Tender Touch (15 page)

He clawed his way back to the surface and gasped for air. He paddled his arms, fighting to keep his head above water, and blinked to clear his vision. Then he saw it—the log, splashed with red like fresh drawn blood.

With his final ounce of strength, Nigh lunged for the log. The rough bark scraped his hands as the river tried to pull him under. He tasted the muddy river water as his fingers closed over a wrist-sized branch and clung. There wasn’t time to wonder if he could hang on long enough. The muscles of his arms and chest burned as he strained to draw himself along the fragile branch until he reached the main trunk. With both arms wrapped securely over the log, Nigh coughed to clear his lungs of water.

“Nigh! Mr. Nigh!”

Col blinked and tried to focus. A swath of red swam before him. Then his vision cleared and he saw the boy clinging to the log half a dozen feet away.

“Mr. Nigh
.
.
. Thank God!” Lyle lifted his head from the log and struggled to smile while water splashed over him and streamed down his tired face. “Can’t . . . hold on . . . much longer.”

“You hurt?” Nigh asked.

Lyle spit out a mouthful of water. “My shoulder. Something hit me.”

Nigh took in their situation and figured their chances of making it to shore were better than fifty-fifty. The tree from which they dangled was still anchored to the east bank where it had been uprooted by the storm. He worked his way close to the boy and tried to shout above the roar of the water. “Grab hold on the other side of the fork in the tree. Put your good arm around my neck. We’ll duck under that limb and work our way to shore.”

Lyle took a deep breath and did as he was told. For a moment, as they submerged themselves under the water to clear the branch, he feared the current would rip them apart and wash them down to the Big Vermillion. Then his head cleared water, and he knew they would make it.

Neither of them saw the second log coming. It struck Nigh in the side only an instant after he’d boosted the boy onto the bank. Lyle clambered onto the muddy shore and turned in time to see Nigh’s head slammed against the thick trunk which had guided them to safety. Nigh’s eyes closed as he lost consciousness.

Lyle threw himself onto the tree and latched onto Nigh’s wrist as the man went under. Lyle didn’t know how long he clung to his rescuer’s hand. Moments passed like hours before his brother found him. But Lyle was certain he’d never been so glad to see Toby in his life.

Together they hauled the unconscious man onto shore and attempted to pump the water from his lungs. They were still at it when Magrudge’s rescue party reached them. Hovering in the background, Brianna put her clenched fists to her mouth and watched silently as the men struggled to save Columbus Nigh’s life.

Nigh never regained consciousness while he was carried back to camp, nor as he was stripped naked, dried off, and tucked into Brianna’s bed.

By the next morning he had a lump the size of a duck egg behind his ear. When Brianna couldn’t wake him, she went to find Lavinia Becker.

“Slap his face, pour cold water on him, whatever you have to do.” Lavinia handed an iron cook pot up to her daughter in the wagon as they prepared to cross the river. “Ain’t a good sign for him to be sleepin’ so heavy still. Wish we had ice to put on that bump. If he don’t want to wake up or if he seems odd in any way, you keep a close watch. If he’s concussed, he may start vomiting.”

It took a pailful of cold water to rouse Nigh. His eyes scrunched up with pain and he looked up at his tormentors in utter confusion.

“Col?” Marc moved close, edging Brianna aside. “I apologize for waking you in such a heartless manner, but we have to ascertain the seriousness of your condition. How do you feel, does your head hurt?”

“Hurts bad,”
Nigh answered. “What happened?”

“You rescued Lyle Woody from the river and in the process your head was slammed rather badly against a tree when a bit of flotsam struck you. You don’t recall?” Nigh shook his head and grimaced at the pain.

“What do you remember?”

Nigh squeezed his eyes tight against the pain. “Lyle Woody?” His head lolled to the side and he was out again.

Marc turned to Brianna. “Best tell Francois to run and see if the Deckers have crossed yet. I’m afraid Col’s hurt worse than we expected.”

Three hours passed before the Villard wagon, with an unconscious Columbus Nigh aboard, was ferried across the Big Blue so Lavinia Decker could visit her patient.

“Concussion,” she announced. “Has he been coughing?”

“Yes,” Brianna said. “He sounds congested.”

Lavinia nodded soberly and the fear Brianna had tried to contain rushed into her throat. Her voice caught as she strove to put it into words. “Is it pneumonia?”

“More likely he swallowed some of that muddy river water.” Lavinia put her thick, stubby hand to Nigh’s brow. “He’s powerfu
l warm, got a fever, I reckon.”

“What do we do?”

