ŷ������

“I saw the way you started looking at me, Amanda. I felt the way you responded that last night. I felt it all the way through me.��

“And it gave you a sense of power, didn’t it? Didn’t it?��

“Yes!�� he admitted roughly and caught her arm when she would have retreated to the back door. “But it’s not a power I’m going to use against you.��

“I’m afraid, too, Mara. Not of the dark, not of the past—but of you and what you make me feel when I touch you. You use my desire for you as a weapon. What I feel is a gift. I know what I want, but when you press yourself against me, all I can feel is your body and my need."

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All the way back, she had imagined him gloating and taunting, rubbing her face in her own broken pride. Instead, he knelt before her and washed her dirty, blistered feet. Throat burning, she looked down at his dark head and struggled with the feelings rising in her. She waited for them to die away, but they wouldn’t. They stayed and grew and made her hurt even more.

His hands were so gentle. He took such care. When her feet were clean, he kneaded her aching calves. He cast the dirty water outside and poured more, setting the pan in her lap. He took her hands and washed them as well. He kissed her stained, scratched palms and worked salve in. Then he wrapped them with warm bandages.

And I hit him. I drew his blood��

Angel shrank back ashamed. When he raised his head, she looked into his eyes. They were blue, like a clear spring sky. She had never really noticed before. “Why do you do this for me?�� she said thickly. “Why?��

“Because, for some of us, one mile can be farther to walk than thirty.��

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It was small satisfaction when the natural needs of his body were driving him harder the longer they were together. His mind would create pictures of them making love as it was written in Song of Solomon. He would almost feel her arms around him and taste her honeyed kisses. Then he would come out of the daydream and feel more frustrated and bereft than ever.

Oh, he could have her now if he wanted. She would be accommodating. She would be expert. And he would know, all the while he poured his hope into her, that she was counting the beams in the ceiling or the chores for the next day or anything else that kept her from him. She wouldn’t look into his eyes or care that he was dying inside for love of her.

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She looked at him bleakly. “Your kind of love can’t feel good.��

“Does your kind feel any better?�� She looked away. He unlooped the reins. “Right now love doesn’t have an awful lot to do with feelings,�� he said grimly “Don’t misunderstand. I’m as human as the next man. I feel all right. I feel plenty right now, a lot I wish I didn’t.�� He shook his head, his face strained with hurt and anger. “I felt like killing you when I walked in that room, but I didn’t. I feel like beating sense into you right now, but I won’t.�� He looked at her with dark eyes. “And no matter how much it hurts, and no matter how much I feel like hurting you back for what you’ve done, I’m not going to.�� He snapped the reins and set off again.

He closed his eyes wearily. He hadn’t prayed in days. “I’d be a fool to go back,�� he said aloud. “A fool.�� He looked out at the dark, weeping sky again. “But that’s what you want, isn’t it, Lord? And you’re not going to give me any peace until I do.��

He sighed heavily and rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t see what good will come of it, but I’ll go back, Lord. I don’t like it much, but I’ll do what you want.�� When he finally went back to bed, he slept deeply and without dreaming for the first time in days.

She looked at the stars, tiny jewels against black velvet. She had never seen it like this before, so close she felt she could reach up and touch each bright speck of light. The night sky was beautiful. It had never looked like this from a window. And the smell—thick, moist, earthy. Even the sounds around her became a kind of music, like the birds and insects, like the rain plinking into the tin cans in a dingy wharf shack. Then the darkness lightened.

It began slowly, hardly noticeable. The stars grew smaller and smaller, and the black softened. She stood up, hugging the quilt around her, watching. At her back was darkness still, but before her was light: pale yellow growing brilliant, gold-streaked with red and orange. She had watched sunrises before from within walls and behind glass, but never like this, with the cool breeze in her face and wilderness in every direction. She had never seen anything so beautiful.

Morning light spilled slowly over the mountains, across the valley to the cabin and the woods behind, and up the hillside. She felt Hosea’s strong hands on her shoulders.

“Mara, that’s the life I want to give you.��

The morning sunlight was so bright it hurt her eyes, blinding her more than the darkness ever had. She felt his lips against her hair. “That’s what I’m offering you.�� His breath was warm against her skin. “I want to fill your life with color and warmth. I want to fill it with light.�� He put his arms around her and held her back against him. “Give me a chance.��

Angel felt a heaviness building inside her. He had pretty words for her, but words weren’t life. Life wasn’t that simple, that straightforward. It was tangled and twisted, writhing from birth. She couldn’t erase the last ten years, or even the eight before Rab had led her through the streets to the brothel and left her there for Duke to ruin forever.

It had started long before that.

She was guilty of being born.

Her own father had wanted her cut out of her mother’s womb and thrown away like garbage. Her own father. And Mama would have done it had she known she would lose him over her small defiance. All those years of endless weeping had told Angel that.