Merline Lovelace

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Authors: Countess In Buckskin

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“I’ve never struck a woman in my life,”
he retorted, offended. Then his brow lowered. “But you tempt me. You tempt mightily ”
 
“Ha!” Her chin jutted.
“Amerikanski promyshlenik!”
 
Josh had no idea what he’d just been called, but he didn’t much like the sound of it.
 
“Listen to me, Countess. A man has but one use for a female in the mountains this time of year, and that’s to keep his backside warm during cold nights. If you think you’re up to that task, I might reconsider taking you with me.”
 
She stared up at him, her eyes widening as she grasped his meaning. They reminded Josh of the sky over the New Mexico territory just before sunset, all deep, purply dark and endless. They also, he realized belatedly, showed no signs of retreat.
 
What in blazes did it take to put this female in her place?
Dear Reader,
 
We are very pleased that
USA Today
and Waldenbook bestselling author Merline Lovelace has taken time from her busy schedule of writing everything from fun-filled romances to action-packed thrillers to bring us a new Western,
Countess in Buckskin.
This passionate story of a Russian countess who falls in love with a rough-hewn American lieutenant as they make a dangerous journey over the snow-clad mountains of northern California proves once again Lovelace’s extraordinary talent for storytelling. Don’t miss this wonderful tale.
 
Cassandra Austin also returns with
Hero of the Flint Hills,
a ranch story about a woman who is engaged to an aspiring politician, but finds herself drawn to his rugged half brother. And in A
Wish for Nicholas
by Jackie Manning, a young woman who has been draining the income from her profitable land to improve the lives of the crofters must protect her secret, and her heart, from the dashing naval war hero who has been given her estate as a prize.
 
Margaret Moore’s popular WARRIOR SERIES is still going strong, as you will discover with this month’s
A Warrior’s Bride.
Don’t miss this wonderful tale of a peace-loving knight and a fiery noblewoman who make an unlikely match in a stormy marriage of convenience.
 
Whatever your tastes in reading, we hope you enjoy all four books.
 
Sincerely,
 
Tracy Farrell
Senior Editor
MerLine LoveLace
Countess in Buckskin
 
 
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN
MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
Books by Merline Lovelace
Harlequin Historicals
 
*
Alena
#220
*
Sweet Song of Love
#230
*
Siren’s Call
#236
His Lady’s Ransom
#275
Lady of the Upper Kingdom
#320
Countess in Buckskin
#396
 
* Destiny’s Women series
 
Harlequin Books
 
Renegades
“The Rogue Knight”
MERLINE LOVELACE
 
Since she hung up her air force uniform and turned to writing romances, Merline Lovelace has discovered a passion for passion. When she’s not out chasing golf balls or antiques with her husband Al, she’s at her computer. She thoroughly enjoys getting lost in an ancient culture or caught up in the turbulent lives of her star-crossed lovers.
 
Be sure to watch for Merline’s next Harlequin Historical,
The Tiger’s Bride,
coming out in August 1998.
 
Merline enjoys hearing from readers and can be reached at PO. Box 892717, Oklahoma City, OK 73189.
To my one and only Al,
my friend and partner in life’s great adventures.
Here’s hoping we discover many, many more
Fort Rosses.
Prologue
 
