Maverick Heart

by Joan Johnston

  “I’ll never forgive you if he dies.”

  Miles’s jaw tightened. “I made a choice, Verity. I couldn’t save you and Rand both. I chose you.”

  He was telling her she was everything to him. But she was so distraught she didn’t hear what he was saying.

  “Rand is my whole life.”

  What about me, Verity? Where do I fit in?

  “You should stop worrying so much about your son and start thinking more about what you want for yourself,” Miles said.

  “I wouldn’t know how to put my needs first.”

  “Then don’t you think it’s about time you gave it a try?”

  Before she could move, before she could anticipate what he had in mind, he picked her up in his arms, and headed for the bedroom door.

  18

  Willow awoke when a blast of cold air hit her. She rose instantly at the sight of Hawk in the arms of the white man she had helped escape barely a moon ago. Her glance flickered beyond him. Her heart sank to her toes. Somehow Hawk had found the woman and brought her back.

  “Lay Hawk down here,” Willow said, pointing Rand to the sleeping pallet she had just left. She didn’t ask how badly Hawk was hurt. She would know in a moment when she examined him. But it must be serious. Otherwise, Hawk would never have allowed the white man to carry him like a child.

  “Your wound has healed?” she asked Rand as she began to undress Hawk.

  He rolled his shoulder gingerly. “It’s fine,” he said. “You did a good job.”

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Were only seeking shelter from the storm,” Rand said. “Then we’ll be on our way.”

  “The woman is mine,” Hawk said in Sioux. “Do not let her leave, no matter what he says.”

  While she tended Hawk, Willow instructed Rand, “You must take off your outer clothing and sit near the fire. Not too close,” she warned. “It will do harm to warm up too quickly.”

  She eyed the white woman. Even with a nose as bright as a chokecherry, she was very beautiful. And a threat to Willow’s peace and happiness. Hawk had been furious when he returned to find the white woman gone. Willow had told him he did not need another wife. And she had promised to kill the next white woman he brought back with him to the village.

  He had scoffed at her and said he would do as he pleased. He had promised to find the white woman and return with her.

  He had kept his promise.

  She intended to keep hers.

  With the many medicines Willow had at hand, there were ways the white woman could die that none would know of her part in it. Except Hawk. She would tell him what she had done, so he would never bring another woman to take this one’s place after she was gone.

  She would prepare a sleeping draught, she decided, one that was strong enough to keep the white woman from ever waking again.

  * * *

  At first Freddy tried to resist Rand’s efforts to free her from the several wool blankets she had been using in lieu of a real coat. “I’m cold. Rand. I need these blankets to stay warm.”

  “You heard Willow,” Rand said. “You’ll warm up faster without them. Come on, sit here by the fire—not too close—and get warm.”

  Freddy couldn’t believe how good the heat felt. She held out her hands in front of it. First the palms, then the knuckles. She inched her toes toward the circle of rocks that rimmed the fire and gave off heat of their own. It wasn’t until she began to warm up that her teeth started to chatter.

  “I never realized a person could get so cold.” She had only been making conversation, but she saw Rand responding to what he must have thought was a complaint by wrapping one of the wool blankets back around her. She tried not to flinch when he touched her, but couldn’t help herself. She knew he wanted to put his arm around her, but she did nothing to encourage him. Then she caught sight of his hands. He quickly tucked them into the waist of his trousers.

  “Let me see your hands,” she said.

  “I’m fine, Freddy.”

  “Let me see them,” she insisted.

  He held them out to her.

  “Oh, Rand.” She reached out, as though to touch him, but pulled her hand back before she made contact. It was infuriating to feel so … frightened … when she knew Rand would never hurt her. She simply couldn’t bear to touch—or be touched by—another human being right now.

  “Your hands are frostbitten,” she said at last.

  “A little.”

  It was more than a little, Rand conceded. He had given Freddy his gloves to help keep her hands warm, and alternated the hand he used to hold the reins, putting it inside his coat pocket to warm it. Both hands had gradually gotten colder and colder. From the look of them, he could expect to be plagued by chilblains in the future.

