Comanche Heart

by Catherine Anderson

  “That’s over and done.”

  She pressed a hand against her waist. Since his arrival her stomach had taken to doing cartwheels, fluttering crazily, sinking to her toes one minute, surging into her throat the next. “Over and done? Just like that, you think you can erase it?” She stared at him, waiting. “Did your comanchero friends kill people, Swift? Did they—rape women? Did they? Answer me!”

  Swift swallowed, determined not to let his gaze falter. “I can’t answer for what they did, Amy.”

  “Then answer for yourself. Did you steal and kill and rape? Did you?” Her voice rose to a shrill squeak.

  “I’m guilty of some of that, but not all.” A glitter crept into his eyes. “You don’t really believe I’d rape a woman. Do you? Deep down . . .”

  “You’d rape me,” she countered. “Deny that, and I’ll put on a pot of coffee. We’ll have a nice little chat, catch up, just like you wanted. Swear to me that you’ll never touch me.”

  Swift regarded her in silence, afraid for her in a way he never had been before. She looked as if an unexpected move from him might make her fly apart. Suddenly he understood what Hunter had tried to make him understand with the story about the raccoon. Amy was trapped here at Wolf’s Landing, terrified of anything or anyone that threatened to change her world.

  “You can’t swear that to me, can you, Swift?” Her voice quavered as she spoke. “If I don’t honor my promise to you, you have every intention of making me honor it. Don’t you?” She stared at him, her pupils so dilated that her huge eyes shone nearly black. “Answer me. You’ve betrayed all else between us. Please don’t add lying to the list.”

  Swift felt as if he stood on a precipice with someone nudging him to leap. He didn’t want to lie to her. But he could see the truth would terrify her, driving the wedge ever deeper between them. “I’ll never hurt you, Amy. You have my word on that.”

  The skin across her cheekbones drew taut, the delicate muscle beneath twitching, until her face became a caricature of its beauty, skeletal and harsh. “Painless rape? Where did you learn that trick?”

  Swift’s guts knotted. “Amy, for God’s sake. Why are you prodding me like this? You started in on me the minute I got here, and you haven’t let up since.”

  Amy had no answer. The last thing she should do was infuriate him, yet she couldn’t let the matter drop. She had to know what he intended. She couldn’t bear the thought of spending an entire night wondering.

  “Do you want a confrontation?” he asked softly. “For me to make threats? Is that it? So you’ll have a reason to hate me?”

  “I’ve plenty to hate you for as it is. I’m asking for honesty, if you’re capable of it anymore. I want to know what your intentions are. I think I’ve every right to that. It is my life we’re discussing. Are you too big a coward to answer me?”

  “All right, goddamn it, yes,” he said, pushing away from the table. His sudden movement made her jerk. “You want it on the line, Amy? You’re mine! You have been for fifteen years. No one forced you to betroth yourself to me. You knew exactly what you were doing. And you wanted to do it as much as I did. If you try to welsh on our agreement, I’ll force you to honor it. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  She braced herself, as if she expected him to hit her. Swift froze, his body taut, his skin clammy.

  “Do you feel better now?” he asked hoarsely. “It’s out in the open. You know where you stand. I’m here, I’m staying, and you’d damned well better figure out a way to deal with it.”

  She looked as if her legs might buckle. Swift yearned to reach for her but didn’t dare.

  “Amy.” His voice shook with emotion, foremost regret because the last thing he had ever dreamed he might do was deliberately frighten her. “Do you know the safest place you could be right now? Come here and I’ll show you. Just three steps, and I swear to your God and all mine that nothing and no one will ever harm you as long as I’ve got life left in my body.”

  She looked at his outstretched hand in horrified disbelief.

  “You trusted me once. You can trust me now. Come here and let me prove it to you. Please. . . .”

  “I trusted Swift Antelope. Swift Antelope is dead.”

  Swift felt as if she had slapped him. He slowly dropped his arm and curled his hand into a fist. “If I were dead, honey, you wouldn’t have a betrothal promise hanging over you. You’re making this a lot harder than it needs to be, and you’re going to be the one who suffers for it.”

