The Bride Wore Feathers (3 page)

She knew she ought to avert her gaze, should have done so the moment he exposed his naked body. She also thought she ought to throw herself at his feet and beg for mercy. But then, Dominique DuBois rarely did anything she ought to do. If she had done so more often, she probably wouldn't be in this predicament from which there seemed to be no escape. Her gentle father, the honorable Judge Jacques DuBois, should have had
his
way for a change and sent her off to yet another finishing school. But no, she wouldn't hear of it. As usual, Dominique, the judge's only offspring and sole reminder of his beloved wife, Julia, had badgered him until she got what she wanted. An adventure out west. The dream of a lifetime, the opportunity to study herself on her own terms and discover what the future might hold. No rigid finishing school would tell Dominique DuBois what kind of person she would become. Now it seemed that dream, that impulsive leap for independence, had turned into a nightmare. Would she escape it with her life? she wondered, watching as the savage finished dressing.

The Sioux pulled on his leggings and moccasins, and then wrapped a buffalo robe around his shoulders as he approached her. She could feel his gaze bearing down on her, hear his uneven breathing over the sputtering fire. Dominique swallowed hard and raised her chin. Slowly lifting her lids, she leveled defiant brown eyes at him. The pale light from the fire illuminated only his leggings and the knife dangling from its rawhide thong at his waist. His torso was a shadowed outline, his features completely engulfed in darkness save for the amused twinkle in his eyes.

Drawing on her feeble knowledge of the wild, she remembered what her papa had once told her—an animal could smell fear and that once detected, the frightened one might as well order a headstone. Hoping to save herself from such a fate, Dominique filled her lungs and lied through her teeth. "I am not afraid of you. If anything, I feel sorry for a man who is such a disgusting animal that he must force himself on helpless females."

"And I"—he bit off the words, in no mood to correct her opinion of him—"feel sorry for any man who must listen to your wicked tongue. Perhaps," he said as he unsheathed his hunting knife, "you would be a better prize if I relieved you of that offensive organ."

Dominique glared at him and drew her body into a tighter tuck. "Do what pleases you, heathen, but know that my papa will make you pay dearly for any harm you may visit on me."

Redfoot laughed as he fingered the edge of the gleaming blade, and then he gripped the knife by its handle. "Planting his seed and reaping one such as you is punishment enough for any man. I should seek him out and make him pay for fathering you." He stalked over to the fire and squatted with his back to her as he issued an impatient warning. "Keep your silence, woman, and let me do what I must."

When no protest or complaints were forthcoming, and only the rattle of her chattering teeth disturbed the calm, Redfoot grinned. This one would not be easily tamed. She would try to flee the minute he turned his back, he guessed. She would run even if such a foolish act cost her her very life. She needed warmth and rest. He knew of only one way to see that she remained calm and compliant.

Redfoot filled a small bowl with water from a pouch hanging close to the fire. After removing the soft wood stopper from a buffalo horn nearby, he tapped a measure of powder into the bowl, and then used a wooden ladle to remove a cooking stone from the center of the firepit. Water sizzled and boiled up over the rim of the bowl as he eased the hot rock into the liquid. When the mixture of water and medicine had cooled to a simmer, he stood and marched over to his captive.

"Here," he said, offering the bowl. "Drink this."

Dominique turned her head away and pressed her lips together.

"I said drink this, foolish woman. You may be warmed enough to fight me, but if you are to survive, you must rest your spent body. I offer you your life in this potion. Take it, crazy one. It will make all the difference."

Dominique slowly returned her wary gaze to the bowl. "What it is?" she asked quietly.

"Medicine. It will warm your gut and make you sleep. Drink it. Then move to the fire and rest beneath the warmth of my robe."

She peered up at him, but still his features were hidden by darkness. Trusting him, because of the hint of concern in his voice and because she hoped what he said about the medicine was true, Dominique reached for the container. Shivering, she lifted the warm bowl to her mouth. Steam rose, thawing the tip of her frozen nose, and she sniffed the aroma of something bitter, like the scent of a young sapling culled from the depths of a virgin forest. The heat of the remaining liquid comforted her. After the barest hesitation, she drank it down.

Redfoot wheeled around and strode to the entrance of his lodge. He tossed open the flap of hide, then looked back at the woman. "I leave you now. Do not try to escape. If you step out of this tipi, what you find in the forest will make you wish the river had swallowed you beyond my reach."

Still guessing silence was her best ally, Dominique kept her tongue and watched as he stepped through the opening and disappeared. After the flap had dropped back into place, she let out her breath in a long groan, then crawled to the center of the tipi and the beckoning fire.

Dominique sat rigid for a full minute, half expecting to drop over dead from the effects of the brew. When it didn't happen, she added a buffalo robe to the blanket shrouding her trembling body, then grimaced as its pungent odor reached her nostrils. What to do now? she wondered, her head feeling a little off balance. Her sheltered upbringing in Monroe, Michigan, had certainly never prepared her for anything like this. What chance did she have to escape, to survive, if she should find her way out of this... this—Where
was
she? Dominique's brain, suddenly and curiously sluggish, labored to remember.

The ferry. Her uncle's men had put her and her chaperon on the boat for the trip to Fort Lincoln. The river, the chunks of ice, a bump. That was it. She suddenly remembered, giving in to the insane urge to giggle like a schoolgirl. She'd fallen off the ferry shortly after leaving Bismarck. Or had the ferry fallen off of her? The giggles erupted again as her mind, fragmented and numb, supplied a cartoon of the ferry, bottom-side up.

