by Sharon Ihle
Recipient of Romantic Times’ Best Western Historical Romance (for The Law And Miss Penny) and Bookrak’s Best Selling Author Award (for The Bride Wore Spurs) and nominee for Romantic Times Career Achievement in Love and Laughter, as well as several other Reviewer’s Choice Award Nominations.
Romantic Times on Dakota Dream: “A stirring love story destined to intrigue Indian romance fans. This is a beautiful story of a forbidden love that survives prejudice and war.”
Dakota Dream
Sharon Ihle
Copyright © 1991 Sharon J. Ihle. All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.
First published by the Berkley Publishing Group, a Diamond Book published by arrangement with the author..
Other Electronic Books by Sharon Ihle
The Bride Wore Spurs
Maggie’s Wish
Spellbound
Marrying Miss Shylo
Untamed
The Law & Miss Penny
Wildcat
Tempting Miss Prissy
Gypsy Jewel
Wild Rose
The Marrying Kind
River Song
E-Books available for download at:
http://www.backlistebooks.com/?author=52&submit=view
Dedication:
To my loving North Dakota hubby, Larry-inspiration for all that I do and
to the marvelous Carroll clan of Moffit, N.D.—with many thanks
Acknowledgements:
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., for the excerpts from The Ladies' Oracle by Cornelius Agrippa, copyright © 1962 by Hugh Evelyn Limited
and to
The Bismarck Tribune, P.O. Box 1498, Bismarck, N.D. 58502 for permission to use titles and verses from their cassette, The Songs of the Seventh Cavalry.
Special thanks to the North Dakota Parks and Recreation Department and the Custer Battlefield Preservation Committee.
Dakota Dream
Sharon Ihle
Chapter One
Dakota Territory, early spring 1876
She was naked.
Dominique DuBois was as bare as a winter landscape and twice as cold. How can this be? she wondered, fighting her way to consciousness.
Her survival mechanisms jerked a tremendous shudder along her spine, spawning chattering teeth and limbs that twitched with rhythmic spasms. Dominique slowly lifted a frozen hand toward her mouth for a puff of hot breath, but on the way her fingers caught in a nest of warmth.
What had happened? Where was she?
Too disoriented to question the origin of the life-preserving heat, too thankful to care, she snuggled against it and pressed her face into silken curls.
"So it seems you will live, my golden treasure from the river.''
The man's voice startled her.
Dominique opened her eyes, but could focus only on darkness. Was it the black of night, or a shuttered room of some kind? A bad dream, or had she died? She opened her mouth to speak, but could only manage a hoarse gurgle.
"Easy, golden one," the deep voice crooned. "Let me help your blood to thaw. Soon it will again rush through your veins like hot springs."
As he spoke, his powerful hands slid down her back and cupped her derriere. Squeezing her damp, frigid flesh with his strong grip, the stranger drew her against the length of his body as he lay down on top of her.
Mon Dieu! The man was also naked.
Gathering her meager strength, she pushed against the warm mat of chest hair. "Aahh, g-ge-e-t a-awa-a-y!"
His laughter taunted her as she struggled for breath and the energy with which to fight him. But in her condition, she was no match for her three-year-old godchild, much less a full-grown man. Dominique collapsed against the coarse blanket stretched beneath her.
"That is better, golden one. Relax," he instructed as he slid a muscular leg between her knees, "and I shall warm you in a way you've never been warmed before—in the Lakota way."
"L-Lak-kota?" she gasped, her head spinning.
"Ah, yes. Your life has been returned to you by a great Lakota warrior. I will help to grow strong again here in my tipi."
"Lakota?" she repeated, trying to make sense of all this information as it merged in her mind. "Tipi? You're an Indian?"
He laughed, the sound dark and sinister, tinged with sarcasm. "Yes, woman. You lie in the arms of a savage."
Still confused, Dominique said, "But you speak English. I don't understand, I don't—"
"Quiet," he ordered as he pulled an enormous buffalo robe across their bodies. "You do not have to understand—you need only to obey. Now let me warm you."
In a daze, Dominique acquiesced as the Lakota tucked the edges of the robe beneath her shoulders. She'd been rescued from a watery grave only to find herself captured by Indians? If anything she'd read in her secret collection of dime novels was true, this savage would be happy only after he managed to rape, torture, then kill her. Dominique took a deep breath and renewed her struggles. "Pffft. P-pfff-tt. P-p-ff-t-tt."
The Indian's mocking laughter increased, telling her he realized that even though she'd swallowed gallons of Missouri River water, her mouth was as dry as the Great Plains in August. She sucked in her cheeks, drawing every drop of moisture from the inside of her mouth, and tried again. "PfFft. P-p-ffff-ttt."
Jacob Redfoot wiped the tiny drop of spittle from his forehead and grinned. "If you wish to frighten me like a fierce mountain cat, you will have to do better than that."
