Shawnee Bride (2 page)

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.

Freezing all emotion, he caught her elbow, spun her away from him and shoved her to a reluctant walk.

Clarissa stumbled along the forest trail, feeling more dead than alive. Her blistered, bleeding feet were beyond
pain. Her stomach was a clenched knot of hunger and fear. Only anger kept her moving-that, and her resolve to make this self-proclaimed Shawnee pay dearly for having taken her prisoner.

“It’s a lovely day for a walk, isn’t it?” She tossed her hair, refusing to give him the satisfaction of hearing her complain.

Wolf Heart’s only reply was brooding silence.

“I’ve always wanted to explore the wilderness,” she persisted with mock pleasantry. “And what a splendid guide I have! A man who knows every bird, every tree-”

“That’s enough!” His voice, behind her, was a low growl of irritation. “Keep that up, and every ear within a day’s run will be able to hear you!”

“Oh, how nice!” She forced her miserable feet to a lilting skip and began to sing. “‘In Scarlet Town where I was born/ There lived a fair maid dwellin’/ Made every lad cry well a-day/ Her name was Barbara-’’’

“Stop it!” he snapped, his massive hand catching her arm and whipping her around to face him. “Do you want me to gag your mouth, tie your legs and drag you along the trail?”

Clarissa gulped back her fear, forcing herself to meet his blazing blue eyes. “Well, at least that might save some wear on my poor blistered feet!” she declared saucily. “Yes, indeed, why don’t you try it?”

He shot her a thunderous scowl. Then the breath eased wearily out of him, and Clarissa knew she had won a victory, however small. “Sit,” he ordered her gruffly.

“There?” She glanced toward a toadstool-encrusted log.

“Sit anywhere. I don’t care. Just keep your mouth shut
while I tend to your feet. We still have a lot of walking to do.”

“How much walking?” Clarissa sank on to the log, exhausted to the point of collapse but determined not to show it. “Where are you taking me?”

“To the place where I left my canoe.” He crouched on one bent knee, his heavy black brows meeting in a scowl as he lifted and examined the bruised, blistered sole of her foot.

“And from there?”

“To my village, far down the river.”

“And what will become of me then?” Clarissa’s voice dropped to a choked whisper as the gravity of her situation sank home. This was no game, no idle contest of wit and will. This was a battle for her life.

He was bent low, his craggy features compressed into a frown as his fingers picked away the thorns and tiny rocks that had embedded themselves in her tender flesh.

“You didn’t answer me,” she said, feigning boldness. “What will happen when we reach your village?”

“You will be brought before the council,” he said slowly, his eyes on his task. “And you will be tried.”

“Tried?” Clarissa’s body gave an involuntary jerk. “Tried for what?”

He glanced up at her, his eyes the icy blue of a frozen lake in winter. “To see if you are worthy,” he answered.

“Worthy?” Clarissa could feel her heart fluttering like a trapped bird inside her rib cage.

“Yes,” he answered in a low voice. “Worthy to live.”

A
s he followed Clarissa down the hill, Wolf Heart cursed the betraying response of his own body. This was not what he’d had in mind when he’d resolved to teach Clarissa to swim. Quite the opposite—he’d only meant to insure that if she did, in fact, try to escape, she would not end her life at the bottom of the river. The last thing he’d planned on tonight was seduction.

But then, who was seducing whom? he mused, his eyes tracing the fluid sway of her hips in the darkness. Clarissa had known—she
must
have known—what she was doing to him there on that moonlit ledge. Yet she had been as cool as the first autumn frost, standing there with his achingly aroused
passah-tih
risen hard against her hips. The memory of that moment seared his face and his conscience. He should have moved back at once, easing them both away from the danger of the precipice. So, why hadn’t he? What had he been thinking when he stood fixed to the ground, cradling her against him? Was he blundering into moon-madness?