 
Somewhere off the Northern Pacific Coast
December 1839
 
“C
ountess! You must go below!”
Tatiana Grigoria, Countess Karanova, barely heard the captain’s shout over the scream of the wind and rattle of sleet on the deck. As much as she wanted to obey his frantic command, she couldn’t! God help her, she couldn’t! Not until she knew the precious cargo entrusted to her care was safe.
Her numb hands slid along the ice-encrusted lifeline the sailors had strung just moments before the storm hit. Heart pounding with fear, she placed one foot before the other on the treacherous, tilting deck. Spray drenched her. Sleet stung her face, her eyes, her hands. She gave a scream of terror as a huge, black wave crashed out of the inky darkness and slammed against the schooner’s wooden hull. The vessel turned almost on its side. Tatiana’s feet went out from under her, and only the rope she’d wrapped around her arm at the last second kept her from being swept overboard.
By the mercy of God, the ship righted itself. Her stomach heaving, Tatiana choked seawater out of her nose and mouth and scrabbled for purchase on the wet deck. She dragged herself to her knees and fought to find footing amid the sodden layers of petticoats, velvet traveling dress and sable-lined cloak.
She no longer heard the captain’s shouts, didn’t know if he’d survived the avalanche of water that had swept the decks. Hanging on to the lifeline with both hands, she inched forward against the screeching wind that buffeted her face and tore the breath from her lungs.
She spotted the huge wooden chest that held the tsar’s treasure just as another towering swell of black water came rushing out of the night. With a sob of terror, she flung herself forward. Her hands clutched frantically at the ropes securing the chest to the decks. To her horror, she discovered that the ropes had slackened in the violent pitch and yaw of the ship. The wooden box began to slide across the tilting, slippery planks, taking Tatiana with it. Her last thoughts before the wall of water thundered down on her were of the tsar.
Nikolas had warned that her life would be forfeit if this cargo was lost, and now it appeared he was right.
Damn, and thrice damn him!
Chapter One
 
