A Woman of Choice

by Kris Tualla

  “Hm. So, I eat a lot, I look good in breeches and I ride astride? And to make the situation worse, you gave me a name that could also be a man’s.” Sydney shook her head. “These aren’t your typical compliments, sir. Should I be offended?”

  Nicolas laughed. “No, Sydney. You aren’t a typical woman.”

  Seeing her momentary frown, Nicolas clarified, “And that, rest assured, is the greatest compliment of all!”

  Nicolas and Sydney wandered along streets and explored different shops that Nicolas wanted to visit. He stocked up on a number of supplies that they didn’t grow or make for themselves at the estate. He also asked Sydney’s opinion on quite a few purchases until, horrified, he caught himself. He must stop thinking of her as permanent.

  They chose a quiet tavern near the theater for a late midday meal. As they talked, Nicolas glanced at a table across the room where two men in their twenties alternated between very private conversation and staring intently at Sydney.

  Nicolas could stand it no longer. “Might you know those men?”

  “Which men?” Sydney followed his gaze. The men avoided hers. “Not that I can recall. Why do you ask?”

  “They keep looking at you.” Nicolas lifted his beer to his lips and watched over the rim of his glass. “The dark skinny one in particular.”

  Their meal arrived and Sydney helped herself to a sizable portion of meat and potatoes.

  “I do have quite an appetite, don’t I?” Smiling, she broke a chunk of bread from the loaf.

  “Well, I’m glad to mark it. You seemed off your feed before we came.”

  Her shoulders drooped. “I was so depressed, Nicolas. It’s impossible to describe how it feels not to know yourself.”

  She laid her hand over his. “Thank you so much for bringing me here.”

  Nicolas glanced again at the two men. When Sydney touched him, they appeared very surprised, exchanging shocked glances and furtive whispers. Something quite odd was afoot.

  He leaned toward her, working up his best love-struck expression. “Play along with me for a moment, will you?” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her palm.

  Sydney smiled awkwardly, then looked down and feigned shyness. “Who are we acting for?”

  “Your two men.”

  “My two men?” Her skeptical look was hidden from them as she pushed a strand of hair from her eyes.

  Nicolas leaned close and brushed her lips with his. Though he knew he was play-acting, it didn’t lessen the bone melting impact of that intimate contact one bit. He closed his eyes and did it again, for the moment forgetting the other reason.

  The two strangers stood and hurried out of the establishment. Nicolas paused for a heartbeat, and sauntered to the tavern door. He pretended to look at the handbills posted there, then leaned outside and looked up and down the street. The two men had effectively disappeared, so he returned to the table with no more knowledge than he started with.

  Sydney asked, “Do you believe they knew me?”

  Nicolas continued his meal and explained between large bites.

  “Sydney, I saw two things. First, the dark skinny one had his eye on you from the minute we walked in. Almost as though he was seeing a ghost.”

  Nicolas gulped a large swallow of beer to wash down the meat. “Perchance he knew you before and thought you were dead.”

  “Then why wouldn’t he say something to me?” Sydney’s expression screamed her frustration.

  “Perhaps he knows your, uh, husband and believes you’re having an affair of the heart? Or perhaps he believes you staged your disappearance? Or even your death?” Nicolas posited.

  “If so, perhaps he’ll get word to this—husband—that I’m quite alive and well.” Sydney appeared inexplicably glum at the suggestion. “What was the other thing?”

  Nicolas glanced around at the surrounding tables. “The other thing could get them life imprisonment.”

  Sydney’s eyes widened. “Life imprisonment? For what, Nicolas?”

  “Well, that’s in Missouri. It would be castration in Virginia.” Nicolas took another bite of meat.

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Sodomy,” he said with his mouth full.

  Sydney’s mouth crashed open. She slid her glance to the vacated table. “How do you know?”

  “A man doesn’t run his foot up the inside of another man’s leg, unless he has it in mind to share quite a bit more than a meal,” he stated matter-of-factly.

  Sydney’s face went white. She pushed her plate away

  “I don’t feel well.”

