"Just so we understand each other." He rose from the wing chair and rinsed off his plate in the pool. The underground current swept the debris away.

"Are you finished?" he asked Mary, looking at the half-eaten remains.

She nodded, handing them over.

"I suppose I wasn't as hungry as I thought I was." Ryder put the uneaten portion back in a tin to be used later in the day. He rinsed Mary's plate and the utensils, put them away, then got out his maps from the chest. He brought them over to the bed and unrolled them, flattening them with the side of his hand. Mary yawned. She had no idea if it was day or night outside of the cavern or if she had slept hours after their last lovemaking or only a few minutes.

"You can go to sleep," he said.

"I won't disturb you." He began to pick up the maps, but Mary stopped him. She was tired, it was true, but she was also strangely reluctant to go to sleep. His mood had cast a pall over her. All the talk of marriage and divorce... it was unsettling.

"I don't mind if you look at them here," she said. She brought down the lighted lantern from another shelf and placed it beside her. Ryder laid out the maps again.

"Perhaps I could help you," she offered.

"You're welcome to look on." It wasn't an enthusiastic invitation, but neither had he said her help wouldn't amount to much. Mary knelt on her knees and elbows and surveyed the topographical map closely. Ryder remained leaning against the high stone bed, his eyes occasionally drifting from the contours at his fingertips to the ones Mary was unwittingly presenting to him.

"You may want to tuck that blanket a little more firmly," he said.

Under his breath he added, "Before I forget which mountain range I'm studying."

"Hmm?" Mary murmured, glancing up at him. He pointed to his own chest.

"Your blanket." Mary looked down at herself. She was practically spilling out over the top.

"Oh... thank you." She adjusted it without embarrassment and resumed her inspection of the uppermost map. Ryder shook his head, wondering what to make of her. With her head bent he couldn't see the small, satisfied smile that lifted her mouth.

"I assume these maps have something to do with the gold from Colter Canyon," she said.

"Do you know where it is?"

"Do you mean, do I know where it is because I have first-hand knowledge, or do I have suspicions?"

"Suspicions, of course," she said, raising her eyes to his.

"I.

don't think you had anything to do with the raid."

"I was there."

"I know. I heard that. My brother-in-law told me."

"I see," Ryder said.

"What else did you learn?"

"Not much. There wasn't time. I wasn't in the fort very long before you took me away."

"Then you don't know about Miss Hamilton?" A chill crept down Mary's spine. She brushed back a tendril of hair that had fallen over her forehead. Her forest green eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

"No, I've never heard the name." With a sense of foreboding she asked, "Who is she? Your fiancee?" Ryder was watching Mary closely, gauging her reaction.

"Anna Leigh Hamilton." It was difficult to maintain an indifferent profile when he had to say her name.

"Senator Warren Hamilton's daughter. The woman who says that while the Chiricahua were attacking the wagons in Colter Canyon, I was raping her."

Chapter Ten.

It wasn't shock that touched Mary's features, but curiosity. She looked at Ryder and asked frankly, "Why would she do that?" Ryder's eyes mirrored nothing of what he was thinking.

"Aren't you going to ask if it's true? Don't you want to know if I raped Anna Leigh?" Mary's brow furrowed.

"Why would I ask that? I can't imagine you even thinking about raping her."

"Then you're the only one," he said without rancor.

"Miss Hamilton was very effective in telling her story." A short red-gold strand of hair had fallen over Mary's forehead. She blew it out of the way.

"I'm sure she was. But I have another experience with you that makes it difficult to believe you would act in any dishonorable way." Her gaze dropped back to the map, and she pretended to study it.

"I haven't forgotten the night we spent outside a watering hole in the Hudson Valley. You held me, comforted me, and quite against your will, I think, your body responded to mine."

"It wasn't against my will," he said softly.

"I wanted you that night. I had wanted you that morning."

Mary's fingers stopped tracing map lines as a fris son of heat tripped down her spine. She closed her eyes and said words she had never spoken aloud before, words that she had struggled not to put together even silently in her own mind.

"And you never acted on it. Not that morning when I would have fought you... and not that evening when I would have given you anything you wanted." Ryder had to strain to hear her last whispered words. It was no admission she was giving him, but her confession.

"Oh, Mary," he said quietly. He took her wrists and pulled her toward him. The maps twisted and curled beneath her, but Ryder didn't care.

When she was at the edge of the bed he lifted her down but never let her leave his embrace. She rested her head against his shoulder.

Tears pressed at the back of her closed lids.

"It's not the reason I left the Church," she said on a thread of sound.

"I was already struggling... questioning... If you hadn't been there that night the outcome would have been the same." He stroked her hair, resting his chin against the crown of her head. Pain shuddered through her and Ryder felt the vibration against his skin. Mary's voice was choked now. She had to work words past the hard, aching lump at the back of her throat.

"Sometimes... sometimes I think God sent you to me... to help me surrender. I was fighting His wishes... ignoring what He was telling me so I wouldn't .." Her tears touched his chest, slipping along the outline of her cheek.

Ryder didn't probe or press. He waited.

"So I wouldn't disappoint .. . my mother." Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, but tears still ran freely from them and her breath came in small, pained gasps. Sagging against Ryder, Mary cried until she exhausted herself. Ryder pushed the maps aside and lifted her back on the bed. This time he joined her, stretching out beside her, his arm placed familiarly around her waist. An extra blanket warded off the chill. He wiped her eyes with the corner of it.

Mary gave him a watery, embarrassed smile.