 
In the Valley of the Hupa
February 1840
 
C
ho-gam, headman of the Green Snake clan of the Hupa tribe, folded his arms across his massive chest. The movement caused his elaborately worked collar of toothlike shells to clink and clatter.
“A new woman came into my household two moons ago,” he announced to the visitor seated cross-legged beside him. “I will give her to you as wife.”
Murmurs of approval rose among the elders gathered around the fire, punctuated by a sharp exclamation of protest from one of the younger warriors. Cho-gam silenced the lone dissenter with a stern look.
Josiah Jones hid a grimace behind the bushy whiskers that had protected his cheeks and chin from frostbite during the long journey to this isolated valley high in the northern Sierra Nevadas. He knew all too well that any gift the tightfisted Cho-gam offered would cost the recipient dearly, one way or another.
Josiah had wintered with the Hupa three years ago, during a previous expedition to Mexico’s vast, unexplored northern California territory. He’d repaid the tribe’s hospitality with frequent forays into the jagged mountains for elk and deer to supplement their staple diet of smoked salmon. He’d also spent endless hours in the sweat house that formed the center of all male activity during the winter months, deftly dodging Cho-gam’s determined efforts to sell him a wife at an astonishingly exorbitant price. Josh had even less time or use for a wife now than he had three years ago.
“I thank you,” he replied as solemnly as the broad-faced, dark-eyed headman. The Hupa phrases he’d learned during his previous stay with the tribe came easily to his tongue. “But I must travel fast and hard this trip. I cannot take a woman with me.”
“You do not travel fast, nor do you travel far if I do not sell you a horse to replace that which is lamed,” Cho-gam pointed out with irrefutable logic. “You will take this wife I offer with the horse.”
His pronouncement prompted another protest from the younger Hupa at the edge of the circle. The warrior pushed himself to his feet, his layers of shell necklaces clattering.
“The fringe person doesn’t want the woman,” he said angrily, employing the term the peoples of the West used to describe the whites who adopted their utilitarian buckskin clothing. “I will buy her.”
“You can’t afford her price,” Cho-gam replied with unruffled calm. “This one can.”
The younger man cast a furious glare at the outsider, then spun on his moccasin-covered heel and stomped out of the low-roofed lodge.
Biting back a sigh, Josh dug into his possibles bag for the pouch that held the last of his Virginia tobacco. He’d hoped to stretch the precious blend until he reached Fort Vancouver, but Cho-gam was proving surprisingly intractable. The headman had resisted Josh’s every offer for a pony to replace his sore-footed packhorse. Now he’d started in on this blasted wife business again. Obviously Cho-gam thought he had a prize and was determined to get top dollar for her. It looked as if Josh were in for some long, temper-testing bargaining.
Hoping that a pull of prime tobacco would soften the headman up, he tamped a wad into the bowl of a carved bone pipe, fired up with a glowing ember and passed the pipe to Cho-gam. The headman’s many necklaces rattled once more as he lifted the pipe to his lips and took a deep, satisfying pull. When he breathed out, the rich aroma drifted up to mingle with the smoke of the pine-fed fire. Sighing in pleasure, Cho-gam passed the pipe to the man on his other side.
Schooling himself to patience, Josh sat easy while the bone pipe made the rounds of the elders. He knew better than to rush this prelude to serious negotiations. Finally Cho-gam named his price.
“For the horse, I will take four strings of shells. For the woman, not less than six woodpecker scalps.”
Josh huffed in derision at the outrageous demand. Four strings of the rare shells for a mountain pony! Not if he had anything to say about it.
“I have no need of a wife,” he insisted again. “Only a horse. Nor do I bring with me shells, only beads from the East and slabs of obsidian from the plains. I will pay three strings of beads and two pieces of obsidian the size of your palm for a sturdy, sure-footed pony.”
Cho-gam considered the counteroffer with the seriousness it demanded. The Hupa used chunks of obsidian from the plains and the thin, tubelike dentalium shells from the coast as money. Even more than money, they prized the brilliant woodpecker scalps that decorated their elaborated headdresses. Like most of the Northwest tribes Josh had encountered in his years of travels, the Hupa defined their social status in terms of personal wealth. The more wealth a man acquired and displayed, the higher his place in the tribe. Their main means of acquiring this wealth was through trade...and, Josh had learned two winters ago, through the bride-prices they demanded for their sisters and daughters.
While he waited patiently for his host to respond, his gaze slid to the group of women at the far end of the cedar-plank lodge. They sat a respectable distance away, as was proper, but not too far for him to miss the lively, laughing glances they sent the men clustered at the fire. Their hands flew as they shaped a pastelike dough made from ground acorns into flat loaves for baking atop the oven stones. After almost two months of solitary trekking through the Rockies and then the Sierra Nevadas, the idea of fresh-baked bread made Josh’s mouth water.
Second to the thought of bread came the realization that he might find himself wedded to and bedded with one of these whispering, giggling females if he wasn’t careful. Not that he’d object to the bedding part of the business. The Hupa women were among the more beautiful and talented he’d encountered in wanderings. He’d shared a blanket with several willing women during his previous stay, paying generously from his trade goods for their enthusiastic services.
Wedding one of these dark-eyed beauties constituted a different basket of berries, however. Aside from the fact that Josh’s orders required him to travel to the northwest territory as swiftly as possible, no woman could ever replace Catherine in his heart or his life.
To his surprise, Cho-gam didn’t appear willing to negotiate. “You will take the woman I offer you,” the headman repeated with impenetrable calm. “She has great beauty and a strong will. She will trek beside you through the snows.”
Josh felt the first stirrings of suspicion. He knew darn well that the headman had a notorious eye for a shapely figure and bright smile. Cho-gam’s collection of wives was another mark of his wealth and the envy of the rest of the tribe. That he was willing to sell a female he considered comely set off warning bells in Josh’s mind.
