by Jenna Kernan
She wrapped her arms about his middle and pressed her head to the wide space between his shoulder blades. She felt the muscles of his stomach jump and his spine straightened with new tensions. But she held on just the same, closing her eyes to savor the contact. He did not warn her off. Gradually his muscles uncoiled.
“Have you ever had a wife?” she asked.
He made a sharp should that could have been a laugh. “I frighten women.”
“You don’t frighten me.”
“I did the night I jumped through your window. And you ran from me the first two times I tried to speak to you.”
All true. “But that was because you spoke to me in Lakota. I had a bad feeling about you.”
“Most women do.” He lifted his water skin and offered it to her.
She drank then and passed back the skin. Their fingers brushed and the tingling excitement rushed through her. She wrapped her arms about his middle again. “Feelings change.”
She felt his stomach muscles cord. Was it her words or her embrace that caused his reaction? It pleased her to believe he felt the same warm glow that filled her whenever she touched him. Lucie bit her lip as she contemplated stroking the fine contour of his stomach. What would he do if she did so? In the end, the action was too bold and that was not her way.
Silence stretched. At last she filled the gap with an attempt to continue to get to know him a little better.
“What about before. Did you have a sweetheart?”
“Then, I was not interested in girls and now…I can’t stay on the reservation because my skin is white.”
He talked as if the only kind of woman he could marry was Indian. That possibility zinged like an arrow into her heart. Lucie grew cautious.
He glanced back at her and then continued. “I don’t want marriage. My life is not the kind to share.”
Lucie was about to disagree when she realized that to do so was to show her hand, as her father would say, and in so doing, give Sky a glimpse of her mad infatuation. But what if it wasn’t mad? What if he felt it, as well?
“But still, Eagle Dancer suggested I marry.”
Lucie’s eyes narrowed. “Did he?”
“He thinks it will help heal my heart if I take a Bitterroot woman.”
Her mind grasped the first objection she came upon and threw it back at him.
“But you’re Bitterroot.”
Sky nodded at her reasonable objection. But if he knew that men went outside their clan to marry, how could he consider a woman from the tribe?
“He says since I am not of their blood it was permissible. There are many widows, since the Battle of the Greasy Grass.”
“But you just said you didn’t want to marry.”
He said nothing to this, but his muscles stiffened as he straightened his spine. Lucie frowned and chewed on her bottom lip as she tried to think past the unexpected blast of jealousy that blew through her.
“Someone you know?”
He nodded. She hated his silence. Why must he make her pull each strand of information from him?
“Do you love her?”
His laugh was devoid of humor, a mere cough of descent. “When I last saw them they were babies listening to stories at their grandmother’s fire. I don’t even know them.”
“I don’t understand. Why must you marry? What good will it do?”
“Some good, I hope.”
She caught it now, the plural form he had used, and with it, the implication that he would become a bigamist.
“How many?”
He held up two fingers, as if he could not find the energy to say so aloud.
It was the way of the People to allow more than one wife. But Lucie had seen it only twice. Once when the first wife was sick with the wasting disease. The new wife cared for her and saw her passing was made easier. The second time, a brave married his sister-in-law at his wife’s request after she lost her husband to a riding accident. It was expected for a man to take care of his family.
Lucie’s eyes widened at the possibility. “Who are these widows?”
Sky sighed. His chest expanded and then contracted before her.
“Eagle Dancer suggested the daughters of Joy Cat.”
She stiffened. He meant the sisters of his friend, Sacred Cloud, the widowed sisters. He felt a duty to provide for the siblings of the friend who had died. Lucie’s mouth hardened into a thin line. Why did she care? He owed her nothing and yet, for a time, she had forgotten that she was ugly.
But why had he looked at her like that? A hateful, cynical little voice called out the answer. The look he gave you last night—was just the look of a man who wants physical gratification. And today? Trying to be kind to the wife of Eagle Dancer.
Lucie pressed her fist to her mouth. She had lived through many disappointments and she knew that she would survive this one, as well. But for the moment, she felt deflated as a fallen cake. It seemed she had still not learned her lesson.
Her head hung and if she did not sit the horse, she thought her knees might fail her.
“Eagle Dancer has offered to speak to him and see if he will accept me,” said Sky.
A tiny hope flared, tinder ignited by a dying ember. Joy Cat might still refuse the match.
“Doesn’t he hate you?” she asked.
“I do not know. But he has good reason to.” Sky steered Falcon around a colony of prairie dogs who barked a warning and then disappeared as they passed. “But if he agrees, Eagle Dancer says I should take them with me. That way we all would have a better life.”
She tried to think past the threatening storm cloud now hovering over her.
“Will he accept the match?”
“I do not know. I would not.”
She wrapped her arms about his middle in a caress she prayed felt tender and sympathetic, rather than like the clinging hold of a woman who has lost her last hope.
Lucie pressed her cheek to the warm wool of his shirt and heard her voice crack. “It’s a terrible reason to marry.”