Still visible below, the lights on the river glimmered through the evening mist. The night was warm for spring, the wind whispering like the breathy voice of a woman
in love. Wolf Heart’s arousal had dwindled to the hollow ache of unfulfillment. And that, he vowed, was all he would allow himself to feel for this woman. Swan Feather had spoken wisely. Some white captives never embraced the Shawnee way of life. It was time he faced the fact that Clarissa was one of them. Sooner or later she would escape, or she would die trying.

She glanced back over her shoulder, her wild russet mane fluttering in the nighttime breeze. When would she make her move? Would it be an impulsive plunge as her last attempt had been? Or would she act with patience and cunning this time, waiting until everything she needed was in place?

And what would he do if he had a chance to stop her?

“Are you coming?” she demanded, tossing her splendid head. “If you don’t mind, I’d just as soon get this swimming lesson over with!”

A wry smile tugged at a corner of Wolf Heart’s mouth. “Don’t be too impatient. Some things take time and practice. Swimming is one of them.”

“I plan to learn fast!” She raced down the trail ahead of him, feet flying in her oversize moccasins. She was as fluttery as a killdeer luring a mink away from its nest, Wolf Heart observed darkly. And her eagerness was all show. He hung back, waiting to see what she would do.

He didn’t have to wait long. Clarissa gave a little yelp as she stumbled and went down. When he caught up with her, still taking his time, she was crumpled beside the trail examining her bare foot, the moccasin lying beside her in the grass.

“I…think something may be broken,” she said, looking up at him as plaintively as an injured puppy. “You’d best take me back to-”

“Let me see.” He cut her off brusquely as he sank to
a crouch. She did not protest as he lifted her foot and cradled it between his hands, but he caught the nervous shift of her pupils in the moonlight. Her body stiffened uneasily as his thumbs began a careful exploration of her bones, starting with the toes and working upward.

“Does that hurt?” His fingers manipulated the ball of her foot. Her bones were as delicate as a crane’s. She shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together.

“Higher?”

She nodded. “I think it’s my ankle. I—must have sprained it.”

“Then it’s a good thing we’re going for a swim,” he said, his voice betraying nothing. “Cold water is the best thing for sprains.”

“It may be more than a sprain,” she said, correcting herself swiftly. “One of my bones may be broken. In any case, I’m certainly in no condition to swim!”

“We’ll see.” His fingers worked their way around her slender ankle. No heat. No swelling. She was fine. “Does this hurt?” He pressed lightly against the hazelnut-size outer knob of her anklebone. The sharp intake of her breath was worthy of an accomplished actress.

“Yes! Yes—there!” she whispered.

“I see.” He glanced up, scowling. Her face was as blandly innocent as a baby’s. “Well, then, there’s only one thing to do.”

Before she could speak, he had caught her behind the knees and shoulders, sweeping her up in his arms as he jerked to his feet. Too startled to protest, she stared up at him as he turned and strode on down the trail.

“Where are you taking me?” He had covered a dozen long steps by the time she found her voice.

“You’ll see.”

“But this isn’t the way back to the village! It’s—”
Her words dissolved in an outraged gasp as she realized what he was up to. For an instant, her whole body went rigid. Then she began to wnggle furiously. Her feet kicked wildly at the air, tossing her remaining moccasin onto the trail. Her angry fists pummeled his chest hard enough to leave bruises. “Put me down!” she rasped, all wild motion. “Put me down this instant, you beastly, unprincipled…Indian!”

Wolf Heart’s only answer was a raw-edged laugh as he tightened his grip, swung off the trail and stalked decisively toward the ledge that overlooked the pool.

Clarissa had been fighting to escape. Suddenly she clung to him for dear life, her arms clutching his neck in an unbreakable stranglehold. “No!” she gasped in horror. “You wouldn’t dare throw me off! You mustn’t! I’ll drown!”

“Throw
you off?” He laughed again, a rough, savage sound that sent a chill through her body.
“Throw
you off? Why, you’ve sadly misjudged me, dear lady! I would never do such a thing! Throw you off, indeed!”

