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Raven opened her mouth to call him an “ill-bred ass,” then, thought the better of it. It would only lead to further conflict, which got her precisely nowhere with him. Bullheaded he might be, obstinate and sometimes rude, but tonight of all nights, he was human companionship, and he helped to take her mind off her papa’s dying. In the moments of silence that followed his pronouncement, she could hear Henri’s hoarse death rattle, and knew what it meant. Tears gathered and her vision swam. In a blur, she saw Eben prop his rifle against the wall and cross to where she sat.

“Try not to think about it,” he told her.

Sympathy was the last thing she expected from him. Her tears bridged her lower lashes and ran unchecked down her cheeks. She dropped her head onto her folded arms to hide her shame and was surprised to feel his warm, hard hands on her shoulders. His touch was surprisingly gentle and, as he dropped to one knee beside her, she went effortlessly into his arms.

She fitted against him surprisingly well, almost as if they were made to be like this, her slender arms clutching him tightly, her soft round breasts crushed against his chest. Eben sighed and closed his eyes, breathing in her haunting sweet scent. She might be made for some man’s loving, but not for his and this moment, though wondrous, was stolen. Her face was pressed to his collarbone, and her tears wetted his skin. Soft black tendrils brushed against his trim beard, catching, yielding to his masculinity, clinging to him as she clung to his

body. And then there was the familiar quickening of blood in his loins, and the urge to take what he wanted so badly was too strong to resist, outweighing any knowledge that he should do otherwise, for her sake, for his own.

Tipping her face up to his hungry gaze, Eben hesitated. Her bewilderment showed plainly on her pretty face. She’d stopped crying, but her breath still came raggedly and her cheeks were flushed and damp. She was soft and yielding in that moment, sweet and vulnerable, and he should try very hard to find the will to heed his nagging conscience. Somehow that still small voice was far away, however, all but drowned out by the heavy thud of his heart.

For Raven, it was a moment filled with wonder. One simply spoken acknowledgement of her grief had brought her trembling into Eben’s arms. He was a stranger, surely, but he was also very handsome, with the firelight catching in his tawny hair, glittering in his pale eyes like starlight. His muscular arms were hard as iron, yet gentle when holding her so close. From the shadow of her lashes, she saw his head come down and felt the first tentative brush of his lips against hers.

Without realizing what she was doing, Raven pressed even closer, one hand at the back of his neck, the other caressing his face. She marveled at the feel of him, the stark contrast of their physiology, the play of the heavy, corded muscles under his smooth skin, the roughness of his beard. Much further down, his maleness stood erect, evidence of his desire. The remembered image of the trapper and his woman flashed in her mind. Would Eben be like that man, taking her body quickly and uncaringly? Or would he be the tender lover every young woman dreamed of?

His mouth was certainly insistent, sending messages to her woman’s body she had no will to deny. Beneath his expert tutelage, she parted her lips even more, allowing the entrance of his tongue. He tasted of her father’s brandy, smelled as fresh as the rain outside—in fact, there was a sort of earthiness about him that called to her even as it intrigued her, a sense of untamed power in him just waiting to be released.

His kiss, the slow, hypnotic movement of his lips across hers, the coaxing of his tongue, robbed her of breath. Her papa had wished her a love both deep and enduring, one to last a lifetime. But this was something very different. The rapid fluttering of her heart brought on by Eben’s nearness, the way his touch seared her skin, had nothing to do with love. She felt his hands slide down her spine to cup her buttocks and urge her Venus mound against his bold length.

She gasped and would have pulled away, but Eben held her fast. His lips left hers to chart another course as fully enchanting as the one he’d just completed. To his delight, the skin of her throat was warm and silky beneath his ardent kiss. He slid his mouth along the arching column and felt her pulse leap under his tongue. Her small hands pushed and pulled at him, and he was even more eager than she to see this thing through to its shuddering, ecstatic end. Slowly, gently, he bore her to the floor.

“Eben, please,” she said.

“I swear, my little love, I’ll do my very best.” His fingers caught in the ribbon that closed her bodice, and then her breasts were bare and his for the taking. He did not hesitate, but kissed and worried first one nipple, and then the other.

The heat of his mouth seared her skin and a similar warmth rippled down through the very center of her core, pooling white-hot in her belly. A few more seconds and it would all be over. He would have her virtue, and her one thousand dollars.

And then what?

He’d already stated he did not want a wife, or children.

That was not bound to change simply because he’d deflowered her.

If that was not enough to cool Raven’s fire, then the groan from the cot was. She pushed at Eben with renewed energy, finally threading the fingers of one hand in the hair at his nape, and giving it a sharp pull.

“Ouch! Now, what was that for?”

“Off!” she whispered fiercely. “This instant!”

“Ah, but my lovely, a man has needs.”

“And you would slake them on an unwilling woman?”

“If that is what you call unwilling, then I should like to see you eager.” He slowly grinned, bracing his elbow on the floor, supporting his head with that hand. “It will be interesting to see just how long you can resist me.” He dropped a lingering kiss on one coral nipple and laughed aloud when she cursed him. “And here I was, thinking the rest of this journey would be dull and uneventful.”

“Bumbling ass! Get off!” She was looking daggers at him now, the pent up fires inside of her rising to dangerous heights.

