Whitefeather's Woman

by Deborah Hale

  His eyelids ached to slide shut, but he forced them open.

  “Of course I thought about you.” Her voice sounded choked with emotion, and the forest hazel of her eyes glittered, as if with dew. “I thought I’d never see—”

  While she was speaking, he drew Jane close enough to kiss. Before she could finish, he kissed her.

  Had she thought she would never see him again? Then perhaps she could understand his fear that one day she might walk out of his life. She might see how it had held him back from committing his whole heart to her, as he longed to.

  For now, he settled for committing his lips to hers. Becoming reacquainted with their ripe sweetness. Awakening potent memories of the night they’d first discovered each other as man and woman.

  He sensed a struggle within her. One part eager to respond to his kiss and all that it implied. Another part still hesitant, still wary. Had she remained angry with him because his very real attraction for her had begun as a pretense?

  Then maybe he would have to gentle his Jane all over again. Slowly, tenderly winning her trust anew. As he watched her ripen with his child.

  Nothing less could have induced him to break from that kiss of reunion. But he had to know.

  He withdrew just far enough to let the words out. With his hand tangled in Jane’s silky hair, he pressed her forehead to his and searched her eyes. “Do you know yet? Whether we have a baby on the way?”

  The subtlest rub of her brow against his told him she was shaking her head.

  Before he could ask if it only meant she still wasn’t sure, Jane whispered, “For a few days I’d thought it might be, but it isn’t. You won’t be obliged to make an honest woman of me.”

  “How’s our patient doing?” Dr. Gray gave a warning rap on the doorsill, then strode in.

  Pulling away from John’s feeble grip, Jane fled the room.

  If he’d had strength to match his annoyance, John might have strangled the good doctor with his own stethoscope!

  Instead, he yelped as Dr. Gray probed his swollen lower leg.

  “No bones broken, as far as I can tell,” said the doctor, “but you’ll have to stay off it, soak it and keep it elevated until those muscles heal. Let’s have a look at that gash on your forehead.”

  John submitted to the examination in stony silence.

  “Well, considering your ordeal, you’re not in bad shape.” Dr. Gray poured some medicine into a spoon and shoved the cloying liquid into John’s mouth before he could protest. “Nothing modern medicine can do for you that rest and nourishment won’t accomplish.” He flashed a wry grin. “A pretty nurse won’t hurt, either.”

  “What was that stuff you gave me?” John wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Just a touch of laudanum to help you sleep soundly. Wouldn’t want you thrashing that leg around.” The doctor chuckled. “I must say, I’ve never seen a woman so improved as your Miss Harris. Traipsed all over town the night of the storm to track me down. Through three different saloons, no less. I never guessed she had that kind of pluck.”

  John’s eyes narrowed. “Haven’t you got other patients to see?”

  Ignoring John’s black stare, Dr. Gray tucked his stethoscope and the laudanum bottle back in his satchel. “As a matter of fact, the sheriff wants me to check out that pair of fools he has cooling their heels in the jail. Come see me at my office if you aren’t feeling back to your old self in a week or so.”

  “Say, Doc…”

  John didn’t want to beg a favor of a man who clearly admired Jane more than he had any business doing. How soon might it be before anyone else came to check on him? He didn’t trust either his strength or his balance to go hunting for Jane on his own.

  “Would you ask…Miss Harris to come back in? I reckon I could use a drink of water to get the taste of that medicine out of my mouth.”

  Before the doctor could say yes or no, a commotion of voices and footsteps approached, and Ruth burst into the room with Caleb hot on her heels.

  “Ah hestatanemo!” His sister hurled herself on John, speaking rapidly in Cheyenne. “I never thought I’d be so happy to see anyone! It was bad of you to give us such a fright. What did the doctor say? You need a good poultice on that cut. Bless all the spirits of the Big Sky for keeping you alive! Stay out of flooded rivers after this, you hear me? What are you laughing about? Did that doctor give you whiskey?”

  “Just sleep medicine, little sister.” Strong sleep medicine. He felt like his bones were starting to melt.