“No worse than yours.”
How true.
Chapter Ten
Lucie wondered if marrying the sisters would help Sky’s heart heal. Somehow she did not think so.
They forded the shallow James River on horseback, without even getting their feet wet.
Upon reaching the other side, Sky dismounted and helped Lucie down. He loosened the girth on the saddle and removed Falcon’s bridle. His stallion gave a deep sigh of relief and then tossed his head. Sky chuckled and scratched behind the horse’s ear and rubbed beneath his stubbly chin. Then he walked along the gravel beds that lined the river. She and Falcon followed behind him like ducks in a row.
“I would put our camp there.” He pointed back toward the line of cedar.
Lucie nodded her approval at the choice.
“Would you set the camp?”
She brightened, happy to enter into this kind of partnership, the division of what must be done. She immediately gathered his bags and her bundle and headed for the area he indicated. He carried the saddle behind her, placing it over a dry log beneath the pines, and handed her his flint.
Sky cut a forked branch from a willow and sharpened the ends to make a fine trident. Then he headed toward the river. She watched him remove his blue jeans and lay them aside. She had a fine flash of his taut square backside before his shirt covered him to midthigh.
The man was beautifully made, that was certain. Lucie continued to watch him as he stood completely motionless, the spear just above the river’s surface. There was always the possibility she might have another look at him. She wondered about the other side of him and then flushed at the curiosity that she had never experienced before.
Of course, Eagle Dancer had taken her body. She recalled the pain and terror of their first coupling. Later she’d endured a discomfort during their joining that was less than that of the tattooing experience but worse than a willow branch across her thighs. She knew her parents enjoyed bed spo
rt. That was obvious from the number of children they had but more so from the sounds that came from their room in the wee hours of the night or the early hours as the birdsong foretold the dawn. The sounds filled her with disquiet, because it made her long for things she would never have—a husband, children, a home of her own. Since leaving Eagle Dancer, Lucie had not had the least inclination to couple with a man, until now.
He made her curious and reckless. She wondered what it might be like to share the tender caresses with a man whose touch ignited her skin with currents of sensation instead of dread. How different would it be to lie with a man, now that she was a woman and this time, a man of her choosing? And not just anyone but a dangerous and exciting warrior, with a raw power that caused her fingers to tingle and her stomach to twitch.
What would it be like to bear his child?
The butterflies in her belly erupted into flight, sending a chill of excitement down her arms and legs that turned her skin to gooseflesh. Was this desire? Longing? Both?
She thought of the others she had known in her life. None excited her the way this one did. She knew that was rare enough, but there was more. He looked at her as if he wanted the same thing. Lucie knew how infrequently that occurred. This was her opportunity to taste what her parents savored.
Once they reached the fort, they would no longer be alone and her chance would have fled. She was not foolish enough to believe he would stay with her. Even if he weren’t Eagle Dancer’s friend, even if there were no widows who needed him, he would not want her. No one did.
But she was foolish enough to think that she might convince him to have her once and if she were very lucky, he might leave her with a child.
Lucie watched him, all poised sleek potential—still as a coiled snake. His arm exploded into action, striking with a speed that was only a blur to her eye. He kept the lance imbedded deep in the soft gravel and mud of the river bottom and she knew he had succeeded. The water beneath the trident erupted with a wild flurry of splashing as the impaled fish tried vainly to escape. Sky was quick as he grabbed it by the gill. One twist and the fish suffered no more. He bowed his head a moment and she knew he was thanking the fish for giving its life so he might feed her.
She bowed her head, as well. After she had finished the prayer, she set to work gathering wood. She used her skinning knife and the flint to send a shower of sparks onto her tinder. Today she had found river reeds. The dead leaves shredded into fine dry fibers that caught the sparks, glowed for an instant and then went out. Eventually she had a curling finger of smoke. She knelt to blow cautiously and coaxed a flame.
She sat back in triumph, grinning at the smoldering tinder. She fed the fire on little sticks, as a mother robin feeds worms to a hungry chick. Her tiny flame grew, but it would be some time until she had the coals needed to cook his fish.
When he finally left the river, she had a nice pile of glowing embers. She enjoyed watching him push his lithe, muscular legs into his denim dungarees. He raised his shirt to fasten the rivet and her eyes consumed the sight of his ribbed stomach as easily as the fire devoured the dry wood.
He walked gracefully up the bank with his trousers in place, but his shirt was untucked and open. She didn’t think she’d be able to keep her mind on cooking the offering he carried in his hand—four good-sized log perch and a very large catfish. The man was a good provider.
Sky set to work gutting and scaling the fish, except the catfish, which, of course, had no scales. His activity raised the attention of two otters, one of which was brazen enough to enter the camp and beg for scraps as if he were a spoiled pet dog.
Sky laughed and tossed him the fish heads. This prompted the second to try her luck and she received a fish tail. This equal treatment caused the two otters to wrestle furiously in a battle for the other two tails. The male won and Sky sent him a tail at the same time he tossed the last one to the defeated challenger.
