A Lady of the West by Linda Howard Read Free Book Online Page A

that every man knew all of this, that only women were kept ignorant. This was what men did to fast women, to prostitutes. The realization put a different slant on every memory she had. The dances and socials and picnics she had attended had all been a part of the ritual leading up to the marriage bed, and bared bodies, and all of her young beaus had known what would happen. How many of them had looked at her and imagined her with her nightgown rucked up to her waist?
    In retrospect she felt very indignant. The system of carefully perpetuated ignorance seemed to her rather like throwing lambs to wolves. She had been prepared for the indignity but not the total loss of modesty or the pain. She thought she would not have been so blindly terrified if she’d had a realistic idea of what to expect. But now, she thought with a wave of depression, she fully knew what her marriage to the Major would be like.
    Roper paused by the gate to the courtyard, his attention caught by the young woman sitting so still, with her hands folded in her lap. The bright morning sun glinted on her hair, picking up the gold in it. He realized that her hair was dark blond, not the brown it had appeared before.
    She sat staring at nothing, motionless. He knew shecouldn’t have had a wonderful night, yet her pale face revealed none of it. She might have been a statue, except for the way the light breeze played in the loose tendrils of hair at her temples.
    His mother had sometimes sat in the courtyard, when she could find a spare minute in her busy days. Elena had been warm and vibrant, always ready to laugh with her sons and husband. The young woman who sat there now was cool and controlled, with a face as blank as marble.
    He felt faintly contemptuous of her for marrying McLain. He felt disgusted with himself for wanting a woman McLain had touched. But the sight of her made his chest tighten, and blood rushed to his loins. He knew her stillness masked her pain and fear, and he admired it. He wanted her for that cool control. He wanted to shatter it with warm passion, he wanted her naked and vibrant and alive with need for him, he wanted her to claw at his back and arch her hips against him. He wanted to snatch her up and take her far away from here, because she was so out of place around men like McLain and Garnet, even himself. Their lives were stained with blood and violence, and it would inevitably touch her. He didn’t see how he could prevent it.
    He had stared at her too long; she turned her head, sensing his presence, and their eyes met across the courtyard. Without haste, every movement graceful, she rose from the bench and returned to the house. Roper clenched his fists at being dismissed by her, but too much was at stake for him to lose control now. His time would come.
    The Major came to her room again that night. Victoria made no sign of protest, but lay with her arms at her sides. Again, McLain expected her to behave no differently.
    He was desperately afraid of another failure, ofagain losing himself to those terrors of the past. McLain crouched between her opened legs and frantically tried to beat life into his unresponsive sex. The more afraid and humiliated he felt, the harder he tried, and nothing happened. All the while she lay there like a damned statue, reminding him of Elena, as if the woman had risen from the dead to torment and punish him.
    He swore and rolled off of the bed and returned, trembling, to his own room. Cold sweat trickled down his face and barrel chest. The damn bitch had emasculated him, finished the job that Elena and her bastard had started!
    His worst nightmare had become reality. God, he’d wanted her for so long, all of his life. Not her in particular, but someone like her, a lady to show the world he was someone important. She was perfect; a woman of impeccable bloodlines, manners, and breeding. She made Elena and that damned Sarratt look like white trash. She was finally his, and he