Shawnee Bride

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.”

Chapter Three

Wolf Heart caught the subtle widening of her eyes. He saw the terror that glinted in their clear green depths. He felt the tension in her slim white foot where it balanced on his bent knee. The girl had courage. Perhaps too much courage for her own good.

At first, when she had defied him, even teased him, he had thought her merely foolish. Now he saw that she was well aware of her danger. Even so, she hid her fear, masking it with boldness.

“Tell me,” she demanded, fixing him with a brazen gaze. “What is your name?”

“In your tongue, my name means Wolf Heart,” he said, bending close to twist a stubborn thorn from her heel. She winced as it came free, the small wound oozing blood. How could she have walked so far on those sore, tender feet without a whimper of complaint?

“I mean your real name,” she persisted annoyingly.

He froze, scowling up at her. “I just told you my real name.”

“All right, -then, your old name. Your Christian name.”

“Seth Johnson.” The long-forgotten syllables were hard to form. They left him wanting to rinse out his own mouth for having spoken them.

“My name is Clarissa. Clarissa Rogers,” she said lightly, as if she were meeting some swain at a party. “May I call you Seth?”

“No.” Wolf Heart carefully brushed the last of the dirt and twigs from her left foot, wishing she would be quiet and leave him alone. But, he sensed she was formulating more questions, and he knew that she would allow him no peace until she had her answers.

“Since you’re bound to ask, I was adopted by the Shawnee when I was eleven years old,” he said. “They raised me as one of their own. I am Shawnee, and my true name is Wolf Heart.”

A quiver passed through her fragile body as he lifted her right foot, cradling it, for the space of a heartbeat, between his big rough hands.

“And did the Shawnee try you as they will try me?” she asked, lowering her voice to a taut whisper.

“Yes.” He worked a small, sharp stone from the ball of her foot and used his finger to stanch the bead of crimson blood it left behind.

“Tell me about it,” she said. “I want to be ready.”

“When you need to know, then I will tell you.” He gazed down at her bruised, bleeding legs, trying not to think of the gauntlet and what it would do to her pale flesh. At that moment, he wished with all his heart she could be spared the ordeal. But that was not the Shawnee way.

“Are you hungry?” He spoke into the gulf of silence that had fallen between them.

“I could probably force myself to eat a bite or two.” Her eyes glittered defiance. “Untie my wrists, and I’ll help myself to whatever you’re serving.”

Wolf Heart hesitated, then shook his head, knowing he could not trust those swift hands of hers unfettered. “First I will finish with your feet,” he said decisively. “Then I will feed you myself.”

He drew his own steel hunting knife and saw her shrink back from him, her eyes as startled as a doe’s. Without speaking, he seized a handful of her ragged petticoat and began slashing a strip as wide as his hand from around the hem.

Her spunk returned as she realized what he was doing. “You owe me for one fine English petticoat!” she bantered.

“I’ll pay you in food.” He finished cutting the strip and began wrapping it in tight layers around her foot. The cloth would wear out rapidly, but at least it should protect her bleeding soles long enough to reach the canoe.

The girl watched him in tense silence as he worked. Clarissa. His mind toyed with her name, turning it over like a glistening river stone. It was a flower name, a name that whispered of pink satin ribbons, dancing slippers and tea in thin little china cups. Clarissa.

“What happened to your family?” she asked, the question pushing into his thoughts. “Did the Shawnee kill them?”

He shot her a glare. “No. I was an orphan. Even that is more than you need to know.”

“I’m an orphan, too,” she said, studying him with those disconcerting eyes. “My brother Junius sent me to Fort Pitt to find a husband.”

“And did you find one?” He had finished wrapping her left foot and started on her right. He was looking down as he spoke and, thus, was totally unprepared for the responding tinkle of laughter. It was a musical sound, as light as the trill of a bird. He glanced up at her, halfstartled.

“Find a husband? Gracious, no!” she exclaimed, her pale cheeks dimpling. “Unless, of course, you’d be willing to fill the job. Junius isn’t fussy. He just wants me out of the way.”

Wolf Heart bent his attention to the wrapping of her foot. Shawnee girls could also be bold and saucy. That he knew all too well. Yet this fragile creature, bruised, starved and probably frightened half to death, was the most impudent female he had ever met in his life. Her spirit moved and astounded him.

But he could not soften toward her, Wolf Heart admonished himself. This intriguing prisoner was not his to judge. She belonged, even now, to the people of his tribe, and he could not let himself be swayed, either by her fragile beauty or by her white blood. Her fate was out of his hands.

