusions he might have had.

He should have been angry and repulsed by the change in her, but instead her practiced kisses had turned his blood to flame. He had taken her mindlessly, helplessly, losing himself in the sweetness of her mouth, in the damnation of her flesh. Drew wasn't sure he could ever forgive himself for doing that. He wasn't sure he could forgive her for reminding him that he had been the first of many men to have her.

And the last.

He hadn't known how to face her this morning, so when Cassie emerged from the bedroom and began poking through their stores, Drew had been glad for the diversion. While she'd been tucking things into a burlap sack, he had gone off to saddle the horses. He figured that after her years with the Indians, she would ride astride and as if she had been born in a saddle. He hadn't been wrong on either count.

As they pulled up in front of Lila's cabin, Meggie burst out the door and headed straight for him.

"Where have you been, Papa?" she demanded, stretching her arms toward him, wanting to be taken up in his saddle. "Lila said you'd be here hours ago."

Lila appeared in the doorway. "I didn't tell her any such thing. I said you'd be coming along when you'd finished up your business." She cast a glance in Cassie's direction. "And truth to tell, I didn't expect you for some time yet."

Drew ignored the laundress's gibe. "And did our Miss Meggie behave herself?"

"She was a perfect little lady," Lila answered. "I even took her to Sunday services."

"And you know, Papa, I slept in a funny little bed that pulled out from under Lila's big one. We had popcorn last night, and played a guessing game with walnut shells and a pea."

"Teaching her to gamble, are you, Lila?" Drew asked, telegraphing his disapproval with a raised brow.

"It wasn't me that taught her," said Lila with a laugh. "It was my boy Josh. He learned some mighty sinful ways when he was off fighting in the war."

"I'll have to have a word with his sergeant," Drew threatened.

"And what did you do last night, Papa?"

Under Lila's speculative gaze, Drew blushed so hard he thought steam might be billowing out from around his collar.

"I married Cassie," he finally said.

Meggie didn't spare so much as a glance for her father's bride. "So is Cassie going to be my mother now?"

"She's my wife," Drew answered slowly, wondering why he hadn't worked this out ahead of time. "So I suppose..."

"Your mother will always be your mother, Meggie," Cassie intervened. "What I'd like to be is your friend."

Meggie looked at Cassie speculatively, not quite willing to believe her. "My friend?"

"I thought perhaps today we could do something to mark the start of our new friendship," Cassandra went on. "I thought the three of us could go on a winter picnic."

"There's no such thing as a winter picnic," Meggie proclaimed without hesitation, proving herself every inch her father's child.

"That's only because you've never been on one," Cassie answered.

Drew figured he'd better step in to curb his daughter's stubbornness. "Look at it this way, Meggie," he suggested. "Do you think it would be more fun to ride out and try one of these winter picnics, or head on back to the cabin?"

"Picnic," Meggie answered, as Drew knew she would. Anything that involved riding horses won Meggie's immediate approval.

"Do you want to ride on my lap or astride?"

"Astride, please." For once in her life, Meggie had decided to be biddable.

Drew swung his daughter up into the saddle before him and looked across at Lila. "We'll come by later to pick up her things."

By some stray miracle, the weather had decided to cooperate with Cassie's plans. After nearly two weeks of gray skies and intermittent snow, the sun was beaming down so hard that Drew could almost hear the hiss of melting snow.

They crossed the bridge to the north side of the river and followed the track along the bank to the south and west. Red Buttes was about four miles out and had been the site of an attack on a supply train a summer or two before. Still, going there was safe enough this time of year, when the Indians were holed up in their winter camps.

As the three of them left the rutted trace that had taken thousands of settlers to Oregon, the river stretched off to their left. Today, after weeks of cold, it was hardly more than a glistening ripple of dark water bordered by a wide, grayish skim of ice. Meggie sang as they rode along, and Drew thought he recognized the words of a hymn, one she must have heard at services this morning. Cassie gradually picked up the tune, though most of the words eluded her.

