The Captured Bride

by Griep, Michelle;

  Planting herself uphill, she grabbed the edge with two hands and pulled. The thing didn’t budge. If anything, the bottom edge dug deeper into the muck.

  But she wouldn’t be thwarted. Sucking in a huge breath, she grasped the crate’s side yet again, and this time she lifted before she pulled. The wood moved, but not much, so she grunted and strained for all she was worth—which by now wasn’t much.

  The momentum did not mix well with the slick ground. The box lifted but her feet slipped. The crate crashed. Pain exploded in her left foot, shooting agony up her leg. One hundred fifty pounds of heavy metal smashed her toes against a rock, trapping her.

  She let out a wail that wouldn’t be stopped.

  Elias trotted back to the river, leaving Matthew and Rufus to turn around the empty wagon. That broken wheel would set them back days…days he didn’t have to spare. Hopefully Matthew was a better wheelsmith than him, for he had no experience. He was about to turn back and ask him when a cry keened from the river, loud as a scream from a red fox.

  Mercy!

  He sprinted, wishing to God he held a tomahawk in his grip. Even so, weapon or not, if anyone harmed her, he’d kill. Fury colored the world blood red as he scanned for movement.

  Past the horses, by the end of the broken wagon, Mercy hunched on the riverbank, holding her leg. A crate hid the bottom half of her skirt from view.

  Taking the bank half-sliding, he skidded to a stop next to the box—fully loaded. He crouched and lifted the crate. She lurched back. As soon as she was free, he dropped the box and scooped her up. Even with her wet skirts, she weighed hardly more than a feather tick. Cradling her against his chest, he hauled her up to level ground, then set her down.

  Her eyes pinched shut, trapping her in a world of private pain. No tears cut tracks down her cheeks, nor did she cry out anymore. Still, the single scream she’d let out earlier would haunt him in nightmares to come.

  “This is going to hurt, and I regret it, but it has got to be done.” He hunkered down near her foot and, as gently as possible, lifted her mucky leg so that her shoe rested in his lap. Ignoring propriety, he pushed up her gown to gain a better look. Stockings, torn and dirty, covered a shapely leg, thankfully not bent or crushed. She must have taken the full brunt of the weight on her foot.

  She didn’t make a sound as he unlaced her moccasin. She didn’t swoon or flinch. She just sat, grasping handfuls of her skirt into white-knuckled fists, eyes still closed but face resolute.

  He tugged on the heel of her shoe and slid it off. When it caught on the end of her toes, she sucked in a breath—he did too. Blood soaked a stain into her gray stockings. That fabric had to come off. Now.

  “Mercy, this is going be hard, but I need you to take off your hose.”

  Her eyes blinked open, either from shock or anger, he couldn’t say. Without a word, she released her handfuls of skirt and reached for her bodice. A blade appeared, shiny and sharp in the late afternoon sun.

  His brows rose. No wonder she hadn’t feared traveling with him or any other man. Between her knife and Matthew’s overseeing, the woman was thoroughly protected.

  She bent forward and sliced a line through the fabric around her ankle. Breathing hard, she leaned back and tucked her knife away.

  “Go on.” Her voice shook. “Do what needs to be done.”

  He gritted his teeth. Would to God he could take the pain for her. Bit by bit, he peeled the fabric down from her ankle. No swelling there. No odd angles or broken skin. The weight must’ve hit farther on.

  He pulled the thin wool past the arch of her foot, steady, using a constant force, and faltered only once—when the stocking stuck to the bloodied pulp of her last two toes.

  His chest tightened. That had to hurt.

  Horses’ hooves plodded behind him. The grind of wheels. Matthew’s voice. “What happened?”

  Before Elias could answer, he heard the sound of Matthew’s moccasins hitting the ground. “So help me, Dubois, if you hurt that girl—”

  “Enough!” Mercy cried. “Your infighting is making me sick.”

  “Easy,” Elias whispered to her as he would a skittish mare. Then he glanced over his shoulder. “I need some water here. Mercy crushed her toes.”

  Matthew loped off.

