Panting, he said his name in his mind. I am Raoul François Philippe Charles de Marion. He repeated it over and over again to himself.
He was sitting in bed in the dark, someone beside him. Not an Indian, and not his long-dead sister Helene. He gasped again and again, as if he had run a race.
He tried to pull his mind together. His heart was still pounding against the wall of his chest, his hands trembling, his skin ice cold. That terrible dream! He hadn't had it in a year or more.
"Lordy, what a nightmare you must have had! You did a right smart of hollerin'."
In the dim light seeping in through cracks in the shuttered window, Raoul saw a woman with long blond hair sitting up beside him, staring at him with pale blue eyes.
Clarissa. Clarissa Greenglove. He looked down at her. A warmth began to creep back into his body, rising first in his loins, as he remembered what they had done together the night before. Five times! No—six! Never before had he done it that many times in one night.
He was still panting in the aftermath of the horror, but the sight of her naked body was helping him get the dream out of his mind.
Never done it with such a good-looking woman.
She looked down at herself and drew up the sheet to cover her breasts.
"Don't do that," he said, and pulled the sheet down again, none too gently.