  Her eyes rolled back and she slipped out of her chair while Nicolas jumped to catch her. He lowered her to the floor and cradled her head in his lap. His gaze ricocheted around the tavern searching for help. The barmaid scurried over and began to wave a wet cloth over her.

  After mere seconds, Sydney’s eyes fluttered open. The barmaid still waved the towel; Sydney reached up to stop her.

  “What happened?” She searched for Nicolas’s frowning eyes.

  “You fainted.”

  The barmaid tried again to revive her by brandishing the towel.

  “Would you stop that!” Sydney snapped. Offended, the girl turned and stomped off.

  “I’m sorry, Sydney. It was insensitive of me to mention such a subject to you at all, much less while you were trying to enjoy a meal,” Nicolas apologized.

  “Sodomy isn’t a pleasant subject, Nicolas, but I assure you I’m not that squeamish.” Sydney rubbed her forehead.

  Nicolas helped her back into her seat and poured her another glass of beer. “Then what happened?”

  “When you said what they were doing, I felt this blackish cloud surround me…” She mimed her words with splayed hands. “It pressed against me and there was no way out.” Her eyes met his. “The next thing I knew, that girl was flapping that smelly towel over my face.”

  “And you are certain you didn’t recognize either of those men?” Nicolas prodded.

  Sydney closed her eyes and sat still for a pace. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

  She opened her eyes. Spying her plate of food, she pulled it toward her.

  “Waste not, want not,” she quoted as she forked a bite. “That Ben Franklin was a wise man.”

  Nicolas sat back in his chair and shook his head, absolutely baffled by the beautiful changeling in front of him.

   

  Nicolas escorted Sydney to their box for the performance of Taming of the Shrew. As she sank into the padded chair, Sydney seemed to vibrate with excitement, her eyes green as new pine needles. The deep pink of her dress matched her lips.

  Nicolas wanted to pull her into him and feel those soft lips part, feel her tongue tangle with his. He settled for sitting close beside her; his long legs straddling her chair.

  He leaned close, inhaling the rosy scent of her hair. “I know. You don’t recall if you’ve ever attended a play before.”

  “On the contrary! I know I have! My father took me to plays in Louisville twice a year, when he went to sell horses.”

  “I give up,” Nicolas muttered, with a crooked smile. “Your memory is a mystery to me!”

  Sydney laughed, resting her hand on Nicolas’s thigh. “Rest assured, it is to me as well!”

  Her hand felt like a branding iron and he fought the urge to jerk away. How did she do it? How did she rouse his basest urges with nothing more than a brush of her fingers? He shifted his weight in the smallish chair.

  Sydney sat up straight and grabbed Nicolas’s arm. “Look, over there,” she pointed with her chin. “Is that the ‘dark skinny’ one?”

  Nicolas leaned to the side to get a better angle. Sure enough, sitting in the front row of the audience, looking—eager? nervous?—was the same man that stared at Sydney in the tavern.

  “Perhaps it was one of the actors he was having lunch with,” Nicolas suggested. “You know, there’s a commonly held belief regarding artists, actors, that sort of man.�
�

  Sydney pinned him with a mischievous grin. “That they better stay out of Virginia, apparently.”

  Once the play began, any doubt about Nicolas’s theory being true was dispelled. Dark Skinny was literally on the edge of his seat whenever the actor playing Lucentio appeared on the stage. And the actor was indeed the same man whose foot slid up Skinny’s leg under their lunch table. In turn, Lucentio seemed to drift toward that side of the stage whenever the scene allowed.

  “They had best be careful,” Nicolas whispered to Sydney. “It’s a dangerous game.”

  They turned their attention back to the play, though other than Lucentio, most of the actors were mediocre at best. The surreptitious interaction between Skinny and Lucentio was infinitely more entertaining.

  When the play ended, Nicolas rose from the tiny chair and stretched, reaching high over his head. Taking Sydney’s elbow, he turned and shot one last look at Skinny.

  Skinny was staring right at him.