They reached Red Buttes just before noon. Cassie set to work making a fire while Drew saw to the horses. Once he was done, he and Meggie scrambled up the ridge of sandstone bluffs. From the top they could look back across the Platte River valley, follow the iced-over stream as it cut a swampy channel from southwest to northeast between the groves of cottonwoods. It wouldn't be long before those trees would be in leaf, Drew found himself thinking. Lush spring grass would carpet the valley below. And with the spring, the Indians would come.

They'd conspire to cut the telegraph line, to steal stock from the way stations and the travelers passing through. They'd harass the railroad survey parties down to the south. Drew smiled to himself. All he had to do was bide his time, and the enemy he'd been yearning to fight for all these years would come to him.

Since the snow had receded from the rusty red outcroppings at the top of the buttes, Drew settled himself at the edge and nestled Meggie between his legs.

"Look, Meggie," he said, bending close to point. "The eagles are fishing in the river."

The big birds swooped along mere feet above the surface of the ribbon of open water. They banked and dove and flapped away with fish clutched in their talons. They were magnificent, soaring into the azure sky, graceful and dark against the sun.

They had been watching the eagles for some time when Meggie turned her head to Drew. "So, am I sus'pose to be nice to Cassie now?"

Meggie's sudden question caught Drew like an elbow in the belly. He fumbled for an answer. "It would make her happy if you were nice," he finally said. "And if she is happy, I guess I'll be happy, too.

"Besides," he went on, "Cassie's going to be taking care of you when I go fight. It would ease my mind considerably if I knew you two got on."

Meggie considered his reply at length. "She's got that mark."

"Oh, yes, the mark."

"I don't care if she got it because she tried to escape from the Indians. I still think it's ugly."

Drew's attention sharpened. "Who told you that's how she got it?"

"She did. She said that was how they punished her when she tried to run away."

So Cassie had tried to escape. But when had she done that? And had she taken Julia with her?

"She won't mark me like that if I'm bad, will she, Papa?" Meggie asked in a very small voice.

Meggie's tone banished Drew's concerns about the past. Taking an uneven breath, he wrapped his arms around Meggie and bound her back against him. "Of course she won't mark you!" he whispered, rocking her against him, pressing his cheek against her hair. "Cassie would never hurt you. She's one of the kindest, gentlest people I've ever known. She likes little girls, and in time she will come to love you every bit as much as your mother did."

The thought of Meggie being marked the way Cassie was, of her falling into the clutches of the Indians as Julia had, lay in his belly like a canister of grapeshot. Meggie was his child, his responsibility. He would do whatever he had to do to keep her safe.

"No, Meggie," he reassured her, rocking again. "Cassie's a good, kind woman. She would never hurt you. She'll take excellent care of you when I'm away."

"But what if she doesn't?"

For a moment Drew was confused by Meggie's continued concern. What else could he say to reassure her?

"What if she doesn't, Papa?" Meggie persisted.

Drew heard how her tone had lightened and realized he was supposed to threaten something outrageous. "Well," Drew drawled. "I could wait until Cassie's asleep and paint her green."

Meggie giggled.

"Or I could—make her eat carrots every meal for a month." Meggie hated carrots.

"Or I could tickle her."

Meggie laughed outright. "I think you should make her eat carrots. Green's too pretty a color, and Cassie might not be ticklish."

"Maybe we should go ask her," Drew suggested, slinging Meggie over his shoulder and getting to his feet. "Besides, aren't picnics supposed to have food?"

This picnic did. Cassie served up a concoction of tinned beef, potatoes, beans, onions, and desiccated vegetables with dumplings on top. Drew couldn't imagine how she'd managed to make something so delicious out of the army's nearly inedible ingredients. When the stew was gone, there were apples from the bottom of the apple barrel. Though Drew cut out the bad spots, they were pretty sorry specimens.

