Shawnee Bride

Turning her back on him, she frowned down at the greenish brown river, wondering how deep it was. If she could touch bottom, she might be able to wade ashore and flee into the woods. She would be taking a dangerous chance, but even drowning could prove to be a kinder fate than the unknown terrors awaiting her in the Shawnee village.

“Where do you come from?” she asked, resolving to bide her time and wait for exactly the right spot in the river. “Your speech, some of the things you say—you don’t sound as if you started life in a log hut on the Allegheny.”

When he did not answer, Clarissa realized she had stepped on to forbidden ground. As a man who had buried his past, Wolf Heart was clearly uncomfortable with her question.

“Very well, if you won’t talk, I will,” she said, setting out to distract him with chatter. “My father was a cloth merchant. He owned one of the finest shops in Baltimore. He and my mother were very happy, as I recall, but she died when I was six, and the rest of my upbringing was left to our housekeeper, Mrs. Pimm.”

She spoke into the breeze, letting her words float back to the brooding presence behind her. “My father passed away seven years ago, and, of course, my brother Junius, who was already grown, inherited the house and the business. We never did get on well, Junius and I. He’s made no secret of counting the days until I take my dowry and leave him alone with his precious, moldy, old ledger books.”

Clarissa glanced back over her shoulder to see if Wolf Heart was listening. His stony face had assumed a mask of studied indifference.

“My dowry includes a fine ten-acre parcel of land just outside the city and fifty pounds in gold,” she continued, ignoring his silence. “All of it, of course, will go to my husband when I marry.”

Her voice trailed off as it struck her that, in all likelihood, she would not live to bestow her dowry, or herself, on any future husband. Her land and money would go to the penny-pinching Junius, to gather dust with the rest of his possessions. Her bones would lie in unmarked earth, somewhere in this alien wilderness, unmourned and unremembered.

Tears blurred Clarissa’s sight. She blinked them furiously away, determined not to show emotion before her grim captor. Straightening her shoulders, she cleared her throat to speak again, but no words would come. Her hands whitened on the cross brace as the silence grew more and more oppressive.

“I was born in Boston.” Wolf Heart’s voice, low and husky behind her, sent a tremor through Clarissa’s body. “My father was a schoolmaster, a good and gentle man until my mother died. Then he took to drink, and that changed everything.”

He lapsed into silence once more, and Clarissa sensed the struggle that raged inside him. He was not a man who revealed himself easily, that she already knew. This slow opening of his past left her strangely touched, as if, in exchange for her empty prattle, he had presented her with a rare and valuable gift.

Quiet minutes passed, broken only by the ripple of the water and the calls of morning songbirds. At last he cleared his throat and spoke again, each word laced with the pain of memory.

“The whiskey turned my father into a violent, foulmouthed stranger. The more he drank, the more he cursed and beat me. I should have run away, but I was only a boy, and he was all the family I had.

“After we lost our home to the moneylenders, he began having grand dreams about making a fortune in the fur trade. He hired both of us out until he’d saved enough for traps. Then we headed west—farther west than any reasonable white man would have gone alone. We were trapping beaver near the mouth of the Little Miami when a bear came charging out of the willows. She grabbed my father before he could even turn around.” Even now, Wolf Heart’s words quivered with self-blame. “I couldn’t save him. All I could do was run for my life.” He emptied his lungs in a ragged exhalation. “The boy named Seth Johnson died that day. He was reborn as a Shawnee.”

Stillness lay like a wall between them, growing thicker, heavier. “The Shawnee found you and took you in?” Clarissa prompted when she could bear it no longer.

“They offered me everything I thought I’d lost,” he said. “Family. Honor. Kindness. A life filled with meaning and purpose.”

“And when they put you on trial—” a bitter undertone had crept into Clarissa’s voice “—did you prove yourself worthy to live among them?”

“Yes.”

She strained to hear his half-whispered reply.

“As I have had to prove myself many times over. Even now.”

The canoe shot forward as he drove the paddle hard into the current. Clarissa stared bleakly ahead—trees, willows and water blending into streaks of muted spring color. She knew now why Wolf Heart had taken her prisoner, and why he would never let her go. To show compassion for a white captive would prove, to him and to all his adopted tribe, that he was not a true Shawnee. He would be an outcast, torn from a world he had come to know and love.