   

  Assuming the sharp knock at her door was Nicolas, Sydney opened it without asking. Mr. Skinny stood in the hall. She jumped back in surprise and he walked right into her room.

  Skinny’s brown eyes drilled into hers. “Why are you following me?”

  Sydney quickly surmised that the truth—that she didn’t know him, or aught about him—wouldn’t be satisfactory. So she took a different tack.

  “Why should I tell you anything?” she taunted with falsified confidence and prayed she was convincing. “Why is it any of your business?”

  “It is if I am your business!” he sneered. “Did he send you?”

  “What if he did? Is there something he should know?” Sydney bluffed. An inspiration lit. “Or perhaps something he shouldn’t know? Is that it?”

  Skinny flinched as though he’d been struck. He looked scared. Perhaps even terrified. Who was this ‘he’ person, and what power did he hold that frightened Skinny so thoroughly?

  “Does he suspect something?” The sneer was gone. Clearly, Skinny was regrouping. He wiped his mouth with a trembling palm. “What might you tell him? You’ve no evidence.”

  “Really?” Sydney decided to take a very large gamble. “There were caresses under the table this afternoon. Something like that could get you both in a lot of trouble.”

  The resultant horror on Skinny’s face was quickly replaced by fury. He grabbed Sydney’s arms and pushed her deeper into the room. His snarling face closed in on hers.

  “Be careful what you say!”

  Sydney winced. “You’re hurting me!”

  “Wouldn’t he like to know the game you’re playing? Who’s the big Swede?”

  “Norwegian,” Sydney spat without thinking. She tried to wrestle free, but he held her in a bruising grip. “Let me go!”

  But he held her close. “You’re no paragon of virtue yourself! When he finds out, he’ll kill you. Again.”

  “Let go of the lady.” Nicolas’s deep voice carried the threat without effort.

  Skinny spun around to face the huge and irate Norwegian. Nicolas leaned on the doorjamb, arms crossed and a pistol tucked in his breeches. While Nicolas’s stance appeared casual, there was nothing relaxed about him.

  “I suggest for your own safety that you leave this hotel immediately. I also suggest that you don’t return.”

  Skinny tossed a nervous glance back and forth, then pitched a warning glare at Sydney.

  Nicolas did not move out of the doorway, he just dropped his hand to the pistol. Skinny was forced to turn sideways and slip out beside him. Nicolas turned his head to watch Skinny leave. He waited another minute, and then stepped into Sydney’s room and closed her door.

  Sydney breathed a sigh of relief. “That was perfect timing!”

  Nicolas propped one foot on a chair and leaned his elbows on his knee.

  “It wasn’t an accident, Sydney. I was listening to everything from the moment he knocked on your door. What was he talking about?”

  Sydney threw her hands up. “I’ve no idea. I don’t even know who he is! But I got the distinct feeling that he wasn’t going to believe that. I was hoping I could draw some answers from him if I went along with him, but that didn’t work.”

  She sat down on the bed, shoulders slumped. “He definitely knew me, and apparently we both know… someone. He’s afraid of that person, and he’s hiding something, and he believes I’m going to tell that someone what he’s hiding. And, to make things interesting, he apparently believes I’m hiding you from that someone as well!”

  Sydney looked up at Nicolas. Frustration burned in her eyes and her hands fisted in her lap. “Only, I don’t know who I’m hiding you from, what I know, or whom I might tell! Skitt!”

  Nicolas stared at her.

  “Sydney?”

  She heaved a deep breath. “What?”

  “He said ‘kill you again’.”

  She looked at him, shocked that she had immediately forgotten such a horrific revelation. The black cloud was back, trying to smother her, but she fought against it. “He did, didn’t he.”

  “It would appear that what happened to you was no accident.”

  She blinked hard to disperse the cloud. “It would appear…”

  “Are you… have you told me everything?”

  Sydney wasn’t certain how to answer that. “Nicolas, I’ve told you everything that I know, as little as that is. Do you mistrust me?”

  “Uh, no.” Nicolas scrubbed his jaw with one palm. “No. But it does appear that you might still be in danger.”