Instinct and the will to live took over then, and Dominique found a way to ignore the strange sensations and colorful images flashing in her head. Determined to find out where she was and seek an avenue of escape, she crawled over to the entrance of the tipi. Carelessly tearing the flap away from the wall, she peered out at what appeared to be a campground and found her eyes would not focus.

Although her vision was blurred and nightfall shadowed much of her surroundings, she could see at least five more tipis arced around another lodge twice their size. She hadn't been kidnapped by a single Indian—she was in the middle of an entire village. Fear knotted in her throat.

"Mon Dieu,"
she ground out, her voice sounding hoarse and guttural. But at the words her fear dissipated and again she thought of her father, of his liberal use of his native tongue, French, and of the love he had for her mother even seven years after her death. Mother, she mouthed to herself, thinking of Julia's Custer blood and the fact that she was the youngest sister of the general himself. What would Mother do?

Julia Custer DuBois would have approved of Dominique's adventure, even to the point of wheedling Jacques into allowing her to accompany their headstrong daughter out to the wild frontier. Dominique chuckled as she remembered Julia's fiery streak of independence—and the day that streak had sent her to her own husband's court to answer charges of harassment and battery. A staunch supporter of women's rights, Julia and a small group of women had bound and imprisoned a terrified jupon manufacturer in a crinoline cage of his own making, then challenged him to wear one of his miserable creations for even a day. Beyond those few details, the incident was never discussed in the DuBois home, but Dominique knew all she had to do was mention the word "crinoline" and her father's cheeks would puff out like a squirrel's and turn as bright as her mother's flaming red hair.

She gave in to another burst of laughter and then suddenly felt maudlin and contrite. A bare six months after the crinoline incident, Julia had died, a victim of consumption. Dominique cast mournful eyes on the circle of lodges. In the darkness, with fires burning inside each dwelling, the scene was almost familial. Each small circle of flames, visible through the skins, looked pink and inviting and gave her an eerie sense of home—and a desperate feeling of loss. She watched, envious of the watery forms of the families as they moved near the fires inside the tipis, and she smiled drunkenly as she thought how much they resembled dancing shadows. Then she blinked, and they transformed themselves into glowing monsters.

Was she losing her mind? Dominique snickered as even that thought flashed a bizarre, yet terribly vivid picture to her poor confused brain. On hands and knees, lurching from side to side, she crawled back to the fire. Collapsing on the buffalo rug, she curled into a fetal position and willed her head to stop spinning, to stop distorting the images around her.

Dominique lay still, straining for lucid thought, searching for some understanding of what was going on inside her muddled head. Then her brain sent its final message just before she passed out: The odds of surviving this little adventure, or even the night, were as good as finding an orchid blooming on the snow-dusted riverbanks.

Chapter 2

Jacob Redfoot sighed with satisfaction, and then rolled over onto his back. He glanced over at Spotted Feather and smiled. A Lakota woman knew how to serve a man, knew when to speak and when not to. What arrogance made the crazy woman in his lodge think he would seek or find this kind of gratification with her—in the arms of a white woman—even if he
was
born of the same kind?

Surprised by the disturbing, unbidden thought, he clenched his fists in anger.
I am Lakota,
he grumbled inwardly. He had become one nearly twenty winters past on the day a Crow raid destroyed his family. Chief Gall of the Hunkpapa Sioux tribe had found him, a frightened trembling child, and taken him in as his own. Forced by circumstance to accept the Lakota life as a youngster, when Jacob grew to manhood, Chief Gall offered him a choice: to return to the people of his birth and make a place for himself in white society, or to remain with the Lakota and prove himself as a warrior. The choice had been easy. The Lakota were the only family he knew, the only people he trusted. Until he'd found the crazy white woman, he'd almost forgotten the physical differences between himself and his adopted family.

Shaking off the troubling thoughts, Jacob slammed his fist into the rug and again growled, "I am Lakota."

"Have I not pleased you?" a small voice whispered at his side.

"Yes, Spotted Father, you have pleased me well. Now silence your tongue if you do not wish to anger me." Half expecting her to make some kind of reply, Redfoot laughed at his own folly, and then turned his back to her.

Although she'd been widowed only a few short weeks, already this berry-skinned woman was easing the pressure on many a warrior's loins, giving of herself, but never asking for anything in return. The complete opposite of the golden-haired woman he'd pulled from the river. How did the white men manage if all their women were like this "gift" he'd found along the frozen banks of the Missouri?
Why
had he even bothered to save her from the icy grave?

But he knew, of course. It wasn't just that cloud of golden red hair floating among the chunks of ice that beckoned him, nor was it her white-skinned beauty. Redfoot would have pulled a worthless Crow warrior out of those icy waters—even if only to kill him later in hand-to-hand combat. That way, it would be a fair death, an honorable end to an otherwise useless life.

Angered as he thought of the Lakota's most hated enemy, the Crow, Redfoot allowed his mind to drift back to the woman, to her glorious multicolored hair. Red, gold, and yellow streaked her curls, as if the Great Spirit himself had dipped his fingers into a fiery sunset, an early morning's dawn, and a starlit night, then passed them through the silken strands of her hair. His breath caught as he thought of the locks so like the stars, the color of which reminded him of the woman he'd once called Mother.

His throat tightened. Redfoot swallowed hard and rolled onto his side. He'd been expecting this, yet still memories of another time, another heritage, shook him, rolling his gut into a tight ball. How would he manage when the Lakota's plans for him finally reached a climax and he returned to the world of the whites? Would memories of this past life, of the gentle yellow-haired woman of long ago, cloud his judgment, jeopardize those he now called family? He wouldn't,
couldn't,
let such thoughts interfere with his mission. He would have to find a way to harden his mind and heart to the past and to the woman whose presence seemed to draw this forgotten part of him to the surface.