While Cassie was cleaning up and Meggie was picking up deadfall along the riverbank to build up the fire, Drew took out his paint box and pinned a paper in place. The buttes intrigued him, the subtle shadings in the stone, the hulking shapes, the contrast of the rusty red against the fields of winter white. He was mixing colors with water from his canteen when Cassandra wandered over to see what he was doing.

"I didn't know you painted," she said with some surprise. "You never did anything like that when we were growing up."

"It's something I started at West Point. They taught classes in drawing and mapmaking, and since I seemed to have an aptitude for scribbling, I decided to try my hand at watercolor."

"Will you show me something you've painted?"

Drew shrugged. He never showed his paintings to anyone. "Maybe later," he said, deliberately putting her off.

"Do you mind if I watch?"

He did mind. His paintings were something he did for himself. They were private, an outlet for thoughts and feelings he didn't know how else to express. For all that he'd taken her as his wife, he didn't want her to be part of this.

Meggie's scream cut off any evasion he might have made.

Drew and Cassie wheeled toward the river. Nearly forty yards from shore, Meggie hung half in and half out of the water, clinging to a branch embedded in the ice.

"Oh Jesus!" Drew moaned. "I never thought to warn her—" He tossed his paints aside and bolted down the bank.

"Hang on, Meggie!" he yelled to her. "I'm coming!"

"Hurry, Papa!" the child yelled back.

"Be careful," Cassie called after him.

Drew ran through the rime of snow and the yards-deep margin of dried grass at the edge of the river, slowing only when the ice turned slick and treacherous beneath his boots.

"Hang on, Meggie!" he could hear Cassie shouting. "Just hang on!"

Meggie hung on, her eyes wide in her pale, pinched face, her red-mittened hands bright against silvery wood.

Fear clawed deep in Drew's chest as he scuffled forward, desperate to save his little girl.

"Papa, hurry!" Meggie begged.

"I'm coming as fast as I can."

The ice turned from cloudy white to translucent gray. Bubbles swelled and slid beneath the surface.

"Papa's coming," he promised.

The ice beneath him creaked and shimmied. Then everything shifted. The branch Meggie had been holding dropped, rebounded, and snapped with the report of a pistol shot.

Drew dived flat out across the ice.

Meggie screamed, and her shrill went silent as the cold, dark water closed over her head.

He scrambled closer to the hole on his hands and knees.

"Oh, God! Oh, Jesus, please!" he pleaded, fear shrieking through him. Would the weight of Meggie's clothes pull her right to the bottom? Would the current take her? Would she be trapped beneath the ice?

"Meggie! Meggie!" Cassandra bellowed the little girl's name as if by sheer force of will she could order her back.

Then miraculously Meggie bobbed to the surface at the far side of the hole, coughing and sputtering.

Drew slithered nearer and felt the ice dip beneath him, all but dumping him into the river. He dug in with his knees, his fingers, and the toes of his boots. He hung there breathing hard, still too far away to reach his daughter.

From somewhere off to his right Cassie was screaming his name. He turned to look and saw that she was out on the ice.

"Go back," he ordered her, "Go back!"

Cassie shook her head. "I don't weigh as much as you. I have a better chance of reaching her."

Drew ignored her, needing to find a way to get to Meggie himself. He shifted toward the hole again. Icy water lapped over the lip of the ice and flooded beneath him.

"Papa, get me!" Meggie wailed. "Papa, please!"

"Damnit, Drew, get back!" Cassie shrieked.

She was sprawled on her belly and squirming toward the hole from the opposite side. Even he could see she had a better chance of reaching his daughter than he did.

Cursing under his breath, Drew inched back.

Somehow Meggie was managing to cling to the slippery ledge of ice at the edge of the hole, to stay afloat in spite of the drag of her skirts and coat.

"Papa?" she mewed. "Papa?"

She was pale as parchment. Her lips were blue.

Drew's heart seized up inside of him. "Cassie's coming," he reassured her. "You hang on until she gets there."