She could expect no mercy from him.

They were passing through a level stretch of river. Here the floodwaters had crept outward across the bottomlands to form a lake, so calm and glassy that the current was scarcely visible. Clarissa stared down at the clouded water, wondering what lay beneath it. Surely, with the river spread so wide, it could not be more than a few feet deep in any spot. Better yet, the bank on the near side was thick with brush and willows. If she could reach them, it might be possible to duck beneath the water, then surface and hide in the shelter of the trailing branches until Wolf Heart gave her up for drowned.

Clarissa’s mind reeled with the daring of her idea. It was a reckless scheme, to be sure. But a fighting chance at escape was better than no chance at all.

She glanced back at Wolf Heart, hoping to catch him off guard. He was watching her intently.

“How far is your village?” she asked in a ploy to lure him back into conversation.

“Not far.” His paddle rippled through the silky water. “We will be there before sundown.”

“You were a long way from home when you found me,” she ventured. “What were you doing?”

“Trailing a bear.”

“A bear?” Clarissa’s reflexes jerked. She imagined herself lying unconscious on the riverbank, the monstrous beast lumbering out of the trees to sniff at her inert body.

“It came to nothing,” Wolf Heart said. “I lost the trail not long before I found you.”

“At least you won’t be coming home empty-handed.” Clarissa made a show of finger-combing her matted curls, drawing his gaze upward as, beneath her skirts, her legs shifted for the leap to freedom. Her pounding heart seemed to fill her whole chest and throat as she tensed, then sprang upward and hurled herself out over the surface of the river.

For the barest instant she hung suspended between sun and water. Then the cold strangling wetness closed around her and she began to sink. Her kicking feet groped for the bottom that, by all reason, should have been within easy reach. It was not there.

Too late, Clarissa realized how wrong she had been. The nver was far deeper here than it had appeared from the surface, and now its strong undertow was pulling her down. Her bursting lungs released a trail of bubbles in the darkness. Her mouth gulped for air and took in water. Her legs and arms thrashed frantically as her oxygenstarved mind began to dim.

She was already beginning to drown.

Chapter Four

Wolf Heart cursed under his breath—a white man’s curse—as his prisoner plunged over the side of the canoe and vanished headlong into the brown swirl of water. His annoyance was directed more at himself than at Clarissa Rogers. He should have known she would try something like this.

His first impulse was to dive in after her, but he swiftly checked himself. To jump into the river would mean losing the canoe and all his provisions. It would be easy enough to paddle to shore ahead of her. That way he would be there waiting to confront her when she staggered, dripping and exhausted, onto the bank.

He turned the canoe broadside to the current, expecting at any moment to see Clarissa’s head bob into sight, her russet hair streaming behind her like a long wet foxtail as she stroked through the water. The undercurrent was strong in this part of the river, but the bank was no more than a stone’s throw away. A good swimmer would be able to cover the distance in a few minutes’ tune. And surely, if Clarissa was not a good swimmer, she would not have jumped.

Seconds passed, measured in long deep breaths and expectant heartbeats. More seconds crawled by, and still she did not appear. Wolf Heart’s instincts shrilled in alarm as he realized something was wrong.

In a flash his lean body knifed into the river, leveling out an arm’s length below the surface. Water filled his vision, so murky with silt that he could barely see his own hands, let alone any sign of Clarissa.

Sick with dread he stroked deeper, heading downstream, the way the current would have carried her. The boyhood ordeal by which he had earned his pa-waw-ka served him well now. Every morning, for four long winter moons, he had forced himself to dive naked into the frigid river. On the final day, with the whole village looking on, he had made three dives, the last one carrying him beneath the ice to the Ohio’s dark bed, where his searching hand had clasped the translucent shell he carried now in his medicine pouch.

That long dive came back to him now as he groped for Clarissa’s slender, elusive body. He remembered the fear, the darkness, the deadly cold. As he had once found his pa-waw-ka, he knew he had to find her.

