He pulled her closer to the bank and stopped where they could stand shoulder-deep in the water. Patiently, he taught her how to swim. She was a quick and enthusiastic learner, and they spent the afternoon splashing and laughing at her mistakes until finally she was ready to try it alone.
“I’ll go to the middle and you come out to me. You can do it, Theodora. Just remember everything we’ve practiced. And don’t forget to breathe and kick.”
Blade swam to the deeper part and turned to face her. “All right. Come on,” he gently urged.
Trust overcame her fears. Theodora slipped into the water and paddled to him. Her hard-won goal was reached, and she gasped for breath. She was exultant. “I did it! I did it!” she cried, laughing in his arms.
Blade looked into her shining eyes with water drops sparkling on their fringe of long lashes. Entranced by her beauty. he gazed upon the upturned face, wet and glowing, the golden hair dark with water and falling in one long braid behind her back. He chuckled mischievously. Taking her with him, he dropped under the water, kicking them farther and farther below the surface.
Just when Theodora thought she could last no longer, he allowed them to begin their ascent.
Embracing him fiercely, she surfaced with her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, her bare legs entwined with his strong ones, her breasts taut against his muscled chest. She gasped for breath and panted in his ear, her cold, wet cheek pressed to his. “For God’s sake, Blade, why did you do that?”
With her body clinging to his, Blade smiled. Passion lit his eyes. “I’m sorry, little scholar. I couldn’t help myself.”
He kissed her, his firm mouth covering hers, his tongue boldly demanding entrance to plunder its softness. They slipped under the water again, and he pulled her with him toward the shore while his hands slid up and down her back and ever her slender hips.
When they surfaced once more, Theodora clung to him as though her life depended upon it. But this time she realized what he was doing and was no longer frightened. “Don’t you dare let go of me,” she teased, as her laughter rang out in the quiet afternoon.
“Don’t worry, vehona,” he answered, and his lips softly brushed hers. One strong hand cupped her buttocks, bringing her firmly against his lean, muscular body. “I haven’t the least intention of ever letting you go.”
She looked into his eyes and saw in their jet-black depths the mysterious longing she felt within herself. The world around them seemed to stand still.
The spell was broken by the sound of Tom’s voice. “Okay, Teddy, I’m ready to help with the lesson now.” He waded into the water, dressed only in breeches. “I’m sorry I’m so late. I started playing cards with Private Belknap and forgot the time.” Sheepishly, he grinned at them and shrugged. “But I won a pair of cavalry gloves from him.”
As Blade released her, Theodora stared in dismay at Tom. She’d completely forgotten that her brother had promised to join them in only a few minutes. Mortified, she avoided the captain’s dark eyes as they watched her with haunting intensity. “Watch me, Tom,” she called, pinning a bright smile on her face. “Wait there and I’ll swim in to you.”
After the swimming lesson Theodora had determined to treat Blade Roberts with complete detachment, believing that an attitude of regal indifference would deflate his presumptuous treatment of her faster than one of embarrassment or defiance. She’d stomped out of the water dripping wet and boiling mad. At herself.
She’d let him do it to her again.
After all her resolutions to keep the cheeky, brazen man at arm’s length, she’d let him kiss her. And more than just kiss, she admitted. The memory of his strong fingers curving over her backside, covered only by the thin, soaking wet pantaloons, brought a hot flush to her skin. Why did she allow him to take such shameless familiarities with her? She knew there would never be anything between them. Discounting all that Lieutenant Fletcher had told her about Blade’s uncivilized background—for Wesley’s eagerness to spread gossip made her question his motives, if not his veracity—she and the captain were as mismatched as a Thoroughbred racer and a plow horse. There could never be any relationship between them except a light flirtation. And as inexperienced as she was, still she doubted that Blade was interested in anything more than a carefree dalliance. His promise to Colonel Kearny to the contrary, the bold captain was taking liberties he had no business even dreaming about.
