not being hurt penetrated her fear. It was Wolfe imprisoning her. It was Wolfe speaking to her. Wolfe, whom she had trusted from the first moment she saw him. Wolfe, who would never hurt her as her mother had been hurt. Wolfe, who had been her talisman against nightmare and waking terror. Wolfe, who might hate her, but would never rape her.
With a convulsive shudder, Jessica stopped fighting.
«That’s better, your ladyship. I know my touch repulses you, but that’s too damned bad. You’re the one who wanted to be married, not me.»
Jessica’s eyes widened. She turned her head from side to side, trying to evade Wolfe’s hand over her mouth. After a moment, he lifted his palm. She licked her lips and tried to speak. On the third attempt, words came.
«Being touched by you doesn’t repulse me,» she whispered. «Truly, Wolfe.»
«You lie very sweetly, Sister Jessica, but your body tells me the truth,» Wolfe said sardonically. «You would have screamed and clawed my eyes out if I had let you. Hardly the act of a girl pleased by a man’s touch.»
«You don’t understand. I was remembering and then you grabbed me, and I didn’t know what was memory or nightmare and what was real.»
«Save your lies for the Moran brothers. They believe you’re half the woman you look to be. I know better.»
Wolfe released Jessica and rolled aside as though repelled by the very feel of her skin.
«Wolfe,» she whispered raggedly, reaching out to him. «Wolfe, you’re the only one I’ve ever trusted. Please don’t abandon me to the wind. It will steal my mind as surely as it stole hers.»
The cold trembling of Jessica’s hand on his arm shocked Wolfe almost as much as her words.
«It’s just a storm,» he said roughly.
«No,» Jessica whispered. «It stole her soul. Can’t you hear herscreaming?Listen. It’s the cry of a woman newly damned.»
A chill moved down Wolfe’s spine. The slow shudders that took Jessica’s body were transmitted to him by the cold fingers clinging to his arm. Despite his anger, he could no more turn away from her naked pleas than he could walk out of his own skin. He put his hand over hers, trying to warm her fingers.
«Jessi…it’s just the wind, no more.»
She didn’t hear Wolfe. She heard only the keening cry of her memories. Wide-eyed, motionless but for the trembling she couldn’t control, she lay and listened to the wind, knowing that soon her mother would drag herself from her father’s bed and walk the stone hallways, crying and wailing, her screams rising and falling in awful harmony with the wind.
«Jessi?»
There was no answer but her quick, shallow breaths. Slowly, Wolfe gathered Jessica against his body. Though she was so tense that she was all but rigid, she didn’t fight his embrace. She simply lay against him, quivering like a bowstring drawn to the breaking point. He had felt the same shivering in her once before, when he had held her amid a fragrant haystack while a wild storm hammered all around. She had been crying with fear then.
He found himself wishing that she would weep now.
She didn’t. She simply lay and shuddered at random, finally driven beyond her ability to endure. The knowledge that he had pushed Jessica to the point of breaking brought no triumph to Wolfe. Had he been able, he would have undone every hurtful word. He had never meant to bring her this low.
«It’s all right, elf,» Wolfe said gently. He stroked Jessica’s back, trying to draw some of the tension from her. «Nothing can harm you. I’ll keep you safe.»
«I thought so once,» she whispered. A shudder racked her body. «Nothing can hold back the wind.»
«The wind can’t hurt you.» Wolfe’s hand smoothed slowly over Jessica’s soft hair. «You’re safe with me.»
The silence went on so long Wolfe became uneasy. He turned aside for a moment to light a candle, thinking that the warm dance of flame would comfort Jessica. When he turned back, she was watching the window with a fixed stare that made his skin cold.
«Jessi?» he whispered.
«Dinnaye hear her, laddie?» Jessica asked, her voice and accents that of the Scots child she once had been.
Ice slid down Wolfe’s spine. «Who do you hear?»
Jessica blinked and her voice changed, her accents becoming clipped, English. «The earl is at mum again. First the screaming and then the bleeding and then the burying.»
Wolfe looked down at Jessica. Her eyes were still wide, still focused on something only she could see, something that so horrified her that she was literally chilled by the sight.
«Tell me what you see,» Wolfe commanded gently.
She closed her eyes. «I will not remember.»
«You must. It’s eating you alive. Name your devil and it can’t own you. Name it, Jessi. Nothing is worse than what you now feel.»
Thunder broke in an avalanche of sound that shook the house. Jessica didn’t flinch, for she was caught in a far older, far more violent storm. Her eyes opened. They were sightless, fixed on a past only she could see.
«The earl wants a son,» she whispered. There was no English accent, no Scots burr, nothing but the rhythms and accents of the West.
Wolfe stroked Jessica’s hair, trying to reassure her.
«Go on,» he said softly.
«The earl wants a son.»
«Yes, I understand.»
«Mother doesn’t want to breed. She never wanted to breed after the first time. It near killed her.»
Wolfe’s hand hesitated as he remembered Jessica’s certainty that women never wanted another child after bearing the first. Slowly, he continued the soothing downward motion of his hand over Jessica’s tangled hair.
«Is your father angry about your mother?»
«Always. He’s drunk. He’s walking down the hall to mother’s room. The door is locked. He hammers on it and hammers on it. I can’t hear a lot of what he yells because it’s storming and she is screaming again.»
Wolfe closed his eyes for an instant, hoping that the suspicions coiling coldly in his gut were wrong.
«Does your mother open the door?» he asked.
«No.»
With a silent sigh of relief, Wolfe asked, «What else do you see?»
«He takes an ax to the door. Thunder and chopping and screaming. She sounds just like the wind screaming.»
Wolfe closed his eyes for an instant. Very gently, he brushed his lips over Jessica’s forehead. Her skin was clammy.
«He drags her into the hall,» Jessica continued, «swearing he’ll have a son of her if it’s the last thing either one of them ever does. Some nights I thought it would be.»
Wolfe’s heart turned over as he sensed what was coming next. «Jessi…»
She didn’t hear. «Mother would fight and he would beat her until she was quiet so he could rut on her. When it was over she just lay there until I came and washed off the blood and took her back to bed.»
«Merciful God,» Wolfe breathed, horrified. «You were just a child!»
Jessica kept talking as though Wolfe hadn’t spoken. She no longer wanted to stem the floodtide of memories. She wanted only to make Wolfe understand that she hadn’t withdrawn from him because he repulsed her.
«Sometimes she simply miscarried after weeks of sickness,» Jessica continued relentlessly. «Sometimes she grew big despite the endless vomiting and fainting. Then she slowly turned yellow and was brought screaming to a childbed, knowing the babe within was dead. No one from the village would tend her, for they believed her cursed. I stayed with her.»
«Jessi…» Wolfe’s voice broke.
«When it was finished, I washed and dressed the tiny corpse in a christening gown. They were like wax