  At least they had a future.

  But he was worried by Freddy’s behavior. He was trying to understand and accept her sudden aversion to being touched by him. But it made him feel like a villain, and he knew he wasn’t. He felt sure that if she would only let him hold her—gently—in his arms, they would both feel better. But he didn’t know the words to persuade her fear away, so touching her right now was out of the question.

  His eyes strayed to the other couple in the tipi.

  Rand made it a point not to watch what Willow was doing to Hawk. He had endured the same surgery himself recently enough to empathize with the pain he knew was involved. Hawk had to be in terrible agony as Willow dug out the bullets, but he never made a sound.

  At last Willow left Hawk’s side and joined them by the fire.

  She heated water and threw a mixture of herbs into it. Rand thought it was some potion for Hawk’s injuries until she poured out a small amount and offered it to Freddy.

  “This will bring you comfort,” she said.

  “What is it?” Freddy asked.

  “Something to warm you inside and out. Drink,” she said, urging Freddy to take a swallow.

  Freddy took a sip, murmured at the sweet taste, and said, “Here, Rand, you should drink some of this, too.”

  Willow took the cup from Freddy to hand it across the fire to the Rand, but she tripped and it spilled before it got to him. “I will make more,” she said.

  Willow put more water on the fire and settled beside them to wait for it to boil.

  “How is Hawk?” Rand asked.

  “Neither bullet hit more than flesh. I have removed them. He is strong. He will be well again.”

  “We owe him our lives,” Rand said.

  “I do not understand,” Willow said, holding a handful of herbs over the water on the fire. “Did you come with him willingly, then? Are you not captives?”

  Rand shook his head. “No. We’re guests.”

  She raised a skeptical brow. “Hawk said this?”

  Rand threw another piece of kindling onto the fire, giving him time to find an honest response. “I am his guest. The white woman belongs to me. And she’s leaving with me,” he added, eyeing Hawk on the other side of the tipi.

  “Ah.” It was plain from the simple sound that she recognized the distinction he had made. She withdrew the handful of herbs and emptied them back into a leather pouch.

  “Aren’t you going to make more tea?” Freddy asked.

  “These herbs are no longer fresh,” Willow said. “I will get others.”

  She suited word to deed and prepared another brew that wasn’t as sweet as the first, Freddy said, but which Rand agreed warmed his insides as much as the fire warmed his skin. “I will keep Hawk with me in this tipi,” Willow said after they had each finished a cup of the reviving brew. “You two may stay the night in the tipi where Hawk left you before. It is not far. I will take you there.”

  Rand exchanged a look with Freddy. She didn’t want to go back out into the cold any more than he did. But the lure of privacy was powerful. “I’ll wrap you up in a blanket and carry you,” he promised her before she could open her mouth to protest.

  “Your s
houlder is bothering you,” Freddy said. “I can walk on my own.”

  And she did, keeping her distance from Rand as Willow led them to the tipi that had been their prison.

  “I will light a fire,” Willow said.

  Rand would have protested except, to be honest, neither he nor Freddy was in any condition to do it for themselves. Willow stayed long enough to show them a kettle they could use to melt snow for warm water and left more herbs for tea.

  “You would be wise to wrap yourselves together in a buffalo robe to share the heat of your bodies,” Willow said. “I will come when it is daylight, to see if there is anything you need.”

  A flurry of cold and snow whirled through the tipi. Then she was gone.

  Freddy eyed Rand askance once they were alone together.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Rand asked.

  “Like what?”

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Freddy,” Rand said in a quiet voice.

  “I won’t lie next to you, Rand, even if we would be warmer because of it. I won’t!” Freddy said. “I can’t!”

  Rand reached out to her, and she jerked away from him. He felt the pain of her rejection, and told himself that any woman who had been through what she had endured was bound to be a little anxious about being touched by a man—any man.

