“Good!” He stood, still gripping her arms. “This little pain is nothing to what
you’ll feel if you expand on that ‘we’ and try to involve yourself in freeing those men.”
“I never said I’d—ouch! Alex, let go of me.”
“So help me, I’ll have a leash forged for your neck if you do anything stupid.”
She started to tell him she’d do as she pleased but the look in his eye stopped her. “Sometimes you’re quite like Adam.”
Immediately, Alex slumped down to the stump again and pulled her to him, hiding his blazing eyes from her view. “Swear to me, Jessica. Swear you won’t involve yourself.”
“Alex, I can’t—”
She stopped because he was squeezing her so hard she couldn’t breathe.
“Jess, I couldn’t bear for anything to happen to you.”
Jess was completely surprised by this and she lifted his face to look at him. “Alex, why did you ask me to marry you?”
“Because I love you,” he said simply.
“Oh.” She let him put his head back on her breast. Two men loved her, one a virile, handsome devil who refused to marry her, and now Alex said he loved her, and Alex was everything the Raider was not: where the Raider used brawn, Alex used brains.
“Alex,” she said softly, “I won’t do anything foolish. I won’t get hurt. The Raider will—”
“Hell!” Alex stood, again glaring at her. “He’ll not be able to help you. He’s going to be shot to death by the hundred soldiers guarding the draftees. Who’s going to save your precious town if the Raider is full of holes?”
She stepped away from him. “Alex, your love for me doesn’t excuse this disgusting display of jealousy. At least I can think of something grander and bigger than a single life. America needs—release me.”
Alex was pulling her out of the forest and back to the road. “You’re not leaving my sight until your precious Ethan is out of town.”
“Ethan! You’re jealous of him too? Still? After what you did to that poor man? Alex, I think you have an odd idea of what constitutes love.”
“And you don’t know anything about death. I’m going to save you no matter how hard you work to thwart me. Now come along and we’ll find you something to keep you busy.”
* * *
“Jessica, are you listening?” Abigail Wentworth asked, her voice angry, her eyes sunken and dark from worry.
Jess straightened in her chair. It had been two days since the admiral’s announcement of the draft and during that time, she had worked about twenty hours each day. Alex had suddenly become very ill and she’d had to tend to his needs as well as run the disorganized Montgomery household. Plus, Alex had given her household accounts from the years he’d been at sea to verify. She’d run from fetching a book for Alex to directing a bondswoman in scouring a floor, to climbing onto the roof because Alex was sure there was a leaky place, to trying to add columns of fifty numbers while Alex talked to her.
When the invitation to tea had come from Mrs. Wentworth, there had been words. Alex’s health had immediately returned in such vigorous form that Eleanor had come to tell them their shouting was drawing a crowd outside.
After she’d threatened to run away in the middle of the night, Alex had relented and let Jess visit Mrs. Wentworth. After all, the old lady was highly respectable, wasn’t she? And what trouble could Jess get into attending a tea party?
“There he is again,” Abigail said, looking out the window.
Jess looked out to see Alex walking past—for the fourth time in the last thirty minutes. She held up her teacup and waved to him.
“How can you bear it?” Abigail said in a melodramatic tone. “How can you bear to be married to that…that glittering, lazy—”
“Leave Alex out of this!” Jess snapped. “He may not be much to look at but he’s a good man. And now he’s only concerned about my safety. Ethan may have the muscle, but Alex’s little finger is smarter than—”
“Are we going to waste time while you two compare husbands?” Mrs. Wentworth snapped. “We have work to do and not much time. Jess, I like your idea of the gypsies.”
“Women can always distract men, especially soldiers a long way from home.”
“The Raider will save him,” Abigail said.