Whitefeather's Woman

by Deborah Hale

  He kissed her again, stalling for time so he could think. And so she would not see the dark clouds of doubt gathering in his eyes. Oh, but when he kissed her and wrapped her in his arms, he couldn’t think. Nor could he remember any of the reasons why a union between them would be doomed from the start.

  Jane subsided against him. “You’re the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept on.” She chuckled and the vibration of her body on his made him dizzy with delight.

  “Well, I reckon you’re the warmest blanket I’ve ever slept under.” He’d spent his whole life being sober and serious. Why had no one ever told him how good it felt to spout fond nonsense like this?

  From outside came the first distant sounds of the ranch waking to a new day. A dog barking. Someone splitting kindling for the stoves. Cookie banging on the bell to call the ranch hands for breakfast. The real world threatened the borders of his and Jane’s tiny private nation.

  She shivered for the first time all night. “How am I going to get back into the house without Ruth and Caleb knowing I’ve been here all night?”

  “Don’t worry.” Was he talking to her or to himself? “Caleb’s probably gone by now, and I can keep Ruth busy in the kitchen while you slip in the door by the parlor.”

  What would his sister say when she found out about this? John’s warrior courage almost deserted him at the thought.

  “It won’t likely matter much.” Jane sighed. “After Emery’s letter, I expect they’ll turn me out today, anyhow.”

  She burrowed deeper into John’s embrace and her voice took on a scared, hunted note. “Could Caleb show that letter to the sheriff and make him send me back to Boston to face charges?”

  “Hush, now, hush.” John stroked her hair. No wonder she’d been so skittish when she’d arrived in Whitehorn, wary of trusting anyone. “I’ll talk to Ruth and Caleb about that letter. I’ll tell them what you told me. Some of it, anyhow. When they stop for a minute and think, I know they’ll take your word over that bast—that ve’ho’e back East.”

  “Emery!” Jane looked up into John’s eyes. He could feel her heart racing, but not the exciting way it had raced last night. “Now that he knows I’m here, what if he takes it into his head to come after me?”

  How desperately she needed someone to protect her. That urge swelled in John’s heart, almost overpowering him. But at the same time a poisonous suggestion of doubt hissed in the back of his mind.

  Had Jane offered him her body last night in hopes of snaring herself a protector?

  All her old fears threatened to overwhelm Jane, but they didn’t quite manage to. Even Emery lost some of his power to intimidate her when she rested in the charmed circle of John Whitefeather’s protective arms.

  If only she could stay here forever.

  “Shh.” John’s voice comforted her as no sound ever had. “Don’t worry. I’ll get Caleb to wire Endicott that you’ve already moved on. I won’t let him hurt you ever again.”

  How could John promise her such a thing? Unless…he meant to be a part of her life forever? The blissful possibility left Jane breathless.

  She hadn’t thought of it last night. She hadn’t thought of anything past her astonished recognition of their common bond and her undeniable desire for this man. In the cold light of day, it seemed the perfect solution to all her problems.

  By some miraculous providence, she had found a man she could trust never to hurt her. One who was also strong enough to protect her from the rest of the world. If she was his wife, an entire regiment of Bismarck widows couldn’t displace her from the Kincaid ranch. She’d be part of the family she had come to love. A sister to Ruth. A doting aunt to Barton and Zeke.

  It wouldn’t be a completely lopsided partnership, either, with John giving her so much and gaining nothing in return. She would look after him, feather the kind of cosy nest this wild hawk craved in his deepest heart. Give him the children he’d been destined to father. Soothe his darkest wounds and share his most secret joys.

  And when the sun faded from the Big Sky and the ghost lights of a million stars glittered in the Montana heavens, she would make him tremble and sweat and cry in ecstasy. As he had done during their very first mating.

  Wouldn’t that be a more than fair exchange?

  As he continued to stroke her hair, Jane vowed she’d never pin it up again.