  Sydney nodded toward the pistol. “I saw the rifle in the wagon. Where did that come from?”

  “It’s just a little something I like to take on trips away from home.” Nicolas pulled it from his breeches and held it out in front of him. Lamplight slid along the barrel. “It comes in handy when I need to make my presence known.”

  At his explanation Sydney allowed a small smile. When was Nicolas’s hulking presence ever a secret?

  She stood and moved across the room. He straightened as she approached. She frowned into his dark blue eyes.

  “Might we go home in the morning?”

  Nicolas brushed his knuckle along her cheek. “We’ll leave right after breakfast.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  June 17, 1819

  “So,” Sydney began once the wagon cleared the city. “Tell me about Rosie.”

  Nicolas hesitated and his scar rippled.

  “No.”

  Sydney sat back, surprised. “No?”

  Nicolas didn’t respond, didn’t turn his head, didn’t acknowledge the question. He just kept driving.

  “Why not?”

  Nicolas slipped her a sideways glance, and then refocused on the road.

  “What is there to say, Sydney? She is what she is and I visited her for only one purpose.” Nicolas’s voice was jagged and the scar outlined the blade of his jaw. “I’m a man with needs. You of all people know that well enough.”

  Humiliated by the hazardous turn of the conversation, Sydney twisted away from him to look at Sessa, stepping along behind the wagon.

  “You have needs, as well,” he cut. “And I believe we’re both fully aware that you do!”

  “Nicolas!”

  “What?”

  Storm clouds on the wagon’s bench mirrored ones forming in the morning sky overhead.

  “You needn’t be cruel!” Sydney’s words dropped in the chasm

  between them. Her interlaced fingers didn’t hold still. A pair of hot tears left dark dots on her skirt.

  She was deeply ashamed of her desire for Nicolas. She tried, she honestly did, to stay clear of him. But his potency overpowered her. Sensual, sexual, taking, giving, lifting, drowning, wanting, needing. He consumed her. And she loved him in spite of it.

  What was it he said? It’s a powerful thing. Not everyone experiences it, not even all husbands and wives. Sydney felt certain that, married or not, she had never shared this sort of passion wit
h any other man.

  A sudden thought shocked her: was Nicolas revealing secrets about his own marriage? Had Lara been less—responsive?

  She couldn’t think about that now. She purposefully tucked the possibility away to ponder at another time.

  Because tonight when Nicolas handed her the papers for Sessa, Sydney’s heart exploded all over him. That he would give her such a gift was beyond her comprehension. Certainly he must feel inclined toward her; hadn’t she seen it in his eyes when she hugged him? Another tear dropped and Sydney heaved a patchy sigh.

  Her fists pressed against her belly. Dear Father, what will I do on July first? What will happen to me?

  Nicolas drove the team in unwavering silence for another mile. Then he covered Sydney’s fisted hands with his. Gently, he worked his fingers between hers until he could take hold. Though she resisted at first, she knew he was trying to make amends in his wordless male way. She relaxed and let him, accepting his tactile apology with a squeeze of her own. Nicolas lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it in acknowledgement.

  Then he looked up at the sky. “I am afraid we’re in for it, Sydney. We’re bound to get soaked.”

   

  Nicolas pulled off his shirt with the first drops and stuffed it under the tarp that protected their supplies. The first grumble of thunder was followed hastily by a second. The pewter ribbon of sky visible between endless trees was filled with heavy clouds, charged and murky. Lightening blinked.

  Sydney slid closer to him.

  “Are you afraid of thunderstorms?” he queried.

  Sydney shook her head and waved her hand. But at the next blaze of light and its simultaneous roar, she squealed and curled into his lap. He stopped the wagon.

  The plith-plith of gentle rain gave way to the deafening smack of weighty drops thrashing the leaves around them. Nicolas urged the horses off the road into the protection of the forest as the clouds breached. He checked the tarp and made certain Sessa’s lead was secure; the filly’s ears twitched in the storm as she pranced and pulled against her tether.