The Beloved Woman

by Deborah Smith

  The moon silhouetted the dark figures of a tall rider and two big horses. The horses were only a few strides from her, and the rider reached out for her.

  “I fight!” she warned in a voice too weak to hear. Her hands fumbled uselessly for the knife she’d traded days earlier for food.

  She couldn’t even manage a scream when the horse’s shoulder bumped her. She started to fall, then felt the rider’s hand winding into the neck of her ragged tunic. The material ripped as she tried to struggle.

  “Katie gal, calm down!”

  Justis. Stunned, dreaming, she went limp, and he pulled her in front of him on the saddle. His arm went around her waist. She sagged against him, her hands digging into his furry coat, her face burrowed in his shoulder.

  Her hazy grip on consciousness told her only that hope had come back into the world. She couldn’t understand the distant sounds of men shouting and horses galloping. Justis held her tighter and clucked to his mount. It went into a smooth, rocking lope, following the riverbank north.

  Katherine tilted her head back and tried to look at him in the moonlight. Shock and happiness confused her until all she could manage to say was a plaintive “Home?”

  “Someday. Thank you, God. Thank you.” He bent his head to hers and brushed a kiss over her forehead.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE WARMTH woke her, the delicious warmth after months of shivering. Katherine moved a tiny bit and sighed. She was wrapped in a cocoon of soft, thick blankets. The mattress under her was lumpy, and it made a rustling sound. It was stuffed with coarse hay, she decided. But compared to cold, hard ground, it felt luxurious.

  How had she gotten there? Vaguely she recalled being wrapped in warm blankets and carried on horseback through the night, the horse rocking under her like a cradle, protective arms holding her with strength and comfort, a much-loved masculine voice urging her to rest easy, to forgive, to live.

  She heard the crackling of a fire nearby and turned her face toward its wonderful heat. Her eyes still shut, she inhaled and felt light-headed when the aroma of roasting meat filled her. Pangs cramped her stomach, and she made a keening sound of hunger.

  Callused fingertips stroked her cheek. “Katie?”

  The drawling bourbon-and-cigar voice caressed her name and brought her fully from sleep in a whirl of groggy emotion. She opened her eyes and cried out in recognition. Justis bent over her, frowning. His face was drawn and tired, his hair ruffled, his mouth set in a grim line. “You,” she said raptly, trying to smile. “You.” Pain stung her chapped lips.

  “Shhh. Don’t do that.” He reached for something, brought it to her mouth, and rubbed gently. “You’re bleedin’.” She dimly felt soothing grease on her lips. Lost in gazing at him, she smiled wider. His expression darkened. “Stop it. Dammit, stop. You’re hurtin’ yourself—”

  “Justis. Never thought … I would see you again. Justis.”

  Her fervent, happy tone snapped his restraint. With a soft groan he cradled her face and rested his forehead on hers. She breathed raggedly, loving the scent of his hair and skin, knowing that the fragrances of woodsmoke and tobacco would always remind her of this moment.

  “Christ, I was afraid you’d never wake up,” he whispered. “Could you take some food?”

  After months of constant hunger, the irony of that question overwhelmed her. “Food?” Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes. “You have food?”

  He drew his head back and gazed at her. His mouth worked for a moment without forming words. Finally he spoke in a low, barely controlled rasp. “Just lie still.”

  “Where are we?”

  “A little place I found last night. Owner’s out beyond the barn—what’s left of him—with a pile of kindlin’ scattered beside him. Must have been sick, dropped dead while he was toting firewood. Probably been dead for months. Bad luck for him, good luck for us. This place is way off the road. I found it only because I was tryin’ to lose your little private posse of Injuns.”

  “I n-need some good luck.”

  He cupped her cheek with his warm palm. “You got some now, gal.”

  She watched him wistfully as he moved away. Her hazy mind finally realized that they were in a cabin of squared logs chinked with clay. The place was so little that Justis could probably lie down and touch one wall with his fingertips, the other with his toes.

  Justis. She drank in the sight of him while he knelt in front of a crude stone fireplace and lifted a black iron kettle from a hook above the flames. Firelight played on his strong, big-knuckled hands and shot red-gold streaks through his hair.