  John’s body tensed ever so slightly beneath her. “Maybe you ought to tell me a little bit more about how you came to Mrs. Endicott’s house and got yourself engaged to Emery—so I can convince Ruth and Caleb not to believe the things he wrote in his letter.”

  Jane didn’t want to talk about her past. Didn’t want to befoul her tongue by speaking Emery Endicott’s name. But if it would keep her lying here in John’s arms, lulled by the strong, steady beat of his heart, she would say or do just about anything.

  “Mrs. Endicott was Mama’s godmother. Like the rest of the family, she cut Mama off when Mama married a man they considered unsuitable. They were wrong, though. Papa wasn’t rich but he was a good man. And when he was home, he made Mama very happy.”

  “And when he wasn’t home?”

  Jane hesitated. “That was harder. Mama had been looked after all her life. She found it hard to manage when he was at sea. After his ship was lost, she sort of gave up on life. I tried to help her and so did Ches, my brother, but I guess we couldn’t make up for Papa being gone.”

  All her life she’d never quite measured up. First being a girl, who could never follow Papa to sea, like Ches would one day. Then watching her mother fade away, and feeling guilty that she hadn’t been an important enough reason for Emily Harris to keep on living.

  “After Ches died and she got sick, Mama wrote Mrs. Endicott, begging her to give me a home.”

  “I guess I didn’t understand.” John’s voice rumbled through his chest, where Jane’s head rested. “I thought you worked for this Mrs. Endicott.”

  “I did, from the very first. I guess legally I was her ward, but she treated me more like a servant. An unpaid companion and nurse. I suppose it’s ungrateful of me to complain. Who knows where I’d have ended up if Mrs. Endicott hadn’t taken me in? I always had enough to eat and warm clothes and a roof over my head.”

  “I had those at the residential school, too.” John did understand—everything. “That didn’t stop me from stealing a horse and running away after three years. That’s how I earned my name. Because I rode west at night and hid during the day.”

  He’d stolen a horse and she’d stolen a brooch, both to escape an intolerable life and search for something better in the West. Another strong link had been forged in the invisible chain that bound them together.

  “I didn’t have the gumption to run away.” If she’d been standing, Jane would have hung her head. “I used to worry a lot about what would happen to me if Mrs. Endicott died. She had so many complaints and ailments, I expected it almost daily. I guess that’s what made me accept Emery when he proposed. I thought it might be the only way I could stay there. I did love that house—most of it, at least. And the neighborhood and the servants. It had been my home for a good many years.”

  “Did you love him? Before he started to hurt you, I mean.” John’s voice had a threatening edge. Could he be jealous?

  The idea seemed ludicrous to Jane, but it also gave her hope for a future with him. Then again, Emery had been insanely jealous of her interest in other men. It hadn’t meant he’d loved her.

  Jane shook her head, ashamed to admit she’d been ready to marry a man she didn’t love, just to keep a roof over her head. “I thought I did, in the beginning. He was the first man—the first person to show much of an interest in me. And I didn’t know any other men to compare him with. I barely remembered what Papa had been like, and I couldn’t bring myself to think much about him.”

  She fought against the tightness in her throat to continue. “Emery and I had to keep our engagement a secret because Mrs. Endicott wanted her nephew to marry a bette
r sort of girl. It seemed romantic to me that he was willing to marry me in spite of his aunt—though, of course, we knew we’d have to wait until after she passed on, or she’d disinherit him.”

  Jane lofted a swift glance at John’s face. Could he understand why she’d promised herself to someone like Emery Endicott, when she could scarcely fathom it herself?

  “Last night, you told me you’d had lots of practice lying about your injuries. Did Endicott…hurt you often?” John’s jaw tightened and his eyes gleamed like the strange blue light at the heart of a flame.

  Jane gave a bitter laugh. “I guess that depends on what you mean by ‘often.’ Not every week—sometimes a month or more would go by. There were times I wished he’d strike me with his hands instead of his words. Bruises on your skin heal so much faster. I just knew if I said anything to Mrs. Endicott, she’d believe Emery instead of me. He was her own nephew, after all, and I was only…”

  Cold, severe, fault-finding Mrs. Endicott. Though subtler than her nephew, she’d managed to erode Jane’s sense of self-worth to the point where she was grateful for the attentions of a man bent on destroying her.