Her flesh and spirit warming, her fear replaced by a growing indignation, Dominique folded her fingers into a half-fist and braced her elbows against his chest. "L-et me go."
"If I do that, you will die. The river chose to spit you out and drop you at my feet—a sign you were meant to live. I must accept you, my gift, or offend the Great Spirit.'' He brought his hands up from beneath the buffalo robe and jerked her arms over her head. "Do not fight me. Let me do what I must."
"N-never, y-you—you ... heathen."
"Hah."
Knowing if the woman didn't accept the heat from his body soon, her chances of survival would be cut in half, Redfoot maneuvered his knees and easily pried her powerless thighs apart. Then he slipped his hips in between them.
As he released her wrists and dragged his fingers through her damp hair, he whispered, "It is said a white woman would rather die than have an Indian put his hands on her. Is the heat of my flesh really so terrible that you would prefer to give up your life?" He punctuated the question by cupping her chilled breasts in his warm hands and gently brushing the tip of each with his mouth.
Peculiar sensations fluttered deep within her as the Indian's caresses grew bolder. Instead of finding the strength the icy waters had stolen from her, Dominique's body sank further into weakness. But her mind cleared.
"Unhand me, you brute. I swear, if you—if you even think about ... violating me, my papa will have you drawn and quartered."
Having anticipated her confusion and fear but not her anger, Redfoot leaned back and peered down at her shadowy outline. Did she think he meant to force himself upon her helpless body?
Amused, he laughed. "Your ... papa? He owes me more than ten good ponies for pulling you from the river. Now still your wiggling tongue. I grow tired of your nonsense."
Catching the hint of hesitation in his voice, and an underlying gentleness, Dominique decided the forbidden novels had painted too simple and savage a picture of the Indians. She set her chin and tried another tack. "I demand you return me to Bismarck. At once."
"You—you demand?" Redfoot gripped her shoulders, his patience with the golden-haired woman rapidly waning.
"You will do as I say. And I say, be quiet."
Dominique pursed her lips. "As you wish."
She tested the inside of her mouth again and found moisture had finally returned. This time, when Dominique spit at her captor, the sound of a target well splattered greeted her ears.
"Enough." Redfoot raised his arm and brought his open hand across her cheek in a hard slap.
Refusing to cry out, Dominique bit her tongue and raked her fingernails down the side of his neck.
"Ayeee."
The Indian pushed up on his elbows and knees as he prepared to jerk her up off the blanket. The maneuver gave Dominique a clear shot. She took it. She kicked upward and out, aiming for his most vulnerable area, and then rolled out from beneath his body before he had time to react.
Amid his howls of agony, she grabbed the blanket, wrapped it around her nude body, and scrambled blindly across the rug until she bumped into a tipi pole. Making herself as small as possible, Dominique curled up against a wall of stiffened buffalo hide and sat shivering in the darkness while she awaited her fate.
"Wi witko," he rasped as he struggled to his feet.
"A white woman is a crazy woman. The golden treasure between your legs is a prize only in your mind."
Dominique's eyes grew huge and she bit her bottom lip. No one, but no one, had ever spoken to her in such a manner. Had she been right from the start? Did this brute mean to kill her—or worse? Drawing on her only resource of the moment, she kept her silence. Instead of issuing threats or delivering mournful pleas, she listened. To the clacking of stone upon stone. To the rustle of branches and twigs. And finally to the crackle of a small fire as it came to life a few feet from where she huddled against the mat of thick fur.
Squinting into the dim light, she picked out the Indian's nude form glistening through the soft flames. He was bigger than she'd imagined, but in spite of her new fears, he looked less savage and intimidating than she had expected. His back was to her, exposing the rigid curves of his firm, rounded buttocks. Dominique's cheeks burned with the messages her eyes conveyed to her brain, but still she couldn't seem to help but watch—this being her first glimpse of a naked man—as he stepped into his breech-clout.
As he pulled on pants made of buckskin, the taut, hardworking muscles of his strong horseman's legs rippled in unison, coursing up to his slim hips and trim middle. Dominique noticed then how his flesh paled at his waist in stark contrast to the darker skin of his back. Why, she wondered, were Indians called redskins when their coloring so closely resembled her own? He turned then, exposing his thick chest and the cloud of sable curls funneling down to the band of his fringed pants.
She knew she ought to avert her gaze, should have done so the moment he exposed his naked body. She also thought she ought to throw herself at his feet and beg for mercy. But then, Dominique DuBois rarely did anything she ought to do. If she had done so more often, she probably wouldn't be in this predicament from which there seemed to be no escape. Her gentle father, the honorable Judge Jacques DuBois, should have had his way for a change and sent her off to yet another finishing school. But no, she wouldn't hear of it. As usual, Dominique, the judge's only offspring and sole reminder of his beloved wife, Julia, had badgered him until she got what she wanted. An adventure out west. The dream of a lifetime, the opportunity to study herself on her own terms and discover what the future might hold. No rigid finishing school would tell Dominique DuBois what kind of person she would become. Now it seemed that dream, that impulsive leap for independence, had turned into a nightmare. Would she escape it with her life? she wondered, watching as the savage finished dressing.