“I seen some wild onions earlier. I’ll send Lucy to fetch ’em and you can make a poultice for his chest. You bathe him with vinegar and cold water to bring down that fever, but be careful he don’t catch no draft.”

Lavinia was about to climb down from the wagon when Brianna, an attractive blush coloring her cheeks, asked, “How. . .much of him do I need to bathe?”

“All but the best part, dearie.” Lavinia bellowed out a laugh. “All but the best part. Wish I could stay and help, but little Gordy Fairman tangled with a water snake and got bit. Melissa ran over to say they couldn’t stop the bleeding. That’s where I was headed when Francois found me.” She patted Brianna once more and turned to go. “I know what you’re thinking, water snakes ain’t poisonous. Seen something like it once back home, though. Something in this particular water snake thins the blood out so it won’t clot.”

Marc helped Lavinia heft her bulk down from the wagon.

“I’ll come back soon as I can.” Lavinia straightened her skirts. “You send Francois after me if Mr. Nigh takes a turn for the worst. We may have to do something a little more drastic to clear out his lungs.”

Nigh muttered something unintelligible, capturing Brianna’s attention. She bent to feel his cheek and he caught her hand and brought it to his lips. “Don’t go,” he mumbled.

Brianna extricated her hand and went to get the bucket of water Marc left in the rear of the wagon. Francois peeped inside, his young eyes full of concern.

“Is Col gonna be all right?”

She didn’t have the heart to tell him she simply didn’t know, so she mussed the boy’s hair and said, “Of course, he will. Go on now, but stay within shouting distance in case I need you to fetch Mrs. Decker again.”

Turning back to her patient, she rubbed her hands down the front of her skirt and thought about the irony behind what she was about to do. By the time Columbus Nigh was well—if he survived at all—she would know his body almost as intimately as she did her own. Better than he would ever know hers.

Chapter Fifteen

Columbus Nigh moaned, drawing Brianna’s attention from her needlepoint. For three days he had been out of his head with concussion and the fever caused by swallowing the turbid river water. Lilith had offered to help nurse the man, but Brianna couldn’t envision her fastidious friend bathing a naked man, and knew she had been right to refuse when she saw the look of relief on the woman’s face. Now, as Brianna bent over him, he thrashed in the bed, flung an arm over his eyes as though to shield himself from some awful sight and cried out, “Oh God, Little Beaver.”

She knelt beside the bed and murmured reassurances as she stroked his shoulder and arm. He was reliving the loss of his wife again, she thought. Little Beaver must have died an awful death.

Col calmed. He moved his arm to his side and opened his eyes, but his gaze was filled with pain. He uttered something in a soft, almost lyrical language and put his hand to Brianna’s face. His thumb stroked the softness of her cheek. He was speaking to her in the Shoshone tongue, thinking she was Little Beaver, no doubt. Brianna wasn’t sure what to do. Touching her seemed to soothe him. How he must have loved his Indian wife. Envy stabbed Brianna’s heart. He closed his eyes. The hand dropped from her cheek and he slept.

Brianna force-fed him water and broth. She applied a fresh poultice to his chest of onions, turpentine, and goose grease to break up the congestion brought on by the river water in his lungs. Shakespeare wrinkled his nose at the stink of the poultice and fled the wagon.

She had sponged Col’s body, watching the hair on his chest spring into tight little ringlets that loosened as they dried. She had felt the hardness of the muscles, saw the cold shrivel his nipples. With her finger she traced a jagged white scar on his abdomen where the line of hair dipped from his navel out of sight below the towel she kept across his loins. There were other scars, and she had come to know them all. The pale birthmark on his inner thigh was as familiar to her as the lines of her own face. She knew the thick coarseness of his hair, the sound of his sleeping breath, the smell of his skin, the shape of his bare feet.

And possessiveness had taken root in her soul.

Every time Lucy Decker came by to ask after Col, or to offer to sit with him, Brianna’s reply became more and more abrupt and ill-tempered.

Brianna might have sympathized with Lucy’s supposed fear of becoming a spinster, if it weren’t for the young men who lined up at the girl’s cook fire every evening with hunger in their eyes for more than Lucy’s scones. To Brianna’s mind, any one of them would make Lucy a more suitable husband than Columbus Nigh.

To hear Lilith, however, Lucy Decker would be the perfect match for Columbus; a practical down-to-earth woman who could sew his shirts, cook him a hot meal and balance his baby on one hip, all at the same time. As for the age difference, Lilith insisted that such a spirited girl as Lucy needed an older man to guide her. That argument made Brianna’s blood boil, since it was that same old wife’s tale about age differences, along with the fear of spinsterhood that had put Brianna in Barret Wight’s bed. But she couldn’t tell Lilith that. Instead she sent Lucy away.

