Shawnee Bride

For a long time she lay where she had dropped, too numb to move. Little by little, the sun crept above the trees. Fingers of light probed between the budding branches of birch and chestnut, warming her through her wet clothes. From an elderberry thicket, the song of a thrush bubbled on the morning air.

Raising her head, Clarissa blinked herself fully awake. Threads of vapor were curling upward from the rainsoaked ground. Her skirts were steaming themselves dry in the bright sunlight. The storm had passed, as all storms did, and a new day had begun.

The rushing murmur of the Ohio filled Clarissa’s ears as she sat up and lifted a hand to her matted hair. Finding it hopelessly tangled, she swept the russet mass out of her face and sat clutching her knees, gazing across the sandbar at the muddy current, thinking how it had nearly claimed her. She remembered the storm and the two evil men who had vanished in the darkness. She remembered Tom Ainsworth, whose face she would never see again.

Clarissa slumped over her knees, shuddering in despair. How could a single careless moment so utterly destroy two lives?

At last she forced herself to sit up, pressing her palms to her burning eyes to stop the tears. This was no time for hand-wringing, she upbraided herself. She had no intention of dying in this wilderness. She had two strong legs and was quite capable of walking back to Fort Pitt. If only she knew the way…

Suddenly she stared at the river.

What a silly goose she had been, sitting here feeling sorry for herself! She was not lost at all. The flatboat had come downstream. To find her way back to the fort, all she needed to do was follow the riverbank upstream again.

Setting her jaw, Clarissa staggered to her feet She moved awkwardly, her joints stiff, her bare feet swollen and tender from hours in the water. Ignoring the pain, she forced herself to take one step, then another.

Her mud-stiffened skirts clung to her legs. Her wet petticoat dragged on the ground, hobbling her every stride. She had scarcely gained ground when a sudden misstep sent her sprawling again. The force of the landing knocked the breath out of her. She lay gasping in the mud, biting back tears of frustration.

I will not give up, Clarissa swore. If she had to crawl all the way to Fort Pitt on her belly, she would do it. She would survive to laugh again, to dance and flirt again, to love, marry and bear a house full of happy children. She would survive to grow old and wise, to cradle her grandchildren in her lap one day and tell them the story of her great adventure in the wilderness.

Marshaling the last of her strength, she willed herself to rise. Her right hand groped outward to brace her body-only to freeze in midmotion as her fingertips sensed an odd smoothness beneath their touch.

She glanced down and saw that her hand had discovered a shallow impression in the bare brown earth. Her throat jerked as she realized what it was.

She was staring down at the long, broad print of a leather moccasin.

Chapter Two (#ulink_57f4cfee-ab11-5651-91a0-5fc03e801c43)

Wolf Heart watched from a stand of birch as the slender white girl scrambled to her feet. The panic in her wide green eyes could only mean one thing-she had discovered his tracks and sensed he was nearby.

His throat tightened as she hesitated, wheeling one way, then another. Her hair was a tangled cloud of flame in the morning sunlight. Her gown-the fabric too light and fine to be homespun-clung to her willowy woman’s body in mud-stained tatters. She looked as fragile as the wing of a butterfly.

Wolf Heart had seen her clinging to the log as it washed ashore. He had melted into the trees as she crawled onto the sandbar, keeping out of sight as she collapsed, trembling and exhausted, onto the bank. A whirlwind of emotions had torn at him. This ethereal young stranger was part of a world he had long since buried, a world he had grown to despise. She and her kind did not belong here.

The girl spun away and broke into a limping run, headed toward the riverbank. Wolf Heart’s blue eyes narrowed for an instant. As she vanished behind a clump of red willows, he stepped out of his hiding place and glided noiselessly after her.

