Read Online Rocky Mountain Man (Historical) by Jillian Hart - Free Book Online Page A

truth.
    This morning her eyes were red-rimmed and she was pale with strain. She was wearing his shirt and a pair of his trousers tied with a rope at her waist. The clothes engulfed her, but nothing could dim the sincerity as she eased over him, careful of his wounds and laid her head over his heart.
    A sharper pain than he’d ever known bore through his chest. It was an odd thing, to feel tenderness for this strangely emotional woman who’d been honest. And the way she held him seemed just as honest as when the men had come and he’d thought, confusing the present with the past, that he was going to be wrongly accused again.
    The sweet scent of honeysuckle filled his head and he wished he could move his arm. Because if he could, he’d lay his hand over her head and wind his fingers through her soft hair. He’d press her close and hold on tight, because she was surely a dream. Surely.
    But too soon the outside door swung open and eye-stinging light filled the room. It was more people—he saw the swish of a woman’s skirts and heard the low murmur of a man’s voice—the same one from before. And she was leaving him, lifting her head and straightening it.
    Longing pierced him, but it was impossible because he didn’t need or long for anything or anyone. Especially not a pretty and proper town lady who was everything he’d come to distrust. She stood. Her weight lifted from the mattress and he was alone. His chest ached with emotion, but it was impossible to know what emotion he was feeling.
    He’d given up on feelings long ago.
    â€œGranny!” It was Betsy’s voice, rising with excitement, moving away from him. “What are you doing here? I don’t understand. And Mama—”
    â€œWhat were you thinking? Spending a night all alone with a mountain man. With any man!”
    It was a mother’s scolding voice and through his foggy vision, he saw two women. One a matronly figure decked out in an enormous hat with a fake flower that bobbed with the movements of her head, which she nodded to emphasize nearly every other word.
    Clearly, Betsy’s mother. Her ample figure suggested a life of being well fed and her brown dress looked to be of the finest material. He recognized the mother-of-pearl buttons that marched from her chin to her toes and the disdainful frown that withered her otherwise pleasant face.
    She glared at him as if she smelled a skunk. That’s all it took and he knew what Betsy’s mother saw. She was a lady of means, probably the type that liked everything in its place including people in the slots where they belonged.
    And she was right. Her daughter should keep a far distance from him. The stink of prison felt as if it had been ground into his skin and deeper. It had changed him. Tainted him.
    Mrs. Prim and Proper shook her head from side to side as she studied him, the flower on her bonnet swaying to and fro.
    He focused on that.
    It was safer. Easier.
    He wished for the strength to let it mean nothing. Nothing at all as the three women—daughter, mother and grandmother—gazed over him. He saw compassion in the elderly woman’s eyes and he knew. She knew. Shame rolled over him like a flooding river and the tide of it drowned out everything he’d worked to become. Washing away all the good he’d ever done, and he felt more naked than if he’d worn no clothes at all. And worse, he saw her pity.
    â€œCome, my sweet Bets.” The elderly woman turned her back to him and grabbed hold of Betsy’s slender arm and pulled her from his side. “You have worked all night, and I am here now. Go with your mama and your brother, and I will tend the mountain man.”
    Yeah, he knew they’d take her from him. Theyshould. His heart was steel again. His soul impenetrable. Strong again, he let no weak emotion live within him. He watched as her brother took her other arm.
    â€œCome now, Bets,” the brother