Lungs bursting, he surfaced at last. His eyes scanned the milky surface of the river as he gulped air, then dove again. Could she be playing with him, hiding somewhere out of sight, laughing behind her hands as he searched frantically in the water? He would not put that past the little vixen—but no, a black inner certainty told him the danger was real.

The current was rougher here. Wolf Heart could feel its pull as the river swept him toward an outcrop of rocks. If he did not find her soon…

His pulse leaped as his fingers brushed a mass of flowing hair, long and fine and silky to the touch. He seized it, and in the next instant felt her head, her throat, her face. He reached lower and caught her waist. She did not respond.

With a wrenching tug, he pulled her body clear from where it had wedged between two underwater boulders. She drifted beside him, as lifeless and unresisting as a doll, as he kicked for the surface, made a final upward lunge and broke with her into the sunlight.

Clarissa lolled in his arms, blue from lack of air. A vein pulsed along the curve of her throat, but she was not breathing.

He plunged for the shallows, lifting her in his arms as his feet found bottom. Her wet hair fanned over his arms, its color like polished cedar. Her gown clung in water-soaked tatters to her delicately curved body. Wolf Heart glanced down at her closed eyelids, remembering her laughter, her maddening questions, her astounding courage. Bursting with effort, he surged ahead, bulling his way through the resisting water. Time and distance crept at a nightmare’s pace as he fought his way toward the river’s edge.

At last he broke free of the water, lurched onto the bank and rolled Clarissa belly-down onto the grass. With his knees, he straddled her waist, his urgent hands working her ribs, lifting, squeezing to imitate the motion of breath.

Why hadn’t he let her go free, back there in the woods? She was such a harmless creature, as fragile and innocent as a fawn. He could just as easily have trailed her back to Fort Pitt, protecting her from a distance until she reached safety. Now, whether she lived or died, it was too late. He had destroyed whatever life she had known, as surely as if he had crushed her skull with a war club.

A sudden shudder passed beneath his hands, a quiver of life that sent a thrill through Wolf Heart’s body. Knowing what must be done, he lifted her by the waist, letting her head hang down. Clarissa choked. Her corseted ribs convulsed as she vomited up a stomach full of dirty brown water.

Wolf Heart steeled himself as he lowered her trembling body to the grass and rolled her onto her back. It would have been easier if she had drowned, he lashed himself. Now, if anything, he was even more deeply torn than before.

She lay with her eyes closed, color flooding her pale cheeks as she breathed. The bodice of her gown, or what was left of it, molded wetly to her small firm breasts, the tatted edging of her camisole stained brown with river mud. The wet tangle of her hair lay pooled on the grass, framing her porcelain features with flame.

Wolf Heart looked down at her for a long moment, then glanced swiftly up at the sky, his fingertips brushing his medicine pouch.

Weshcat-welo k’weshe laweh-Pah. The words of his Shawnee mother, Black Wings, echoed in his memory. May we be strong by doing what is right.

His gaze dropped once more to Clarissa’s pale face. Weshemoneto, Master of Life, make me strong, he breathed in wordless prayer. Help me remember who I am and what I must do.

Clarissa opened her eyes to find him crouched over her, his hair dripping, his gaze deeply troubled. A muscle twitched in his cheek as their eyes met. As she stared up at him, the line of his mouth hardened into an angry scowl.

“What did you think you were doing?” he growled, the black tips of his brows almost touching above his nose. “I thought you had at least enough sense to stay in the canoe1”

“What…happened?” She blinked up at him, her mind still emerging from the fog of unconsciousness.

“You almost drowned, that’s what! Why did you try such a crazy thing, anyway?”

“I didn’t realize it would be so deep.” Clarissa’s throat felt as if she had swallowed a length of knotted hemp. Her ribs ached with every breath. The sun was a blur of light against the hot blue sky.

“You’re saying you don’t know how to swim?” He glowered down at her, angry and incredulous.

“Young ladies in Baltimore don’t usually take swimming lessons,” she retorted coldly.

“So you just jumped into a flooded river and expected

to float?”

“Of course not! I meant to wade ashore, not swim. I just underestimated the depth of the water, that’s all.”

He shook his regal head in disgust. “Did you think it would be that easy to get away from me?” he demanded.

“Not really.”