Back where the ice was thicker, Drew scrambled to his feet. From there he could see Cassie wriggling closer and closer to his daughter. She was six feet away. Three feet. Less.

She stretched out her arms.

Meggie made a grab for one of Cassie's hands. She missed and sank beneath the water again.

"Meggie!" Drew yelled and bolted forward. His daughter was going to drown. He'd failed again.

Cassie lunged for the hole and thrust both arms shoulder-deep into the water.

"I've got hold of her sleeve," she shouted and began creeping backward.

Drew stood frozen, helpless. He prayed Cassie didn't lose her grip on Meggie's coat, that the current didn't drag both of them down.

It seemed like forever before Meggie surfaced. Cassie wrapped her hands around both the little girl's wrists and began to pull her up through the hole in the ice.

Drew started forward to help, and Cassie warned him back again.

He could hear Cass babbling reassurances as she crab-crawled backward. He could see Cassie's back arch, sense how the muscles of her shoulders and arms were straining against the drag of Meggie's weight and the river current.

Gradually Cassie reclaimed his daughter. Her shoulders came first, then her back as far as her waist. Meggie's legs and feet appeared. She was kicking a little as if trying to help.

The two of them sprawled flat out on the ice, as if they never meant to move. Then slowly Cassie climbed to her knees and pulled his daughter toward her. She bound the child up tight in her arms, soothing her with words Drew could not hear, swaying gently.

Drew sucked in a ragged draught of air. He wiped the sweat from his face with one shaking hand and went out to meet them.

He caught Meggie roughly in his arms, surprised by how much he needed to feel that small shuddering body against his chest.

"Why?" he whispered against her, light-headed with relief when he should have been angry. "Why did you go out on the ice?"

"To see the eagles."

"The eagles?" he breathed, and hugged her tighter. "Oh, Meggie." Drew carried her back to the fire.

"We've got to get her out of those wet clothes," Cass said, gathering up Drew's discarded overcoat. "We've got to get her wrapped in this."

Working together they stripped off the little girl's things and rubbed the circulation back into her hands and feet. Meggie accepted their ministrations, shuddering and blinking in white-faced confusion.

"She's going to be all right, isn't she?" Drew mumbled, opening his own wet tunic and shirt and binding his daughter against his chest. Cassie draped Drew's overcoat around them and buttoned it tight.

"We need to get her to the fort."

They made the ride in record time. Meggie was still trembling violently when they got back. While Cassie bathed his daughter in a steaming bath with pungent herbs, Drew got down his whiskey bottle and made a sweet, weak toddy. He fed it to Meggie with a spoon.

He was still shaking inside, berating himself for not seeing the danger, furious at Meggie for scaring him, angry with Cassie for being able to rescue Meggie when he could not. He hated the panic that flowed in him. He hated being so naked to the world. He'd vowed not to care this much about anyone ever again.

Once they had scrubbed and dosed a modicum of warmth back into the little girl, Cassie eased her out of the tub, rubbed her dry, and bundled her into a nightdress. Meggie was limp when Cass was done. She lifted the child in her arms and carried her to her own small bed.

Drew sat stiff and still at the edge of the larger one, his own mug of whiskey clasped between his hands. Cassie turned to him when Meggie was tucked up tight and sound asleep.

"She's going to be all right, isn't she?" He hated needing reassurance, but couldn't seem to help asking.

Cassie looked down at him with compassion in her eyes. "I think she'll be fine. I don't see any sign of permanent injury, but you can have one of the medical orderlies take a look at her if you like."

"She won't get pneumonia?" He heard the quaver in his voice and cursed himself. "Laura died of pneumonia."

Cassie stepped nearer and stroked his hair. It took everything he had not to grab her and just hang on.

"I can't tell for sure," Cassie answered him honestly, "but her lungs seem clear so far."

He leaned his head against her midriff, accepting her touch, welcoming her tenderness. He could never remember being so shaken, so down-to-the-bone weary.