  Elias turned back to the woman. Thankfully, now that her foot was free, color seeped back into her cheeks. A light wind teased a runaway lock of dark hair across one of those cheeks, and the urge to brush it back tingled in his hand. He curled his fingers tight, annoyed by the base response at such a moment.

  “What were you doing?” His voice was flat, even to his own ears.

  Her big brown eyes stared into his. “I thought to gather some of the spilled contents.”

  He frowned. “Gathering is one thing, but trying to move a full crate on your own? What were you thinking?”

  Her eyes narrowed. So did her tone. “Clearly I wasn’t.”

  “Well,” he sighed. “It could have been worse. One—maybe two—toes look to be broken, but thank God it is not your ankle.” He allowed a small smile. “You should be kicking Rufus’s hind end in no time.”

  Matthew returned and handed him a canteen. “We’ll start loading. Join us as you’re able. But you”—he shifted a cancerous gaze to Mercy—“stay put.”

  She frowned at Matthew’s retreating back. Though she said nothing, Elias got the distinct impression that any other man who’d just told her what to do would be wearing that knife of hers through the back.

  He uncorked the metal flask. “How long have you two been together?”

  “Three years,” she murmured.

  “Three? Have you been tangled in this war for that long?”

  She nodded, loosening more hair in the process.

  Setting down the cork, he shifted her foot so that the water would run off into the grass instead of his lap. Best to busy her tongue to keep her mind from the pain he was about to inflict. “Why did Bragg even consider taking on a woman?”

  He poured a stream over her toes with one hand, the other supporting and rubbing off bits of mud with his thumb.

  “I’m good at what I do.” Her voice strained and her nostrils flared, but she kept talking. “My sight is a gift. And no one expects a woman scout. A messenger, yes, but never a scout.”

  He grunted. No argument with that, for he’d never run across such.

  Dousing her foot afresh, he bent and studied her toes. Now that the blood was gone, the damage was easier to assess. The little toe, as suspected, was likely broken, already swollen to nearly twice its size. She’d lose the nail for sure. The toe next to it pulsed an angry shade of deep red, but it wasn’t as puffed up. More like a deep bruise. She’d live to fight another day—and soon.

  He set down the canteen and faced her. “War does not last forever, thank God. What will you do when the fighting is done?”

  Her brown eyes glazed over, but this time he guessed it wasn’t from pain. Gently, he resettled her foot on his lap and dried off what he could with the hem of his hunting frock.

  “I suppose I shall cross that creek when I come to it,” she said at last.

  His gaze shot to hers. “There is no man waiting for you on the other side?”

  Her lips curved, sunlight painting them a rosy hue. “I’ve been told I am a handful…not to mention stubborn. Even were I to want a man, not many are up for the job.”

  While spoken in jest, her words sank low in his gut, and a strange urge rose to meet such a challenge. He cleared his throat, then shrugged off his hunting frock and balled up the fabric. He set the lump on the ground and eased her foot to rest atop it. “Let this dry off while I help load those crates. I will bind that toe when I am finished.”

  Her chin jutted out. “I am fully capable of binding my own foot.”

  Proud woman, as stubborn as she was beautiful. He scowled. “Just promise me that when I am down there loading”—he hitched a thumb over his shoulder—“I won’t turn around and see you next
to me, lugging up a crate.”

  A small smile flickered on her face. “You have my word.”

  It was a small victory, her giving him her word—so why did it make his heart thump hard against his ribs?

  Rising, he turned toward the task at hand. Would that fixing the broken wheel would prove as easy a conquest.

  Sun beat down surprisingly hot for an early April day. The afternoon warmth on Elias’s back joined the heat from the heaping pile of glowing coals in front of him, and sweat trickled down between his shoulder blades. After two days of whittling spokes that never seemed to fit, the need to be on the move burned hotter than the sun and embers combined. Despite the threat of roaming Indians, they’d had no choice but to build a fire. Moisture dripped down his temple, and he shoved the dampness away with the back of his hand. Heat blistered off in waves from the coals, hinting the temperature was just about right—hopefully.

  Throwing down his stick, he reached for the flat steel tire, then worked it flush into the fire so that all sides heated evenly. This would work. It had to. He glanced up at a cornflower-blue sky and lifted a prayer as the metal heated.

