Heather Graham's Christmas Treasures

by Heather Graham

  No one could come to her rescue. Any white man who rode into Black Eagle's camp now had to be mad, for Black Eagle was furious with the whites, and the Blood Blackfeet were known for their skill at warfare, torture, and death.

  But Shane had ridden in.

  He was mounted on Diablo, the fine black stallion that had taken him safely through years of war, wandering, and peace. He was very tall in his saddle, just as he had been the day she first met him back in New Orleans.

  He was clad against the severe cold in his high hunting boots, a black wool cape with shirted shoulders, black leather gloves, and a low-brimmed hat. Wisps of his sand-colored hair escaped the hat in the wind. Beneath the brim of his hat, she thought that she saw the glitter of his eyes. Gold, challenging, never wavering as they met the coal-dark stare of Black Eagle.

  Kaitlin's heart seemed to slam against her chest. He could not be there, not really. She had been thinking of him so poignantly that she had caused this mirage to appear. This was not really happening...

  But it was.

  "This is your wife?" Black Eagle asked, holding tightly to Kaitlin.

  "Yes, that's her," Shane replied easily enough.

  "Then we will talk," Black Eagle said. His grip remained tight on Kaitlin's shoulders. As Shane dismounted from Diablo, Black Eagle spoke softly to Kaitlin. "MacAuliffe is a brave man. We will see how brave. Perhaps he will leave with you. Perhaps he will die at the end of my hunting knife."

  Her knees were trembling. She was going to fall.

  "Go back to the teepee," Black Eagle commanded. "I will meet with him elsewhere."

  She shook her head ferociously. "No! I—"

  "I will talk with him elsewhere!" Black Eagle repeated.

  Once again she shook her head. "Please, just a moment!"

  She didn't wait for an answer. She didn't believe that Shane had come here, that he had risked nearly certain death.

  For her. She had to tell him to go.

  She broke free from Black Eagle's hold and started to run. The snow was deep on the ground and she had to flounder through it.

  "Kaitlin, stop! Go back to him!" Shane ordered.

  But she didn't obey him, she couldn't. She had nearly reached him and she stumbled through the last of the snow, vaulting into his arms.

  He felt so good. She raised her eyes to his. God, they were so gold. As gleaming as the sun. As startling, as powerful.

  She had never expected to see him again. The handsome, hard-chiseled features of his face. That jaw that could clench so determinedly. She had never expected to feel his arms around her, feel the soaring heat within their protection.

  "Shane! Go!" she said, her lips trembling, her teeth chattering. "Go, while you can. He likes you, you know. He admires you. If you just leave him alone and go home, back to Francesca—"

  "MacAuliffe!" Black Eagle thundered.

  Shane shook her. "Stop it, Kaitlin, now! Go back to him, and leave me to talk."

  "He could kill you!"

  "It's a gamble," Shane admitted.

  "Then—"

  His lips twisted in a wry grin. "Ah, but it always seems to be a gamble, doesn't it, Kaitlin? It was a gamble that we met, the flip of a card that we wed. Well, I am a gambling man. Leave me to play the game."

  Black Eagle was nearly beside them. Shane was going to hand her back, until they played this game of chance between them, whatever it might be. It filled Kaitlin with dread.

  "Shane, I love you!" she cried out suddenly, passionately.

  His arms tightened around her. They were nearly brutal. "Damn you, Kaitlin, don't say things like that just because I've come here for you!"

  "No, it's true!" she whispered urgently.

  His eyes, fierce and golden, met hers. I have loved you for such a long time, really! she thought. But she couldn't tell him that now. She couldn't begin to explain it.

  "Don't gamble your life!" she pleaded.

  But his eyes left hers and met Black Eagle's. He shoved her back to the Blackfoot chief.

  "You are a fool, or an extremely courageous man," Black Eagle told him.

  "It's nearly Christmas," Shane said. "A very great holiday for my people. We exchange gifts on that day. I've come to ask for my wife back for Christmas. She would be your gift to me."

  "I am not white but I know all about Christmas. Why should I give you such a gift?"