  But he was the man who loved her. He wasn’t going to hurt her. He only wanted to hold her. To help her.

  “Freddy, let me hold you,” he said. “I promise I won’t do anything else.”

  Freddy stared at Rand with eyes that were ages older than they had been a week ago. “Please, Rand, if you care at all for me you’ll leave me alone. I feel …”

  She couldn’t say dirty aloud. It revealed too much that she didn’t want him to know. About how she felt. About what had been done to her. “I don’t want to be touched. I couldn’t stand it.”

  “All right, Freddy. I’ll lie on the other side of the fire from you. I’ll take the blankets. You can have the buffalo robe.”

  “You’re sure you won’t be cold?”

  He would be cold. But he wasn’t going to force her to do what was obviously so distasteful for her. “I’ll be fine.”

  They bundled up as best they could on opposite sides of the fire. Their thoughts ran on similar planes, but were nothing alike.

  I have to be patient with her, Rand thought. It’ll take time for her to get over what happened. Of course she was feeling low now. But he knew, for a certainty, that his Freddy would come bouncing back.

  Freddy was nowhere near so sanguine about the situation. She would never get over what had happened to her. The devastation was irreversible. There was no recapturing virginity once it was gone. There was no reclaiming innocence once it had been taken.

  I’ll never let another man touch me so long as I live, she thought. Her chest felt like someone was sitting on her, holding her down.

  “I want to go home, Rand,” she whispered into the flame-licked shadows.

  “We will, Freddy. Soon.”

  “I mean to England.”

  “If you want to go back, I’ll find a way to get us there.”

  “Alone, Rand. I want to go back alone.”

  He pushed himself up onto his elbow and strained his wounded shoulder. “Damn and blast!” It wasn’t the shoulder that made him swear. It was the futility he felt. They should have been married by now. She should have been his wife. There should have been no question of her returning to England, with or without him. They were right back where they had started months ago. She was as elusive, as unattainable, as she had ever been.

  But he was responsible for her happiness now in a way he had not been before. He had to make her see that running away wouldn’t solve anything. It hadn’t made his problems go away. It wouldn’t end hers.

  Freddy heard Rand swearing and pushed herself upright. “Is something wrong?”

  “I hurt my shoulder again.”

  Four days ago, a lifetime ago, she would have crossed the small distance between them to see if she could help him. But she didn’t want to touch him, because he might think he could touch her in return. “Is it all right now?”

  He sighed. “We have to talk about this, Freddy.”

  “My mind is made up. You can’t change it.”

  “Not about England, Freddy. About … about what happened with Tom.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t think any less of you, if that’s what you’ve been thinking. I—”

  “Stop!” She pressed her hands against her ears and closed her eyes to shut him out completely. “I’m not listening.”

  “I know you can hear me, Freddy.”

  She rolled over and turned her back to him, curling herself in a protective ball. “I won’t listen! Blah! Blah! Blah! I’m not listening!”

  “Bloody hell, Freddy! You have to listen to me!” He leapt up and covered the distance between them in two strides, jerking her onto her feet. She made a small, whimpering sound and dropped into a crouch, her shoulders hunched against his touch.

  He half expected her to start screaming and was relieved when she didn’t. He tried to lift her up, but she resisted, remaining curled into herself in a way that shut him out. He didn’t want to force her any further, so he knelt beside her and did his talking to the back of her head. At least her hands weren’t over her ears. She was using them to hug herself.

  “I love you, Freddy. There’s nothing on this earth that could stop me from loving you. Don’t you see? Nothing else matters. We’ll forget any of this ever happened and—”

  She laughed, a spine-chilling sound. “Forget! Maybe you can forget. I can’t!”

  He touched her shoulder, and she yanked herself free with a strength that surprised. She rose to face him, her green eyes glittering eerily in the light from the fire. “Would you like to know what he made me do? Let me tell you. Let me describe it for you. Perhaps that will make you see why I can never forget any of it.”

