A Woman of Choice Read online

  A Woman

  of Choice

  Kris Tualla

  A Woman of Choice is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places

  and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead,

  is entirely coincidental.

  Originally Published in the United States of America through:

  Goodnight Publishing

  www.GoodnightPublishing.com

  © 2010 by Kris Tualla

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotations used in critical articles or reviews.

  For my wonderful husband who supports me always.

  Chapter One

  Cheltenham, St. Louis County

  Missouri Territory

  April 1, 1819

  The dogs wouldn’t come back. They yowled and yipped and danced around a muddy heap of fabric lumped beside the receding rain-swollen creek.

  “Can’t you control those mutts, Rick?” Nicolas Hansen growled. Irritated, he reined Rusten toward the hounds and wondered which particular Cheltenham resident upstream had seen fit to discard their curtains into his creek. But when he got close, his gut twisted.

  The heap had hair. Long, black, tangled hair.

  Nicolas threw himself from the gelding. “Rick! Get over here!”

  He knelt beside the crumpled and filthy form. His knees sunk into the chilled creekside mud and the roar of the tumbling water almost drowned the roar of his pulse. He stretched his hand over the still figure and hesitated, hoping for some sign of life. There was none. He gently turned the body toward him.

  She exhaled a faint moan.

  “It’s a woman, Rick!” Nicolas called over his shoulder. “And she’s alive!”

  His gaze skimmed the woman’s mud-smeared face. Dark brows slanted from a bruised temple. Their arches flanked a straight nose with a nasty bump. Her lips were blue and the lower one was split and bleeding. That was a good sign. It meant her heart was beating.

  “Å min Gud…” Nicolas moaned. He yanked his hunting dirk from its sheath and held it over the woman’s skirt.

  He hesitated again, weighing the ramifications to himself—and her—if he cut away her clothing. But he knew he couldn’t balance her on his horse anchored as she was by yards of mud-saturated wool. In Nicolas’s personal economy, saving her life far outweighed saving their reputations.

  If he wasn’t too late already.

  Rickard’s voice spilled over his shoulder, “Wrap her in this.” A blanket nudged his arm.

  Nicolas nodded his acknowledgement. He severed the full skirt from her bodice in a few quick strokes. He left her chemise intact and his gaze didn’t linger on her bruised and bare legs. He rolled her into the blanket, stood with her cradled in his arms, and faced Rickard.

  “Hand her up to me,” he said as he transferred the woman into his best friend’s sturdy grasp. Rickard accepted the burden without pause.

  Nicolas mounted his tall gelding and leaned down to gather the limp bundle. He shifted a bit until he felt both he and the woman were secure on Rusten’s back. “Ride ahead, will you? Tell Addie what’s coming.”

  Rickard nodded and turned to his own mount. “Do you know her?”

  Nicolas frowned. “No. Do you?”

  Rickard prodded his stallion closer and leaned over the unconscious woman. “I don’t think so. Hard to tell with all the mud and the bruising, though.”

  “Hm.” Nicolas jerked his chin at Rickard. “Go on, then.”

  Rickard kicked his horse to an easy canter, waved over his shoulder, and he was gone.

  Nicolas followed at a steady walk, afraid to jar his fragile passenger by hurrying the huge gelding. He guided Rusten with his knees while he considered her pale, muddy face.

  Lying ten miles southwest of St. Louis, Cheltenham was a small township. Nicolas had lived here his entire life—save for four university years and the year he was obliged to stay in Norway. He believed he knew all of its residents, so he was fairly certain he had never seen this woman before.

  And that made her appearance even more puzzling. Where had she come from? Where was she headed? And how did she end up in the creek to begin with? Was she the victim of an accident? Or was something more sinister afoot?

  “I suppose if you awaken, you’ll explain yourself,” he mumbled and shifted her position a little. Her eyelids fluttered and she gave a tiny whimper. But she lay as limp as a drowned cat in his arms.