“You need to eat.” He reached into the small parfleche that hung at his waist, drew out a thin strip of smoked venison and thrust it toward her.

“Ugh! What’s that?” She drew back, wrinkling her elegant nose m distaste. “It looks awful and smells even worse!”

“It’s just deer meat,” Wolf Heart said irritably.

He tore off a small chunk from the dark, dry slab. Her gaze widened sharply as his fingers moved the morsel toward her mouth. “It looks raw,” she said, shrinking away from him.

“Smoked and salted. Try it.”

She shook her head in a show of defiance. This, Wolf Heart swiftly realized, was to be a contest of wills. “How long has it been since you ate?” he demanded.

“What difference does it—” Her question ended in a choking sound as he shoved the sliver of meat into her open mouth, seized her jaw between his two hands and held it shut. Inches from his own, her green eyes blazed like a bobcat’s.

“You are going to eat if I have to stuff this down your throat!” he said in a low, menacing voice. “Now chew!”

Her gaze shot daggers as he held her, his fingers framing her temples, his thumbs bracing her jaw. She smelled of river moss, and her cheeks were as soft as the petals of the wild hawthorn blossom. A vein throbbed beneath the translucent skin of her throat.

Wolf Heart found himself growing acutely aware of her body and the way the mud-stiffened bodice of her gown had molded to her small, perfect breasts. He remembered their savage struggle on the riverbank, her slim legs tangling so wildly with his own. Even now, the thought of it triggered a freshet of heat that trickled downward to pool in his loins.

This was not good, he lectured himself. Being this close to her was filling his head with thoughts that would only weaken his resolve and make everything more difficult. Clarissa Rogers was nothing but a red-haired bundle of trouble. She was the kind of female who could get under a man’s skin and fester there like a blackberry spine. He would be a fool not to keep a safe distance.

With a sharp exhalation, he forced himself to let her go. She sagged backward, her gaze searing his senses.

“Very well, I won’t force you to eat,” he said evenly. “But you’re going to need all your strength in the days ahead. Your life will depend on it, Clarissa. That much I can promise you.”

For an instant her pride wavered. Then a single tear glimmered in her angry eyes. Without a word, she began to chew the venison he had given her, gingerly at first, then with ravenous hunger. Her swanlike throat jerked as she swallowed.

Bit by bit, he fed her nearly half of the smoked venison. She might have eaten it all, but Wolf Heart feared that so much meat on an empty stomach might make her sick.

Her eyes watched him guardedly as he replaced the leftover meat in the parfleche. She had not uttered a word the whole time she was eating. Only now, as he stepped back and motioned for her to stand, did she clear her throat and speak.

“Don’t expect me to thank you for the food,” she said. “If you really want my thanks, you’ll untie me and let me go.”

“You wouldn’t last a day out here on your own.” He stepped back onto the trail and waited for her to take her place in front of him. She moved obediently ahead, then swung angrily back to face him.

“Are my chances any better with the Shawnee?” she flared. “What if I don’t pass my so-called trial? What if I’m not judged worthy to live? What then? Why don’t you just kill me here and now?”

Wolf heart met her eyes, steeling himself against the fear in their green depths—the fear that was already eating away at his conscience. He remembered his own boyhood ordeal, the stark terror that had kept him on his feet and driven him through the gauntlet. Maybe it would be the same for Clarissa. Her delicate body housed a fighting spirit, that much he already knew. But would it be enough?

She glared up at him with the ferocity of a trapped animal, and for an instant Wolf Heart was tempted to reveal everything she would be facing. He swiftly checked himself. Knowing would only heighten her fear. It would only serve to worsen her ordeal.

He forced himself to give her a hard look. “Turn around and walk, Clarissa,” he said quietly. “We have a long way to go.”

The canoe lay at the river’s edge, concealed by a thicket of overhanging willows. Fashioned of birch bark, the brown inner side facing outward, it was an elegant little craft, as sleek and graceful as the point of a spear.

The sight of it filled Clarissa with a mingled rush of relief and dismay. Wolf Heart had set a grueling pace on the trail, draining every drop of her endurance. Bone weary and sore, she welcomed the prospect of resting her battered feet. But reaching the canoe also meant they were nearing the Shawnee village where she would face a fate so terrible that he had refused even to speak of it.