Shadows flickered over his rangy hard-muscled body as he moved through the undergrowth. In this, the moon of mouse-eared leaves, the willows and birches trailed long catkins in the light morning wind, but the foliage was thin. The girl’s hair blazed like a signal fire through the trees, making it easy to trail her even at a distance. Wolf Heart eased his powerful stride, giving her plenty of room. He had no wish to confront her face-to-face. Not, at least, until he had made up his mind what to do with her.

As he paused for thought, his fingers brushed the small deerskin medicine pouch he wore on a thong around his neck. It contained objects of his own choosing, small tokens of memory, family and courage. Wolf Heart’s medicine pouch had been fashioned by his Shawnee mother, Black Wings. She had cut and stitched the leather, adding bands of fringe and fine quillwork to make it a thing of beauty. Inside it, Wolf Heart had reverently placed a tooth from the first bear he had taken, along with the bright indigo feather of a bluebird and, most important of all, his personal pa-waw-ka, a translucent shell he had seized from the bed of the ice-bound river during the ordeal that had marked his passage into manhood.

The medicine pouch was his badge of belonging, his proof to himself and others that he had abandoned all memory of Seth Johnson and become, in his deepest being, a true Shawnee. He had undergone the test and rituals. He had hunted bear, elk and puma, fought bravely against the marauding Iroquois and earned a place of honor among his brothers of the kispoko warrior sept. He had danced around the war pole. He had sung the death chant over Black Wings when she died of the coughing sickness. All this time, he had never questioned who or what he was-until now.

The coppery flash of her hair told him the girl was still running, darting in ragged bursts of speed along the bank of the Ohio-se-pe. She was headed upstream, toward the fort, most likely, or one of the grubby little settlements that pushed the white man’s boundaries ever closer to the world of the Shawnee.

Wolf Heart had met a fair number of white men since the death of his father. There were the French who traded their guns and blankets for furs. There were the English redcoats who were becoming more and more common now that the British had seized the fort at the joining of the rivers. White men, yes. But any images of white women-including his own birth mother, who had died when he was six-existed only in the dimmest recesses of Wolf Heart’s memory. He had never imagined, let alone seen, a fox-haired wisp of a girl like this one.

Any other Shawnee would have taken her prisoner by now, he reminded himself darkly. The tribe had sided with the French in this mad war against the English, making any English prisoner a trophy of war. So why then, when it would be so easy, had he not simply captured her? Was it her startling beauty that held him at bay? Was it the certainty that this girl would never survive captivity? Or was it something more subtle and disturbing-some long-buried tie of blood that even he could not deny? Whatever the reason, it troubled Wolf Heart deeply.

Far ahead now, he saw her stumble and go down in a patch of bog. His breath caught as she clawed her way upright then paused to glance back in his direction, her hair whipping the pale oval of her face. Her head went up sharply, and for an instant Wolf Heart thought she might have seen him. But then, just as abruptly, she wheeled and floundered on as before, dripping mud as she fought her way through the briars and willows that rimmed the flooded river.

The girl had spirit, he conceded. She was chilled, sore, exhausted and probably half-starved, as well, but she had shown no sign of flagging. Spunk and grit, combined with a healthy dose of fear, were driving her on, step by struggling step.

But for all her courage, Wolf Heart knew she could never make it back to her world alive. The journey was too long and too dangerous.

On impulse, he paused to examine her tracks in the mud. Crouching low, he traced the shape of one narrow imprint with his fingertip.

Where her foot had pressed, the damp brown earth was stained with blood.

Clarissa plunged along the bank of the river. Her ribs heaved painfully beneath the constricting stays of her corset. Her heart exploded with every beat, hammering the walls of her chest as she ran.

She had seen one fresh track. How many others had there been? How many pairs of savage eyes were watching her, even now, as she fled like a hunted animal.

A gust of wind whipped her long hair into her eyes, half-blinding her. She swept it back, only to feel the tangled ends catch on a low-hanging tree branch. A vision of the biblical Absalom, hanging lifeless by his hair, flashed through her mind as she jerked to free it. Any second now, she would feel the fatal thrust of an arrow in her back or, worse, the roughness of brown hands seizing her waist, dragging her off to an end so horrible she could not even imagine it.