Still holding her in his arms, he took two running strides and leaped off the ledge.

Clarissa screamed in rage and terror all the way down. Then the water closed around her like an icy shroud, shutting out the world as her senses had known it.

She gripped Wolf Heart’s shoulders, fighting panic as they sank together.
He would not let her drown—again
and again she forced herself to remember that one truth. A wretched Shawnee turncoat he might be, and an unrefined brute, as well, but she knew, with sudden surety, that she could trust him with her life.

Realizing that her weight would only pull him down, she willed herself not to struggle as his powerful legs
kicked for the surface. Her bursting lungs told her that they had gone deep, so deep that an eternity seemed to pass before they broke at last into the night-chilled air. She pushed upward, spitting, choking, gulping life back into her body. Wolf Heart’s arms supported her in the water. She sagged against his chest, her ribs seized by racking spasms.

“How’s your ankle now?”

The playful question with its mocking edge rumbled in Clarissa’s ear. Startled, she looked up into his grinning face. “You—” she sputtered, her fear congealing into white-hot rage. “You insolent, unsufferable—”

He let her go.

She gasped, swallowing water as she went down again. This time anger gave her strength. Her legs began to kick furiously, driving her upward until she broke the surface. Murder glittered in her eyes.

“I should have drowned you!” Her feet and hands paddled furiously. “I should have pulled you under and kept you there!”

“You would never have done it.” Water drops glistened like jewels on his straight black eyebrows. “You’re a fighter, Clarissa. Your own urge to survive would have been too strong. See, look at you now! You’re swimming!”

“Oh!” She blinked, so startled that she stopped paddling. Her head promptly went under, but this time a series of confident kicks brought her to the surface again. The water, which had seemed so cold at first, was deliciously cool now.
“This
is swimming?” She laughed, her anger forgotten in the delight of her discovery. “But it’s easy! There’s nothing to it!”

“Well, there’s more than you might think.” His critical frown could not quite hide his pleasure. “You’ve
learned the first lesson. But there’s more. Do you feel strong enough to go on?”

“Yes!” Clarissa was all eagerness now, thrilled by her new accomplishment.

“Come on, then. I’ll need a place where I can stand.” He hooked her waist with his free arm and kicked for the shallows. A stone’s toss from the bank he found bottom and stood erect, the silky black water lapping at his tautly puckered nipples. The thumb-size, fringed pouch he always wore dangled just below the surface of the water, held down by its own weight. Someday, when she knew Wolf Heart better, she would ask him what was insidebut there would be no someday, Clarissa swiftly reminded herself. At the first opportunity, whenever it might come, she would be on her way back to Fort Pitt.

“Are you ready?” He took her hands and swung her around to face him.

Clarissa gripped his big rough fingers, her feet kicking frantically behind her. By now she was beginning to tire. Her breath came in gasps, and her side had developed a sharp stitch, but she forced a smile, determined not to let Wolf Heart see that she was flagging.

“Did
you
have to…learn to swim when you…became a Shawnee?” she asked, panting between words.

“Yes and no. I could swim well enough before. But I had a lot to learn.” He scowled momentarily, then lowered himself neck deep into the water. “For this, you’ll have to trust me,” he said.

“Trust you? Ha!” She blew across the glassy surface, spraying his stony face with water. “Why, you’re the very last person on earth I’d trust!”

His eyes flickered as if he’d been stung, and for an instant he hesitated. Suddenly realizing how much she
wanted this lesson to continue, Clarissa swiftly reversed her course.

“All right, but no tricks,” she said. “Do you promise?”

“Why should I promise if you don’t trust me?” It was his turn to tease her now.

“Because otherwise I’m climbing out of this pool right now! So, do you promise?”

“All right, I promise.” He eased her away from him, pushing her farther out into the water. “Now let go of my hands.”