  "Because I have a gift for you," Shane said. "If you will just come with me...?"

  "Alone? Why should I trust you?"

  "Why should you not? When have I ever betrayed a trust?"

  "If I am not pleased with your gift, I will kill you, no matter how well I know you," Black Eagle told Shane.

  "You will try. I will defend myself," Shane said.

  Black Eagle smiled. "It will be as you say." Abruptly he turned to Kaitlin. "Go back to the teepee as I have commanded, or I will call the women to be sure that you do so. You will be one man's gift this night, either mine or his. For if he is slain, I need not, by any man's honor, respect his wedding vows."

  Her knees were buckling again. She meant to obey him, though, for she knew that the Blackfoot women could be far worse than the men when they took hold of a hostage.

  But Shane was still there... with his blazing eyes upon her, filled with some emotion. Passion, hatred, love?

  She knew not which.

  "Please...!" she whispered.

  And Shane moved. Against his own better judgment he took a step through the deep pile of snow. He took her into his arms for a moment, and his kiss seared her lips with a startling force and heat. She would fall because of the fierce pounding of her heart... because of the way her blood was streaming through her veins.

  "Go back," he told her.

  "Shane—"

  "It's a gamble, Kaitlin." He touched her cheek, smoothed back her hair. His breath was a cloud against the cold of the day. "And I'm a gambling man. You know that well."

  He turned, thrusting her away from him, leaving her. Kaitlin felt the tears stinging her eyes with a vengeance now. She started to stumble back to the teepee through the snow. There was nothing that she could do.

  But wait.

  She fell to her knees in the teepee. Tears flooded her eyes.

  She looked up and saw the numbers she'd scratched on the hide of the teepee.

  The last number.

  Twenty-four.

  It was Christmas Eve. The last day she might ever see Shane.

  She closed her eyes again.

  And suddenly, all she could do was remember the first day she had seen him, the very first.

  Funny.

  It had nearly been Christmas then, too.

  Chapter 1

  Christmastide 1868

  Vieux Carree—the French Quarter

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  Kaitlin stood in the smoke-shrouded hallway of Madame de Bonnet's Wine and Ale House, staring blankly at the man named Jack Leroux.

  He was seated at one of the tables. His game tonight was poker.

  Thank God for poker.

  The game had taken Leroux's attention from her, and if she could just gather her wits about her, she could find a way to escape Leroux. Did she really need to escape him? She hadn't yet legally committed herself to him; he had no right to hold her!

  But from the moment he had seen her at the station, he had begun to laugh, a laugh of pure pleasure.

  The last thing she had felt like doing was laughing. The fear that had consumed her on her journey all the way from eastern Georgia swiftly became horror.

  Whatever had possessed her to answer an ad for a mail-order bride?

  Life, she reminded herself bleakly. Not that it had ever been really good. Her father—God rest his soul—had been a drunkard. Once, he had done well enough with his gambling to acquire an attractive spit of land. Enough to convince her aristocratic mother's folks that he would be a fine catch.

  But the land he had acquired was slowly sold off acre by acre. Kaitli
n's mother had died when she was barely five, leaving behind a beautiful portrait of herself and nothing more. There had been years of struggling to get enough to eat, to make ends meet. And there had been Jemmy, her brother, a year younger than her, her only salvation.

  But the war had come. And the war had taken Jemmy. And when it was over, the war had taken even the meager roof over her head.

  She had tried. She had tried so hard. Although he'd been a drunkard, she'd loved her father, and she was the only one left to care for him. She'd taught children to read and to write, but the war had taken the money from the aristocrats, too, and left behind the carpetbaggers and a world that was merely a ghost of what it once had been.

  Then last year Pa had finally died and she had looked around at the devastation of Georgia, and she suddenly decided that it was time to leave. In the West, in Montana and Arizona and South Dakota, there were new worlds. Worlds unravaged by Sherman and his troops. Worlds where little children didn't go hungry.

  She had wanted a taste of that world.