  He wore a heavy wool shirt, and trousers held by leather braces. The arms of white long johns showed beneath the shirt’s rolled-up sleeves and in the V made by its floppy lapels. His face was thinner than she remembered, and older. It no longer held a hint of youthful smoothness. His wavy chestnut hair was ragged, and so long that it brushed his shoulders in back. And the mustache—it badly needed a trimming.

  She thought him more handsome than ever. “Très beau,” she whispered. “Tu es très bien.” Almost crying with happiness, she added hoarsely, “Je t’aime, Justis. Je t’aime beaucoup.”

  He hurried to scoop some sort of stew into a wooden bowl. “Aw, it’s nothin’ good enough to speak French over. It’s just rabbit mixed with cornmeal.” He carried it to her and sat down on the bed, a narrow structure of rough-hewn wood built into the cabin’s corner. After placing the bowl on the cabin’s dirt floor, he slipped his arms under Katherine’s shoulders. “Can you sit up, gal?”

  She nodded, not caring whether she could or not. She stared devotedly into his worried eyes. “Still as green as new leaves.”

  “Shhh. Your mind’ll be all right soon as you eat something.” He lifted her to a sitting position and moved around behind her on the bed.

  “I want to look at you,” she protested weakly. “See your mustache.”

  “Katie, please. Just try to eat.”

  He reached for the wooden bowl and set it on her blanket-wrapped lap, then lifted a small strip of meat to her mouth. She lunged for it with sudden, single-minded desperation, swallowed it whole, and licked his fingers like a grateful dog.

  “Oh, God,” he said in pained shock. “Easy, now, easy.”

  Trembling, she whimpered again. “More. More.”

  He made a gruff, sorrowful sound and brought the food to her mouth as swiftly as she could eat it. “Slow down. You’ll be sick.” She ignored him until he grabbed the underside of her jaw and held it firmly. “Slow,” he ordered.

  She forced herself to chew each bit of meat a few times. When her stomach stopped begging for more, lethargy took over. Between one bite and the next her eyelids grew heavy and her head drooped forward.

  “Katie!” He tilted her head back and looked at her anxiously.

  “Sleep,” she murmured, turning her face toward the crook of his neck. “Warm. Strong. You feel so good. Hold me. Have to sleep again.”

  He almost sagged with relief. “You sleep all you need,” he said in a low, shaky voice. “I won’t ever let go.”

  “I should have known that,” she murmured, her voice trailing off. “Should have known.”

  A TINY DRAFT of cold air curled between the cabin’s chinking and touched the tip of Katherine’s nose. She groggily pushed a blanket down and opened her eyes. On the opposite wall a line of dawn light shone at the bottom edge of a window covered with a deerskin. The fire was no more than a bed of weak embers, and her breath made white mist in the air.

  She looked at her chapped, aching hands in bewilderment. They were covered with grease. She touched her lips. The same. He’d oiled her as if she were a rusty gun, she thought with giddy amusement.

  She burrowed into the lovely heat under the blankets and the wall of warmth that cupped her back, hips, and thighs. The wall shifted, curving closer against her, and she sighed with pure, uninhibited pleasure. Justis. His long, rock-hard arm was draped over her waist, and as she lay there sm
iling, he slid it farther around her. It pulled sleepily, fitting her hips into the angle made by his belly and thighs.

  Katherine plucked at the long, heavy shirt she wore and realized that it was one of his. She was too exhausted to feel any embarrassment that he’d changed her clothes. In fact the only thing that did bother her was her ugliness. What a sight she must be, all bony and sunken.

  She shifted swollen, overused feet and discovered that they were covered in coarse stockings—obviously another of Justis’s belongings. Moving her legs closer to his, she sighed with delight at the feel of his soft long johns against her bare skin.

  She stroked the arm he’d wrapped around her, ignoring the pain in her sore, cracked fingertips. Finally she determined where the sleeve of his long johns ended and his thick, hairy wrist began. She slipped her fingers downward and curled them around his hand. With another sigh, infinitely peaceful, she grew drowsy again.

