The Savage

by Nicole Jordan

  Shaking herself, she glanced at Pedro. “He should have a doctor.”

  She stepped back while they lifted Lance and put him in the back of the buckboard. Climbing in after him, Summer cradled his head in her lap and tucked the blanket around his bare shoulders.

  It made her heart sink when he refused to look at her. Lance kept his eyes shut, not acknowledging her—or Harlan Fisk, who came to stand beside the buckboard, twisting his hat in his hand.

  “We owe you an apology, son,” Harlan said quietly. “A mighty big one. I guess none of us deserves it, but if you could find it in your heart to forgive us…Well, I just want you to know I’m damned sorry.”

  Reed answered for Lance, and Summer, as well. “If you really mean it, Harlan, you’ll make sure the whole state finds out that he’s innocent. And that there never was any danger of Comanches.”

  “I’ll see to it,” Harlan replied solemnly.

  Reed nodded at Dusty, who, with a backward glance at his passengers, snapped the reins and urged the team forward.

  Summer put her arms around Lance, bracing him against the jolt and sway of the buckboard. She felt no response, not even the slightest softening. Lance lay stiff and silent in her embrace, his eyes closed, his lips pressed together in a grimace.

  Summer closed her own eyes as dread curled around her heart. Perhaps his continued silence had little to do with physical pain. Perhaps he simply wanted nothing more to do with her—because she was one of the people he couldn’t forgive.

  Chapter 25

  The Round Rock doctor patched up Lance’s wounds and declared him lucky. The bullet had pierced his side but failed to hit any organs or ribs. The arm wound, too, could have been much worse, splintering bone instead of tearing only muscle. His other injuries, though no doubt hurting like hell, were superficial. Summer was allowed to take Lance home with only a warning to yell if there were complications.

  She would have been relieved, except for his continued silence. Lance had a high tolerance for pain, she knew, but he hadn’t made a sound through all the jostling and jolting of the buckboard, or when the doctor had poked and prodded him or stitched him with a needle. Nor did he curse or rant or even mention the incident just past that had nearly cost him his life. He merely maintained a grim silence that none of the Westons dared breach, not even to ask forgiveness for the part they’d played in doubting him. Only Dusty was entirely blameless. His graveness seemed directed at Amelia, who sobbed softly from time to time.

  Summer felt like weeping as well; tears would have been a welcome relief to the self-reproach that ate at her stomach like acid. But they wouldn’t come.

  It was nearly two o’clock in the morning when they reached the ranch. Dusty and Reed helped Lance into the cabin and put him to bed, then took their leave. Summer, bone-weary and filled with growing dread, settled into the rocking chair with a blanket to be near if Lance called her in the night.

  He didn’t.

  She dozed fitfully now and then, and started awake to gaze wildly around her, finding solace at the sight of his poor, bruised face whose bronzed hue was mottled with shades of black and blue. Lance was home, with her, battered but safe.

  He woke at midmorning, showing no signs of fever. He drank some soup that Summer warmed for him, but he didn’t speak to her, or even look at her, and he insisted on feeding himself.

  Her heart ached hollowly at his distancing silence. His manner wasn’t hostile, or even cold, but it aroused a terror in her nearly as great as when she’d watched him struggle helplessly against a deadly, strangling rope. There was an air of defeat about him, a supreme indifference, as if he no longer cared what happened to him, or between them. As if he’d lost the will to fight, to continue his defiant battle against a hostile white world. As if he’d decided he couldn’t forgive her for not believing in him, for not trusting him.

  Afraid to press the issue, Summer couldn’t find the nerve to disturb the silence. What Lance needed most now was sleep, healing rest. When he had recovered enough, then she would be forced to face the welling fear that had already woven knots in her stomach.

  He had gone back to sleep when Reed stopped by to ask how he was faring. Summer put on a brave face, assuring her brother that Lance seemed to be recovering and that she would call if he took a turn for the worse. It was only when Reed was gone that the tension of the past few days finally got to her and she broke down for a bout of weeping. She felt somewhat better afterward, but only in the way numbness is preferable to pain. When Dusty called a short while later, she was able to force a smile and thank him profusely for the part he’d played in saving her husband’s life.

