Children, yes, but the mingling of his de Marion blood with the nondescript Greenglove line could hardly produce the children he wanted. Nancy, on the other hand, from an old New England family that probably went back to even better English stock, was just the sort of woman he wanted to breed with.
"Clarissa and I have never stood up before a priest or a minister, Miss Hale. I've just been passing my time with her until the right lady came along."
Her gaze was cool and level. "As far as I'm concerned you're as good as married, and you have no right to be talking to me this way."
"Necessity makes your bedfellows out here on the frontier."
"Not mine." She shook her head, blond braids swinging. He could picture all that honey-gold hair spread out on a pillow, and he felt a pulse beat in his throat.
Nancy went on, "You must know how wrong it is for you to speak to me this way. Otherwise you wouldn't have ambushed me out here."
"I've waited days for a chance to speak to you in private."
Josiah Hode, Hodge Hode's boy, had ridden fast to the trading post this morning to tell Raoul that Miss Hale was driving her buggy into town and was traveling, for once, without her father. It was the news Raoul had been hoping for ever since the governor's proclamation had arrived in Victor. Knowing Miss Nancy was indignant over his treatment of the mongrel, Raoul had delayed approaching her. Now he could delay no longer.
"I leave with the militia next Monday," he said. "That gives you three days to think it over. I hope to carry your favorable answer with me when I ride off to defend you from the savages."
She smiled, but the smile was without humor or warmth. "Carry this answer with you if you wish: No." She flicked the reins, and her dappled gray horse speeded up to a trot.