  “Maybe, but I’ll go down fighting.” Even as she spoke she retreated a step, her voice thin and quavery. “Make no mistake in that, for I will fight you. With my last breath. I’d rather die than let a man like you put his hands on me again.”

  Brave words, but they had no force behind them. Swift studied her, and he grieved over what he saw. What had happened to the Amy he had known—the courageous girl who had once stood alone, challenging sixty Comanche warriors with a rifle she wasn’t big enough to shoot? Even if it meant losing her, he longed to see that fire back in her eyes again, if only for an instant. As Amy was now, she was only a shell—a beautiful, untouchable shell—of the woman she should have been.

  “A man like me? You know nothing about me.”

  “I know you’re not the boy I loved! That’s all I need to know.”

  “You can’t get rid of me quite that easy.” He strode toward the door and bent to pick up his hat. After he dusted it clean on his pants, he turned to regard her. “A betrothal promise is forever, Amy. I realize fifteen years is a hell of a long time, but it’s nowhere close to forever. You promised yourself to me by the central fire. Nothing and no one can change that. I’ll give you some time to get used to the idea, but not too long. The way I figure, too much time has been wasted already.”

  He opened the door.

  “Swift, wait!”

  He paused and glanced back.

  “Y-you can’t really expect me to honor a promise I made as a twelve-year-old.”

  “Yes, Amy, I really can.”

  He could see how badly she trembled, even from across the room.

  “Even though you know I’d rather die?”

  Swift ran his gaze over her. “I’m not too worried about you dying on me. You might wish you could, but wishing and doing are two different things. You can give it a try. We’ll see if you’re more successful than I was. But my advice is to spend more time getting used to the idea of marriage—just in case wishing yourself dead doesn’t work. It’d be a hell of a note to kid yourself right up until the last minute and find yourself being touched, despite all your wishing, by a man like me.”

  He waited, hoping she’d throw the challenge back in his face, but instead she only grew pale. With a sinking heart he walked out and softly closed the door.

  After a poor night’s rest, Amy awoke just after dawn to the ring of an ax. Slipping from bed, she approached the window, wondering who would be in her yard chopping wood. Pressing her face to the glass, she peered out into the grayish gloom.

  “Swift!”

  Her fingers tightened on the window sash when she spotted him. His black, collar-length hair was wind-tossed and damp with sweat, but those who didn’t know better might think it was mussed from sleep and damp from washing his face. Naked to the waist, he afforded her a view of his sun-burnished upper torso. With every movement, muscle bunched across his broad back. Except for the gun belt strapped around his waist, he looked like a man who had just crawled out of bed to chop wood for the breakfast fire. A fire that people would assume was to be built in her stove.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she called, glancing anxiously toward town to see if anyone had seen him.

  He didn’t seem to hear her. Infuriated, Amy grabbed her wrapper, shoving her arms down the sleeves as she dashed from the bedroom. When she threw the door wide and yelled the question again, he ceased swinging the ax and turned the full impact of his gaze on her, beginning at her toes a
nd working his way up to her face, his interest lingering at several points in between.

  “I’m chopping my woman’s firewood,” he explained with a lazy grin. “That is how you white folks do things, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not your woman! And I don’t appreciate your parading about my yard half-dressed. I’m a schoolteacher, Swift. Do you want me to lose my job?”

  He balanced a partially split chunk of wood on the block, stepped back, and rendered it in two with one mighty swing.

  Sputtering, Amy ran onto the porch. “You get out of here. People will see you and think you’ve been here all night.”

  “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

  She watched him split another log, her temper rising with each report of the ax. When he continued to ignore her, she braved the yard barefoot, uncertain what to do once she reached him but convinced she had to do something.

  “I said get off my place.”

  “Our place.”

  “What?”

  “Our place. What’s yours is mine, what’s mine is yours. You know how it goes.”

  “You don’t have anything but a horse.”