  Her eyes were wild, frightening.

  “Freddy, please—” he pleaded.

  But she wasn’t with him anymore. She had retreated to wherever it was that fiend Tom had taken her, reliving the horror, the awfulness of it all. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. Just whimpers. Pitiful crying noises.

  “Freddy, stop it. Do you hear me? Stop it!” He lurched to his feet and grabbed her shoulders, shaking her once, twice, until her eyes cleared of their tortured look and focused on him again.

  “Rand?” She looked at his hands on her arms and shuddered.

  He released her instantly and took a step backward. “I’m sorry, Freddy. I won’t touch you again. And I’ll take you home to England, if that’s what you want.”

  He paused and said, “Or you can go back alone. I … I won’t ask you to talk about what happened ever again. It’s a closed book.” A horrifying tale that would be remembered and perhaps relived for the rest of her life, he feared.

  “Lie down and get some sleep,” he urged her. “I promise you we’ll head back to the ranch as soon as the snow melts.”

  “It must melt soon, Rand, don’t you think? It’s only September. That’s awfully early for snow, isn’t it?”

  “It would be in England,” he said. “But this is a strange place, Freddy, with its own set of rules.”

  “Surely the sun will come out and melt the snow away tomorrow. Don’t you think?”

  He said what he knew she wanted to hear. “You’re probably right, Freddy. It’s an unseasonable storm. The sun will have to come out and melt the snow soon. Very soon.”

  None of them could have predicted the cold was there to stay, or that it would snow on and off for the next two weeks. None of them could have known the wind would blow for another week after that, until the landscape had brown, barren patches of naked earth and drifts elsewhere looming twelve feet high.

  Travel in such weather was impossible.

  Then winter was upon them in earnest, and there was no letup in the bitt
er cold, which kept the snow from melting even when the sun finally did come out again.

  None of which mattered to Hawk, whose wounds had putrefied, or Willow, who spent those weeks keeping him alive one day at a time. Until, at last, the fever eased and the awful redness around his wounds turned a healthier pink and healing began in earnest.

  Willow gave their two “guests” little enough of her attention but made sure they had food and knew to stay out of the way of everyone in the village until Hawk could confirm to the others what status they held.

  “I have told them you are Hawk’s guest and that the woman belongs to you,” she told Rand. “But that does not mean someone will not take offense if you offer insult. And Hawk is not well enough to protect you should a quarrel occur.”

  “We’ll keep out of everyone’s way,” Rand assured her. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

  “There is hunting to be done,” she said. “But I do not expect you will be much help with that.”

  “I’m a pretty fair shot.”

  She shrugged. “Crooked Knee is Hawk’s uncle. Go and see if he will take you with him. I do not think you should go alone.” It was because she thought he would get lost, but she did not want to insult him by telling him so to his face.

  “Just point him out to me,” Rand said.

  Rand had gone to Crooked Knee, but the elder Sioux had refused to have anything to do with him. Rand realized he was lucky he was a “guest” and not a “captive,” or the situation might have gotten sticky. It was plain the Sioux would have delighted in putting a period to his existence.

  Rand had gone out on his own, making note of the landmarks before—and behind—him, as Miles had taught him in the little time they had spent together at the ranch. He could easily have shot several rabbits, but he remembered how much Freddy dreaded the thought of eating them. So he stayed out in the cold until he found a lone deer, and brought it home over his horse’s back.

  Willow had been surprised and pleased with the meat for her cooking pot. But Freddy hadn’t even been aware of his effort. She had retreated into a world of her own. A world that shut him out.

  During those early days and weeks they spent in the Indian camp, Rand kept his distance from her as she had asked. It was difficult not to reach out to her, she was so obviously suffering. But he was afraid of making things worse for her if he forced her into any sort of intimacy, even something as simple as a hug of reassurance that he was there for her, that he still loved her, that she would never be less in his eyes because of what had happened to her. He did not pressure her in any way to accept his touch.