Shawnee Bride

“Stupid little bitch!” he cursed, twisting her arm so viciously that Clarissa felt her bones begin to separate, and she whimpered aloud in spite of her resolve. “So help me, I’ll fix you good!” he rasped, snatching up the knife and raising it high for a slashing blow. “I’ll show you who’s boss if it’s the last thing I-”

Maynard spoke no more. She saw him stiffen and arch as if struck hard between the shoulder blades by some invisible force. Only as he pitched forward did she glimpse the arrow point protruding through the front of his buckskin shirt, right where his heart would be.

Clarissa’s fear exploded into all-out panic as the lifeless body collapsed, still twitching on top of her. She thrashed and kicked in a wild struggle to throw off the horror, wanting only to be free of Maynard’s smothering weight.

Seconds passed, each one a small eternity, before she realized that her ordeal of terror was only beginning.

The knife—it had been in Maynard’s hand. She had to get it before it was too late. Her fingers groped desperately along the wet ground where he would have dropped the weapon. Her heart convulsed as she felt the tip of the blade, cold and sharp against her fingertip. Gasping with effort, she stretched to reach the handle. Her fingers touched it, almost clasped it.

Then the weight of Maynard’s limp corpse was snatched off her as if it had suddenly sprouted wings.

The morning sun struck Clarissa fully in the eyes. Dazed and blinking, she lay sprawled on the ground, her muddy skirts ruched up to her thighs. She was aware that Maynard’s body had fallen to one side, but that was no longer a concern. Her full attention was riveted on the masculine figure who loomed above her, his features silhouetted by the blinding light.

Sun dazzled, her gaze dropped low, taking in long, muscular, buckskin-clad legs. Little by little, her eyes focused upward, skimming the shadowed bulge beneath his breechcloth, then darting abruptly to the feather-trimmed tomahawk that hung at his waist and the elegantly crafted bow balanced in his left hand.

Flinging herself onto her belly, she made another lunge for Maynard’s knife. This time her fingers closed around the handle. She rolled swiftly, drawing in her knees and coming up in a tight crouch, the weapon raised in defiance.

The stranger had not moved, but from her new position, Clarissa could see him more clearly. His powerful chest and arms were bare except for the leather strap of his arrow quiver and a small decorated pouch that hung from a thong around his neck. His long wavy hair, decorated with twin eagle feathers at the scalp lock, was raven-black, tinged with an azure glow where the light fell on it. Flat silver ear studs, set into his lobes, glittered as they caught the rays of the sun. His eyes, shadowed by craggy brows, wereHer thoughts scattered like alarmed birds as he took a step toward her.

Clarissa tensed, clutching the knife. She had vowed to die fighting rather than be taken alive. Now that vow would be put to the test. “Don’t come any closer!” she hissed.

He took another cautious step, then one more. “Don’t be afraid,” he said gently. “I won’t hurt you.”

Clarissa was beyond hearing his words, let alone comprehending them. Her pulse exploded, pumping her system with the fury of a cornered animal as she sprang upward to meet this new enemy. The steel blade flashed in the sun as she struck wildly, blindly at the stranger’s chest.

She heard him grunt as the razor edge skimmed his flesh. His huge hand captured her wrist, its momentum whipping her against him, where he caught and held her fast. Clarissa had dropped the knife, but she continued to fight like a wildcat, her hands clawing his chest, her feet kicking his solidly placed legs.

A glancing blow from her raised knee caught him off guard. Still gripping her waist, he stumbled backward and stepped into the entrance of a badger hole. His fall carried them both to the ground. They rolled in the grass, legs tangling, knees jabbing as he struggled to subdue her.

Their tussle had displaced his breechcloth. Clarissa felt the masculine bulge brush her thigh. The contact triggered a disturbing tingle, flooding her body with rivulets of heat-but the sensation was swiftly dashed by terror. This man, this Indian would ravish her, she thought, just as Maynard had meant to do. Then he would use that deadly tomahawk to hack away her scalp, leaving her body here for the crows and buzzards.

He had managed to seize both her wrists and pinion them above her shoulders. Wild with fear, Clarissa twisted to one side and sank her teeth into the firm bronze flesh of his forearm.

“Stop it!” He jerked away, his voice raw with anger now. “Stop now!”

Clarissa went rigid with shock as the realization struck her. This half-naked savage was speaking to her in English.

“What…?” She struggled to form a question, but it was no use. The words died somewhere between her mind and her tongue as she found herself staring up into a pair of cold, angry eyes.