  “He’s one hell of a good horse, though.” His eyes met hers, dancing with mischief. “My, my, Amy, you are a fetching sight in that nightdress. From a distance, I bet we look like we’re making eyes at each other.”

  Amy felt heat rising up her neck. “Get out!”

  He gave her a measuring glance. “You giving me the boot?”

  She wanted to wrest the ax from him but didn’t quite dare. “Teaching is my life. Do you understand that?”

  “Yeah, and it’s a hell of a waste.”

  “It isn’t a waste. I like it. I love it!”

  “Fine with me. Teach to your little heart’s content. They don’t have anything against married women teaching, do they?”

  Amy stared up at him, legs quivering with rage. She knotted her hands. He noted the gesture and grinned, his laughing eyes daring her to strike him. Amy came close to accommodating him. Only the thought of what he might do in retaliation stopped her.

  “The men on the school committee will terminate me on the spot if they think I’m engaging in—in improper behavior. Unlike you, I can’t steal for a living.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her, his grin widening. “Would you listen to yourself? Are you the same girl who helped me tug all the ropes coming from Old Man’s lodge one night and then hid with me in the brush to watch all his wives run to join him in his buffalo robes? Improper, Amy?”

  Lips parted, she gazed up at him, unable to speak. It had been years since she had thought of that night. She and Swift had rolled in the grass, bent double with laughter, fighting to make no sound while Old Man tried to placate his wives. The memory hit her so suddenly and with such clarity that for a moment she nearly forgot why she was standing there. Looking into Swift’s eyes, she felt for a timeless instant as if she were floating, that there was no present, only yesterday, she a child, he a carefree young man.

  “Do you think he ever figured out it was us who tugged the ropes?” Swift asked.

  Amy blinked. Old Man had been slain in a massacre shortly after that night, murdered by border ruffians. Reality and all its harshness came sweeping back to her. With it came self-awareness. She was no longer a child, and Swift didn’t look at her as if she were. They both knew what Old Man’s wives had been hoping for when they ran so eagerly to his lodge.

  She couldn’t drag her gaze from his. To know that he, of all men, had seen her behave with such a total lack of propriety made her feel dangerously vulnerable. And here she stood, attired in nothing but a nightdress and wrapper, in what was fast approaching broad daylight. “I—” She searched desperately for something, anything, to say. “I’m going to be late.”

  With that, she turned and scurried for the house. The rhythmic sound of the ax continued the entire time she dressed for school. She grabbed a chunk of bread and an apple for lunch, then left the house, slamming the door with such force the windows shook. Swift upended the ax on the chopping block and propped an arm on the handle’s end. His gaze followed her as she swept past him in a blaze of anger. There was only one word to describe that look in his eye, predatory. And, God help her, she was his prey.

  Chapter 5

  THE FIRST THING AMY CLAPPED EYES ON WHEN she stepped inside her classroom was Swift’s black poncho hanging on the coatrack. As soon as she’d set down her books, she walked over to dispose of the disgusting thing, but when she reached for the coarse black wool, her arm began to shake. Try though she might, she couldn’t force her fingers to clasp the garment.

  Slowly the children began to filter in. Aside from the concern for her welfare because she had fainted the prior afternoon, it seemed like any other day, yet not, for she knew Swift lurked somewhere in town and that he might, at any time, appear in the doorway. Just in case, she closed the door but soon reopened it when the children began to look flushed. It was an uncommonly warm morning for October, and the classroom was a misery without some fresh air.

  Before Amy called class to order, she heard a distant popping sound. Gunfire.

  Swift always had been one to practice with his weaponry, so hearing the shots shouldn’t have surprised her. Memories assailed her, of Swift teaching her to throw a knife, his strong hands enfolding hers, his chest against her back, his deep voice whispering next to her ear. If only they could go back. If only the years hadn’t changed each of them so.

  Amy licked her lips and dragged her mind back to the present, to the gunfire. Swift was no longer a gentle boy. He had killed more men than he could count and had joked about the number last night. Not more than ninety. One was too many.