  And so she had begun to read the papers, and at long last, she had found the perfect advertisement. A Mr. Jack Leroux was seeking a bride. He was a businessman of means, French by descent. He was tall, young, handsome, and amiable, and seeking a lovely young lady to brighten up his days.

  He had sent her a picture of himself, and asked for one in return. She had sent him one, and soon after, she had received the passage money.

  It was a wild idea. But there was nothing left for her at home, and the idea of meeting this Frenchman in New Orleans was exciting. His property was in Montana, but he often traveled to New Orleans. It would be a fine place to meet and marry a bride.

  From the first moment she had seen him—awaiting her in his carriage—she knew that she had made a dreadful and horribly naive mistake.

  He didn't begin to resemble his picture. The tintype had shown the slender face of a lean young man with dark hair and a luxuriant mustache.

  Well, this Jack did have dark hair and a mustache, but that was where any similarity ended. Jack Leroux was a big man, broad in the shoulders, paunchy at the middle. Kaitlin didn't care about that. She hadn't expected to fall in love. All that she wanted was something tangible out of life. A house with a good roof. Clothing that wasn't mended on top of the mends. Food other than onions and potatoes. Simple things really. And the man in the letter had promised so much more. Silks and satins and so forth.

  What horrified her about Jack Leroux was his eyes. They were nearly jet black and small.

  And they were evil.

  She had barely felt his fingertips on her own when she realized what a fool she had been. What a naive fool. Jack Leroux had not been looking for a wife. Or perhaps he was—perhaps he married many women. But she knew—knew!—as soon as his gaze raked over her assessingly that he had other plans for her that didn't involve any homestead in the West.

  She tried to keep her smile in place as his hands touched hers. She excused herself discreetly, saying that she needed to look for her luggage.

  And then she had tried to run. She didn't know where to go. Or how she would manage once she got there. She had spent Leroux's money on the passage. Did that mean that she was indebted to him? Did he have a legal claim to her?

  She was afraid, even, of the law, for Reconstruction had brought with it a horde of procurers, and thieves and scalawags, and it didn't seem to matter if there was a title before a man's name or not.

  It didn't matter because as she tried to run away she wasn't caught by the law. She was caught by two of Leroux's thugs, who promptly returned her to their boss. He had rudely informed her that he had a game to attend, and that she might as well spend her first night in New Orleans getting accustomed to her new station in life. According to Jack, she was indebted to him. To the tune of fifty dollars in gold.

  "You can't force me to marry you!" she had told him, as the carriage lurched forward.

  When he had laughed she had known that he didn't care in the least about marriage.

  "You'll get used to your new life soon enough, my precious. But you are a beauty, quite a prize! You'll pay me back in no time."

  "I'll not!"

  "I hope you're not thinking of trying to run away from me again, my dear."

  "And I'll not do anything for you, either!"

  "I know men who like a feisty woman."

  "I'll manage to kill you somehow, I will."

  That had sent him into further gales of laughter. "Another Rebel boast! Well, Miss High and Mighty, your side lost the war, remember?"

  She spat at him. He pulled out his snow-white handkerchief and mopped his face. "I'll see that you pay for that later, ma cherie. Right now, open your eyes. Take a look around. You've the beauty to make money. Real money. Think about it."

  When the carriage stopped in front of the alehouse, Leroux and his thugs had forcibly escorted her inside. Then Leroux had walked away, leaving her in the hallway. It didn't matter. The place was filled with his people. He was confident that there was no way that she could run.

  But she had to, somehow!

  And it was nearly Christmas. The season of peace, of good will toward man!

  There were decent folk in New Orleans, Kaitlin was convinced of it. War or no war, carpetbaggers or no. If she could just manage to elude Jack and his men.

  The poker game seemed a godsend. Jack was seated at a table, leaning back in his chair. The lights were very dim, and the smoke was heavy. There were other women in the place. Blondes, brunettes, and redheads in strange, scanty outfits. They moved about with various parts of their indecently exposed bodies jiggling as they served drinks to the men.

  The players were drinking straight whisky.

  The stakes were high.

