Free The Unofficial Suitor by Charlotte Louise Dolan Page B

room, especially as that one would undoubtedly have been Cassie.
    She lay awake a long time after the other two had fallen asleep, worrying at first about how much they would have to pay for their room the next day, but then gradually becoming soothed by the rumble of men’s voices coming up from below, which were audible now that the wind had died down. Every now and then she heard the deeper rumble that was the man called Hawke, and occasionally a burst of laughter, before finally she also drifted off to sleep.
    * * * *
    In the taproom Richard Hawke paid only the bare minimum of attention to the conversation of his companions. The bulk of his attention was directed to the women upstairs, or rather, to one of the women.
    Thanks to the great quantity of brandy he and his friends had imbibed the evening before, he had not paid any special attention to the three during the day. In fact, were he to have been asked earlier to describe them, he would merely have said three women, assorted ages and sizes.
    To be sure, Perry had ogled the black-haired one at lunch, and could probably have described her in great detail. His interest had achieved him nothing, but had merely revealed his youth quite clearly. Richard had long since passed the stage where he assessed a woman on the basis of how well nature had endowed her. Although he had later been intrigued with the same young woman, it was not her looks that had attracted him, but rather her attitude.
    In a word, she reminded him of Molly. She had fussed over the other two women with the same loving concern Molly had once shown for him, and he suspected this girl could be as fiercely protective of the people she loved as Molly had been. Not only that, but Cassie, as he had heard the other two females call her, had pushed herself to the limits of her physical endurance to provide for them. When he had turned to see her standing in the doorway of the taproom, he had seen the same bone-weary exhaustion that had been a daily part of his life as a slave.
    Following her to the kitchen, he had expected to be met with tears, pouts, fluttering eyelashes, and other obvious bids for sympathy—all designed to elicit from him the required offer of assistance. From the start, he had been prepared to send her up to join the other women, and to set John to fixing the food while he and Perry carried in the wood.
    Instead, she had faced him squarely, almost managing to hide the fear she had of him, and had made her proposal. She had gotten less by bargaining than she would have obtained simply by ordering him to fetch the wood and fix the food, did she but know it.
    He had not sent her up to her room as he had planned. Somehow he felt it would be belittling her simply to brush aside her efforts to manage, especially when she had shown such courage in asking, and so he had simply agreed to do as she requested.
    Nor had she stinted on her part of the bargain, either, as many women would have done. Richard added that to her list of virtues and was impressed with the total. He would have to search far and wide to find someone who more closely fit his requirements for a wife. There was something to think about in that.
    The other thing to think about was a puzzling memory of the girl sleeping snuggled up next to him, but that memory was so vague, he was not sure if he was remembering what had actually happened or something he had merely dreamed.
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Chapter 5
    In the morning Cassie slipped out of bed without waking her companions and hurriedly pulled on her dress, forcing her feet back into her shoes which, although dry, were stiffened by the soaking they had received the day before.
    The room was marvelously warm in spite of the fact that the fire had died out during the night, and a glance out the window confirmed the message the sun was trying to communicate—the snow had vanished, to be replaced by a day that was as unexpectedly balmy as the day before had been unseasonably cold. It was the kind of