In the wee hours of the night, as Brianna sipped tea and watched Col sleep peacefully again, she studied the streaks of blond in the pale brown of his mustache. The feel of the mustache against her lips when he kissed her intrigued her. She couldn’t resist running the backs of her fingers over it to see if it were truly as soft as she remembered.

His eyes opened. They were glazed but looked straight at her. When she set her tea aside and knelt by the bed to test his brow for fever, he captured her hand in his and cupped her cheek with his other palm. “Beautiful.” His voice was hoarse and raspy.

Brianna stiffened, then relaxed as she realized he had mistaken her for his wife again.

His hand slipped behind her neck and pulled her toward him. “Want you .
.
. so much,” he said as her mouth neared his.

Brianna’s heart danced along her ribs. Of their own volition, her lips parted. She moistened them with the tip of her tongue. His eyes followed the action. “Come here,” he said, his tone so inviting she felt her body turn to liquid, thick and sweet and slow like syrup. A sweet ache began in her innermost depths.

Col’s mouth was firm, his lips satiny as they skimmed across hers, once, twice. She tried to tell herself it was wrong to take advantage like this. The man thought he was kissing his wife, not her. But she let her eyes close and gave in to her curiosity, needing to learn his taste, his texture, his scent. To explore the unbelievable sensations he aroused in her.

Brianna laid her hand on his chest and let the springy curls entwine about her fingers. The pressure he exerted at the back of her head increased. His other hand stroked her back. She let her own hand glide further up his chest, feeling the soft prickle of the hair, the firm nub of a nipple, the smooth, taut muscles of his shoulder. Her fingers tangled in his thick coarse hair and silvered shivers whispered down her spine.

The mustache tickled slightly, intensifying the shivers that set her nerve endings on edge. How could a kiss feel this good? She felt as though she had been lifted into a dream, all sensation and rapturous bliss. She never wanted it to end.

He nipped her lip lightly with his teeth, then suckled gently, first the upper lip, then the lower. The feel of his tongue grazing the sensitive insides of her mouth created wildness in her. She answered in kind, finding herself as eager to give as to take. Their tongues met and formed a sensuous dance that sent her pulse soaring. She explored his mouth as he explored hers and found an unbelievable rightness to it all that amazed her as much as it enthralled her.

His hand moved from her back to cup the fullness of her breast. Burned by his heat and shocked by the wild surge of hunger that racked her body, Brianna gasped. She pulled away and his eyes opened. In their depths she saw passion and intense need. She also saw that they were every bit as clear and lucid as her own.

Dazed, she rose to her feet and turned away. “You . . . you must be thirsty. I’ll get you some water.”

“Bri,” he whispered.

She ignored the plea in his low, husky voice. What had gotten into her? She’d acted like a wanton, believing him delirious. Had he been fully conscious all that time? Had he known he was kissing her and not Little Beaver?

With her back still turned to him, she pressed the cup of cold water to her breasts as though to cool their heat.
You’ve made a fool of yourself, Brianna Wight, and you deserve what you have coming. Face it, then crawl back inside your shell where you belong
.

When she turned, he was asleep. One hand lay curled above his heart as though still holding hers. His face looked peaceful, the color normal. Slowly she reached out to feel his forehead. It was moist with sweat.

The fever had broken. He would be all right now.

But would she? How would she ever face him again after the way she’d reacted to his kiss? After the way he had touched her so intimately. Wrapping her shawl about her, she drew back the wagon cover and climbed out. Then she walked into the pre-dawn darkness. And wept.

Columbus Nigh slept most of the next day. Each time he woke up, he found Lilith sitting next to him. Once he found Shakespeare pawing at his shoulder, a dead mouse dangling from the cat’s mouth.

Lilith assured Nigh that Brianna was fine, but he remembered the shock in her eyes after they had kissed in the night. The thought that she might be running away from him now because of that kiss infuriated him. The exquisite rapture of waking to find her in his arms, of feeling her respond to him, had erased his own doubts. She belonged to him. Her marriage to Wight had been nothing more than a disastrous mistake. Surely she knew that now.

By evening, when Marc brought him a cup of broth along with the news of the day’s events, and Brianna still had not come, Nigh knew she was avoiding him. The fool woman had allowed herself to be overcome with guilt. Or fear.

“It took two days to ferry all the wagons across the Big Blue. The Shorthill’s dog was the only casualty, thank the Lord.” Marc sat down and rested his elbows on his knees. “We’ve made good time. The weather’s let up a bit and we’ve suffered no mishaps. In fact we managed to get ahead of that California company that squeezed us out at the Kaw. Looks like they’ve been struck by cholera. They were digging graves when we rolled past.”