Tossing her hair out of her eyes, she slumped against a tree. She could feel Wolf Heart’s keen blue eyes watching her every motion, but he had not touched her since their encounter over the meat. He had scarcely spoken, in fact; not even earlier, when she’d insisted that he turn his back while she squatted wretchedly in the grass to relieve herself. He had shut himself away to become as silent and mysterious as the forest itself.

His sun-gilded body glistened with sweat as he bent to slide the canoe into the river. Except for his eyes, this man, christened Seth Johnson, could have passed for a full-blooded Shawnee. He had dark bronze skin overlaying a lithe, muscular body. His flowing black hair and liquid way of moving blended with the elements of wind and water, sunlight and shadow. His face was satin smooth with no trace of beard. How could that be? Clarissa wondered. Perhaps later she would ask him—if she lived long enough.

The canoe lay rocking gently in a shallow bed of water. “Climb in,” Wolf Heart ordered her gruffly. Then, seeing that she would not be able to balance in the wobbly craft with her hands tied, he straightened, moved close to her and began loosening the knot of the leather thongs that bound her wrists.

Clarissa stood very still, her heart hammering as she felt the brush of his fingertips and the stir of his breath in her hair. His skin smelled lightly of rain and wood smoke. She fought the strange compelling urge to strain forward and taste him with the tip of her tongue.

For the space of a breath, time seemed to freeze. Then the leather thong fell away, freeing her arms. He stepped back as Clarissa rubbed the circulation into her tingling wrists.

“No tricks,” he warned her gruffly, “or I’ll truss you up like a dead deer and sling you into the bottom of the canoe.”

She nodded, more in acknowledgment than promise. If any chance arose to escape, Clarissa knew she would take it.

He crouched to hold the canoe’s edge until she could sit down in the prow, facing forward with her muddy ragged skirts piled around her. “Hang on to that cross brace,” he said, his glance indicating a smooth wooden bar in front of her. “There’s some rough water out there.”

She twisted back to look at him. “You don’t have to do this,” she pleaded. “Let me go and forget you ever saw me. I’ll take my chances in the woods.”

The only answer to her plea was the subtle tightening of Wolf Heart’s jaw.

Clarissa felt the canoe scrape the bottom of the shallow inlet as he took his place behind her and pushed off with the paddle. Swiftly they glided out into the flooded river.

Clarissa gasped as the flood-swollen current struck the canoe, sweeping it into an eddy, swirling it around and around like a windblown leaf. She clung white knuckled to the brace, spray lashing her cheeks as the bow dipped and danced through the water. Haunted by the nightmare ride on the flatboat, she battled rising waves of panic.

Behind her, she could hear Wolf Heart laboring with the paddle. She could hear the deep, steady passage of air in and out of his powerful lungs. He was not afraid, she suddenly realized. He knew the river’s nature and how to use it, how to move in harmony with the current, not against it.

Clarissa felt her fear easing. She leaned forward, the breeze lifting her hair as the water foamed along the narrow bow. Her hands kept their tight grip on the cross brace. Except for the persistent churning of her stomach she could almost believe she was going to survive this wild ride.

Moments later they shot out of the rapids and entered a calmer stretch of water. Clarissa slumped over the bow. “Are you all right?” she heard Wolf Heart ask.

“I’m just dandy,” she snapped, feeling dizzy and nauseous. “For someone who’s been half-drowned, forcemarched barefoot through the woods, stuffed with halfraw meat and taken on a giant whirligig ride, I’m doing magnificently! Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

She leaned over the side of the bobbing canoe and proceeded to lose everything he had so insistently fed her.

Behind her, dead silence had fallen. In the midst of that silence she heard Wolf Heart chuckle. The sound was so deep and warm and startling that, for all her miserable condition, it sent a shock of pleasure through her body-pleasure that was swiftly replaced by outrage. Shawnee or white, this backwoods ruffian had no right to laugh at her discomfort.

She turned around and shot him a malevolent glare, only to see him grinning broadly at her. “Clarissa Rogers, you’re a caution,” he said.

“A caution?” She shook her head at the homeyness of the word, coming as it did from a bare-chested savage with silver disks in his ears and two eagle feathers jutting from his scalp lock. “I have no idea what you mean by that!”

Sunlight rippled on his massive shoulders as he maneuvered the canoe expertly around a large boulder. “You’ve been through enough to undo most white women,” he said. “But you still haven’t lost your spunk.”

“I can see you don’t know much about white women!” Clarissa huffed, still feeling light-headed. “Did you expect me to swoon? Did you expect me to whimper and cry like a helpless little ninny? For your information, I’m way beyond that now. I’ve long since had all the crying scared out of me!”