  When he reached the manor, his aging housekeeper stood in the doorway beside Rickard, craning her neck and worrying her apron. His friend stepped forward, accepted the feminine bundle once again, and held her while Nicolas dismounted.

  “Thanks, Rick,” Nicolas said as he took the woman and hugged her securely against his chest. He faced Addie. “We’ll put her in the room at the end of the hall.”

  She nodded and followed him into the house. “Poor thing,” she cooed.

  Nicolas topped the stairs without noticeable effort and headed toward the uninhabited room, the furthest one from his. After all, he had no interest in any sort of entanglement and fully expected to return this unexpected and unwanted female to whomever she belonged as soon as she regained consciousness. Once in the room, he laid his mysterious charge on the bed and gave her over to Addie’s competent care.

  “Rick?” he called down the staircase.

  “I’m here, Nick.” Rickard stepped out of Nicolas’s study and gulped a glass of amber liquid.

  Nicolas snorted and started down the steps. “Let’s get back to hunting, eh? Before you finish off my best brandy!”

  Rickard laughed and set down the empty glass. “You’ve got more stashed in here than even I could finish and you know it!”

  Nicolas reached him, grinned and slapped his shoulder. “Come on, then. If you can manage those dogs, I’ve a taste for pheasant for supper tonight!”

  Chapter Two

  April 2, 1819

  The frigid liquid world blurred and roared and tumbled around her. Tossed without mercy, she couldn’t figure out where up was, where air was, where water wasn’t. Hard edges battered her. She was tangled in endless sodden wool. Her limbs chilled, her lungs burned, and she couldn’t draw a breath to scream.

  Then blackness drowned her senses.

  Pain dragged her back toward consciousness. The surge of her pulse slammed her skull with steady sledge hammers. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think.

  Distant voices mumbled through her awareness.

  A man, deep and demanding, “Has she awakened?”

  A woman, older, “No, not yet.”

  “Well, what are we to do with her?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

  Had she dreamt it?

  Or were they talking about her?

  She willed her eyes open and blinked the spinning room into submission. Her blurred gaze staggered over her surroundings and panic squeezed her chest, intensifying the hammers’ pounding.

  Where am I? What happened to me?

  She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, defying the tenderness in her ribs, and ordered her heart to slow its frantic warning. Then she opened her eyes again and searched for the whisper of anything familiar.

  She lay curled on her side in a bed with clean linens. She could see the carved top of the footboard without moving her head, its edges rubbed light by years of use.

  Should she recognize it?

  Plaster walls hemmed the wood floor of the unadorned room. Finished logs and cross-planks comprised the ceiling. Dank whiffs of wet bark
and moldering leaves leached through the open window past blue afternoon shadow-light.

  A stone fireplace dominated the opposite wall, beneath a faded medieval tapestry with images of helmeted warriors and carved ships. A plain bedside table and slat-back rocker were the only other occupants of the room. Under the encroaching outdoor scents, she smelled dust and old smoke. Realization squeezed her temples and dug behind her eyes.

  No one lived in this room.

  She rolled to her back and lifted onto her elbows. A blade of pain knifed up her neck and ricocheted through her skull. Her world went black again.

   

  This time, the room held still. So did she.

  The window was closed. A diminutive flame sputtered in the large fireplace, while an oil lamp on the bedside table chased the shadows to the far corners of the chamber. On the seat of the rocking chair, a book waited.

  But she was no closer to figuring out where she was.

  The door creaked open, pushed by the ample backside of a woman past middle-age. She wore a brown dress, a lace cap and a white apron with the strings tied in a drooping bow. Her eyes remained fixed on her tea tray, which she set on the bedside table. She reached down to pick up the book before easing herself into the rocker. Only then did she look toward the bed.

  “Oh, my!” she blurted, her voice loosened by age. “Are you awake, dear?”

  Remembering not to move her head, she whispered, “Yes.”