The Sioux pulled on his leggings and moccasins, and then wrapped a buffalo robe around his shoulders as he approached her. She could feel his gaze bearing down on her, hear his uneven breathing over the sputtering fire. Dominique swallowed hard and raised her chin. Slowly lifting her lids, she leveled defiant brown eyes at him. The pale light from the fire illuminated only his leggings and the knife dangling from its rawhide thong at his waist. His torso was a shadowed outline, his features completely engulfed in darkness save for the amused twinkle in his eyes.
Drawing on her feeble knowledge of the wild, she remembered what her papa had once told her--an animal could smell fear and that once detected, the frightened one might as well order a headstone. Hoping to save herself from such a fate, Dominique filled her lungs and lied through her teeth. "I am not afraid of you. If anything, I feel sorry for a man who is such a disgusting animal that he must force himself on helpless females."
"And I"—he bit off the words, in no mood to correct her opinion of him—"feel sorry for any man who must listen to your wicked tongue. Perhaps," he said as he unsheathed his hunting knife, "you would be a better prize if I relieved you of that offensive organ."
Dominique glared at him and drew her body into a tighter tuck. "Do what pleases you, heathen, but know that my papa will make you pay dearly for any harm you may visit on me."
Redfoot laughed as he fingered the edge of the gleaming blade, and then he gripped the knife by its handle. "Planting his seed and reaping one such as you is punishment enough for any man. I should seek him out and make him pay for fathering you." He stalked over to the fire and squatted with his back to her as he issued an impatient warning. "Keep your silence, woman, and let me do what I must."
When no protest or complaints were forthcoming, and only the rattle of her chattering teeth disturbed the calm, Redfoot grinned. This one would not be easily tamed. She would try to flee the minute he turned his back, he guessed. She would run even if such a foolish act cost her her very life. She needed warmth and rest. He knew of only one way to see that she remained calm and compliant.
Redfoot filled a small bowl with water from a pouch hanging close to the fire. After removing the soft wood stopper from a buffalo horn nearby, he tapped a measure of powder into the bowl, and then used a wooden ladle to remove a cooking stone from the center of the firepit. Water sizzled and boiled up over the rim of the bowl as he eased the hot rock into the liquid. When the mixture of water and medicine had cooled to a simmer, he stood and marched over to his captive.
"Here," he said, offering the bowl. "Drink this."
Dominique turned her head away and pressed her lips together.
"I said drink this, foolish woman. You may be warmed enough to fight me, but if you are to survive, you must rest your spent body. I offer you your life in this potion. Take it, crazy one. It will make all the difference."
Dominique slowly returned her wary gaze to the bowl. "What it is?" she asked quietly.
"Medicine. It will warm your gut and make you sleep. Drink it. Then move to the fire and rest beneath the warmth of my robe."
She peered up at him, but still his features were hidden by darkness. Trusting him, because of the hint of concern in his voice and because she hoped what he said about the medicine was true, Dominique reached for the container. Shivering, she lifted the warm bowl to her mouth. Steam rose, thawing the tip of her frozen nose, and she sniffed the aroma of something bitter, like the scent of a young sapling culled from the depths of a virgin forest. The heat of the remaining liquid comforted her. After the barest hesitation, she drank it down.
Redfoot wheeled around and strode to the entrance of his lodge. He tossed open the flap of hide, then looked back at the woman. "I leave you now. Do not try to escape. If you step out of this tipi, what you find in the forest will make you wish the river had swallowed you beyond my reach."
Still guessing silence was her best ally, Dominique kept her tongue and watched as he stepped through the opening and disappeared. After the flap had dropped back into place, she let out her breath in a long groan, then crawled to the center of the tipi and the beckoning fire.
Dominique sat rigid for a full minute, half expecting to drop over dead from the effects of the brew. When it didn't happen, she added a buffalo robe to the blanket shrouding her trembling body, then grimaced as its pungent odor rea
ched her nostrils. What to do now? she wondered, her head feeling a little off balance. Her sheltered upbringing in Monroe, Michigan, had certainly never prepared her for anything like this. What chance did she have to escape, to survive, if she should find her way out of this ... this— Where was she? Dominique's brain, suddenly and curiously sluggish, labored to remember.
The ferry. Her uncle's men had put her and her chaperon on the boat for the trip to Fort Lincoln. The river, the chunks of ice, a bump. That was it. She suddenly remembered, giving in to the insane urge to giggle like a schoolgirl. She'd fallen off the ferry shortly after leaving Bismarck. Or had the ferry fallen off of her? The giggles erupted again as her mind, fragmented and numb, supplied a cartoon of the ferry, bottom-side up.