“Then why did you take such a foolish chance?”

Clarissa pushed herself up onto one shaky elbow, her hair tumbling into her water-reddened eyes. “The way I saw it, I had nothing to lose,” she said.

“Nothing to lose?” His eyes contained the fury of summer lightning. “That’s where you’re wrong. You’ve managed to lose something very important to both of us.”

His gaze flickered toward the river. Only then did Clarissa realize that the canoe was nowhere in sight. And only then, as she noticed the water drops glistening on Wolf Heart’s coppery skin, did she understand that once more she owed this man her life.

“Not only is the canoe gone,” he said with an undertone of menace, “but also my bow and arrows, my blanket and the corn cakes I was going to feed you as soon as you felt well enough to eat again. Even my parfleche was lost in the river. Now we will both go hungry.”

He rose to his full height, looming above her, his face a thundercloud. With one great fist, he caught Clarissa’s hand and jerked her upward. She staggered to her feet, her senses reeling dizzily.

“I tried to make this journey easy for you,” he said, turning her around and maneuvering her roughly ahead of him. “Youchose not to go along. Without the canoe, we have only one way to get to the village. Walk.”

It was his voice, rather than any perceived touch, that prodded Clarissa ahead. She willed one leaden foot to move, then the other. Her whole body ached. Her mouth tasted of sickness and river mud. The ground swam like water in her vision. But she would not give Wolf Heart the satisfaction of hearing so much as a whimper from her.

One foot. Then the other. She moved like a sleepwalker, conscious only of the dark presence behind her. Wolf Heart would not let her rest, she knew. He would march her all the way to his village.

She stumbled ahead, forcing each step. Then, abruptly, she blundered into a rain-filled hollow. Her leg buckled beneath her and she collapsed flat on the muddy ground.

Biting back a moan of despair, she braced her arms and worked her weight onto her knees. She would crawl if she had to, Clarissa swore, but she would die before she would beg this arrogant savage for mercy.

She inched forward, fingers clawing the mud. Suddenly the earth seemed to fall away beneath her. She gasped as Wolf Heart’s big hands enclosed her waist. His powerful arms swept her upward, turned her deftly in midair, and slung her face-backward over his shoulder. Without a word, he struck out downriver, covering the ground in long, swift-moving strides.

Dazed, Clarissa bobbed limply while the breath returned to her body. Then she began to struggle. Her legs kicked uselessly beneath the clasp of his arm. Her fists pummeled the only part of him they could reach—his muscular buttocks—only to stop abruptly when she realized she was pounding bare flesh.

Her face reddened in spite of her fear. “Put me down!” she sputtered. “Put me down this instant!”

“You’re saying you’d rather walk?” Wolf Heart did not break stride. His tone was almost pleasant, but Clarissa did not miss the edge to his question.

“That’s not the point! I’m a lady, for your information, and no man has a right to handle me this way!”

“Oh?” Disdain sharpened his voice. “And how would you like me to handle you?”

“With dignity! With respect!” Clarissa’s spirits sagged as she realized how ludicrous her demands must sound to him. Here she was, slung over his shoulder like a bag of oats. She was filthy, footsore, and facing a fate so horrible that she could not bear to imagine it. Dignity and respect had long since gone the way of the wind.

“Just let me go,” she pleaded, abandoning all pretense. “Turn your back and let me take my chances in the forest with the wild animals. Is that asking so much?”

Wolf Heart did not answer her. When Clarissa twisted her head, she could see that he was gazing upriver, his body tense and expectant

“Please, Wolf Heart,” she persisted. “I’m not your enemy. I mean your people no harm. Just leave me here. Forget you ever set eyes on me.”

His throat moved against the curve of her body. “It’s too late for that,” he said softly. “Look.”

Stooping, he lowered Clarissa’s feet to the ground. The blood rushed out of her head as she stood erect. She swayed dizzily, her vision swimming into darkness. Groping for Wolf Heart’s arm, she clung to his solid flesh with both hands. Slowly the world stopped spinning around her. Little by little her vision cleared.

She stared past him, her gaze following the sundappled river upstream. A blue heron took flight from the shallows, its long neck folded into its shoulders, its slender legs trailing behind like ribbons. Dazzled, she traced its streaking flight along the curve of the bank.

