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his internment there. While inside its dark interior, he hadn’t been forced to deal with a flame-haired harpy.
    He rubbed the back of his neck. “Stop.”
    She licked her damnably soft lips. “What is it, precisely, that you wish for me to stop doing?”
    “Addressing me as if I were some kind of half-wit.”
    Her already rosy cheeks flushed a brighter shade of pink.
    Was that it? Did she really think he was dim-witted?
    Indignation tore through Logan. That this capricious female considered herself superior to him was the last straw. Her words kept darting off in a dozen different directions. Trying to speak with her was like carrying on a conversation with a bundle of colorful butterflies.
    “There’s no need to be sensitive about it.” Her Boston accent was crisp and officious. “Not everyone can boast a keen intellect.”
    Astonishment popped the bubble of anger that had built within Logan. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so soundly offended. Not even Windham, with his ridiculous claim about Logan bedding his wife, had struck such a deep blow.
    Logan found he disliked having his intelligence insulted more than he disliked having his honor impugned. A man could redeem his honor in a fair fight. There was no quick and final way, however, to convince this green-eyed witch that he was her intellectual equal. He told himself it didn’t matter what she thought.
    “Now, about who’s in charge here,” she continued, as if she hadn’t just mortally insulted him. “As it’s my wagon, and my team, and you are now in my custody, I should be the one to decide who does what.”
    “All right,” he managed to say through his clenched jaw, not wanting to waste time arguing.
    She smiled. “Why don’t you go ahead and load the wagon, then, and I’ll.”
    He said nothing, contenting himself with images of her being bound and gagged and tossed into the back of her wagon.
    She gestured toward a row of privies. “Well, you know…”
    He maintained his stoic silence.
    Only after she left did Logan let out the breath he’d been holding. He stalked toward the team, each step making his ribs ache. Little Miss Boston Accent didn’t know it, but marauding Blackfeet were the least of her troubles. She would be damned lucky if she made it to Trinity Falls without him throttling her.
    A short while later, with the climbing sun raising a bead of sweat on his skin after his exertions in harnessing the team, Logan looked into the back of Miss Amory’s covered wagon.
    At first he didn’t believe what he saw.
    When it finally dawned on him that he wasn’t imagining things, a heartfelt oath escaped his cracked lips.
    “Well, hell, that’s why they left her.”
    He lofted himself into the wagon, ignoring a stab of pain from his bruised ribs. He would demonstrate to Miss Amory that the West had its own code of survival. It was a lesson he’d learned, and he would see that she damn well learned it, too.
    For both their sakes.
    After performing her morning ablutions, Victoria felt revived as she walked back toward the wagon. She’d overcome her aversion to entering the abandoned domiciles and scrubbed her face and hands in a floral ceramic washbowl she’d found in one of the eerily silent bedchambers. She’d also borrowed a comb and refashioned her hair into a semblance of order.
    Gazing into the mirror above the washstand, she’d studied her features. The freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose and cheeks were more prominent than ever. The Western sun was responsible for that, no doubt. There was one good thing about her profusion of freckles, Victoria had decided as she refastened her cuffs. Men did not find freckledwomen attractive, which meant that even a disreputable sort like Logan Youngblood wouldn’t direct any unseemly attentions to her.
    As Victoria crossed the gravel yard, she said a hasty prayer on behalf of those who’d fled the fort. She included her own welfare on the list of those