“If she’s so beauteous.” he asked bluntly, “why do you wish to sell her?”
When the headman didn’t answer right away, one of the elders leaned around his bulk to peer at Josh with cloudy, watery eyes. “She comes from beyond the mountains,” he put in. “She knows not the ways of the Hupa, nor does she wish to learn.”
Cho-gam’s majestic calm slipped for the first time. He scowled, and an aggrieved note entered his voice. “My uncle speaks the truth. I’ve had to pay many fines already for the offense she gives to other members of the tribe without meaning to.”
Ah, now they’d got to the heart of it! She was costing the headman fines!
As Josh had discovered during his stay, the peace-loving Hupa lived by a complicated social code that required monetary compensation for injuries done. An impartial mediator negotiated with the parties involved and levied fines for each infraction of the social code. Everything from murder to public insult was settled this way. As tightfisted as Cho-gam was, it would surely stick in his craw to hand over a portion of his hoard of treasure as recompense for an outsider’s infractions.
“She is of your kind,” the headman added, as if that clinched the deal.
Josh threw him a startled look. “My kind?”
“She is not of the people,” the elder confirmed in his wavery voice.
Swiftly Josh ran through the possibilities in his mind. She could be a Californio, he reasoned, a Mexican up from Monterey or the presidio at San Francisco, several hundred or so miles to the south. Or possibly a French trapper’s wife. He’d heard that Pierre Levesque had brought his Canadian-born bride with him into the mountains. He’d also heard rumors that a white woman had joined her husband at the British Fur Company’s outpost at Fort Vancouver. Had one of these women somehow ended up in this remote, isolated village?
However she’d arrived at the village, Josh determined grimly, here she’d have to stay. Until the spring thaws made travel through the high passes less hazardous, she was far safer among the peaceful Hupa than trekking through the mountains. Josh himself had barely survived the journey that had brought him and his lamed packhorse through the jagged, snow-covered peaks.
“I will speak with her,” he told Cho-gam, “and take messages to her people with me when I go. They will buy her back at a far richer price than I can pay. If you will summon her, I’ll—”
He broke off as a chorus of deep, full-throated barks and excited yips arose outside the lodge. A child shouted. A woman’s voice commanded something Josh couldn’t catch. The barking rose to a furious crescendo, then ended with a high-pitched yelp.
Cho-gam’s face folded into a resigned expression. “I don’t need to summon her. She comes...without invitation or permission.” He heaved a long, heavy sigh. “Such is her way.”
Sure enough, the deerskin door covering was thrown back a few moments later and a woman stood silhouetted against the blinding sunlight. Josh formed a fleeting impression of a tangle of dark hair and a female form clad in a shapeless buckskin tunic, then the flap dropped and the newcomer marched into the lodge.
As she stepped out of the shadows into the circle of light cast by the fire, Josh realized that Cho-gam hadn’t said the half of it. This woman was more than beauteous. With her mane of sable hair, winged brows and high cheekbones, she looked somehow exotic and aristocratic at one and the same time. Even in the loose tunic, she displayed a set of slender curves that caused a man to sit up and take notice. Full breasted and round hipped, she strode across the lodge with a loose, long-legged grace. Instantly, instinctively, the muscles in Josh’s lower belly went rawhide tight.
He’d been on the trail for too many weeks, he decided wryly. Spent too many nights with only his long-toothed packhorse for company. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt such a randy, polecat kind of reaction to the sight of a female. He might not have any use for a wife, but his body was sending unmistakable signals that he could sure use a woman. Uncurling his legs, he rose.
She stopped abruptly a few feet away. Even through the smoke of the fire he could make out her magnificent eyes. Thick lashed and slightly tilted at the outer corners, they formed pools of deep purple in her pale, oval face. They also, Josh noted, regarded him with something less than approval.
Her dark brows slashed down in a frown as her gaze traveled from the tip of the turkey feather decorating his broad-brimmed, flat-crowned beaver hat. Over his bushy beard, bleached to a mixture of dun and muddy gold by the sun. Down his stained, well-worn buckskin shirt. Past his wolf-fur leggings to his tough, rawhide moccasins. When her gaze returned to his face, it held a mixture of disappointment and poorly disguised disgust.
A tinge of heat crept up Josh’s neck. Granted, he wasn’t exactly the feminine ideal, even when clean shaved and turned out in trousers and starched shirt-fronts. Catherine had always teased him about his lean, rangy height and heavily muscled shoulders, saying he looked more mountain lion than man. Still he didn’t remember causing such a revulsion of feeling in a female before.
Controlling her reaction with an obvious effort, the woman addressed him in a clear, ringing voice.
“Vyi gavariti parruski?”
Ruski? Josh had picked up a word or two of Russian in his travels, but not enough to communicate. He shook his head. Frowning, she took a step forward, then stopped abruptly. Her aristocratic nose wrinkled.
The heat rose from Josh’s neck to his jaw. He’d walked and slept in his clothes for the past three weeks. As a consequence, he’d been looking forward to several long hours in the sweat house after his smoke with the elders. Now, he realized, a good sweat wasn’t just an agreeable luxury, but a necessity.
She overcame her momentary pause.
“Parlez-vous Française?”
Like most of the men who made the mountains their home, Josh could switch easily between a singsong mixture of Spanish, French, backwoods American, and any one of a number of Indian dialects. His vocabulary in all but his native tongue was limited, however.
“Oui,”
he drawled. “I
pariez
a little French, but not the kind a man rightly uses in conversation with a lady.”
“You are of the English!” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “Why did you not say so most immediately?”
Her heavily accented phrases came out in an irregular, up-and-down pattern, but Josh had no trouble understanding them.

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