  “Thank the Lord!” The older woman pushed up from the chair. “I’m so glad to see you finally awake. You were in such a bad way, we weren’t at all assured that you’d survive, poor thing!”

  She crossed the room with surprising haste and shouted into the hallway. “Maribeth! Come quickly!”

  Then she returned to the bedside, moving like a loose bag of potatoes. Rapid footsteps preceded the appearance of a much younger woman, slim and dark.

  “Are you hungry, dear? Do you feel you could do with some tea or perhaps some broth? Nothing solid yet! I don’t believe that would sit well.” Not waiting for an answer, she ordered Maribeth to bring warm broth without delay. “Oh, and find Sir Nicky soon as you’re able, and tell him that our girl is finally awake!”

  “Sir Nicky?” she croaked. Her mouth was dry, her tongue sticky. She tasted blood.

  “Oh, he’s not truly knighted.” The older woman waved her hand and chuckled. “It’s only that I was his nanny when he was just a boy, him and his younger brother, and they loved to play knights and horses and castles and dragons and all. So I started calling his brother ‘Sir Gunny’ and him ‘Sir Nicky’ and, well, I reckon I just never stopped.”

  The woman shook her head. Gray wisps escaped her cap. “Oh, but listen to me go on. You’d believe I’ve lost all my manners! I haven't even introduced my own self yet! My name is Addie, and that’s short for Adelaide, which I feel is much too much of a mouthful for anyone!” She smoothed the covers with her wrinkled hands. “I’ve been here at the manor almost forty years, now. Why, I nearly raised those two boys myself!”

  Addie’s verbal deluge drenched her and she felt a wave of panic. So she closed her eyes and tried to sink into the mattress to puzzle things out. If Addie needed to introduce herself, then she hadn’t ever been here before. So naturally she wouldn’t recognize her surroundings.

  But if she doesn’t know me, how could she possibly know what happened to me?

  Her persistent headache confounded her ability to reason. She heard a bowl rattling on a metal tray and smelled the beef broth. It must be Maribeth who set the tray on the bedside table with an audible sigh.

  A shadow blocked the lamplight. “Can you wake up again, dear? Your broth is here,” Addie asked.

  She opened her eyes and forced a shaky smile, though her sore lower lip stung with the effort. Perhaps broth was a good idea. After all, she had no idea how long she’d gone without food.

  “Do you believe you might be able to sit up if we helped you, dear?”

  Addie and Maribeth tenderly lifted and tucked until she sat propped against a stack of pillows, though every bit of movement brought new pain to the surface. The room rolled and she swallowed a surge of nausea.

  She held out stiff arms and considered the white cotton and lace nightgown she wore. “Are these my clothes?” Her rough voice was unrecognizable.

  “Oh no, dearie… Your dress was ruined, I’m sorry to say. A frightful mess, it was, too, what with all the water and mud and being so cut up. Such a shame, since that green color would go so well with your eyes.” Addie paused long enough to gently brush a strand of hair from her forehead. “But I cleaned you up. Washed and plaited your hair, as well. And I found one of Miss Lara’s best sleeping gowns to dress you in.”

  Who?

  She slid her hands over the finely woven material; it released the faint scents of lavender mixed with camphor.

  “Please thank her for me,” she murmured. A shadow passed over the housekeeper’s face and Maribeth’s eyes widened. For a beat, no one spoke.

  Addie picked up the bowl of broth and eased her generous bottom onto the edge of the bed. “Let’s try this while it’s still warm, shall we?”

  She managed to swallow most of the broth before hard soles on wood echoed heavily toward the room. Addie rose from the bed and straightened her apron. All eyes turned to the doorway as a man of about thirty years ducked inside. The strong odors of fresh air—and fresh manure—entered with him.

  He must be a full hand over six feet.

  His broad shoulders and solid build seemed to strain the confines of the small room. If he had not looked so stern, she might have considered him beautiful.

