“Do you ever miss riding with the Comanche, Steve? I know you lived with them as a boy, but did you—”

When she stopped, he finished, “Go on raids with them? It would be a good night for it tonight. Plenty of light to see by.” His teeth flashed in a grin. “You’d make some brave a good prize, but once he tried to tame you he’d probably prefer to have your scalp at his belt, instead.”

“You just say things like that to annoy me. If I was such a bad hostage, you would have drowned me in a sack.”

“Don’t think it didn’t occur to me more than once. Ah hell, Ginny, sometimes it seems like only last week when I first saw you—”

“And mistook me for a whore.”

“Understandable if you take into consideration that I’d been told a red-haired Frenchwoman would be coming to my room for the night, and there you were.”

“Yes. There I was.” She caught and held his gaze. “And here I still am. Do you ever get tired of moving around so much, Steve? Don’t you ever want to just stay in one place, know that when you go to bed, it’s your own bed? That when you wake up the next day, you’ll see the same faces of the people who love you?”

He was quiet for such a long time, she thought he did not intend to answer her, and moved to rise from the rock where she sat, intent upon finding her bedroll.

But then he said softly, as if to himself, “It’s not that I don’t want that. Part of me does. But there’s a part of me that’s never satisfied to stay in one place for long, always restless, looking for something else. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it’s forever. And sometimes I think that maybe I’ve found what I’ve been looking for with you. I know that I don’t want any other woman, but I’m just not too sure what I do want.”

A shiver traced down her spine, and she clenched her hands tightly together in her lap. “Well…” She forced a laugh that sounded hollow. “That’s honest, at least.”

“Yes. I think you deserve honesty. Ginny.” He stood up and stepped around the fire, pulling her close to hold her against him. His hand clenched the hair at the back of her neck to pull her head backward until she looked up into his eyes, an inexorable tug that would not allow her to look away. “You know I love you. I’ve told you so over and over again. I mean it when I say it. It’s not something I would ever say if I didn’t.”