He felt Lucie staring and looked back to find Lucie’s attention not on the otters but on him. His smile faded and the churning tension filled his middle again.
“What?” he asked.
“I’ve never heard you laugh before.”
“Yes, you have.”
“Not like that. Before you sneered or gave a laugh of derision at some comment of mine. But that.” She pointed at the otters, now engaged in a tag game in the river. “That was a joyful sound. You should laugh more often.”
He allowed himself to smile. “Haven’t had much cause.”
“That’s a pity. I’ll see if I can talk the otters into joining us.”
That made him laugh again and this time she joined him. It felt good being here with her. He speared the fillets on green branches and staked them in the earth. Lucie raked out a fine bed of coals. She certainly knew how to keep a camp. He set the pink meat in place and watched it begin to turn white.
She flipped them once and then waited for the pink to disappear from the underside. They ate in silence, but he could sense her eyes still roving over him. He drew the edges of his shirt together and finished his meal.
Lucie washed her face and hands in the river. He waited until she had finished before doing the same. This avoidance game could not go on forever. Soon they must place their blankets and lay down to sleep. He glanced up at the darkening sky, knowing the greatest challenge of his life would soon come. At least there would be no rain, so he could rest away from her instead of enduring the torture of holding her in his arms. He delayed as long as he could, but eventually he had to return to her. He found her sitting by the fire, gilded by the orange flames. Behind them she had laid out his bedding and her blanket, near, but not touching. He could not seem to keep his eyes from the few inches that separated them. Did she choose such proximity for safety or…
“You’re avoiding the roads, aren’t you?”
He glanced up to find her studying him again. Those lovely blue eyes seemed to see inside him. It was just as hard to stay where he was now as it was to stay still while she watched him fishing from the bank. Did she know what she did to him with those direct stares?
“It seems wiser.”
“And you are avoiding me.”
He was about to deny it and then he looked at her. There was that direct stare again. His stomach twitched and down lower, he felt the blood rush of excitement pulse as he met her stare with one just as bold. Lucie bore a startling resemblance to a hunter on the prowl. Was he the quarry? Oh, he hoped so.
“Do you think of me like you do all whites, then?” she asked.
“You aren’t one of them.”
“But not an Indian—like you?”
“You float between both worlds, like a flower on a pond.”
She laughed. “A frog, rather.”
He met her gaze now, held it, hoping she could see that his words were true. “You are the most beautiful of women. Time has only made you more so.”
Her expression hardened, like a blade of grass covered with frost. “Do not mock me. I have a looking glass.”
“But somehow you cannot see.”
She glanced away. “If I am so beautiful, why haven’t you tried to kiss me?”
Her gaze flashed back to him, holding a challenge. Did she think he did not want to?
“I am trying to treat you with the respect due the wife of a head man.”
“A station I will not hold for long. When I see him safe, I will break the union that was forced upon me.” Her mouth turned down. “What excuse will you give then?”
Is that what she thought, that he secretly despised her?
“I’ll wager all that once I am a free woman, you’ll find some pressing business in another state.”
“Lucie, why do you say such things?”
She shot to her feet with a speed that startled him. There she stood with her fists balled at her sides and her arms out stiff and straight. High color flooded her face and her lips grew bloodless as she pressed them flat. She trembled with a fury she barely contained. Wha
t was happening?
“Because I know what I am. I’ve come to terms with it. And then you come along with your lies and pretty flattery. Do you think I am some imbecile to be coddled and sheltered?”
He cocked his head, unsure what to say or do.
She glared at him as if she hated him and spat out the words. “Ruined, that’s what. A spinster who is past all hope of marriage and children, because I did not hide as I was told to and because I could not run fast enough to escape.”
Sky was shocked into stupefied silence and could only gape. It was madness. Wasn’t it? And then he thought of the teasing boys, who mocked his accent and the men who cut his hair short and dressed him like all the other boys. Whites were very hard on those who looked or acted differently. They had no tolerance. He stared at Lucie’s chin and then lifted his attention to find her glaring.
“Do you think I have not tried to rub them from my chin? But I can’t and I can’t disappear. I know. I’ve tried. And you have the nerve to lie to me. To pretend it is Eagle Dancer that keeps you from me when we both know it is your contempt.”
She was right about one thing; Eagle Dancer was only a convenient excuse to avoid taking what he wanted. He tried another tactic.
“I don’t want any woman.”
“Yet you have proposed to two.” Her narrowing eyes dared him to deny it.
It all came back to that, back to the reason he accepted a proposal not of his choosing, back to why he needed to take care of what remained of the blood of Sacred Cloud, to act in his stead.
He hung his head. “That is an act of duty, not love.”
She made a disparaging sound. Clearly she thought this just another excuse.
“So you prefer to wed a stranger than to accept a ‘beautiful’ woman, like me.”