  He stopped.

  Dark blue eyes raked over her and his jaw clenched. A thin scar on one cheek whitened. Pulling a leather thong from his hair, he retied his shoulder-length blond locks. He released a sigh and approached the bed, frowning.

  “So.” His uneasy stance and the shift of his feet unnerved her. She looked away, realized she couldn’t evade the man, and faced him again. When their eyes met, he asked, “How are you feeling?”

  Before she could answer, a shiver convulsed her and her face contorted. Two quick gasps preceded an explosive sneeze. With a grunt and a groan, she put her hands on her temples and slumped over the edge of the bed, vomiting broth onto the floor. Blood dripped from her nose and her field of vision filled with black motes and silver lights.

  The burst of activity around her sounded far away. Steel arms lifted her and laid her back onto the pillows. Someone wiped her mouth and nose, and laid a wet cloth over her eyes. She heard the thud of a heavy bucket on the wood planks and the swish of a rag on the floor next to the bed; she smelled the tang of lye soap.

  Her face flamed with embarrassment and her lower lip tensed. Hot tears escaped from under the cloth and rolled down her cheeks. Her head throbbed and felt too heavy for her neck.

  “There, there.” Addie lifted the cool cloth from her eyes and used it to wipe her face. “Don’t worry a thing about it, dearie. Happens all the time.”

  Reassured by the ridiculous claim, she fixed her grateful gaze on the older woman. She purposefully avoided looking toward the imposing male figure, but his stare from the foot of the bed held weight.

  Addie rinsed the cloth and pressed it under her nose, then turned with a cocked brow. “Have you forsaken your manners, young man? You have a guest! And a poor injured woman at that!”

  The recipient of Addie’s scolding slowly straightened and placed his right palm against his chest. Though unsmiling, his hard sapphire gaze met hers and he bowed a little at the waist.

  “Please forgive my appalling lack of decorum, madam,” he said in a powerful voice that rumbled from the depths of his sizeable chest. “For I was certainly raised to know better by my beloved old, old nanny.”

  Addie snorted. But she smiled.

  “I am Nicolas Reidar Hansen, owner of this estate, your humble servant, and deeply honored rescuer.”

  Res
cuer? From what?

  Confused, she tilted her head back and held the cloth firmly beneath her nose. “I ab berry pleased to beet you, Bister Hadsend. By nabe is…” She stopped, her mouth still open.

  The cloth dropped to her lap.

  “M-my n-name is…” she tried again, but only murky water swirled through her wits. The salt of sweat pricked her skin. Nicolas and Addie exchanged unsettled glances.

  “My name is—!” She exhaled the words as though, if said with enough intent, the statement would complete itself.

  It did not.

  Oh, merciful God; this must be a nightmare!

  With a mournful wail of denial, she curled into herself in the center of the bed. Why don’t I wake up?

  “What is it, dear?” Addie touched her shoulder and she recoiled from the very real contact.

  “I don’t remember my name!” She gulped air. Dread pummeled her aching ribs and made it harder to breathe. “And I don’t know what happened to me!”

  Neither Addie nor Nicolas moved.

  “What!” Nicolas thundered.

  “You don’t remember aught, dear? Not anything at all?” Addie’s gentle tone squeaked.

  Drowning in disbelief, a small shake of her head was all she could manage.

   

  Nicolas burst into his study, reaching the massive oak desk in two strides. He jerked the top drawer open and grabbed a flask of brandy. He downed two healthy gulps before slamming the pewter flagon on the oak.

  “Hva i helvete!” He pounded the abused desktop with his other fist. “Skitt!”

  Rickard leaned against the mantel, half empty crystal glass in hand and his mouth curving in a confused smile. “What’s got you so twisted, of a sudden?”

  “She doesn’t know who she is!” Incredulous, Nicolas turned to face him full-on. “She doesn’t Gud forbanner know who the helvete she is!”