  John glanced past Ruth to Caleb. His brother-in-law looked as though a crushing burden had just been lifted from his back. Yet Caleb’s overwhelming relief still held a faint, bitter after taste of worry and grief.

  “You look damned ugly, old friend.” Caleb shook his shaggy blond head. “But it’s sure good to see you this side of heaven. We got the herd in. I struck a sweet deal with the railroad to ship ’em back East early.”

  “That’s good. My friends from Sweetgrass?”

  “We sent the word out to them that you’re alive. They did a fine job on the roundup. Put a couple of them in a proper saddle and teach them to throw a lasso, they’d make top-notch cowboys. I think I’ve got that young Ravencrest fellow about ready to come apprentice at the ranch next winter.”

  “Hush, Caleb,” said Ruth. “Can’t you see he’s sleeping?”

  He wasn’t, quite. John just couldn’t hold his eyelids open one more second, nor could he make his mouth move.

  Another set of footsteps entered the room, and he listened hard, hoping to catch the sound of Jane’s voice before sleep overcame him in earnest.

  “Seems like good fortune’s smiling on everybody,” said William Kincaid. “Our baby arriving nice and healthy. Caleb getting the herd in. Jane coming into all that money. Now John practically rising from the dead. We’ll all have plenty to be thankful for in our prayers. Why don’t you folks come have a cup of tea and something to eat? I imagine John’ll sleep for quite a spell.”

  “What’s this about Jane getting money?” Ruth’s voice moved away from the bed.

  John struggled to stay conscious, hoping Will, Caleb and his sister wouldn’t get out of earshot before he found out what Will was talking about.

  “That’s right, you won’t have heard yet. That woman Jane used to work for in Boston plans to leave the girl her fortune. Always did, as near as I can make out. Jane sent all the pay Caleb gave her back East so the old lady could buy back the brooch Jane pawned.”

  “Well, I’ll be,” murmured Caleb.

  The voices were retreating.

  “I think she wrote a letter, too,” said Will. “Telling the old lady what was what with her scoundrel of a nephew. This morning a wire arrived from Boston asking Jane to come home.”

  Though he could still hear the drone of voices in the distance, John could no longer make out the words. He’d overheard all he needed to, though.

  Jane had a chance at the kind of affluent life she deserved. The kind of undemanding life she needed. And there was no baby to bind her to him.

  As the laudanum dragged him into the murky depths of sleep, John almost wished he’d let the river have him.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jane kept a vigil by John’s bed that night, watching him sleep. Her gaze lingered over the finely chiseled contours of his sun-bronzed face. Dwelled longingly on the firm, narrow lips that had coaxed such pleasure from her body. Passed like a visual caress over the mane of dark hair splayed across his pillow.

  So recently her heart had ached with emptiness, like a starving belly. Now it swelled so full of love and wistful desire that it hurt all over again.

  For a mad instant, after he’d kissed her out of her right mind, she had almost answered his question about the baby with a lie she wished was true. Would it have been so very wrong to say she was pregnant, or even that she was still uncertain, buying her time to conceive?

  Yes. It would have been wrong. As wrong as stealing Mrs. Endicott
’s brooch. As wrong as seducing John to gain his protection. Doing wrong sometimes proved an overwhelming temptation when right wasn’t just a straight and narrow path, but also a rocky one on the edge of a steep precipice.

  Somehow she’d found the courage to tell him the truth. Then she’d felt his disappointment—a pang so intense it had pierced her heart, too. Immediately she’d regretted her foolish honesty. Had John wanted her only because he thought she might bear his child?

  Why did it matter, anyway? she asked herself. John had escaped death…this time. She’d experienced a grim foretaste of the pain she might have to live with one day. And she’d seen for herself how cruel and capricious the Big Sky could turn, without warning. Even if John wanted her to stay, for all the right reasons, how could she, knowing at what perilous risk she placed her heart?

  John stirred and his eyelids fluttered. “Damn, I hurt!”

  So do I.