He chuckled as he got to his feet. “Should you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

She swatted at him, and he ducked, turning his head away.

It was then that he caught sight of the iron box beneath the table. “Well, well. What is this, I wonder?”

“You know very well what it is.” The scent of the gold drew him, like a black bear to honey. He walked to the table and crouched down, dragging it out into the open, testing its weight. “Heavy. It looks like Henry might have been telling the truth, though I would like to see for myself.”

Raven narrowed her eyes, glaring at him. She’d picked herself up and readjusted her bodice with swift little jerks. Now, she was put back together and ready to defend her papa’s honor against this buffoon’s insinuations that he might be less than saintly. “The strong box remains locked. You have done nothing to earn you share.” She gave a little shrug. “You will be paid when your part of the verbal agreement you entered into with my father has been satisfied, and not a moment before.”

“Fair enough,” he agreed, surprising her, “though I would have a look inside all the same. It might be full of bricks for all I know.”

“Henri Delacour promised you payment, and he never lies.”

Eben watched her closely, and there was a calculating light in those pale blue eyes. “Every man lies, if the stakes are high

enough.”

“Do not measure his wheat with your half-bushel, m’sieur. It is gold. I have seen it myself. Besides, I would be a fool to open it. Then, you would take it all for yourself and be gone, and I would be all alone and helpless.”

He snorted. “Alone perhaps, but hardly helpless.” He got up and helped himself to a dipper of cool water. “Has it occurred to you that if I were as bad as you say, I would simply take the box and leave? I could always break the lock, or find a smithy to cut it off.”

She felt a thrill of fear, hearing him say it, but she kept her head high and only her rapid heartbeat—had he looked closely enough—betrayed her vulnerability. “I can’t imagine what keeps you from it.”

“A little thing called ‘honor’, mademoiselle. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”

“Honor? Ha! Pretty words coming from a man who nearly forced himself on me a moment ago.”

He stared at her in dumb amazement. “There was no force involved, though I am not sure why I’m surprised to hear that you refuse to admit any guilt in what just happened. Women of your caliber rarely do.”

Raven eyed him suspiciously. “Exactly what are you saying?” She suspected she knew, but she forced him to say the words, unwilling or unable to back down.

He didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he walked slowly around her, raking her from head to toe and back again with that chilly gaze. When he halted by her side, close enough that his breath stirred the tendrils at her ear, Raven shivered. “I am saying, mademoiselle, that you are a cock tease.” His tone low and vibrant, he traced one lean, brown finger along the curve of her flushed cheek. “But, beware, my lovely. I’m not a man to turn aside a tasty morsel when it is flaunted so blatantly beneath my nose, especially when I am hungry.”

He turned then, and stalked from the cabin, closing the door on his seething charge. Outside, Eben leaned against the cabin

wall and let the heavy rain pound him for a second time that evening. His breath came hard as he struggled to control the impulse to go back inside, to kiss away her resistance, to take what he wanted so badly. She’d been willing a moment ago. He wasn’t misreading it. She’d wanted him as much as he’d wanted her.

Well, perhaps not quite as much, but enough to make her a willing participant in any lovemaking that would have taken place.

She had wanted him. Hadn’t she?

The rain soaked him thoroughly, cooling the fire in his blood and the insistence in his loins, but it was a very long time before the sweetness of her response and the satiny feel of her fragrant skin would be erased from his memory, and all he could do was curse Henry for putting him in this unenviable position.

Sometime later, Eben walked back in, finally ready to face his recalcitrant charge. What he found, instead, was a much- needed haven of silence and solitude. Curled, childlike, on a hap folded and placed by the old man’s cot, Raven slept. For a few minutes, Eben stood looking down at her. In sleep, her expression was as sweetly innocent as a babe’s. It seemed impossible that her soft red lips were the same ones that had cursed and abused his good nature, maligned his character, and accused him of being a dreadful boor. And those eyes, hidden now behind shuttered lids, her lashes sooty crescents curled against her cheeks, could not have snapped with dark angry fire.

Surely, this was the Frenchman’s daughter, the vulnerable waif in need of a fearless protector. Yet, as he struggled against the feelings of enchantment threatening to overtake him, he remembered the way she had been.

Perversely, he’d thoroughly enjoyed the spitting hellcat who’d threatened to unman him, and the temptress who’d so briefly melted in his arms still lurked in his memory, teasing him relentlessly, testing his restraint.

Finally, Eben sighed, ready to release the puzzle that she was for now. “Two sides of one golden coin have I seen. It will be interesting to see what else lays in store for me.” He drew a light quilt over her sleeping form, then turned his attention to Henry.

“Death is a silent stalker,” Eben said softly, not wanting the chit to waken and find him. The poor sick bastard had passed in his sleep. His features were waxen, his eyes sunken even more than before. His skin as pale as parchment. His smile was fixed, self-satisfied.

Perhaps, relieved at last of his earthly woes, he’d greeted death joyfully. Or, more likely still, he’d seen the passing of his burdens onto the work-weary shoulders of another as a final jest. If the latter was the case, Eben thought, covering the corpse’s ghastly grin with a blanket, then it was a grim jest indeed.