"Thank you for what you did," he mumbled against her ribs. "I'm not sure I could have reached her. I'm not sure I would have known what to do once we got her out of the river."

"At least we won't have to worry about her walking out on the ice again," Cassie said with what sounded like a smile.

"No," Drew agreed. "But there's no telling what mischief she'll come up with tomorrow."

"Then, I guess we'll have to be ready for anything."

As Cassie spoke, Drew felt her reach for the buttons on his uniform blouse.

"What in hell are you doing?" he demanded, pulling back.

Cass looked down at him with tenderness in her eyes. "This tunic's nearly as wet as Meggie's things. And I suppose those trousers are, too. I want you to put on something dry, then stretch out on the bed for a little while."

"It's not even dark," he argued, as he came to his feet and stripped his shirttail out of his pants. The effort made his head reel and his knees feel rubbery.

"But you're exhausted, aren't you? Being scared to death does that even to big, strong men like you."

Sometimes this new Cassie was entirely too wise. He couldn't bring himself to admit either that or how frightened he'd been. Not while she was standing there, watching him. Not while the ripples were still settling. Yet somehow he was glad she understood.

She gathered up his clothes as he removed them and waited while he tugged on a fresh pair of underdrawers. He sat down on the bed to put on his socks then glanced across to the alcove where Meggie was fast asleep.

"She's going to be all right," Cassie reassured him. "And so are you."

He looked up into that pale, marked face, drawing warmth and courage from her eyes. Perhaps it was his momentary weakness, his need for comfort and concern that prevented him from resisting when she laid one hand against his shoulder and pressed him back onto the bed. Perhaps it was why he agreed to close his eyes, at least for a little while.

He heard her take the extra blanket from the chest at the foot of the bed, felt her drape the woolly folds over him.

"I want to take care of you, too, Drew," she told him so softly he wasn't sure he was meant to hear her.

At another juncture in his life he might have welcomed her offer. He just wasn't sure he could let her close enough to do that now.

* * *

Even as she rose through the hazy veil of sleep, Cassandra sensed that Drew was watching her. She fancied she could feel his gaze slide across her skin, from the crest of her brow to the curve of her cheek, from the slope of her throat to the rise of her breast. She fancied that she heard him breathe her name.

She turned to where he lay beside her in the moonlit darkness of their bedchamber. She could tell he was awake. She could hear the faint, uneasy flutter of each breath, feel his motionless rigidity. He was staring out of hollow, shaded eyes, looking back from some cold, dark place inside himself. It was as if he had been watching her for hours, intent and pensive—yet detached.

"Drew?" she whispered. "Drew?"

As if he were willing a world of distance between them, he shifted on the feather tick and rolled onto his back.

Cassie refused to allow the withdrawal, not with her own man, not in her own bed. Not when the dark pressed close around them, and they both seemed suddenly so very far from sleep.

She let the shift of his weight spill her against him. As she braced a hand against his chest, her fingertips hummed with a faint, focused resonance of a man in pain.

She curled against him, instinctively seeking to soothe him with the strong, sure contact of her own flesh. She drew him closer and he came, big and broad, resisting and relenting. His skin was hot and damp. He smelled of desolation, old terrors, and bad dreams. Of a boy's haunting memories and a man's new fears.

She whispered his name, calling out the torment deep inside of him. A breath ripped raw up the back of his throat as he tried to resist, and then his hands were on her, clawing at her hair, gathering the fabric of her nightdress in his fists. He shuddered, he sighed. He gave his emotions up to her.

They flowed over her, jumbled and incoherent, raging and hot. She fought down a need to protect herself. She had demanded that he show her where it hurt, and now she refused to look away.

He gave up the words in a whisper as frayed and fragile as the ribbon in a family Bible. "Oh, God, Cassie," he gasped. "I could have lost her. She could have drowned."

His shudder racked through them both.

"It's all right, Drew," Cassie murmured back, holding him as tightly as she could. "We got her. We saved her. Meggie's safe."