  With nothing else to keep her panic at bay, Kaitlin began to study the players. Beside Jack there was another big fellow. He was as round as a cherub with a little bow mouth and a clean, bald head. He must have been very wealthy, for he threw gold piece after gold piece on the table. Beside him, in contrast, was a reed-thin fellow with sallow dark cheeks and long stringy hair.

  Next to him was a younger man. He wore a low-brimmed hat, even at the table. He would probably be tall when he stood, Kaitlin thought, and he was built well, with fine broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He was clad in a long railway frock coat, and he appeared to be a friend of the fellow sitting to his right.

  That fellow was a young man who had caught Kaitlin's attention.

  He had beautiful blue eyes. Soft as clouds. Kaitlin knew because he had looked right at her as she stood in the hallway. His features were very fine, and his hair was so light that it was nearly a platinum color. He smiled at her, and she felt her heart thud against her chest. He was wonderful. If only he had been the man to advertise for a bride...

  But surely, such a man would have his pick of respectable young women. He wouldn't need to advertise. She had been such a fool.

  At his side, his friend nudged him. The blond man said something, and his neighbor looked up at Kaitlin.

  And she saw his face clearly.

  Brilliant eyes, hazel eyes that gleamed like gold, fixed on hers with amusement and speculation. He chewed idly upon a straw and looked her up and down in a fashion that seemed to make her blood steam. She wanted to crawl beneath the table.

  It's not my fault that I'm here, and I'm not that kind of woman! she wanted to scream. Damn him. There was so much mockery in his golden gaze. So much speculation. Something cold, and something hard. And something so curious, too.

  She gritted her teeth. He was a very handsome man—lean, taut, and bronzed, at once both rugged and elegant. But his manner disturbed her and she stared at his friend again.

  Hope was suddenly born in her chest. When the time seemed right, she would throw herself on the mercy of the blond man. Surely, he could not be part of Jack Leroux's party!

  "Come on, Leroux, put your money on the table!" the blond said.

  "And don't pul
l out another ace," the man with the golden eyes warned.

  "You're accusing me of cheating!" Leroux was suddenly on his feet.

  "I'm not accusing anyone of anything," the man said. He was calm, he was smooth. Those gold eyes assessed Leroux. "I'm just suggesting that you don't pull out another ace."

  "Why, you—" Leroux began, and from behind him, two men appeared with guns.

  There was the roar of a firing gun. Kaitlin was certain that she cried out.

  The man with the golden eyes had pulled out his guns and disarmed the men who had aimed at him.

  He hadn't killed them. He had shot them both in the hands. The gun hands.

  "Jesu!" someone gasped.

  "You want to put your money on the table?" the reed-thin man asked Leroux.

  Leroux sat very still, staring at his cards. Then he stared at the pile of gold on the table.

  "I haven't got any more gold."

  "Then you're out of it," the man with the gold eyes said.

  "No, no, I'm not." Leroux grinned broadly. "I've got something better than gold. A Christmas gift, gentlemen."

  Suddenly he pushed back his chair and rose. Turning, dramatically, he swept an arm in Kaitlin's direction. "A prize far greater than gold, gentlemen. Miss Kaitlin Grant, my fiancée." He drew papers from his pocket. "Her indebtedness to me, gentlemen. She can be yours." He threw the papers down on the table.

  Kaitlin gasped. She stared at the men seated at the table. The thin man had a lean, hungry look about him. It was not reassuring.

  The fat man looked at her as if she were a steak and mashed potatoes and apple pie, all rolled into one.

  "But I'm not property!" Kaitlin protested.

  Jack Leroux ignored her. "Are we on, gentlemen?"

  The handsome blond man with the blue eyes and his golden-eyed friend were both watching her, too.

  The blond, kindly.

  The golden-eyed man—more speculatively than ever. Well, she belonged to Jack Leroux, it seemed. She must appear to be a whore.

  "I am not property! I don't owe anything to any man! I'm trying to get hold of a sheriff or a constable or the law in some shape or form—"

  "Shut up!" Jack said, walking toward her. "Shut up, or I'll see you black and blue—"