She would die fighting, Clarissa vowed as she splashed through a patch of flooded willows. Whatever happened, she would not allow herself to be taken alive.

As she mounted the bank once more, pain shot through the ball of her left foot. She remembered, however dimly, stepping on something sharp earlier, but she had not dared to pause and investigate. Now the injury was getting worse. Her right sole, as well, had grown so tender that every step was agony. Sometime soon she would have to stop and wrap her feet, perhaps with strips of her petticoat. If only she knew where—

Clarissa’s thoughts ended in a gasp as her toe stubbed against something soft. That same gasp exploded in a stifled scream as she looked down and saw the body of a man, clad in waterlogged buckskins, lying facedown in the long grass.

Her stomach convulsed as she recognized Maynard.

Her first impulse was to run, but when he did not move she swallowed her fear and stood staring down at him He’s dead, she thought. He can’t hurt anyone now.

Flies swarmed around a blood-encrusted gash on the man’s temple, but there were no other marks of injury on him. Most likely he had struck his head when the flatboat capsized, drowned while unconscious, and finally washed up here on the bank.

Clarissa battled waves of nausea as she crouched over the inert form, steeling herself to touch him. Maynard had been armed with a hunting knife. If that knife was still on him, and if she could get it, she would no longer be helpless prey. She would have a weapon to defend herself.

Maynard’s dirty, wet buckskins reeked in the morning sun. The stench swam in Clarissa’s nostrils as she bent close, seized his arm and dragged him over onto his back. Yes, the knife was still there, large and evil looking, laced into the scabbard that hung from his belt. All she had to do was reach out and—

She froze as Maynard rolled his head to one side and groaned.

Panic seized her, and for an instant all she could think of was running away. But she needed the knife. She would have to get it now, before Maynard came fully awake.

She made a desperate lunge for the weapon, her fingers clutching at the leather-wrapped grip. For the space of a heartbeat, she had it. Then his sinewy hand closed around her wrist, twisting so hard that she cried out and dropped the knife.

“Well, hang me for a horse thief!” He grinned up at her, his small eyes glittering. “Heaven don’t get no better than this!” He rolled to a sitting position, his free hand darting out to grab the knife from where it had fallen. A single joint-wrenching move spun her against him with the blade at her throat.

“You and me got some unfinished business, girl,” he rasped against her ear. “And we’re gonna finish it here and now!” His hand released her wrist and slid upward to fondle her breast. “Treat me nice, and you won’t get hurt Hell, you might even get to like it.”

Clarissa struggled to keep her head. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she whispered, her throat moving against the razor-sharp blade. “Indians-I saw moccasin tracks-”

“Nice try, girl.” Maynard’s arm tightened around her. “But I know this country, an’ there ain’t no Injun towns anywhere near these parts. An’ even if you did see tracks, hell, plenty of white men wear moccasins, too. Now quit stallin’, you little bitch, and git down on your back!”

The broad steel blade caught a glimmer of sun as he jerked her around and slammed her onto the wet grass. Clarissa lay rigid and trembling, praying for an instant’s distraction when she might be able to catch him off guard. Maynard, she calculated, was capable of killing her, or carving her up so hideously that she would no doubt wish herself dead. If her timing was off, she would not get a second chance.

He was breathing hard now, muttering curses as he used his free hand to tug at the lacing of his breeches. The water had caused the leather ties to swell, and the knot was too stubborn to yield to Maynard’s one-handed fumbling. Clarissa tensed as he grew more and more impatient. At last he spat out an oath and tossed the knife, point down, into the grass.

In a flash she was after it, twisting sideways, stretching to seize the weapon where it had struck. But she was not fast enough. With blinding speed, his hand had clamped hard around her wrist.