  She was there when Lance woke again in late afternoon—and so was the wall he’d erected between them. When she offered to wash him, Lance clenched his jaw and refused her help with a terse shake of his head. He took the wet cloth from her and performed his own ablutions, and when he was done, he turned his head on the pillow to watch the window, shutting her out. He seemed so far away, so unreachable, so unutterably alone.

  It was all Summer could do to keep the tremor out of her voice when she asked if he wanted something to eat. He refused that, too, and made no reply when she offered to bring him a glass of lemonade. Helplessly she turned away, escaping into the next room on the pretext of fixing him a drink, unable to bear his remoteness any longer.

  While she was gone, Lance watched the shaft of late sunlight streaming in the window. The warm brilliance made mock of the bleakness in his heart; the dancing dust motes taunted him with their cheerful gaiety.

  He felt empty inside. Drained. Wrung-out. Hollow. Except that the clamoring ache in the pit of his gut had little to do with physical hunger.

  It was shame, pure and simple. Gut-wrenching, soul-writhing, heart-sickening shame. Shame at his weakness.

  What kind of man couldn’t protect himself and his woman? What kind of warrior had to be rescued from mortal danger by his wife? What future could he offer Summer if he could no longer hold his head up? If every time he looked men in the eye, he saw his defeat in their expression, his humiliation?

  All his life he’d endured scorn and degradation, and spit in the face of any man who’d dared press too hard. But he couldn’t face this. Something had snapped inside him last night. The noose that had nearly hanged him had ripped away his self-respect even though it hadn’t taken his life.

  Summer came back a while later with his glass of lemonade, and approached his bed tentatively, as if she feared to get too close. He took it and drank, but his throat still felt full of gravel when he lowered the glass from his swollen lips.

  His voice was low and hoarse, but his tone uninflected when he finally spoke. “I’ll be leaving just as soon as I can ride.”

  Summer froze, staring at him as if she hadn’t understood what he’d said. “L-Leaving? What…do you mean?”

  “Just what I said.” He turned his shuttered black gaze on her for a fleeting interval. “I’ll be leaving the ranch. Leaving Texas, in fact.”

  “Why? Where…?” She started to ask where he intended to go, but broke off stupidly. Where wasn’t nearly as important as why. She could barely force the question past her tight throat. “Why? Is it to punish me for not…for thinking you…You can’t forgive me for having so little faith in you?”

  His dark brows drew together in a scowl. “You don’t have to feel guilty for that, princess. I never expected your faith, not really.” His lips twisted. “Don’t look so stricken. I’m sure you’ll be glad to be rid of me—”

  “Lance…no…that isn’t true!”

  “Isn’t it, princess? You never wanted to marry me, you know damn well you didn’t. Well, you won’t have to put up with a savage redskin as your husband any longer. You’ll be free of me. You can get a divorce easy enough. Any white judge would jump at the chance to ‘sever our union.’”

  He said the last formal words mockingly, with a bitterness he didn’t try to hide as he turned his face toward the window ag
ain.

  “I don’t want a divorce,” she whispered rawly. “I don’t want to be free of you.”

  He shook his head, obviously not believing.

  “I don’t want you to go. Lance, please…I’m asking you to stay.”

  Lance shut his eyes. A few days ago—for most of his lifetime, in fact—he would have sold his soul to hear those words from Summer. He had dreamed about it so long, he could almost believe he wasn’t imagining her saying the words. What he couldn’t believe was that she meant them. He couldn’t let her mean them. Whatever her reasons for asking him to stay—guilt, remorse, compassion—he couldn’t accept them. He wouldn’t stay on those terms. Not as half a man.

  “Why?” she cried softly when he was silent. “What have I done?”

  The hollowness inside him swelled to a throbbing ache. “It’s not you,” he retorted, his voice so low, she could hardly hear. “It’s me. I don’t have the right to stay.”

  “What…what are you talking about?”