"Safe." He scoffed a jagged laugh. "No one's safe. No one's ever safe. Not Meggie or Laura. Not Julia or you. I've never been able to keep anyone safe."

With those whispered words, she recognized the parched, brittle agony of his soul.

After Julia died, she had eaten and slept and breathed this shame and futility. She had wanted to stop feeling and thinking and waking every day. Yet somehow she had groped her way beyond it. She could help Drew do that, too.

"Oh Drew," she whispered, holding him more tightly than before. "Let this go. Forgive yourself and stop remembering. Let me help you."

Deliberately, she stretched up along his body and sought his mouth—his sweet, soft mouth, draped in the fine dark silk of his reddish mustache. A score of memories returned with the taste of him, memories of slow, tart kisses stolen in an apple tree. Of snuggling in the hayloft the night she turned fifteen. Of a sun-warmed rock beneath her back as they made love. And with them came the need to make more memories. New memories. Memories potent enough to warm a night when the wind blew cold and the future lay shrouded in uncertainty.

Cassie set about that task, trailing her fingers over him, testing the texture of his flesh with her fingertips. She skimmed them down along his side, then up along the arc of his ribs. She sought the dark, flat disk of his nipples in a nest of downy hair. She entwined her legs with his and pressed close.

Drew gasped and shuddered as she touched him. She felt him strain beneath her hands, his muscles tightening. As she stroked him and held him and soothed him, she sensed the need for forgetfulness grow in him. It was as if he wanted to lose himself, to forfeit the guilt and responsibility for a little while.

They both needed that—to touch on a more than physical plane, to obliterate the past in a rush of new pleasure, to share the bliss they could find together. She wanted this joining, this loving both for Drew and for herself.

And he seemed to want it as fiercely as she. He grabbed her hard, his arms enfolding her, his hands splayed against her back. He rolled above her.

"I need you, Cassie," he whispered.

She felt as if she had been waiting half her life to hear the words. Drew needed her, to love and pleasure him, to understand and heal him. To be his wife in every way.

Her throat was too tight to speak. Instead Cassandra gave her answer with her eyes. With her hands. With her hips rising against him.

She slipped her trembling fingers beneath the waistband of his underdrawers and eased them down his hips. He lifted away her heavy bed gown and fit his body to her, length to length.

She sucked in her breath at the intimacy of the contact, at the way his chest crushed down on hers, at the brush of their bellies, at the weight of his manhood nestled between her legs.

She looked up into his eyes and knew that he was here with her in a way he hadn't been with her the night before. He was letting her see his turmoil and his pain. He was giving her this chance to touch the bare, cold places where the real Drew lived.

Cass opened her arms and her heart to him.

He came to her with a kiss that crested and swirled with both dark emotions and breathless need, with a touch that set her shivering, with a love that had not been diminished in spite of him denying it.

She offered him the redemption of her mouth, the salvation in her touch, the benediction of giving himself to her. She willed him to believe that sharing his deepest self, that loving like this, could make a difference in his life. That it could help him find his way after nine long years of being lost.

She felt the fervor build in him. In her. In both of them.

She breathed his name, calling him to her.

He came, sinking deep into the succor of her woman's core. The joining of bodies was sweet beyond all bearing. She ached with the delight of being one with him, with having him give all of himself to her. She brushed her palms up his chest, contoured them to the strong, straining column of his throat, and curved them along the slope of his jaw. She drew him down into her kiss.

As their mouths merged it was as if they were completing a cycle of their lives, a sweet beginning, a time apart, and a fierce reunion. An act of welcome, of coming home.

They held tight to the moment, savoring the splendor and the sweetness, the magnitude and the magic. They sighed and shifted and settled as the fervor ebbed away.

They lay tangled together amidst a mound of tumbled bedclothes. Cassie turned her head and pressed her mouth against Drew's ear. "I love you," she breathed, the words harkening back to a time when they'd come easy, a time when neither of them had understood their magnitude, a time when they were young.