  “Almost makes me want to swallow another dose of that medicine.”

  Jane remembered the laudanum she’d been given in the Boston infirmary. Going back to Mrs. Endicott’s would blunt all the pain and unpleasantness of life in much the same way, making everything as placid and effortless as a drugged doze.

  “Is that you, Jane?” John squinted at her in the flickering candlelight.

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t expect to find you here when I woke up.”

  She shrugged. “Someone had to keep watch in case you needed anything in the night. William and Lizzie have to see to…their baby.”

  She’d hesitated over the word, half-afraid, half-hopeful it would give them an excuse to talk about their hopes…or fears.

  Instead John said, “I’ll be fine until morning if you want to go get some sleep.”

  “Is that your polite way of asking me to leave?”

  “You know I don’t set a whole lot of store by fancy manners. Do you want to stay?”

  How could she leave?

  Jane nodded.

  Without any introduction, he asked, “Were you sorry or relieved when you found out…you know…that you weren’t…”

  It had been only last week. With all that had happened since, it seemed like a hundred years. Yet the pain was still fresh in her heart.

  So quietly she could barely hear herself, she whispered, “I wanted to die.”

  Had he not heard her? Or had he turned a deaf ear because it wasn’t what he wanted to hear? Perhaps he just sensed she had more to say.

  She did. “I thought you were gone. Lost like my papa. And I couldn’t bear not having anything left of you.”

  The tears she’d longed for last night fell now, though Jane wished she could hold them back. She hated the thought of John marrying her out of pity. Especially when she wasn’t certain she wanted to marry him at all.

  If he asked, would she have the strength to refuse him? Or the strength to accept?

  John moved around in the bed, as though trying in vain to get comfortable. “Sounds like there’s been a lot going on around here since I went out on the range.”

  Jane rummaged in her apron pocket for a handkerchief. He was probably just making small talk to give her time to compose herself.

  When she didn’t answer, John spoke again. “Dr. Gray told me how you hunted him through nearly every saloon in town to come tend Lizzie when she had her baby. Weren’t you scared?”

  “Terrified.” That probably wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He needed a strong, courageous wife. “But Lizzie had to have the doctor, and there was nobody else to go for him.”

  John nodded as though he understood. “You’re so scared to stick up for yourself, Jane, but you’d brave a trip to hell for the folks you care about.” His voice held equal measures of admiration and regret.

  She had never thought of it that way before. Until she’d come to Whitehorn, it had been so long since she’d had anyone to care for and protect.

  Heaving a deep sigh, John winced. “Will you pull your chair a little closer and hold my hand?”

  I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t.

  “I suppose so.”

  Her hand felt too good, too right in his. She wanted to strip down to her shimmy or further, and lie on that bed beside him. Guide his hand to her breast or between her thighs.

  “I reckon you must have been scared to write to Mrs. Endicott, too.”

  John’s words quenched her passionate impulse…for the most part. “Of course I was scared. For all I knew she might find a way to have me arrested. When I heard you walking into the Double Deuce yesterday, I figured Emery had come to finish me off. Who told you about all that, anyway?”

  “Will mentioned it to Caleb and Ruth when they thought I was asleep. I hear you’re an heiress now.” The muscles in his hand tightened, though not his grip on her. “Congratulations. I reckon it pays off sometimes to do whatever scares us most.”

  “Lots of things in life are a gamble.” Jane wanted to let go of his hand, but she couldn’t. “Sometimes they pay off big and other times you lose…everything.”

  John Whitefeather and the Big Sky represented a gamble for breathtakingly high stakes. Beacon Hill and Mrs. Endicott were a sure thing.

  What was it about this man that made her such a reckless daredevil with her heart?

  “I won’t pretend I’m not tempted to run off back to Boston.” Jane shrank from looking into those relentless blue eyes, but she made herself do it. “I was pretty certain I loved you, but until I thought I’d lost you, I didn’t know how much.”

  John hissed with pain as he wrenched himself up from the pillows and pulled her into his arms. “Those are just about the sweetest words I’ve ever heard.”