  Please, God. A little help here.

  Behind him, Matthew readied the wheel. Once the flat-tire heated through, they would have to work fast, especially since they labored without tongs or pincers. One wrong move and the metal would set cockeyed, or one of them could suffer a wickedly bad burn.

  He faced Matthew. “Are you ready to give this a go?”

  Matthew hoisted the wooden wheel, the new, crudely carved spokes fixed between axle and rim. He gave it a last once-over with his hawkish eyes, then set the thing down in the sandy spot they had created. “Aye.”

  Grabbing two stout sticks, Elias jiggered the flat-tire loose. He rushed the charred metal ring over to Matthew, and the two of them set to whacking the band over the felloes. Long before they could pound it on the wheel straight, it cooled and shrank, setting lopsided.

  Frustration churned the blackened fish he’d eaten at noontide. If that metal rim weren’t righted now, there’d be no prying it off without rebreaking the wheel, and they would have to start all over. If they could even get it off. He dropped one stick, hefted the other in two hands, and brought the end down with all his might. The stick hit the edge of the metal—and slid. The force of it lifted the opposite side of the wheel, shooting it into the air. He and Matthew dodged backward. Though the metal was too cool to fit as it should, it would still pack a flesh-searing burn.

  The wheel juddered back onto the sand. The metal tire sat mostly on but partly off. If they attached that to the wagon, the first turn would crush it.

  “You are a disappointment.”

  Elias yanked off his hat and slapped it against his thigh. “Blast!”

  A laugh rumbled in Matthew’s chest, as if nothing more than a game of stickball had been lost. Retreating to a nearby log, the ranger sank onto it. “You’re a man of many talents—but wheelwrighting ain’t one of ’em.” He swept his hand toward the crooked wheel.

  Elias blew out a long breath. No sense taking offense at the truth. Cramming his hat atop his head, he joined the man on the log. “You’re right. I am surely no wheelwright.”

  Matthew’s smile faded. “Then what are you?”

  Elias tensed, the turn of conversation as troubling as the ruined wheel. “What do you mean?”

  Sweat trickled down the older man’s brow in rivulets. “Well…” He paused and pulled out a dirty kerchief, rubbing off the offense. “It seems to me you took to that water like an old friend. Dubois is your surname. And you’re accused of consorting with the French. If I don’t miss my mark, you have voyageur blood in you.”

  Elias stared him down, saying nothing. Clearly the man had been giving him some thought, and by the sounds of it, quite a bit. That was a danger. Nothing good ever came of too close a scrutiny.

  But then Matthew elbowed him, an easygoing smile returning to his face as he tucked his cloth away. “There’s no shame in it. I’ve yet to meet a harder working lot, and you have more than proved your mettle this past week—excepting the wheel, that is.”

  Matthew’s good-natured teasing loosened the tight muscles in Elias’s shoulders. The man was a honey-dipped hound on the hunt, he’d give him that. Yet for the most part, it was a pleasant way Matthew had about him, seeking information with amiable conversation instead of at knifepoint.

  Unlike his own father.

  Elias frowned. Normally he didn’t think about the man, but Matthew’s speculation had unearthed an ugly patch of dirt. He kicked at a rock with his heel as he spoke. “My father runs pelts up north of Kippising—or did, depending on if he yet lives. I traveled with him for a time. It was…an experience.”

  His throat closed, shut down by too many memories. Those years had been harder to bear than the tears in his mother’s eyes when Bernart Dubois had left her alone with a young boy clutching her skirts.

  As if sensing the turmoil, Matthew’s grizzled face softened. So did his voice. “Why’d you leave?”

  The question pierced straight through his chest, and he sucked in a breath. The man could have no idea of the wounds he prodded.

  “It was my father’s dream, not mine,” he muttered. “The life of a wanderer is not for me.”

  “Yet here you are.”

  He shot to his feet. The stink of smoke and sweat clung to him, the odor of travel and toil—things he’d sworn to change.