  His face was buried against the back of her neck—apparently he’d gathered her hair into a nest there—and his deep, even breathing cascaded onto her skin. But just as she was about to drift off he mumbled incoherently, then flexed against her.

  She blinked in slow surprise as he grew hard, his robust stiffness fitting neatly against the cleft of her hips, its size impressive even when obscured by clothing. His breathing quickened, and he arched languidly a few times. His arm slid from around her and she felt him fumbling with the material that covered his groin.

  She was too weak to be aroused but not too weak to be curious. Justis wasn’t the kind of man who’d take her in her helpless, unresponsive condition. She sensed that strongly. But what did he intend to do?

  Slowly he pulled her shirt up in back. She felt his hand caress her bare hip—gently, more like a loving pat than a touch designed to excite. Then he grasped himself and stroked slowly. Her eyes widened in amazement as a satiny, rounded surface rubbed up and down on her hip. He stroked faster until his whole body tautened and he groaned softly. Warm fluid tickled the small of her back.

  He wiped it away with the hem of her shirt, then eased the shirt back down and fastened his long johns. His arm slid over her again, snug and possessive, and he nuzzled his head closer to hers. “Oh, Katie,” he murmured. “Katie.”

  The tenderness in his voice made tears crest in her eyes. He hadn’t tried to find her right away, but he had searched for her eventually. Why? To salve his lust and anger? To make her sorry for breaking their bargain? To force her to accept it? Maybe all of that, but his stubborn pursuit held a world of affection, too, a sort of love.

  Months of hardship had left her feeling vulnerable and confused, her emotions wrenched by losing Squirrel, Walks Smiling, Little Bird, and so many others. She didn’t have the energy to analyze, to scold herself, to hold back her feelings. They flooded her with the truth. It didn’t matter why Justis had tried to find her, why he wanted her, or for how long. If he asked, she would never leave him again.

  JUSTIS HUNG THE turkey carcass on a peg outside the cabin door, leaned his rifle against the wall, and stamped snow from his boots. “Katie? It’s me,” he called loudly. He’d given her one of his pistols, and he figured it wasn’t wise to startle a fighter such as she.

  There was no answer. He shoved the door open. The cabin was empty, but the fire blazed as if recently tended. His pistol lay on a table by the door. She’d barely had the strength to sit up while he fed her breakfast—how could she have left? He turned and plowed hastily through foot-deep snow, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Kath-er-ine!”

  “Over here.”

  The cabin and its small barn were surrounded by woods. Behind the cabin a small stream wound among the straight white trunks of a poplar grove. Her voice had come from there.

  He ran to the grove and halted. She was huddled on the ice-banked edge of the stream, holding a blanket around herself with one hand. With the other she lifted her hair from the frigid water and turned to look at him.

  “I’m washing up. I found a crockery jar with some soap in it. I’m done now. You may help me back inside.”

  His language could have melted all the snow in Illinois. He finished scalding the air about the time he reached her. “I didn’t save your skinny behind so you could freeze it off for vanity’s sake!” he yelled, jerking the wool scarf from his neck. He wrapped it around her head, slinging the dripping hair to one side. “Crazy! Crazy woman! If you get sick I’ll—”

  “I’m accustomed to the cold,” she protested, swaying under his hurried ministrations. “I’ve spent many nights sleeping on frozen ground. And I’ve always washed in creeks like this. There’s been no other way.”

  “I don’t care if you’re used to dancin’ nekkid in a blizzard!” He grabbed her by the shoulders to lift her up. His grip jerked the blanket, and she fumbled for it as it slid in a heap around her waist. He saw her bare, wet back and nearly exploded with anger. “You took off my shirt!”

  “Well, sir, I couldn’t wash very much of myself with it on, could I?”

  He muttered fierce oaths and snatched the blanket back around her. She clamped her lips tightly together, offering no protest when he scooped her into his arms, but her hands shook as she clasped the blanket to her chest.

  After he got her inside the cabin he laid her on the bed and got a towel from his bundle of supplies. He came back to her and shoved her hands down. The blanket fell open and she crossed her arms instinctively to shield herself.

  “I’ve seen it all before,” he said in disgust. He was too scared and angry to be gentle. Only by the grace of God had he found her on the trail before she was beyond saving. He wasn’t going to lose her now.

