“Just singing all day?”
“What do you know? You probably spent your childhood outside in the sunshine. I did not. Rain or shine, good weather or bad, I was inside with Madame, practicing. The same note over and over. The same syllable. The Italian lessons, the French lessons. Outside, I could hear other people laughing and having a good time, but I was always inside, practicing.”
“You must have had some time off.”
“Very little. I faltered in my resolve once and only once. I fell madly in love with a young man my father had hired to help with the work. I wanted to be near him almost as much as I wanted to sing.”
“And what did your little Madame say to that?”
“She said that I could be a singer or I could subject myself to a man’s tyranny for life. It was my choice.”
“Spoken like a true spinster.”
Maddie made a face at him. “Why do men always think that the worst state in life for a woman is to live without a man? Yes, she was a spinster. And because she was, she’d been free to come to me in the middle of—” She hesitated. “In the middle of nowhere.”
“So I assume that you chose your singing over the cowboy?”
“Obviously. I saw him years later and wondered what I had ever seen in him.”
“But you made up for lost time with your many hundreds of lovers.”
“My what? Oh, yes, all the men. It’s true that men do love women with talent.”
“Not to mention women with figures like yours.”
She laughed. “I believe that has been an, ah…added attraction. Opera singers do tend to be a bit plump, so I’ve always been careful not to follow that particular fashion. I had no idea you had noticed, though.”
“The last time I checked, I was alive and I was a male. You know, one of those creatures out to make a woman’s life miserable by not allowing her to remain a spinster.”
When she laughed the second time, he turned to look at her. “No sense of humor, huh?”
“None. I’m sure you were serious. Now that I’ve told you a story, you tell me one.”
“Such as?”
“Why you’re doing this. Why you’re taking care of me.”
“I was ordered to, remember? Your beloved General Yovington ordered me here, and I’m doing my job.”
“No, General Yovington ordered Lieutenant—”
“Surrey.”
“Yes, Lieutenant Surrey to escort me. You, Captain Montgomery, are an error. Why did your commanding officer choose you?”
“Now, there’s a man with a sense of humor. I think he thought it would be a great joke to send me out to baby-sit an opera singer.”
“How many of these thorns are sticking in you from the waist down?”
“Not enough to make me strip off in front of a lady.”
“How ridiculous. Especially after the way you sneaked into my tent wearing practically nothing the night you were trying to scare me.”
“Little did I know that an attack of Blackfeet couldn’t frighten you.”
“There you’re wrong. Bug’s Boys scare me to death. Take off those trousers and let me see. I promise not to be shocked at the sight of your bare backside.”
He stood up and grinned down at her. “I hate to disappoint you, but I have on underwear. And it’s a good thing, too, since otherwise I might have frozen to death in the last few days while chasing you around these mountains.” He unbuttoned the fly of his trousers and, after removing his boots, dropped them and stepped out of them. He wore long, red summer underwear under his trousers, and when he turned his back to her, there were several long thorns sticking out of his legs.