Shawnee Bride

“I’m an orphan, too,” she said, studying him with those disconcerting eyes. “My brother Junius sent me to Fort Pitt to find a husband.”

“And did you find one?” He had finished wrapping her left foot and started on her right. He was looking down as he spoke and, thus, was totally unprepared for the responding tinkle of laughter. It was a musical sound, as light as the trill of a bird. He glanced up at her, halfstartled.

“Find a husband? Gracious, no!” she exclaimed, her pale cheeks dimpling. “Unless, of course, you’d be willing to fill the job. Junius isn’t fussy. He just wants me out of the way.”

Wolf Heart bent his attention to the wrapping of her foot. Shawnee girls could also be bold and saucy. That he knew all too well. Yet this fragile creature, bruised, starved and probably frightened half to death, was the most impudent female he had ever met in his life. Her spirit moved and astounded him.

But he could not soften toward her, Wolf Heart admonished himself. This intriguing prisoner was not his to judge. She belonged, even now, to the people of his tribe, and he could not let himself be swayed, either by her fragile beauty or by her white blood. Her fate was out of his hands.

“You need to eat.” He reached into the small parfleche that hung at his waist, drew out a thin strip of smoked venison and thrust it toward her.

“Ugh! What’s that?” She drew back, wrinkling her elegant nose m distaste. “It looks awful and smells even worse!”

“It’s just deer meat,” Wolf Heart said irritably.

He tore off a small chunk from the dark, dry slab. Her gaze widened sharply as his fingers moved the morsel toward her mouth. “It looks raw,” she said, shrinking away from him.

“Smoked and salted. Try it.”

She shook her head in a show of defiance. This, Wolf Heart swiftly realized, was to be a contest of wills. “How long has it been since you ate?” he demanded.

“What difference does it—” Her question ended in a choking sound as he shoved the sliver of meat into her open mouth, seized her jaw between his two hands and held it shut. Inches from his own, her green eyes blazed like a bobcat’s.

“You are going to eat if I have to stuff this down your throat!” he said in a low, menacing voice. “Now chew!”

Her gaze shot daggers as he held her, his fingers framing her temples, his thumbs bracing her jaw. She smelled of river moss, and her cheeks were as soft as the petals of the wild hawthorn blossom. A vein throbbed beneath the translucent skin of her throat.

Wolf Heart found himself growing acutely aware of her body and the way the mud-stiffened bodice of her gown had molded to her small, perfect breasts. He remembered their savage struggle on the riverbank, her slim legs tangling so wildly with his own. Even now, the thought of it triggered a freshet of heat that trickled downward to pool in his loins.

This was not good, he lectured himself. Being this close to her was filling his head with thoughts that would only weaken his resolve and make everything more difficult. Clarissa Rogers was nothing but a red-haired bundle of trouble. She was the kind of female who could get under a man’s skin and fester there like a blackberry spine. He would be a fool not to keep a safe distance.

With a sharp exhalation, he forced himself to let her go. She sagged backward, her gaze searing his senses.

“Very well, I won’t force you to eat,” he said evenly. “But you’re going to need all your strength in the days ahead. Your life will depend on it, Clarissa. That much I can promise you.”

For an instant her pride wavered. Then a single tear glimmered in her angry eyes. Without a word, she began to chew the venison he had given her, gingerly at first, then with ravenous hunger. Her swanlike throat jerked as she swallowed.

Bit by bit, he fed her nearly half of the smoked venison. She might have eaten it all, but Wolf Heart feared that so much meat on an empty stomach might make her sick.

Her eyes watched him guardedly as he replaced the leftover meat in the parfleche. She had not uttered a word the whole time she was eating. Only now, as he stepped back and motioned for her to stand, did she clear her throat and speak.

“Don’t expect me to thank you for the food,” she said. “If you really want my thanks, you’ll untie me and let me go.”

“You wouldn’t last a day out here on your own.” He stepped back onto the trail and waited for her to take her place in front of him. She moved obediently ahead, then swung angrily back to face him.

“Are my chances any better with the Shawnee?” she flared. “What if I don’t pass my so-called trial? What if I’m not judged worthy to live? What then? Why don’t you just kill me here and now?”

Wolf heart met her eyes, steeling himself against the fear in their green depths—the fear that was already eating away at his conscience. He remembered his own boyhood ordeal, the stark terror that had kept him on his feet and driven him through the gauntlet. Maybe it would be the same for Clarissa. Her delicate body housed a fighting spirit, that much he already knew. But would it be enough?

She glared up at him with the ferocity of a trapped animal, and for an instant Wolf Heart was tempted to reveal everything she would be facing. He swiftly checked himself. Knowing would only heighten her fear. It would only serve to worsen her ordeal.

He forced himself to give her a hard look. “Turn around and walk, Clarissa,” he said quietly. “We have a long way to go.”

