Summer stared at him. His soft tone held such mockery that she didn’t think he could be serious. “You can’t mean it…”
His expression hardened. “Oh, I mean it, all right. I want you to marry me before a preacher. That’s all I want. A wife that can help me become a respected member of the community.”
Her silence clearly proclaimed her shock.
He tossed the bit of fern away. “Course, I don’t expect you to like the idea, what with my Comanche blood and all. A bastard half-breed isn’t exactly what every fine lady wants for a husband.”
He wouldn’t look at her, afraid to see the disgust he was sure would be written on her face, but he could feel her eyes searching his own face.
“Is this…your way of getting revenge? Is this punishment for what I did to you all those years ago?”
He winced, realizing how low she thought him. “What do you think?”
“I…I don’t honestly know.”
“It isn’t revenge, Summer,” he said quietly. “If you were my wife, I’d stand a chance of living down my past, my Comanche blood. You have standing, respectability, wealth, land, a place in the white world. All the things my mother never had.”
“I…just can’t believe…You’re really serious? Do you know what you’re asking of me?”
“Do you know what you’re asking of me?” He smiled coldly. “I’m good enough to do your hired jobs, risk my life for you, but I’m no one you’d want to associate with otherwise, is that it?”
She heard the bitterness in his tone, but didn’t know how else to reply.
“You told me once”—his voice dropped, yet she caught the edge of scorn over the ripple of the creek—”it didn’t matter to you that I was half-Indian.”
“Yes, but…marriage…It’s…such a high price.”
“Maybe so, but that’s what I want.”
He paused for an instant.
“Before you say no, you ought to consider one thing,” he said slowly, carefully, so she would understand, so she would have plenty of thought to chew on. “My people wouldn’t take kindly to my helping whites against my own kin, but if we were married…it would change things. By Comanche law, a man is obliged to protect his wife’s family. If you were my wife, it would be my duty to rescue your sister. There’s not a Comanche alive who would argue with that.”
Slowly then, he stood and went to retrieve his black slouch hat from two yards away, where he’d flung it earlier. Slapping it restlessly against his thigh, he finally looked down at her.
“That’s my condition, princess. You think on it and let me know what you decide.”
Chapter 2
Marriage was the price for saving her sister. Marriage to a hard-bitten, unforgiving stranger. A man she had once wronged. A bastard half-breed within whose veins flowed the blood of the most vicious race ever to ravage the Texas plains.
Marriage to Lance Calder. It was unthinkable—and yet Summer had thought of nothing else during the past five hours.
She had needed every moment of that interval for sober reflection, every moment to conquer the feelings of shock and denial Lance’s ultimatum had aroused in her. The condition he had put on his services—while dumbfounding, contemptible, perhaps insulting—deserved careful consideration. The stakes were too high to do otherwise.
Summer had postponed telling her brother until now, though, waiting until after supper before following Reed to the west parlor, which had served as his bedchamber since his wounding rendered him unable to climb stairs. As she’d expected, he’d turned livid. For the last two minutes Reed had vented his helpless fury in a roar loud enough to make her wince. Summer clasped her hands together now as she watched her brother, feeling the same impotence, the same anger, but trying to draw courage from the simple need to calm him.
Too outraged to sit still, he paced the floor with as much vigor as a one-legged man could summon, his crutches thudding dully on the rose-patterned carpet.
“The nerve of that bastard! Who in God’s name does Calder think he is?”
“I expect,” Summer murmured with more equanimity than she felt, “that he knows exactly who he is. No one will let him forget it. He won’t let himself forget.”
“The devil, he won’t! He dared propose to you.”
“Well, actually…it wasn’t much of a proposal. He was more interested in the respectability that marrying a Weston could bring him. And I suppose he’s right. As his wife, I could give him a better chance at acceptance than he has now.”
Stopping abruptly, Reed turned to stare at her in horror. “You can’t seriously be considering his offer? Good God, Summer! The man’s an Indian!”