Untamed (24 page)

He frowned, but said, "All right. What's the second?"

"When time comes for me to herd Sweetpea into town so I can convince a banker to invest in my ranch, I'll have a lot better chance of getting the money if he thinks he's bankrolling me and my husband, not a woman alone."

"Makes sense, I suppose—at least for you." Daniel hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his trousers. "I still don't see why you had to drag me into your fancy plans for the future. It wasn't my fault that Long Belly kidnapped you."

"I don't care whose fault it is. The point is that I got dragged into your life against my will. Besides," she added defensively, "I couldn't think of anything else to do but marry you."

"Damn, woman, you might have at least asked me for suggestions."

"Oh, what are you so worried about? It's not as if we'll have a real marriage. It'll just look that way until I get the loan."

He raised one eyebrow. "Father van der Velden is going to marry us tonight. How do you figure that isn't real?"

Josie rolled her eyes. "You just said that you don't ever want to get married again, right?"

"Now you're talking my language."

"Well, if you marry me but I don't live with you except on a temporary basis until I get my ranch, then you'll be married without actually having to put up with a wife. Best of all, no one else can trap you because you'll legally be married. It's perfect for you, can't you see that?"

Looking back out at the river, Daniel puzzled on this a minute, then shook his head. "All I know is that I can't think of anything worse than having you for a wife. Not only are you ornery as a mule with a burr in its blanket, you aren't worth your salt when it comes to wifely duties."

"But that's my part of the bargain," she quickly assured him. "I get my buffalo and a husband's name, and until spring, you get the best cook west of the Mississippi, a seamstress without equal, and the finest housekeeper in all the Territories."

"I do?" Daniel looked over his shoulder. "Where the hell is she?"

Josie slugged his shoulder. "I'm talking about me, you fool. I lied to you when I said that I couldn't cook or anything. I even had to force myself to keep from making our Thanksgiving supper any better than it was. I can also sew and keep house with the best of them."

Daniel glanced at her, a little too long and a little too speculatively. "If all you wanted out of this is Sweetpea, I don't see why you couldn't simply have made a deal with me for her before we came to the mission."

"I told you—I want my own ranch, and to do that, I have to get money from the bank. To do that—"

"I know, I know, but you're such a damn good liar, why couldn't you just lie to a banker about having a husband?"

It wasn't that Josie hadn't thought of that—she had. She also knew that if she'd played that card before showing her hand to the priest, Daniel would have found a way to ruin everything.

"Are you saying," she asked cheekily, "that you would have agreed to let me go back to your ranch to stake my claim on Sweetpea if I'd asked?"

Daniel's hesitation was good enough answer for Josie. "I didn't think so. And that's why you and I are getting married come six o'clock tonight."

"Just one more thing," he said, looking grim. "I have to know—that story you told me about catching a pox. Is it true?"

Josie burst out laughing. "Of course it's not true. I overhead some of the girls at Lola's talking about how worried they were about such things, but I don't even know what a pox is."

Daniel smiled then, really smiled for the first time since she'd sprung her scheme.

Then he brought up a subject she'd given little, almost no thought to.

"In that case, I guess I'm trapped, no matter what," he said, still smiling. "Since you're so gee-whizzley smart, you must have figured out by now that means you are, too."

Chapter 15

Marriage
.

The full implication of what she was about to do didn't actually hit Josie until Caleb walked her down the chapel's short aisle and she found herself standing before her husband-to-be and a priest. In fact, she didn't think about much of anything as the sisters draped her body in a pair of bedsheets they'd tacked together to form a reasonable substitute for a wedding gown, then topped her off with a veil made out of a lace altar cloth. Now all she could do was think—and fret about whether she was making the right decision.

Josie stole a glance at her groom, noting that he was the model of composure, his expression as solid and impenetrable as a pair of new barn doors. In profile, Daniel's strong, straight nose and serious brow gave his Indian heritage the dominant edge over his features, making him look the part of a full-blooded Cheyenne warrior. He'd tied his shoulder-length hair at the nape of his neck with a leather thong sporting stone arrowheads and a single eagle feather, a hurried bit of grooming that did nothing to lessen the image.

Someone—the priest, Josie assumed—had lent Daniel a clean white shirt and a long black coat that reached to mid-thigh. In keeping with his Cheyenne name, Daniel Two Skins, he wore his buckskin trousers and beaded moccasin boots beneath the jacket. No longer an invalid, he stood straight and tall, his two feet planted firmly on the floor, the picture of potent masculinity. Never before had Daniel struck her so profoundly as the product of two nations—or as a man. The very thought that soon she would call him 'husband' made Josie go weak in the knees.

Marriage
.

She heard Father van der Velden say the words, "Dearly beloved," then caution that the vows of marriage were sacred, not to be taken lightly or frivolously. Josie immediately saw in that statement the opportunity to back out of this idiotic plan and take her chances in Miles City, without benefit of Sweetpea. She hadn't forgotten Daniel's insinuation that she was as trapped as he by this marriage.

"Do you, Josephine Baum, take Daniel McCord as your lawfully wedded husband?"

"Josephine?" Daniel whispered, laughing under his breath. "Josephine?"

His amusement over her given name rattled Josie so that she completely forgot she was having doubts about going through with the wedding. Before she realized what she'd done, she'd promised to love, honor, and obey Daniel McCord until death did them part. Surprisingly enough, he made those same vows to her in return, all without so much as a whispered protest.