  He rubbed his fingers absently over his temple, gingerly touching the line of stitches in his scalp. “The Comanches would call me a weakling. Hell, so would the whites.” Lance gave a low, mirthless chuckle. “For once, they would agree. A man who can’t protect his woman isn’t much of a man.”

  Pressing her trembling hand over her heart, Summer stared at him. So that was it. For a man as proud as Lance, defeat at the hands of his enemies would have a shattering effect. His pride had suffered a mortal blow. But that at least was something she could fight.

  She took a step closer, her gaze pleading. “There is no shame in standing up to a mob of bullies, Lance. What they did to you…they could have done to anyone.”

  She saw his eyes close, saw the bleak grimace that contorted his features for an instant, and her heart squeezed. She’d already sensed his loneliness, but this was beyond lonely. This was a man in pain.

  But he could get over it. He had faced hatred before and survived it—and he could this, as well. Lance was a survivor. He was a fighter, just as she was. Except that he seemed to have given up his will to fight.

  “Don’t…don’t be foolish.” Fear made her tone shrill. “It’s just your stubborn pride talking.”

  “So what if it is?” His retort was low, hostile—and it gave her courage. Deliberately she tried to inflect scorn into her own voice.

  “So…so I don’t really think you’re being too objective at the moment. You’re not the victim you’re making yourself out to be. What those men did was wrong, shameful, but you’re not entirely blameless either. You brought some of it on yourself for taking them all on alone. You could have waited to go after Prewitt until you had help.”

  Lance’s eyes narrowed in fury. “I could have waited?” The sudden fierceness that claimed his harsh features was the first show of emotion other than resignation she’d seen since his near brush with death. “For help? Just who was I supposed to ask for help? Who believed me?”

  “I know…” She hung her head, choking back a sob. “I’m sorry, Lance…I’m sorry I ever doubted you…”

  She broke off her pleading when she saw the coldness overtake his expression again. He wasn’t listening.

  Desperately Summer searched her mind for some way to get through to him. She stood near the bed, her hands tightly clasped over her stomach in an effort to calm herself. She would tell him about her hope that she was pregnant, that their baby would likely be born in the summer—except that Lance wouldn’t be here next summer, she realized dazedly. He had just said he was leaving…

  “Lance…you can’t…you can’t leave. I…I think I’m pregnant.”

  His head snapped up; his black gaze pierced her with startled awareness.

  Summer flinched at his expression, all her words rushing together as she tried to explain. “I’m not certain, not really, but I’ve been sick the past several mornings, and Maritza says that’s what it is, that I’m breeding, and I know it’s true, I can’t really say how, but I’m sure of it…I’m going to have your baby.”

  He didn’t reply. Didn’t make a sound. The ache that ripped through him had made his breath cease.

  Summer swallowed, hard. “Lance…you can’t leave us. I don’t want to bear a child alone, the way your mother was forced to. You can’t leave now. It wouldn’t be fair to him…or to me, to make me rear him alone.”

  “My…baby?” The word was scarcely a rasp of sound.

  “Yes, your baby. And mine. Ours.” Summer dashed a stream of tears from her eyes, vaguely aware she was crying. “Do you want us to face the hardships your mother had to endure? Do you want your child to suffer the way you did?”

  “No…”

  “Neither do I. So you have to stay. It will be difficult enough with two of us protecting him. I want him to have a chance for a good life, not the terrible one you had to live. And I’ll do everything I can short of murder to see that he gets that chance.”

  Lance stared, doubt scoring his features. “You…want my baby?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I want him.” Her tearful expression grew indignant. “You can’t think I would abandon him?”

  “A lot of women would.”

  “That…has to be the cruelest thing you’ve ever said to me.” The tears spilled over again. “I would no more abandon my child than I would abandon you. I love you, Lance.”

  He went totally still, his expression blank. Now who was being cruel? He didn’t believe her claim. Not for a second. But at least he understood now why she didn’t want him to leave. She didn’t want to be left alone with a half-breed kid to raise. That was why she’d professed to love him.