  “Prissy, proud, stubborn woman,” he muttered. He toweled her roughly, hurrying to get done and get her dressed warmly again. “At least those tits still look grand—smaller, but grand. Hmmph. Arms like sticks, ribs all showin’, belly sunk in like an empty pond. But you think you’re healthy, sure, healthy enough to go prancin’ outside nekkid and soak yourself in ice water. So high and mighty!”

  She yipped with anger when he rolled her over and toweled her back. “Backbone like a starved dog,” he continued. “And an ass so flat I could serve tea on it.”

  “You didn’t mind this morning,” she wailed. “I wasn’t so dreadfully ugly to you then!”

  His hands hesitated. “Dammit to hell. I thought you had gone back to sleep.”

  “I knew what you were doing! My flat a-ass suited you then.”

  “If what I did upset you, why didn’t you say so?”

  “I thought you were paying me a compliment! Now I understand—I’m good enough to use for stimulation even if I’m horrible to look at.”

  Quickly he flung dry blankets over her and removed the damp one. She turned her face into the pillow, her body quivering as he pulled the wool scarf from her hair. “It was a compliment,” he said gruffly. “Sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

  Startled, she was silent. Then, sounding bewildered, she asked, “What do you want from me? I can’t do you much good in or out of bed. I feel so broken and used up.”

  He turned to the table and fumbled with the shirt and stockings she’d left there on her way outside. Was she no more willing to put up with him now than she’d been in Gold Ridge? When he’d looked into her eyes yesterday, hadn’t he seen so much welcome that it had choked his throat with happiness?

  “You ran out on your agreement with me,” he said. “I can’t let that kind of insult pass.”

  “What penalty do you plan for me, then?”

  “I figure you suffered it over the past few months. Reckon it’s settled. Now you see that stickin’ with me wouldn’t be the worst thing you could do.”

  “How did you discover where I’d gone?”

  “I finally sweet-talked Amarintha. Her tongue slipped.” No point in telling her the grim truth about that day in the Gold Ridge jail.

  “You must have promised her something—otherwise she’d never have told my secret. You’re not g
oing to marry her, are you? She’s not suitable for you at all.”

  “I’ll not be marryin’ Amarintha or anybody else.”

  “Not until after you’re done with me, at least.”

  He slung the shirt and stockings on the bed. “You sorry I came after you? You think you’d a-lived to reach Injun territory?”

  “I don’t know. I feel so … lost. I wonder if I’ll ever be strong again.”

  “You will.” He brusquely pulled the blankets down her back. “Here. Get into this shirt.” He helped her sit up. She faced the wall and stubbornly covered her breasts. He slipped his huge wool shirt over her head.

  As it settled into place, covering her thinness, he wanted to tell her that she stirred the heat in him with a lot more than just her body. He wanted to tell her how he’d searched all the way to Philadelphia and back, then nearly driven himself to ruin, all because he’d lost her. But those were things that would only give her more power to hurt him, and would probably make her think he was a fool.

  “Turn over,” he commanded. He wrapped the towel around her hair and helped her settle comfortably on the mattress with its one lumpy pillow under her head. He flipped the bottom of the blankets up to reveal her feet. Christ, he thought. Her tattered moccasins must have let every stick and rock on the trail leave their mark. “Don’t know how you shuffled along on these. What’d you do, traipse on ’em the whole way from Tennessee to Illinois?”

  “Yes,” she said grimly, staring hard at the ceiling.

  His stomach twisted with anguish. “Fool thing to do.”

  “Sorry. I traded my royal coach for a cooking pot.”

  Justis took a moment to dump his coat and hat by the hearth. Then he picked up the pottery bowl that held the crude salve he’d made from pork fat and liniment. He didn’t speak again until he was seated on the bed with her feet in his lap. As he carefully rubbed salve onto them, he asked, “So you traded the royal coach for a pot, huh? Why didn’t you trade my gold nugget for a horse to ride?”

  She jumped a little. He looked up at her and saw that she’d shut her eyes. “I wanted a memento,” she told him. “Something from the Blue Song land. That’s why I took it.”