Instead of the brutal invasion that she feared, his hands found her breasts, and her tears began to dry as, despite her fear, the coral buds hardened under his rough caress. She felt his touch slide down her sides and brush through the soft, tight triangle at the juncture of her thighs. Then she moaned as he invaded her with his touch, testing her desire in the only way he could trust.
His lips began teasing her nipples, then biting them, bringing her such agonizing pleasure that she thought she would go mad. His mouth moved on to her smooth belly, her thighs, cutting into the tender skin, biting and sucking at her flesh. She cried out his name as, intimately, he violated her with the wrath of his tongue.
He brought her to the brink of fulfillment and then pulled away, leaving an aching void that yearned to be filled. Their eyes clashed -locking, hating, wanting. Imperiously she arched her hips, and he drove himself into her with all the remaining force of his anger. Wrapping her legs tight about him, she strained against his body, pulling him down and parting her lips so she could taste the rugged planes of his face with her tongue and teeth. She was barely conscious when she sobbed her fulfillment, and he shuddered convulsively within her.
Later, when he sat up and dropped his legs over the side of her bed, she reached out a restraining hand and touched his arm. 'Quinn, I didn't mean what I said earlier,' she whispered miserably. 'I've guessed for some time that you were Indian from Amanda's portrait and the silver disk you wear. I'm sorry. I deliberately goaded you. It was wrong of me.'
Without a word, he disappeared into the dressing room.
Noelle fell back on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. What devils had driven her to that desperate madness? It had been insanity to incite him as she had. Suddenly she began to shiver. Turning on her side, she drew up her knees.
From his bedroom, Quinn heard her moan. He rushed in to find her huddled in a tight ball under the covers. Her hair was a tangled mass, and he carefully brushed it back from her ravaged face, then he eased the blankets from her body. He sickened as he looked down.
'My God, Highness.' His voice was ragged. 'Look what I've done to you.'
Even as he tucked the covers back around her, he couldn't erase the memory of the bruises that were already marring her beautiful flesh. 'I should never have brought you here. We're poisoning each other.'
She turned her face into the pillow and began to sob. He slid his arms under her and gently carried her in her blanket cocoon to a chair, where he held her in his lap and stroked her hair. After a while, he began speaking softly to calm her, first talking about everyday things and then telling her stories of his boyhood. He spoke of treasure hunts, of teasing Emily and taking his lessons with Julian, of Amanda climbing trees with him, fishing, teaching him to track and use a bow and arrow, of everything except the feelings churning inside him.
It was as much the gentle closeness of him as it was his words that quieted Noelle. 'I wish I'd known your mother,' she finally murmured into his damp shirtfront.
'She would have liked you, Highness.' He smiled. 'She liked unconventional women.'
'Will you tell me about her, Quinn? Really tell me this time.'
'What would you like to know?'
Everything! she wanted to say. Everything that has been hidden away from me, that has made you a bitter, driven man. But instead she only asked, 'How did she and Simon meet?'
Quinn was quiet for so long that she didn't think he was going to answer her question, but she was wrong. His answer, however, left her stunned.
'Simon bought her.'
'Oh, no!' She began to tremble again.
Carefully Quinn eased her down into the chair and disappeared through the dressing room. He returned with a glass of brandy, which he held up to her lips. When she had taken several swallows and was steadier, he moved to a wing chair across from her. Stretching his legs out in front of him and sipping from the remaining brandy, he told her the story of Simon and Amanda, all of which he had not learned himself until after his mother's death.
Quinn explained that Amanda's father was a white trapper, her mother a pureblood Cherokee. She was raised in her mother's village near the Georgia-Tennessee border. Her parents died within a short time of each other when she was fifteen, and her father's brother, a miserly man named Carter Slade, came for her. He took her to his farm near Augusta, where he worked her from dawn until long after dark.
One evening, Simon appeared at the Slade farm, leading a lame horse. He asked for shelter and, for a price, Slade agreed. That night, Slade saw Simon watching his niece, and when she left the room, he asked if he wanted to buy her.
At first, Simon had laughed. It was illegal; Cherokees hadn't been sold into slavery since they had fought with the British during the Revolutionary War. But Slade insisted that as a Cherokee, Amanda would honor any agreement a member of her family made.
And so, Simon Copeland, a man who didn't believe in slavery, a man who had never owned a slave, bought Amanda Slade for five hundred dollars.
Simon never knew what Amanda felt when she learned she had been sold, but as Slade had predicted, her honor demanded that she keep the infamous agreement. And so, the next morning, she turned her back on the past and went off with the handsome stranger who now owned her.
Even then, Simon wasn't an impulsive man. He was horrified at what he had done and didn't permit himself to touch her, yet each day he grew more fascinated with her. It was Amanda who finally went to him, giving her love freely, asking for nothing.
'It was a bittersweet moment when Simon realized how much he loved her in return. He was an ambitious man who had planned to make an advantageous marriage, and Amanda had neither money nor background to recommend her. To make matters worse, even though her father was white, she considered herself Cherokee.
'Quinn, none of what you've told me explains your bitterness toward Simon. Even if he did buy her, he took your mother away from a horrible life. From what Emily told me, he was a wonderful father to you, a loving husband-'
'Oh, he was a loving husband, all right!' Quinn exclaimed bitterly. 'Everyone in Cape Crosse will tell you that. And a wonderful father. If you press them, even my friends will tell you I've been an ungrateful son to have turned against him. Christ! If I've heard once about Simon taking me everywhere with him on that bay of his, I've heard it a thousand times.'
'Then why?' Noelle's eyes pleaded with him to finally tell her the truth, but when she saw the pain etching itself so deeply across his features, she almost wished she had kept her peace.
'He didn't marry her, Highness,' Quinn finally said. 'Not until a few hours before she died. She was his slave until the end.'
'He didn't marry her!' Noelle exclaimed. 'What reason could he have had?'
'You should know the answer to that better than anyone. She wasn't a suitable Copeland bride. No family, no education.' He stared into the depths of his glass and muttered, 'Nothing but a loving heart.'
Then he told her how he had overheard the brief, hushed ceremony, trying not to let himself understand what it meant but knowing, without question, that, at the age of twelve, his world had come to an end. Later, when his mother called him to her, she sensed that he had discovered the truth.
'She told me that I mustn't blame him. Said it hadn't been important to her. But I've never been able to forgive him. It was only the threat of having her die leaving me a bastard forever that finally forced him to marry her.'
He stood up and walked over to the fireplace, staring down into the dying embers. 'After the funeral, I ran away to the Cherokees.'
'Did Simon come after you?'
Quinn nodded. 'But it took him over a year to find me, and then I was so filled with hatred that he couldn't trust me in the same house with him. That's when he decided to send me to England to stay with the Peales and go to school.'
A silence fell between them that Noelle finally broke. 'I'm sorry, Quinn,' she said simply.
Brusquely he rejected the pity in her voice. 'I'm leaving at first light tomorrow for Milledgeville. Wasidan asked me to try to make the governor see reason.'
'But you told me there was no hope, that the Cherokee removal to the west was inevitable.'
'It's a fool's errand, Highness. But I can't say no to him.'
Sleep eluded her that night, and she was still awake at dawn when she heard Quinn riding off. She threw herself from the bed and pulled on her riding habit remembering his words as she did.