So when he approached her at mess that evening, she avoided meeting his gaze. And when he asked politely for a second cup of coffee, she pretended not to hear him, letting Twiggs spring up to wait on the impertinent officer. Instead, with a flirtatious smile, she offered a second helping to Wesley Fletcher and sat down on a log beside him while he ate. This time when the handsome lieutenant criticized their commander, she was ready to listen.
Seated on the ground next to them, Ezekiel Conyers lit his pipe. When Fletcher excused himself to check on the evening pickets, Conyers’s dark brown eyes watched him leave through a wreath of smoke.
“Reckon it’s mighty easy to talk about a man behind his back.” Conyers said to no one in particular. “Specially if ’n yore a yeller-livered polecat.”
Theodora stiffened and grasped her plate on her lap with both hands. “I’m not frightened of Captain Roberts. He’s officious and overbearing. And I’m not afraid to tell him so to his face.”
Conyers took the stem of his pipe out of his mouth and tamped on the tobacco in the corncob bowl. “Well, those are pow’rful big words for a li’l gal. But if by ‘officious’ you mean the cap’n expects his orders to be obeyed ’thout question, yore dam tootin.’ Out here on the prairie you only get one mistake. But if ’n it’s sum’pin’ else has you all riled up, I’d jest as soon stay outta it.”
Theodora looked down at the eagle feather in the scout’s hatband and grew thoughtful. “You speak Cheyenne, don’t you, Zeke?”
“Yep.”
“What does vehoka mean?”
“ ‘Little white woman.’ ”
She pursed her lips and looked across the campsite at the tall captain with narrowed eyes. “And what does vehona stand for?”
The Kentuckian took his time and puffed on his pipe before answering her. “Well, now, Miss Gordon, that thar title means ‘princess.’ ”
Turning this information over in her mind, Theodora placed her dish on the grass by her feet. “I can understand vehoka, Zeke, but why does he call me ‘princess’? Is Captain Roberts making fun of me?”
“Maybe so. Cain’t never tell with the cap’n. In’jun braves are taught from the time thar knee-high to a grasshopper not to show thar feelin’s. One thing I’ve larned, though, is that under that cool mask of his the cap’n has the doggonedest sense of humor. But I don’t rightly think Blade Stalker’s laughin’ at you, li’l gal. Sum’pin’ tells me he takes you more seriously than any other member of this hyar whole pack train.”
“Blade Stalker?” she repeated with curiosity.
“That thar’s his Cheyenne handle. In’jun’s are given names with meanin’s.”
Theodora waited to hear the meaning of such a ferocious title, but the scout just sat and quietly drew on his pipe. ,
“Well,” she said at last, “what’s the significance behind the captain’s Indian name?”
Zeke eyed her thoughtfully. “Reckon I’ll let the cap’n tell you that, pun’kin. When he’s ready to.”
The next day the nomads reached the river the French Canadians called La Riviere Plate. Winding across the prairie with a monotonous beauty of its own, the river had cut a path through the tall buffalo grasses over the countless years, carrying the melting snow and silt from the faraway mountains down to the muddy Missouri.
“The Omaha and Otoes called the river N.i bthaska, meaning ‘flat water,’ ” Blade explained to Theodora as they rode along its bank.
He’d ridden beside her all that day, breaking down her cool indifference bit by bit. He knew she couldn’t resist the wealth of information w
ith which he bombarded her, and he tantalized her with stories of the early French trappers who had first traversed the plains. Self-conscious and shy, she listened politely, like visiting royalty deigning to accept the homage of some minor dignitary. He knew the reason for her studied composure, but wisely refrained from mentioning their impassioned kiss.
With some discomposure of his own, Blade suspected that what he felt for her went beyond the obvious physical attraction. He wanted her more than any woman he’d ever known. The fact that she was betrothed to some wealthy New York entrepreneur named Martin Van Vliet didn’t bother him in the least. If it weren’t for the promise he’d made to Colonel Kearny, he’d be free to pursue her himself. The idea of seducing the golden-haired beauty conjured up pleasant images. But his word as an officer stood between him and Theodora Gordon, and Kearny couldn’t have built a more impregnable barrier. Blade had given the colonel his sworn promise that he would protect the young woman—from himself, if need be.