Clarissa released his fingers, keeping her eyes locked with his. The water was over her head here, and for all her newfound paddling skill, she was uneasy.

“Just relax.” His hands reached underneath her to support her waist. The motion brought his face within a finger’s breadth of hers. A bead of water, holding its own tiny gold moon, glittered on his lower lip. What if she were to lean forward the slightest bit and flick away that shining drop with the tip of her tongue? What would Wolf Heart do to her?

What a deliciously wicked thought!

“I’m going to turn you over,” he said, gently rotating her body until she faced upward. “Now straighten your legs, put your head down and arch your back a littlethat’s it—as if you were lying on a bed. How does it feel?”

“Oh.” Clarissa gave a little moan of wonder. She was floating languorously in the cool dark water, Wolf Heart’s hand lightly supporting the small of her back. Her hair flowed outward like sea moss, fanning in slow ripples around her head. She managed a nervous little laugh. “It feels magical! Like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life! But, oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t let go of me!”

His laugh was like the rumbling purr of a great sleekmuscled cat. “It wouldn’t make any difference if I did let go. The water would hold you up. All you need to do is let it. Trust the water, Clarissa, and trust yourself. That’s the whole secret of swimming.”

Clarissa stretched her bare toes. She closed her eyes, giving in, for the moment, to the sheer sensuality of lying suspended in liquid coolness. Her senses unfolded like night-blooming blossoms, opening to the sigh of the wind and the crystalline tinkle of the spring, to the far-off cry of a loon and the fresh aromas of wet moss, wood and flowers, to the feel and taste of water on her windchapped lips.

Now and again, at night, she had dreamed of floating in the sky like a cloud. This was even more wonderful. This was real.

“Open your eyes.” Wolf Heart’s throaty whisper caressed her like the stroke of fingers on a harp. “Look up.”

Clarissa’s mouth formed a silent “Oh” as her eyelids fluttered open. She was gazing upward at the ring of cliffs that surrounded the pool. Cascading ferns and mosses, beaded with moisture, festooned the rocky ledges. Sprays of tiny white flowers nestled among them like bunched lace. High above, the great golden orb of the moon glowed against the inky velvet of the sky.

“The Shawnee believe the moon is the home of Kokomthena, our grandmother, who made all living things.” Wolf Heart’s voice, blending with the sounds of darkness, had taken on a mystical quality. “She made the deer and the bear and the panther. She made fish and birds and insects—and people. First the Delaware, then, when she’d had more practice, the Shawnee.”

“And do
you
believe that, too?” Clarissa asked, still lost in floating.

“Why not? It makes as much sense as anything I ever heard in church.”

“But do you really
believe
it?” she persisted, suddenly aware that his hand was no longer supporting her back.

“I choose to believe it, as I choose to be Shawnee.”

Clarissa struggled to keep her calm balance in the water even as she struggled with the paradox of this man who so stubbornly declared himself to be what he was not.

“And did your grandmother make white people, too?” she asked, chipping away at the edges of his maddening logic.

Wolf Heart’s pensive silence darkened as the seconds passed. “Our grandmother was wise,” he said at last. “She knew the Shawnee would need enemies to fight. Otherwise they would grow weak and lazy. So she made the Iroquois. But the whites came from far away, long after the old stories were set for telling.”

“So your grandmother didn’t make them?”

“Kokomthena’s grandchildren follow her laws.” A bitter edge had crept into his voice. “They don’t ravage the land or claim to own it as white people do. Why would she make such selfish, wasteful creatures?”

“But
you
are white!” Clarissa was becoming agitated now, losing her equilibrium in the water. “You’re no more Shawnee than I am Chinese—”

She went under, righted herself and came up facing him, thrashing and spitting. “I know what you’re trying to do!” She flung the words at him. “But it won’t work, Seth Johnson, so you may as well give up! You’ll never succeed in making me over into a hide-scraping, buckskin-wearing, moon-worshiping Shawnee squaw!”