It didn't seem real, this long religious ceremony with constant references to God and blessings and children, and yet when it finally drew to a close and Daniel was invited to kiss his bride, Josie's were the lips he brushed with his own. A moment later, when the priest christened her Mrs. Daniel McCord, she almost fell over in a dead faint. What in the world had she gotten herself into?

Josie did manage to recover well enough from the shock of hearing herself addressed as the wife of a half-breed to enjoy a wedding supper of roasted antelope and squash. She even took a perverse pleasure in Daniel's sour expression when Father van der Velden explained that the mission did not have facilities for married couples—which meant they would have to spend their first night as man and wife in separate quarters. It wasn't until she and Daniel took a private stroll around the mission grounds that the reality of what she'd let herself in for kicked her in the gut, good and hard.

Hips swaggering with a hard-muscled cockiness she hadn't noticed in him before, Daniel slipped his arm around Josie's waist as he guided her around the windmill and toward a copse of trees between the mission and the White House. The night was still and quiet, made for lovers without so much as a wispy cloud overhead. Clusters of sparkling stars filled the inky sky and the moon was bright, casting giant elongated shadows of Josie and Daniel as a couple in the path ahead. Mesmerized by the way their phantom selves blended together so smoothly, his hard edges melting into her rounded curves until they seemed one, Josie's mind wandered to mergings of another kind.

"I want to head back to the cabin at first light," said Daniel, disrupting her indecent thoughts. "Make sure the nuns wake you in plenty of time."

"What's the hurry?" she asked, glad for the distraction. "I was kind of looking forward to a nice leisurely breakfast tomorrow morning, and maybe a nap afterward. I haven't gotten a whole lot of rest lately."

"You can rest when the next storm hits. Before that happens, I've got to deliver supplies at the reservation. I live smack between the mission and Lame Deer, so we can easily make the ride in one day."

"We?"

"I want you to ride along with me."

Pausing near a barren cottonwood tree, Josie considered the request. She had no interest in visiting the home of a bunch of no-account savages, or of making sure that a group of murdering Indians had their bellies full when her own father and brother lay dead in their graves, never to feel hunger again.

"I'd just as soon you drop me off at the cabin," she said, sure that Daniel's invitation was simply a courtesy. "I want to check on Sweetpea, then I've got a lot of cleaning to do in that house."

Daniel braced himself against the tree just above her head. He was so close she could smell their wedding wine on his lips and the lingering scent of the alkaline soap the nuns had given them for their baths. She felt rather than saw his eyes on her, hot and inquisitive.

"I'll help you with the buffalo," Daniel said, still urging her for no reason Josie could think of, to join him. "And the cabin can wait. You'll probably enjoy the ride out to Lame Deer. The deeper you get into reservation land, the thicker the forest. We might even scare up some game. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

He lowered his head and leaned into her then, confusing Josie so, she wasn't sure what the question referred meant. She only knew that she wanted Daniel to kiss her, to hold her in his arms and kiss her until she couldn't think at all anymore.

She said, "Yes," giving him permission for just about anything he had in mind.

As if sensing her hunger, apparently sharing it too, Daniel raised Josie's chin with the tip of his finger, bringing her mouth within inches of his. He looked at her for a long moment, brooding and reflective, and then slowly ran his tongue along his bottom lip. Sure her torment was about to end, Josie closed her eyes and let her head fall back.

"Then it's settled," Daniel said in a whisper. "I haven't gotten around to training The Black for dragging a travois yet, and I doubt he'd take too kindly to it, so we'll haul most of the load behind your mount. Think you can handle it?"

Disappointed, feeling robbed and embarrassed, Josie opened her eyes again. "'I can handle about anything, I guess, but what about that poor mare? How's she going to feel about having a big load like that strapped to her hips?"

Daniel grinned, blue eyes glittering. "About the same way you're going to feel with me strapped to your hips, I expect—thrilled to be of some use for a change."

Josie felt her cheeks grow hot. Never had he spoken to her so blatantly, not even when he thought she was a whore.

"Bedding you is not a part of our bargain," she said, her tummy doing a slow, sensuous roll at the memory of the pleasures his touch could ignite. "I said I'd cook, sew, and clean. Nothing else."

"Bedding me became an unspoken part of our bargain the minute you took your vows." Still grinning, he ran a finger down the front of her dress, lingering there at the sensitive juncture of her thighs. "Why are you so worried about that part of our deal? You already know that you won't be the least bit disappointed."

Daniel had the audacity to wink at her then, irritating Josie even as he turned her insides into a kettle of hot mush. She tried to think of something equally glib in reply, but before she could, he pulled her close and lightly kissed her forehead.

"See you at first light, Missus McCord." Then he turned her around and gave her a shove toward the White House, adding, "Don't be late."

* * *

The following morning, as Josie finished saddling the mare, Caleb strolled out to the barn to say good-bye. Gone were the nervous gestures and darting glances he'd developed since riding away from his father's home. He almost seemed at peace.

"The nuns wanted you to have this," he said, handing Josie the altar cloth she'd worn as a veil. "They thought every gal would want to have some kind of memento from her wedding. Maybe you ought to put it on now. At least then you'll look a little more like the white girl you used to be."

She whirled on him. "What's that supposed to mean?" Caleb pointed out her apparel. "Criminy, ain't you had a look at yourself lately?"

While she knew she wasn't exactly a female model of decorum in buckskin trousers, Josie hadn't thought of herself as looking particularly different. She just knew that she'd never before known such freedom of movement—a commodity for a future cattle rancher worth all the snickers and stares of polite society.

She gave Caleb a shrug. "You try riding herd or mending fences wearing a skirt and petticoats. See how much you like being trapped in yards of lace and calico."