The princess was as safe as if she sat atop a glass mountain. As she rode beside Captain Roberts, Theodora leaned forward and absently patted Athena’s glossy neck with her gloved hand. Blade’s near presence brought back every vivid detail of the recent swimming lesson. How could she so easily forget the man she was engaged to marry? she accused herself.
She’d first met Martin Van Vliet when she was fifteen and he was thirty-four. She’d accompanied her father to the publisher’s office in Manhattan where Charles Gordon attempted to sell his book on the classification of plants. Although Martin seemed more interested in her than in her father’s scholarly manual, he agreed to publish it. In the years that followed the financier kept in touch with the Gordons, and while Theodora was at Mount Holyoke, he traveled from New York to see her. Martin had never pursued her romantically during those first years, though she sensed he had had more than a platonic interest in her from the beginning. He seemed to be waiting for her to grow up.
He proposed on her nineteenth birthday, and on every birth day thereafter, until finally, at twenty-three, she accepted on one condition: that first she accompany the scientific expedition on which Tom was going. Reluctantly, Martin agreed. In the end he even contributed heavily to the cost of the journey, saying that it was in his best interest to see that the campaign was well planned and amply supplied. He drew up a written betrothal contract and laughed at her astonishment when he presented it to her.
“Waiting a whole year for an elusive female, after spending all that money on her, is bad enough,” he teased. “I’ve no intention of ending up without a bride.”
When she’d agreed to marry Martin, she reflected, she hadn’t felt the thrill she experienced each time Blade touched her. With her fiance she was comfortable, relaxed. Their worlds were compatible, for Martin shared her interests, and her few excursions into New York’s high society had occurred under his protection. With Martin’s sophisticated guidance their relationship had evolved until marriage seemed the logical thing. She knew her father and brother respected him. And besides, at twenty-three she was considered a hopeless spinster by all the young ladies with whom she’d attended school. Who else but a publisher would ever want a bluestocking recluse with her nose forever in a book?
Sighing, she returned from her reverie to peep under her lashes at the broad-shouldered captain riding beside her. For some mysterious reason she was physically drawn to him in a way she’d never felt before, while her mind told her she should be repulsed. Unconsciously, her gaze sought him out time and again during the day; in the evening, she was pulled to his side like a compass needle ever seeking north.
No woman would ever marry him because it was the reasonable thing to do. His very nature demanded total capitulation. And surrendering to Captain Roberts, otherwise known as Blade Stalker, was the last thing she intended to do.
She’d never met a man more totally unsuitable for her. He was brash and cocksure of himself. An aura of power, even barely leashed violence, hovered about him, from the carbine he carried with such ease to the deadly hunting knife he wore strapped to his thigh. He was a warrior. A career soldier and proud of it. More than that: he gloried in it. Since childhood, she’d been taught that differences could be solved through peaceful compromise. She doubted that compromise was even a part of Blade Roberts’s vocabulary.
They followed the valley along the Platte, over flat country with water standing in ponds. The cottonwoods and occasional hockberries, which had grown along the river bottom, became increasingly more sparse. Off in the distance, herds of red deer gamboled, and Theodora wondered if they knew they were safe from the hunters since buffalo were all around them now and the huge creatures were so much easier to bag.
As the company rode through the high grass, it disturbed a family of jackrabbits, who hopped at amazing speed to safety, their fuzzy tails signaling their departure. Whippoorwills and marsh wrens rose from the muddy banks in a flurry of wings at their approach. The beauty of the plains thrilled Theodora, and she was always anxious to reach their evening campsite and collect more botanical samples for her journal.
The travelers still covered only eighteen to twenty miles per day, despite their hard-won expertise on the trail, and made camp by three o’clock in the afternoon. This left time for her to collect specimens, while the horses and mules grazed on the thick grass before being brought into the campsite at evening time.
On the sixth day after reaching the Platte, Theodora realized the inconvenience the lack of timber would cause her. Not just in firewood, which was now being replaced by buffalo chips, but because of her need for privacy as the only female among forty men.