  Summer could hear his disbelief in his silence. She wrung her hands, clenching her fingers so tightly, the knuckles showed white. She had gone about this all wrong. It had been a mistake to tell Lance about the baby, trying to force his hand without telling him what was in her heart. Perhaps he didn’t care what she felt for him, but he deserved to know. If he still wanted to leave her…No, she wouldn’t think in that defeatist vein. She would get down on her knees if that would make Lance listen.

  “Last night…when I thought I had lost you…I thought I would die. But it was before then—when you walked out the last time—that I realized how much I loved you. I was wrong not to trust you, I know that. But even then…even when I thought you might be guilty, I still loved you. I do…I love you, Lance. I don’t care about anything else, anyone else. Lance, please…I’m begging you…don’t leave me.”

  He couldn’t answer her. The oxygen seemed trapped in his lungs.

  Summer took a gulping breath, trying to stop her tears. “All right. If you truly want to leave…if you can’t bear to live here any longer…then I’ll go with you. Wherever you want.”

  “You’d leave here with me? You’d leave your ranch? Your family?”

  “I’m your wife,” she said simply, her voice quavering. “My place is with you, beside you. You’re more important to me than anything, anyone.”

  And she knew as she spoke the solemn words, they were true. She was willing to face a hostile world at Lance’s side, wherever he chose to go, whatever he chose to do. And yet they now had something else besides themselves to consider.

  Her voice lowered to a shaken murmur. “I would like…our children to grow up here at Sky Valley. This land…the life we could have here together…are worth fighting for. But if that isn’t what you want, then I won’t ask you to stay. Just…don’t leave me behind.”

  Blindly Lance turned his head toward the window, the disconnected emotions of hope and fear and joy crashing through his mind. Could he dare believe? Was Summer working her wiles on him for some ulterior purpose of her own, or was she telling the truth? Had she really come to love him, as in his most cherished fantasy?

  A shadow passed in front of the window just then, blocking out the sunlight. Lance reached for his guns beside the bed, slipping his six-shooter into his palm with the ease of long practice, while Summer froze.

>   A moment later they heard footsteps on the connecting porch, then a quiet knock on the front door. Summer could have screamed. Nothing short of an Indian raid should be able to interrupt this crucial, critical moment, when her future and Lance’s hung in the balance.

  Spinning on her heel, she went into the other room and flung open the door. Reed was standing there, his arm around a subdued Amelia.

  “Is he awake?” Reed asked quietly.

  Regretfully, curtly, Summer answered, “Yes.”

  “We came to offer our apologies. My we see him?”

  Summer hesitated. She still couldn’t face her sister with anything approaching equanimity, but one glance made Summer reconsider slamming the door in her face. Amelia looked terrible, almost as devastated as when Lance had rescued her from her Comanche captors, although without the ugly cuts and bruises. There were puffy dark circles under her eyes, which were red from weeping, and her complexion was splotchy with tears. Her head drooped in shame, and she wouldn’t meet Summer’s eyes as she twisted a handkerchief nervously between her fingers.

  Silently Summer stepped back to allow them entrance. She couldn’t deny Amelia this moment of healing—or Lance either.

  “I don’t know if Lance will want to see you,” she warned. Shutting the front door behind them, she preceded them into the bedchamber.

  In order to gather his crutches, Reed had to release Amelia, but she remained close beside him, like a child afraid to stray from her parent.

  They stopped just inside the door, as far away as possible from the man on the bed.

  Lance had put aside his six-shooter and had drawn the blanket up far enough to cover most of his bare chest. “Excuse me if I don’t get up in the presence of a lady. I’m not quite up to such exertions.” His tone was cool, uninflected, but amazingly, lacked the hostile edge Summer had expected.

  Reed took off his hat and met Lance’s eyes directly, his own blue ones somber and sincere. “I owe you one heck of an apology, Lance,” he began without preliminaries. “It was wrong of me to suspect you, especially after all you’ve done for us. My only excuse is that I was worried for Summer’s sake. I couldn’t take the chance…well…if you were guilty, you might drag her down with you.”