  He pressed his lips to her brow and kissed his way down the side of her face to her lips. The heat of his firm, muscled chest penetrated her calico shirtwaist.

  She wanted him so much it frightened her. “Please don’t make me lose my head and throw away my choice about this.”

  John froze, more truly frightened than when he’d faced death on the river. Would Jane still consider hightailing back East, in spite of how she felt about him?

  “Is that what you think I’m trying to do?”

  “No. Maybe. When you hold me and kiss me, I like it so much, I can’t think.”

  “All right, then.” Like a warrior casting aside his most potent weapons, he let go of her and collapsed back onto the bed. “Do you want to go to Boston?”

  She threw the challenge right back at him. “Do you want me to? Do you want me to stay, even if there’s no baby? If I go back, I’ll have enough money that I can afford never to marry. Nobody in Beacon Hill will ever know about you and me, so you won’t need to marry me just to salvage my reputation.”

  What could he say? John wondered. What did she want to hear? His reasons for wanting her in his life had nothing to do with fatherhood or honor, as important as those were to him. Did he dare tell her so?

  All his life he’d sought acceptance. Rejecting the white world, before it could reject him. Prepared to sacrifice everything for the Cheyenne, just so he could belong somewhere.

  He could reject Jane first, foolishly hoping it would hurt less than if she turned her back on him. Or he could pour everything into winning her. Even if it wasn’t what she truly wanted.

  Was there no other way?

  Tell her the truth, perhaps, then let her choose. Leave himself wide-open to hurt. Having thrown down his weapons, must he surrender his shield, too? Did even a Cheyenne warrior have that kind of courage?

  “I want what’s best for you, Jane. Babies and Cheyenne honor were just excuses to do what I was too scared to do for the real reason. I can’t give you the kind of life you could have in Boston with Mrs. Endicott’s money.”

  She jumped from the bed. Wrapping her arms protectively across her chest, she faced him. “It isn’t the money I want or the things it can buy. Don’t you see that? It’s the safety. You can give me so much. Everything I want but that. The more I
love you, the worse it’ll hurt if I lose you.”

  “I know. I’m scared of losing you, too. Scared that one day you’ll find life in Montana too hard and you’ll go away. But I think winning you is worth the risk, Jane Harris. Nobody can keep trouble at bay forever, if it wants to find them. No matter where they live or how much money they’ve got. All we can do is treasure the time we have together and try to grow the courage we need to take whatever comes.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “It’s not. We’ve both lost too many loved ones to be fooled into believing that. But there’s no better teacher of courage than the Big Sky. I reckon you’ve already begun to find that out, Snowbird.”

  She stared into his eyes, and he saw all his own doubts and fears mirrored in her. He saw something else, too. Her newfound courage, like a wobbly legged filly. Would she be willing to nurture it into a full-fledged Montana maverick?

  As Jane turned and walked away from the bed, he closed his eyes and held his breath. A warrior must never cry out his deepest pain. If she’d made her decision, he must honor it.

  John heard the door close and the bolt slide home.

  A single hot, stinging tear escaped from beneath his closed eyelid and rolled down his cheek.

  Then he heard the softest and most beautiful sound in the world. The rustle of clothes parting from a woman’s sweet body.

  When his eyes flew open, Jane flashed him a self-conscious glance. “I locked the door so nobody’d walk in on us tomorrow morning.”

  The tempo of her undressing slowed and a teasing smile hovered on her lips. “You were watching me that night I took off my clothes in front of the window, weren’t you?”

  Desire, gratitude and love swamped his heart. Unable to speak, he nodded.

  With her eyes locked on his, Jane removed each garment with lingering sensuality. Until John’s longing reached a pitch that made him forget all his hurts.

  “This bed’s a good size and I don’t take up too much room.” Jane snuffed the candle and slid under the covers beside him. “I know you must be sore and exhausted. All I want is to lie beside you, feel the warmth of your body and the beat of your heart to reassure myself this isn’t a dream.”