Rocky Mountain Man (Historical) by Jillian Hart Page A

great black bear could, then what?
    He’d endured betrayal and injustice. Anguish and a banished life.
    Sometimes he wondered if he lived at all. His heart had died long ago; his spirit had been blotted out with the dark of an endless winter night.
    Until her kiss on his palm. He’d dreamed it—it could be nothing else but a dream. But awake he could sense the change in the air. She had brought lightness into this night-black cave. Her bright scents of sunshine and little yellow flowers lingered.
    If he concentrated hard enough, he could conjure the image of her beside him, her head bent, her soft face leaning toward him. His palm burned with a strange life.
    Oh, if he were man enough with a clear past and a whole heart. But he was not. He could not have her. He could never look upon her again. She was like freedom to a man robbed of it. She was the chance at life to a man who’d died in every way that mattered. She was beauty he did not believe in.
    â€œOh, so you live.” There was no pleasure in the old woman’s words as the chair creaked and the strong scent of sulfur stung the air. A match snapped to life, flame igniting the battered lantern on the floor. Sinuous orange light twisted across the crone’s face. “I had hoped that would be the end of you.”
    â€œA man already dead cannot die again.”
    â€œTrue.” Her thin mouth pursed, bracketed by lines made deeper by the shadows. “I know who you are. What you are.”
    â€œYou sent her away.”
    â€œBetsy?” The crone’s smile was a dark one. “I did. You are as good as dead to her.”
    â€œThen you told her.”
    â€œYou’re a monster. There’s no other word for you, and in my opinion, the law was too soft. It’s all the bleeding hearts that think a monster ought to have more rights than the poor innocent young woman you destroyed.”
    â€œI didn’t—”
    â€œOh, don’t you play that hand with me. I’m wise to men like you. I know what you are. I say ten years wasn’t near enough for what you did. I would have letyou hang, and that would have been too good for you.” Adelaide Gable had known sorrows her own mother would not acknowledge, and it was all she could do not to be rash and go against her own beliefs. “It would have been simple to let you die. Just to have let your wounds seep until they festered. Let gangrene take you, and believe you me, that’s a bad way to die.”
    Duncan squeezed his eyes shut, forcing away the memories and the smell that over twenty years later still made his guts fist with nausea. He could taste the bile building, feel the quiver of his diaphragm.
    â€œBetsy is a good girl. The best. She’s the apple of my eye, I’ll tell you that, and everyone who knows her loves her. You—” Her finger stabbed like a bone against the center of his chest where the last claw marks ended.
    Fire consumed him and between the pain and the memory, he felt his abdomen clench. He would not vomit. He refused to give the old woman satisfaction.
    â€œYou want her. I can see it.”
    â€œN-no.” It wasn’t like that. The old woman would never understand. Ever. The tiny glimpse of brightness Betsy had somehow left began to fizzle like a candle in a cold, hard wind. He wasn’t strong enough to hold the wind back and to protect the flame. He’d never hurt Betsy, he would never hurt any woman, but Betsy, she was like the noon sun, bold enough to warm the world.
    â€œI can only thank the heavens above you didn’t try to hurt her before this—”
    â€œI d-didn’t—”
    â€œShe thinks you’re dead, and you listen up. If you want to live, you’ll leave it that way. There’s no reason for her to come out here. Not to pick up and launder adead man’s shirts. Do you hear me, you beast? If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay dead.”
    He