After explaining their problem to Lieutenant Haintzelman, Tom and Theodora walked upriver until they reached a tributary and followed its fork. Here bushes, vines and wildflowers grew along the bank, and meadowlarks filled the air with song. The stream was cool and clear.
“Oh, Tom, I’m going to take a bath,” Theodora said. The thought of washing away the day’s dust and grime was too appealing to forgo.
“Me, too, Sis. I’ll be right over there by those rocks.” Setting the butt of his carbine on the ground and bracing it against a boulder, Tom took off his sweat-soaked hat and ran his fingers through his damp hair. He grinned mischievously. “I think I’ll go in clothes and all, and do my laundry at the same time.”
Theodora laughed. “I’m going to do my washing, but I don’t intend to do it while it’s on my body. I brought along a change of clothes. I’ll hang my wet ones on those bushes. We can look for plants while they dry.”
Handing her brother a bar of soap, Theodora waited until she heard his splash and wild yell of enjoyment as he hit the cold water. She stripped off her dress. The feel of the cool water on her hot skin was wonderful. She lathered her long hair and plunged under the surface to rinse it off. She swam in the shallow water, delighted to find that she hadn’t forgotten the skills Blade had taught her. Then she waded out, dried herself on a linen towel, and changed into a cotton dress.
She washed her clothes and spread her wet laundry over the berry bushes on the bank. “All right, Tom,” she called.
Her brother appeared carrying a handful of lavender flowers he’d picked while he was waiting for her. He was barefoot, and his dripping clothes left puddles of water on the dirt bank. “Look here, Teddy. Have you ever seen wildflowers like this before?”
It was a small Astragalus gracillis. “Only in books. Where did you find them?”
“Come on, I’ll show you,” Tom said as he grabbed her hand.
Theodora found more of the same species and then spotted another Penstemon she couldn’t identify. It was a rare azure. “I wish I had Nuttall’s catalogue with me,” she complained.
“Hey, look over here!” Tom called, pointing to a bright magenta blossom. “I bet you’ve never seen a flower like this before either.”
Together brother and sister moved from spot to spot, gathering the plants as miners would gather nuggets of gold. They scramb
led up the creek bank and onto the flat plain, moving from one discovery to another in their excitement. Neither noticed the sun dropping to the horizon, as it spread its red blanket across the prairie.
It was twilight when they realized they were lost.
Chapter 9
Blade Roberts stepped back from the map table and rubbed the aching muscles in his neck. Annoyed at Tom’s continued absence, he glanced over the work he’d managed to complete by himself before supper time. It wasn’t nearly enough. He needed Gordon’s expert skill at cartography, for the draftsman’s nimble fingers could sketch the lay of the land on its grid of latitude and longitude lines at twice the speed of his own.
Where the hell was Tom? Blade had been so engrossed in his work that he didn’t realize that the sun was setting until he stood and gazed through the tent’s opening at the burnished plains. Leaving the shelter, he called to the burly officer standing near the picket line. “O’Fallon, find Gordon and send him to me. Check with Belknap. The two of them could be playing cards somewhere.”
All around him the camp bustled with activity, but neither of the twins was in view. Blade felt an unaccountable stab of apprehension. Usually this near mealtime he could spy Theodora’s blond curls alongside Twiggs’s grizzled head in the camp mess. And this was the first time Tom had been late since leaving Fort Leavenworth three weeks ago.
If Belknap had talked Tom into gambling again, Blade decided, he’d have to clamp down on them both.
Fifteen minutes later, O’Fallon entered the captain’s quarters with Lieutenant Haintzelman at his side. “Captain, the twins are missing,” he announced. Anxiety thickened his brogue. “Aye, and we’ve searched every tent in the blessed camp. They’re not with Belknap. He’s over by the fire cleaning his rifle and swearing he hasn’t seen Tom since morning.” Blade stepped back from the map table and threw down his pen. Splotches of blue ink splashed across the white parchment, puddling in miniature lakes. “What the hell are you talking about, Sergeant?” The ill-defined uneasiness he’d felt earlier crystallized into alarm. By God, if this was true he’d have somebody’s hide!
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