  Unearthing these memories hurt far more than when John had thrust into her that first time, but Jane forced herself to continue. John would need every scrap of ammunition she could give him to convince Ruth…and especially Caleb.

  “I don’t remember quite when I decided to run away. I had a little money, but not enough to live on, so I knew I needed a job. I started checking the employment notices in the papers Mrs. Endicott’s cousin sent us from Saint Louis. I sent off several letters, but I never heard back from any of them…until one came from Whitehorn. The mail was late that day and Emery saw the letter. He flew into a rage and burned it before I could read it. I thought he was going to kill me. I could hardly believe it when I woke up in the infirmary. I knew I couldn’t go back to that house, for the next time I might not be so lucky.”

  “So you took the brooch off Mrs. Endicott’s shawl and sold it for train fare?”

  Jane nodded. “I was so worried that someone here would find out about what I’d done, or that Emery might come after me. But as I got to know you and Ruth, I felt so wicked for deceiving you. I planned to tell you…some of this last night, even before you saw Emery’s letter. You’d been so kind to me the past while, I figured you might understand.”

  “Bet you never thought I’d understand this well.” John held her tight and drew a deep breath. “I reckon there’s only one more matter to settle before we get up and face the day.”

  He sounded so solemn.

  Jane mouth went dry as ashes. “What matter?”

  “The matter of you and me.” His voice sounded strange. Hesitant…fearful? “Lord knows, I don’t have much to offer a wife. Pretty well everything I make goes to William’s bank to pay off the mortgage on Sweetgrass. If you don’t mind sharing what’s left, I promise I’ll always look after you and make sure no one ever hurts you again. If you’ll be my…wife?”

  Had she heard right?

  “You mean it?” She looked him full in the face, praying she hadn’t imagined his proposal.

  John nodded. “Every word.”

  He hadn’t said anything about love, and the majestic blue of his eyes seemed strangely clouded. What did that matter? Perhaps the Cheyenne didn’t think of love in the same terms white folks did. What they felt in their hearts was still the same. Who could blame the man if he entertained a little uncertainty? Events had propelled them toward this moment so swiftly, it might take a little getting used to.

  He’d waited a long time to take a wife. Perhaps he’d never intended to. She had made this handsome, wise, courageous man ready to commit the rest of his life to her. Jane glowed with the wonder of it. For the first time in her life, she had not only measured up, but eclipsed every other woman John Whitefeather had ever known.

  She shoved aside the doubts that threatened to steal her joy. “I’d be honored.”

  They kissed to seal their pledge.

  Their lips refused to disengage. Longer and deeper they kissed, breathing fresh ardor over the glowing coals of last night’s passion. Jane sensed the heat and need building between her thighs and felt the straining evidence of John’s desire pressing against them.

  Parting her legs, she lowered herself onto him. True to John’s promise, it didn’t hurt at all this time. It felt wonderful.

  A cry, something between a gasp and groan, broke from his lips. “Mmm, what are you up to, woman?”

  Jane grinned. Never had she felt so light of spirit and yet so powerful, holding a large, vigorous man captive beneath her.

  “I’m not up to anything,” she purred with mock innocence. “I’m just trying to learn how to read a person’s body movements the way you do. I had a silly notion your body was inviting me to do this. Maybe I misunderstood.”

  She raised her hips, then eased them down again, savoring the delicious sensations that skittered through her.

  “No…I reckon…you understood just fine.”

  “That’s good.” She began a leisurely, rhythmic thrust of her hips. “I also wanted to make sure if…oh…this was the kind of, mmm, activity you could…ah…tolerate on a regular basis.”

  Her husband-to-be didn’t reply. At least not in words that meant anything in either English or Cheyenne. But as he writhed beneath her and they shuddered together in blissful waves of release, Jane got the answer she’d been hoping for.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Answer me, hestatanemo.” Ruth’s dark eyes glowed like live coals. “Did Jane spend last night here with you?”

