Scully tried—really tried—to look away from Evangeline, but just about the time he had himself convinced to do so, she started taking off her dress. He stifled a groan and told himself she belonged to Big John, but even that didn’t work. She was the most cussed, most fascinating woman he’d ever encountered, and she was disrobing by the light of a flickering lamp.

Damn it all, he was only human.

Evangeline removed her petticoat, pulled her camisole away from her chest, revealing her high, well-shaped breasts. It was touch and go for Scully for a while there, because just looking at her, even streaked with blood the way she was, blood he’d shed himself, was damn near enough to kill him.

When she stepped out of her drawers, he saw her shapely hips, her firm belly, even the thatch of light brown hair between her legs. And what legs they were, long and perfect, glimmering with a fine sheen of the palest down.

This is about the lowest you’ve ever stooped, Scully berated himself, but he kept watching as Evangeline stepped over the side of the tub, and lowered herself into what water there was. He heard splashing, but the child and the table blocked her from full view by then, which he supposed was a good thing, though he would have chosen to continue in sin if given his druthers.

His patience was ultimately rewarded; she stood again, and the firelight reflected off her wet skin was fit to blind him. That time, he did groan, and she heard him, looked up, reached quickly for the flour sack, which didn’t serve her purposes all that well from what he could see. He hoped she’d decide it was pain that had wrung the sound from him, or some bad dream.

God knew, he was entitled to a nightmare or two.

“Scully?” she asked, keeping the flour sack in front of her. It was a thin square of cotton, clinging like another layer of skin.

He held his peace. There was a temptation to snore once, for effect, but that might seem just contrived enough to give him away. Evangeline would be mortified if she thought he’d seen her wearing nothing but night air and firelight, and she might hate him for it, too. It wasn’t, after all, the most noble thing he’d ever done.

She dried herself, her motions as eloquent as those of a dancer, and during that brief interval, Scully’s throat went tight again, and hurt half again as much as the double wound in his shoulder. Which was considerable.

He watched, stricken by the sight of her, as she stretched her slender arms high to pull on the nightgown. It slid down her body, passing over places where Scully wanted to put his hands. As she moved toward Abigail, she came closer to the hearth, and the light of the fire showed through what was probably flannel, worn to near transparency by time and much washing, outlining her shape in an exquisite silhouette.