The canoe lay at the river’s edge, concealed by a thicket of overhanging willows. Fashioned of birch bark, the brown inner side facing outward, it was an elegant little craft, as sleek and graceful as the point of a spear.

The sight of it filled Clarissa with a mingled rush of relief and dismay. Wolf Heart had set a grueling pace on the trail, draining every drop of her endurance. Bone weary and sore, she welcomed the prospect of resting her battered feet. But reaching the canoe also meant they were nearing the Shawnee village where she would face a fate so terrible that he had refused even to speak of it.

Tossing her hair out of her eyes, she slumped against a tree. She could feel Wolf Heart’s keen blue eyes watching her every motion, but he had not touched her since their encounter over the meat. He had scarcely spoken, in fact; not even earlier, when she’d insisted that he turn his back while she squatted wretchedly in the grass to relieve herself. He had shut himself away to become as silent and mysterious as the forest itself.

His sun-gilded body glistened with sweat as he bent to slide the canoe into the river. Except for his eyes, this man, christened Seth Johnson, could have passed for a full-blooded Shawnee. He had dark bronze skin overlaying a lithe, muscular body. His flowing black hair and liquid way of moving blended with the elements of wind and water, sunlight and shadow. His face was satin smooth with no trace of beard. How could that be? Clarissa wondered. Perhaps later she would ask him—if she lived long enough.

The canoe lay rocking gently in a shallow bed of water. “Climb in,” Wolf Heart ordered her gruffly. Then, seeing that she would not be able to balance in the wobbly craft with her hands tied, he straightened, moved close to her and began loosening the knot of the leather thongs that bound her wrists.

Clarissa stood very still, her heart hammering as she felt the brush of his fingertips and the stir of his breath in her hair. His skin smelled lightly of rain and wood smoke. She fought the strange compelling urge to strain forward and taste him with the tip of her tongue.

For the space of a breath, time seemed to freeze. Then the leather thong fell away, freeing her arms. He stepped back as Clarissa rubbed the circulation into her tingling wrists.

“No tricks,” he warned her gruffly, “or I’ll truss you up like a dead deer and sling you into the bottom of the canoe.”

She nodded, more in acknowledgment than promise. If any chance arose to escape, Clarissa knew she would take it.

He crouched to hold the canoe’s edge until she could sit down in the prow, facing forward with her muddy ragged skirts piled around her. “Hang on to that cross brace,” he said, his glance indicating a smooth wooden bar in front of her. “There’s some rough water out there.”

She twisted back to look at him. “You don’t have to do this,” she pleaded. “Let me go and forget you ever saw me. I’ll take my chances in the woods.”

The only answer to her plea was the subtle tightening of Wolf Heart’s jaw.

Clarissa felt the canoe scrape the bottom of the shallow inlet as he took his place behind her and pushed off with the paddle. Swiftly they glided out into the flooded river.

Clarissa gasped as the flood-swollen current struck the canoe, sweeping it into an eddy, swirling it around and around like a windblown leaf. She clung white knuckled to the brace, spray lashing her cheeks as the bow dipped and danced through the water. Haunted by the nightmare ride on the flatboat, she battled rising waves of panic.

Behind her, she could hear Wolf Heart laboring with the paddle. She could hear the deep, steady passage of air in and out of his powerful lungs. He was not afraid, she suddenly realized. He knew the river’s nature and how to use it, how to move in harmony with the current, not against it.

Clarissa felt her fear easing. She leaned forward, the breeze lifting her hair as the water foamed along the narrow bow. Her hands kept their tight grip on the cross brace. Except for the persistent churning of her stomach she could almost believe she was going to survive this wild ride.

Moments later they shot out of the rapids and entered a calmer stretch of water. Clarissa slumped over the bow. “Are you all right?” she heard Wolf Heart ask.

“I’m just dandy,” she snapped, feeling dizzy and nauseous. “For someone who’s been half-drowned, forcemarched barefoot through the woods, stuffed with halfraw meat and taken on a giant whirligig ride, I’m doing magnificently! Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

She leaned over the side of the bobbing canoe and proceeded to lose everything he had so insistently fed her.

Behind her, dead silence had fallen. In the midst of that silence she heard Wolf Heart chuckle. The sound was so deep and warm and startling that, for all her miserable condition, it sent a shock of pleasure through her body-pleasure that was swiftly replaced by outrage. Shawnee or white, this backwoods ruffian had no right to laugh at her discomfort.

She turned around and shot him a malevolent glare, only to see him grinning broadly at her. “Clarissa Rogers, you’re a caution,” he said.

“A caution?” She shook her head at the homeyness of the word, coming as it did from a bare-chested savage with silver disks in his ears and two eagle feathers jutting from his scalp lock. “I have no idea what you mean by that!”

Sunlight rippled on his massive shoulders as he maneuvered the canoe expertly around a large boulder. “You’ve been through enough to undo most white women,” he said. “But you still haven’t lost your spunk.”