Montana Bride by Joan Johnston Page B

disfiguring wound was the fact that Hetty had chosen not to mention it. Surely such an assault would have merited a sentence in one of her letters. Unless this mutilation was the reason she’d needed to leave Cheyenne. It seemed more and more certain to Karl that his mail-order bride was running from someone in her past.
    He wondered when and how Hetty planned to explain the wound. Maybe she wasn’t planning for him to see it. Maybe she intended to stay garbed like a nun for the rest of their marriage. It was only by accident that he’d noticed the ragged, raised flesh in the moonlight. Ordinarily her nightgown would have hidden it.
    Well, they would just see about that. When he made love to his wife, he planned to do it without a lot of clothing between them. He would see what she had to say about that scar when she had nothing left to hide behind.
    Hetty rolled over and her nightgown fell open to reveal the luscious swell of her breast.
    Karl groaned softly when he realized his body had responded urgently—and predictably—to the sight. If only his bride had kissed him back. It was agony to have this beautiful woman lying next to him and know it might be a very long time before he would be able to make love to her.
    He slowly rose up on an elbow, leaving one hand free to reach for the curls on the pillow. Her hair was silky soft. He brushed a knuckle against her cheek, and she shifted her head back and forth, as though she’d been tickled by a feather.
    Then he heard her say quite clearly, “No.”
    He withdrew his hand abruptly, then noticed she was repeating the word, even though she was still sound asleep.
    “No no no No No NO!”
    Her voice rose and became increasingly distraught. Her head moved from side to side, tears streamed from her eyes, and her hands and feet struggled beneath the covers.
    Karl sat upright, laid a hand on one of her shoulders to shake her gently, and said, “Hetty, wake up. Hetty!”
    But she was lost in whatever misery held her spellbound in her dreams. Karl lifted her into his arms to comfort her, holding her despite her efforts to be free. “Shh,” he said. “It’s all right, sweetheart. I have you.”
    Hetty’s cries grew more frantic, her struggles more desperate, and Karl wondered if he’d made a mistake by taking her in his arms. But it was too late to back away. She was still sound asleep, and writhing as she was, she might fall off the bed if he let her go.
    “Clive!” she cried. “Clive!”
    She grabbed Karl around the neck, sobbing and making keening sounds of mourning. He heard pounding at the door, heard Grace begging to know what was wrong, but there was no way he could let go of Hetty to answer the door. “Come in!” he called.
    Both children tumbled through the door. The boy kicked the door shut with his bare foot and stood there with his hands balled into fists. The girl crossed all the way to the bed, her eyes wide with fright, and demanded, “What are you doing to my mom?”
    Instead of answering, Karl asked, “Who’s Clive?”
    The girl frowned, rubbed her nose, and shrugged.
    Apparently, Clive wasn’t one of the two fathers. He turned to the boy and said, “Griffin?”
    “How the hell should I know?”
    “Don’t use that language,” Karl said in a voice made harsh by the children’s inability, or unwillingness, to identify the mysterious Clive. Whoever the man was, Hetty was grieving the loss of him. Karl wondered if Clive had wounded Hetty and run or whether Hetty had left an angry paramour behind in Cheyenne.
    “She’s wailin’ like somebody died,” Griffin said belligerently. “What did you do?”
    Karl noticed that despite the boy’s concern for his mother, he stayed out of reach. He wondered if Clive, or some other man, had hit Griffin in the past. He wanted to say,
I won’t hurt you, boy,
but the painful knot in his throat made it difficult to speak. At last, he was able to clear his throat and said, “She’s having a bad