“Don’t sound like I missed anything worth worrying about.”

Marc chuckled. “Except for Lucy Decker’s constant visits. I think that girl’s got her cap set for you. You could do worse, you know.”

Could do better, too, Nigh thought.

“We’re camped in a pretty little valley tonight, and it’s dry out for a change,” Marc went on. “There’s a fair stream here and quite a bit of timber, some of it good oak.”

Nigh didn’t hear. Thinking about Lucy had brought Brianna back to mind. She’d changed from the skinny, frightened widow he’d led out of St. Louis, so prim and proper and clinging to that cat as though it was all she had in the world. Now she could light a fire in a prairie wind, snap a whip and drive a team of oxen as competently as any man. She had the strength of an oak tree, inside and out. Lilith, by comparison, was a hot house flower. He glanced at Marc, wondering how the man would handle it if his flower wilted and died along the trail.

“Jeb Hanks came in with two fat bull elk,” Marc was saying now. “Had three Shawnee with him. They’ve been all over camp trading moccasins, dried buffalo tongues, and jerked meat. Zeke Knowls seems to think it a good enough reason to break out his fiddle. So we’ll be having a bit of a celebration after awhile.”

Nigh sipped his broth and wondered when he had started thinking of Brianna as “his.” Before or after last night’s kiss? He wanted to ask Marc to send her in to him, but a fit of coughing took him before he could get out the words.

Marc took Nigh’s cup and listened with concern as his friend hacked. Outside, pots clanged as the women prepared supper. Francois was begging for a bucket for catching tadpoles. Marc frowned when Lilith turned the boy down, saying tadpoles were dirty and might make him ill if he handled them.

“Sorry, Marc.” Nigh had himself under control now.

Marc gave him a reassuring smile. “You know, Col, I don’t mind telling you, you gave us one hell of a scare.” Marc peeked out under the wagon cover, as if worried his wife might have heard him curse.

Nigh’s mouth quirked up. “Bit scared myself. Thought I was headed for the spirit world.”

Marc chuckled. “Couldn’t have been too frightened. You managed to get Lyle Woody safe on shore before knocking yourself out on that log.”

“Who rescued who, though? Somebody must’ve pulled me out.”

“Lyle hung onto you until Tobias came along. The current had tossed Tobias into some calmer water where he was able to swim to shore. I guess you could say he got there in the nick of time.”

Marc looked at Nigh’s cup as he rose to go. “You didn’t eat much. Shall I tell Brianna you’re hungry for something other than onion plasters and broth?”

Nigh smiled. “Can’t think of anything I’d like more.”

***

“Tom Coover, you stop that.” Betsy giggled as she tried to push her young husband away. His hands burrowed beneath her shawl to tickle her again, while she squirmed and squealed.

Then the game changed. His hands slipped around to cup her breasts while he nibbled her ear. She ceased her squirming and cradled his hands with her own, turning her face up to accept his kiss. His hand slid down her still-slim waist to the belly that had yet to show sign of the burgeoning life within. Betsy smiled and closed her eyes while he tested the roundness of her tummy with his hand, as though eager to feel some sign of the life they had created together.

On the windswept bluff above, Brianna dropped her gaze from the young couple and turned away. She knelt to admire brilliant pink prickly-pear blossoms, while the Coovers’ youthful laughter floated up to her. Had she ever been that young? Certainly she’d never been that happy. Was it the child Betsy was expecting that filled them with such joy? Or the love so evident on their young faces? Brianna sighed. If only she had conceived. Perhaps a child would have changed Barret. Except that Barret had not wanted children.

She touched a finger to the silky pink petals and marveled that such a spiny, unpleasant plant could produce a blossom so lovely. Sharp spines and dazzling beauty. Like sorrow and joy; can’t have one without the other, her father had told her once. But it seemed to Brianna that it had been all too long since she’d had anything but spines.

Footsteps sounded behind her. She rose, turning at the same time. “Dulcie.”

“Hu’lo, Brianna. You looked so deep in thought I wasn’t sure I should bother you.”

Brianna took the girl’s hands in hers and smiled. “Of course, you should. I’ve missed you. I wasn’t sure if I should come to your wagon, knowing how your husband feels about me, but I wa
s hoping you’d come to see me.”

“Punch don’t dislike you, Brianna. It’s just—?

“I know, it’s Col. Never mind. We’ll find a way to visit each other without upsetting Punch.”

Dulcie drew a piece of paper from her pocket. “I was hoping I could ask you a favor.”