  Another volley of shots rang out. Distracted by the sound, nerves leaping, Amy relied on ingrained habit and opened the day’s lesson with arithmetic, then proceeded to spelling. When the distant sound of gunfire ceased, her senses, alert for the slightest sound, became riveted to the doorway. During recess, she refused the girls’ invitations to join them outside for a game of jacks. Instead she sat at her desk, back to the wall, nibbling her apple and trying without success to read.

  By the end of the day, Amy’s nerves had frazzled. As relieved as she felt that Swift hadn’t visited the school, she still had the remainder of the afternoon and the evening to get through. In no hurry to go home, where he was sure to find her, she sat at her desk to check her notes on the next day’s lessons.

  When a shadow suddenly fell across the room, she stiffened and glanced up to find Swift standing in the doorway. Because she hadn’t heard him approach, she dropped her gaze to his boots. His silver spurs had been removed. As much as she detested the chinking noise the spurs made, a perverse anger swept over her. Why had he taken them off? The better to sneak up on her?

  Brown-red dust coated the toes and heels of his boots. She swallowed and trailed her gaze upward. More dust clung to his pants. Dressed all in black, with his hat over his eyes and the gun belt low on his hips, he looked every bit the heartless gunslinger, the kind of man who was lightning quick to anger and deadly on the draw. The kind of man who would rule a woman’s every thought, word, and action.

  The sleeves of his shirt were rolled back over his corded forearms, as if he’d been working. The collar hung open, the top three buttons unfastened to reveal a V of bronzed chest.

  “M-may I help you?”

  “Something that belongs to me is here,” he replied silkily. “I thought I’d walk over and collect it.”

  Amy gripped the edge of the book so hard her knuckles ached. “I thought I made myself clear last night and this morning. I’m not yours. Nothing on God’s earth could convince me to marry a man who hasn’t even the common decency to remove his weapons in a schoolhouse. Hunter may not step in on my behalf, but there is law here in Wolf’s Landing. If you bother me again, I’m going directly to the jail to tell Marshal Hilton.”

  He tipped his head so the sunshine slanted under the brim of his h
at, revealing his slow, taunting grin. His hatband of silver conchae flashed into her eyes like a mirror.

  With a flick of his fingers, he unbuckled his gun belt and slung it over his shoulder as he stepped inside. “I was talking about my poncho, Amy. I worked all day with Hunter up at the mine, and it gets damned chilly if I go underground. The poncho’s the closest thing to a jacket that I’ve got.”

  “Oh.” She swallowed, feeling ridiculous. How could she have forgotten the poncho? Swift rattled her so badly that she was fortunate to recall her own name when he was around.

  So he’d been working at the mine all day, had he? No doubt catching up on old times with Hunter. That was just like a man, making threats and leaving a woman to stew, never giving it another thought, while she thought of nothing else.

  He stepped to the coatrack. “I’m sorry if I startled you. It was so late, I figured you’d be gone.”

  To her dismay, instead of collecting his poncho, he hung his gun belt on a hook and strolled around the classroom, hands clasped behind him. Her attention centered on the knife and scabbard attached to his pants belt. She recognized the hand-carved handle; he still carried the same knife he had years ago. She could almost feel the smooth wood against her palm, still warm from his hand, the thrill of hitting her mark.

  He paused before a display of drawings. “Not a bad likeness of a horse. Who drew it?”

  “Peter Crenton. His father owns the Lucky Nugget Saloon. He’s a little redheaded boy. You may have noticed him.”

  He nodded. “That carrot red hair was hard to miss.”

  “His name is in the bottom right corner.”

  “I can’t read, Amy. You know that.”

  A pang of sadness hit her at the life he had led, but she pushed it away. “What can you do, Swift? Besides ride a horse, steal from the God-fearing, and sling a gun, I mean?”

  He nudged his hat back, the movement slow and lazy, then turned to survey her, his mouth still curved in a grin. “I make love real good.”