The answer seemed to rise in Drew, too swift and strong for him to deny. "I love you, Cassie. I love you, too."

* * *

Drew slept soundly, dreamlessly, as he had not slept in years. He awoke alone. The covers on the far side of the bed were tumbled, but cool to the touch. Cassie had been gone for quite some time.

Cassie.

Images of the previous night blurred in his head, of hands and hips and tumbled hair. Of kisses and caresses and promises.

Cassie. Oh, God, what had he done?

Drew rolled to the edge of the bed and sat for a moment with his head in his hands.

The nightmare had started it. In the dream he had been stretching, reaching—but not for the pistol to save Cass and Julia from the Indians. This time he had been grabbing for Meggie's small, red-mittened hands, trying to pull her from the river. He'd fought so hard to reach her, to rescue her, but in the end he hadn't been able to save his daughter, either.

When he started awake, Cassie had been in bed beside him. She had come to him with her tenderness and her warmth. She had soothed him with her touch. And when she offered him the solace of her body, he had snatched her to him and held on hard.

Drew cursed the memory and shoved to his feet, stepping gingerly on the ice-cold floor. He scrambled for his socks and underwear. He broke the skim of ice in the water pitcher and prepared to shave.

It took everything he had to face himself in the mirror, knowing he had let Cassie see his frustration and his fear, knowing he had opened himself and let her touch the raw, secret places inside him. Knowing he had given up every part of himself as they made love.

He lathered his face and skimmed the straight razor along his jaw.

He could still taste her in his mouth, still feel the imprint of Cassie's hands against his skin. He remembered every word they'd said to each other, every sigh they'd shared. He had told Cassie that he loved her. How could he have done that?

Wiping away the last of the soap, Drew reached for his trousers and shirt.

What was he supposed to say to her this morning? Could he tell her that he'd lied? Would she understand if he told her he couldn't care for anyone now?

The thought of facing Cassie, of extinguishing the light in her eyes, made him damn whatever twisted bit of fate had brought them together. Yet he knew he must find a way to make her accept that last night had been a mistake, that he didn't love her after all.

By the time Drew buckled his sword belt around his waist, he thought he had prepared himself to face her. He meant to behave as if nothing untoward had happened between them. If he did not acknowledge the weaknesses he'd shown her, she might not acknowledge them, either. If he didn't put actions to his words, she might understand how much he regretted telling her he loved her.

His resolve carried him as far as the kitchen door.

Drawn up before the hearth, his wife and child sat dozing in the rocking chair. They were bundled in a well-worn buffalo robe and the delicate appliqué quilt Laura had made for her daughter. Meggie lay lax against Cassie's chest, one arm curled around her neck. Cassie sat with her tattooed cheek pillowed on Meggie's hair.

The swell of unexpected tenderness caught him hard.

Everything that mattered was snuggled up in that rocking chair. It was all he could do to keep from kneeling beside it and gathering the two of them in his arms. He wanted to hold them and protect them and keep them safe.

As if he could.

As if anyone could.

As if he dared to take that chance.

Standing there, Drew was forced to admit how much he needed to hear the swell of Meggie's laughter. He wanted to be able to curl into Cassie's sustaining warmth. But no man could live on such thin fare as that. Nor could he endure if that warmth suddenly cooled or the laughter fell silent. Drew couldn't claim and hold this woman and child because he knew he could never protect them.

From out on the parade ground came the bugle call for reveille.

Drew straightened slowly, squaring his shoulders, raising his head. He owed his allegiance to his parents and his brothers on whose graves he'd sworn revenge. He must honor those vows or lose himself. He owed his energies to the army that was giving him his chance for revenge. And in the end, dedicating himself to those things was infinitely safer than loving a woman and a child.

Drew's heart beat thick inside his chest. He knew he had made his choice, that there was no going back. He took one last look at where Meggie and Cassandra sat curled together. Then without so much as a word of good-bye, Drew left the cabin.