  Hearing Jane’s name, Barton began bouncing in his mother’s arms, chanting, “Na-na-na-na-na.”

  John sighed and nodded. What was the good of lying?

  The flattened state of his fleece rug might have told the tale, even without the flecks of dried blood. Besides, he and Jane were going to be married. He might go into Whitehorn for a license this very day, just in case Caleb refused to accept the truth about Jane. By the sound of it, Barton would be pleased, at least.

  “How could you do something so foolish?” Ruth transferred the baby to her other hip. “Now the girl’s ruined for Amos Carlton! I never would have asked you to get her ready for his courting if I’d thought you’d turn into a lovesick calf and then a rutting bull.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Ruth.”

  It hadn’t been, had it? Sure, he’d wanted Jane so badly he’d feared he might burst into flame. But she’d been the one to ask, the one to take it each step further until they’d plunged off the lip of a canyon together.

  His sister shot him a scornful look. “What was it like, then? And what’s this letter Caleb got from some man in Boston? Foolishness about Jane being some kind of jewel thief—honestly! If I wasn’t crazy in love with that man, I’d clout him with a frying pan.”

  John would sooner have tried to bag a wolverine with his bare hands than mess with Ruth when her temper was up. Thank goodness there weren’t any frying pans or rolling pins handy in his cabin.

  He avoided her first question by answering the second. “That letter is nothing but a pack of lies. Jane pawned one little piece of Mrs. Endicott’s jewelry to buy her train ticket out here, so she could get away from the old lady’s miserable snake of a nephew. Remember what her face looked like when she got here? He did that to Jane when he saw the letter you and Caleb sent to her. And it wasn’t the first time, either.”

  Ruth’s sun-kissed cheeks paled and she held Barton tighter to her. “I knew there was something not right about that. And the train wreck?”

  “Never happened. She didn’t want folks knowing why she’d come here with nothing but the clothes on her back.”

  “That’s foolishness. She could have told us.”

  John shook his head. “Not at first, Ruth. How could she know we weren’t every bit as bad as the Endicotts? Would you have hired her, even for a short spell, if you knew she’d run off from her last
job?”

  Ruth opened her mouth to protest, then looked at her little son and appeared to reconsider. “But later—”

  “Later she was ashamed to admit she’d lied to us in the first place.”

  “The poor thing. No wonder she was so nervous around strangers.” Ruth grimaced. “And me shoving all those suitors at her. Henry Hill—it’s a wonder he didn’t end up with worse than creamed peas.”

  “It’s all right. You didn’t know.”

  Ruth had nothing to apologize for. She’d dismissed that confounded letter from Emery Endicott, trusting Jane, while he’d been quick to believe the worst. How could he be a good husband to a white woman, when his suspicion and hostility toward her whole race could blaze out of control so quickly?

  Ruth pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped the drool sliding down Barton’s chin. “You still should have let her be, hestatanemo. I asked you to get her ready for Amos Carlton to court. This business of her past is all the more reason Amos would have made a good husband for Jane. Now, thanks to your…meddling, there’ll be no chance of that.”

  “Don’t fret yourself.” John threw back his shoulders, accepting his responsibility, though the prospect of it tied his stomach in knots. “She may not have Amos Carlton for a husband, but she’ll have me. I’ll take care of Jane.”

  Ruth’s graceful black brows drew together in a worried frown. “I suppose it’s the only honorable thing to do, now that you’ve taken Jane into your…” she stared at the fleece rug “…bed.”

  Hot shame seared John’s face.

  His sister shook her head. “I can’t help fretting for both of you when I look into the future. Jane is a dear soul, and taking account of her past, she’s done well since she came out here. You and I both know the spirits of the Great Sky haven’t shown off their strength lately. A girl as delicate and sensitive as Jane Harris needs a different kind of looking after than a half-Cheyenne ranch foreman can give her.”