  “Yet here you are.” Matthew’s words taunted him, especially with the end of his wandering within reach. It had seemed simple at the outset. One last trek to Boston and his drifting days would be done—if only that blasted wheel didn’t lie in a broken heap.

  He faced Matthew. The man wasn’t the only one who had questions rattling around like rocks in a can. “And here you are. Judging by the way you send Mercy to scout for enemy tracks before we leave and your chafing at keeping to known paths, I would say you are a ranger, for those are two primary rules of rangering, are they not?”

  Matthew angled his head, sunlight sparking humor in his gray eyes. “It appears you have been studying me as well.”

  Elias held the man’s gaze. “You are pretty far afield for a ranger—and a lone wolf at that. Not a common sight. Mercy tells me you met up with her three years back.”

  All humor fled from the man’s face. “She saved my life.”

  He couldn’t stop the lift of his brows, picturing the lithe-limbed Mercy snatching the barrel-chested man in front of him from the jaws of death. “How did she manage that?”

  “I did not mean it in that sense, though there is more strength in that girl than in most men I’ve known.” For a moment, Matthew grew silent, his eyes glazing over with a faraway look. Deep ruts lined the parts of his face not sporting bristly scruff. How many years had this man seen?

  Matthew scratched at the week-old growth on his chin. “I strayed out here, abuzz with a bellyful of anger. Sometimes those you fight alongside of aren’t there for the cause, but for themselves. Meeting up with Mercy, well…would to God the rangers had more men like her.”

  The captain lapsed into silence for so long Elias wondered if he’d finish his tale or not.

  At last, Matthew pushed up from the log, meeting him head-on. “Mercy reminded me that a few bad men are just that—few. That there’s still a lot of good in this world. It was her zeal what breathed new life into these old bones. When that girl puts her heart into something, there’s no holding her back.”

  He needn’t close his eyes to imagine her, so branded in his mind her face had become. The way her long braid swung down to full hips. The determined gleam in her brown eyes. How she’d fit so light yet strong in his arms. “She is a rarity,” he murmured.

  As if by speaking so, the woman herself appeared from out of the tree line, at a sprint despite the hindrance of skirts and limp favoring her sore foot. Something urged her to such a pace—likely something bad.

  A battle charge ran along
each of his muscles, and he took a step toward her. So did Matthew.

  “Someone’s coming,” she warned.

  Sucking in air, Mercy caught her breath. Judging by the way Matthew’s hand hovered over his tomahawk and by the icy blue streak in Elias’s gaze, she’d better get her words out before they tore off on a killing spree.

  “Two wagons,” she huffed. “Three men, one leading on a mount, coming from the east.” She shoved back the hair from her eyes, lungs finally filling. “There’re two women, three littles. One’s a babe in arms.”

  Matthew looked past her, where the route cut a path through the greenery. “How far out?”

  “Two miles or so.”

  Elias narrowed his eyes at her. “You cannot see that far, not with the bend of the road and the scrub in the way.”

  A familiar rage flared in her belly. She had yet to meet a man who trusted her ability when it exceeded his own. Still, after twenty-five summers, ought she not have learned to master such anger? Black-Fox-Running told her so often, but that did nothing to change her on the inside.

  She lifted her chin. “That is what scouts are for, Mr. Dubois. You told me and Rufus to keep a sharp eye while you had a fire going.”

  He folded his arms, looking down the length of his nose. “I also told you to mind your foot.”

  She rolled her eyes. The man harped on her more than Matthew. “My foot’s near to better.”

  “You are still limping.”

  “Not as much.”

  Matthew stepped between them. “No time for bickering. We’ll have company soon. I say we help ’em on their way across the river as fast as possible. We can’t have so large a party staying the night with us. That many people attract too much attention—something we can’t afford.”

  Elias nodded. “Agreed.”

  Matthew turned back to the wheel on the ground. Though his big shape blocked part of her view, from her angle she could see things weren’t right. The metal rim choked the wooden frame, jutting off where it ought to lay flat. Her gaze strayed to Elias, his broad back toward her now as he crouched beside Matthew, conferring. No wonder he was so ornery. The wheel was no more fixed than when she’d set out hours earlier.