Maverick Heart by Joan Johnston

even if I did, you’ll need a better seat if we have to make a run for it.
    “And you might want to wash up a bit before we go. It’ll be the last chance you’ll have for a while. There’s not much in the way of amenities out on the range. You look like you could use a rag and some soap.”
    She flushed as he gave her a rude examination that was nothing short of insolent. For the first time Verity became aware of her rumpled and torn velvet riding habit. She had forgotten entirely about her appearance in the desperation of the moment. She reached up to smooth her hair and realized that blond strands had fallen down where pins were missing from the bun she had secured at her nape that morning.
    Her thin leather gloves were torn, revealing scratches on her palms, and she could only imagine the condition her face was in. She reached up and winced when her fingertips came in contact with the bloody scratches on her cheek.
    “My things are all with the wagon,” she said. “Has it arrived at the fort?”
    “Uh … that’s another problem,” the colonel said. “I’m afraid your wagon was a total loss. The buffalo didn’t leave much but splinters. Everything was trampled beyond recognition.”
    “What?” Verity stared at him, goggle-eyed. Her jaw worked, but she found herself momentarily speechless. She closed her eyes to keep the two men from seeing the depth of her despair. She gritted her teeth to still the quiver in her chin.
    She felt a hand at her elbow, and her eyes snapped open. Miles stood beside her, ready to assist her.
    “I’m fine,” she said, stiffening her knees to keep them from collapsing under her. “Only …” She took a shuddery breath and said, “Everything I brought with me from England was on that wagon. Everything we needed …” Verity sank onto a wooden chair Miles shoved behind her knees.
    She looked up at him, letting him see the desolation she felt. She searched in vain for a spark of sympathy, an offer of comfort in his remote gray eyes.
    Then she remembered Rufus and Slim. She turned to the colonel. “The two men—”
    “I’m afraid they’re dead, ma’am.”
    “My God.” She held herself rigidly upright in the chair, clenching her hands together in her lap to still their trembling.
    She had been grateful—and amazed—to discover when Chester’s will was read that he had left her anything at all. It had seemed like a miracle that she would be able to offer her destitute son a way to redeem his fortune. She had convinced herself that they would enjoy their new life in the Wyoming Territory.
    So far everything had gone dreadfully awry.
    Rand and Freddy had been captured by Indians. Everything she had brought with her to start a new life had been trampled by buffalo. And the one man she had ever loved had turned up demanding vengeance for a wrong she had done him more than two decades ago.
    She lifted her eyes and sought out Miles, who had leaned back against the planked wall, his arms crossed over his chest.
    “Do you still want to come with me?” he said. “Or would you rather wait here until I get back?”
    Verity looked—really looked—at Miles. The coiled tension in his shoulders betrayed him. He wanted her to say she would go with him. Because she would be completely at his mercy if she did.
    She eyed the slashing scar running through the shadow of beard, his shaggy black hair, the filthy buckskins. She tried to remember the handsome youth who had courted her, but found nothing in the steely gray eyes staring back at her from beneathdark brows that remotely resembled the English gentleman she had loved.
    There was nothing gentle about this man.
    She stared out the colonel’s window onto the immense parade ground at the center of the fort and considered her choices.
    Fort Laramie, located at the junction of the Laramie and North Platte rivers, wasn’t much of a refuge from marauding Indians, to Verity’s way of thinking. There were no stout walls, no walls