The irises of those black-centered eyes were a deep cobalt-blue.

Wolf Heart felt the girl’s body go limp beneath him. Where his hands gripped her wrists, he could feel her pulse racing like the heart of a rabbit in a snare. She was still frightened, but at least she had stopped fighting him.

“I don’t mean to hurt you,” he said, groping for the words of a language he had spoken but rarely in the past fourteen years. “But if you bite me again, you will wish you hadn’t!”

She stared up at him, her wide eyes the color of deep mossy pools. “You’re a white man!” she whispered incredulously.

“No.” Wolf Heart’s reply was as cold as the chill her words evoked. “I am Shawnee.”

Her gold-tipped lashes blinked as she strained upward. “But your speech, your eyes-”

“I was a white boy once, a very long time ago. I have never been a white man.” Wolf Heart raised his body, aware, suddenly, that he was straddling her hips in a most unseemly manner. “If I let you sit up, do you promise you won’t try to run?”

The girl hesitated, giving him a moment to study her thin heart-shaped face. She would be a beauty in the white man’s world, he thought. But he had grown accustomed to the robust darkness of Shawnee women, and this pale creature seemed as out of place here as a snowflake in summer. Her skin was streaked with angry red scratches from the brambles. Her hair was matted with river weed, and one side of her face was crusted with a layer of drying mud.

“What a sorry sight you are,” he said, the words springing from some forgotten well of memory. It was the kind of thing his white mother might have said to him as a child.

Her green eyes flashed with spirit. “And’what kind of sight would you be if you’d been kidnapped, shipwrecked in a flood and nearly drowned?” she snapped. “Are you going to let me up?”

“I’m still waiting for your answer,” he retorted gruffly. “Will you promise to stay put?”

“That depends.”

“Depends?” Had he ever known that word? A heartbeat passed before it surfaced in his memory.

“My answer depends on what you mean to do with me,” she explained as if she were talking to a backward child. When he did not answer at once, the fear stole back into her eyes. “All I want is to go back to Fort Pitt,” she said in a small strained voice. “Just let me go. Is that such a difficult thing to do?”

Wolf Heart scowled as the dilemma he had wrestled all morning closed in on him. “Fort Pitt is many days’ walk from here. These woods are filled with dangers, and you are not strong-”

“I’m stronger than I look!” she interrupted. “I came close to getting the best of you, if I say so myself!”

“You wouldn’t come so close to getting the best of a puma or a bear-or another man like that one.” He jerked his head toward the buckskin-clad body that lay in the grass, a stone’s toss away. “But I’d wager you’d be more likely to starve, or drown, or maybe get bitten by a copperhead.”

“You could take me back!” She strained upward against his hands, her eyes so hopeful that they tore at his heart. “My uncle, Colonel Hancock, would pay you a handsome reward.”

“What would I do with money? I am Shawnee!” The words burst out of Wolf Heart, resolving his own question. Shawnee law demanded that all captives be turned over to the village council for judgment. To defy that law, to go against custom and set the girl free, would be an abnegation of his duty as a Shawnee warrior.

He willed his expression, and his heart, to harden. “You are my prisoner,” he said. “I must take you back to my people.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Your people are my peoplewhite!”

“Sit up.” Wolf Heart ignored the sting of her words as he jerked her roughly to a sitting position and bound her wrists behind her back with a strip of deer hide. She did not speak, but he could feel the anger in her slim, taut body and see it in the set of her delicate jaw. When he pulled her to her feet, she did not protest, but he knew her mind was working. Given the chance, the girl would make every effort to escape.

When he motioned for her to walk ahead of him, she moved silently into place. She was footsore and hungry, and he knew he was being cruel, but he did not trust himself enough to treat her gently. Not yet, at least.

Abruptly she swung back to face him. Blazing defiance, her eyes flickered toward the dead man who lay facedown in the grass, the arrow still protruding from his back. “What about him?” she asked in a voice drawn thin by fury.

“That one is past our help.” Wolf Heart turned away from the corpse, which was already beginning to attract flies.

“I can see that,” the girl snapped. “But since you’re a Shawnee, I thought you might be wanting to take his scalp.”

Wolf Heart glared at her, his temper stirring.

“Go ahead,” she persisted. “He was an evil man, and his death was no loss. Show me what a true savage you’ve become!”

Her sarcasm cut as no blade could. Wolf Heart, who had never killed a white man before, let alone taken a white scalp, bit back the urge to seize her shoulders in his hands and shake her until she whimpered for forgiveness.

“Well?” she demanded, her eyes flinging a challenge.