Only then did she see the three canoes. Still small in the distance, they were bearing swiftly downstream toward the sandbar where she and Wolf Heart stood.

It’s too late. His words spun in Clarissa’s mind as she stood helplessly, watching the canoes approach. It was too late to run. Too late to hide. Too late to plead for her freedom. She had run out of hope.

Wolf Heart raised an arm and waved. A lone paddler in one of the canoes waved back and, in a moment, the narrow craft had broken away from the others and was angling across the current, moving toward the bank.

Clarissa remained silent, her heart a pulsing knot of dread. Wolf Heart had not spoken to her in minutes-had not, in fact, even looked at her. He was all Shawnee now, every remnant of Seth Johnson buried beneath the visage of a warrior.

The canoe glided into the shallows. Its bow nosed up to the bank and crunched onto the sand. The brave wielding the paddle paused to rest, a grin spreading across his lean, pockmarked face.

“Tap-a-lot brother!” He greeted Wolf Heart, but his curious eyes were already devouring Clarissa in fascination. “You told us you were going to hunt bear. Is this a new kind of bear you have taken alive? No, it looks more like a fox! How splendid that red pelt will look on your bed!”

Wolf Heart scowled, his gaze flickering to Clarissa. She could not understand a word of what Cat Follower was saying, of course. But in the hours to come she would be the butt of many such good-natured jokes, and he silently ached for her. Yes, he lashed himself, he should have let her go while there was still time. Now it was too late.

“And what has become of your canoe?” Cat Follower’s grin widened, showing the gap of a missing tooth. “You look very wet, brother, as does your fox. Could it be that she spilled you both into the water? What a shame!”

“Never mind that,” Wolf Heart retorted a bit sharply. “It’s a long walk back to the village. Will your canoe carry all three of us?”

Cat Follower chuckled, one hand indicating the empty hull. “As you see, this was not a good day to go hunting. But my bad luck is your good luck. Since I have no game of my own, there is room for you, and for your whiteskinned fox, as well.”

“Then I owe you my thanks.” Wolf Heart nudged Clarissa toward the canoe. His fingertips brushed her back, feeling the fear in her taut muscles. This time, however, she did not try to fight or run away. She had no strength left.

He seated her in the prow of the canoe, then, pushing the craft off the sandbar, he slipped into place behind his friend and took up the spare paddle. Clarissa sat in rigid silence as the canoe glided into the current, her hair fluttering like a flame in the afternoon breeze.

Cat Follower’s wiry muscles rippled beneath his pockmarked skin as he guided the canoe. Years ago, his family had taken in a French trapper who had stumbled, delirious with fever, into their camp. The white man had recovered and moved on, but the sickness he carried had swept through the small Shawnee village. Only Cat Follower, then a youth of sixteen summers, had survived.

“What do you plan to do with her?” He was staring raptly at the play of sunlight on Clarissa’s hair.

“That is not for me to say.” Wolf Heart spoke around the painful tightness in his throat. “You know our law as well as I do. It is for the council to decide.”

“That will mean the gauntlet.” Cat Follower glanced back at Wolf Heart. “The council will demand it.”

“Yes, I know.”

“This one is not strong, brother. Look at her. She is as thin as a willow.”

Wolf Heart heard the note of caution in his friend’s voice, and he knew it was meant for him. Even for a man, the gauntlet was a brutal test. He could hardly expect a fragile, city-bred girl like Clarissa to weather such punishment.

Even so, as he watched her lean into the wind, her hair flying like a banner, Wolf Heart knew he could not abandon hope. “A willow bends,” he murmured quietly, “but it does not break.”

Clarissa heard the low voices behind her, speaking a tongue as alien as the chatter of wild geese or the baying of a wolf pack. The two men were talking about her—of that much she was certain. But maybe it was just as well she didn’t understand what they were saying. She was frightened enough as it was.

Her hands gripped the sides of the canoe as the slim craft sliced through a stretch of white water. The spray was cool on her skin, the canoe’s wild, careening plunges strangely exhilarating. Clarissa allowed herself to savor the moment. Soon, perhaps forever, all such pleasures would end.