by Jenna Kernan
He was beside her now, whispering her name as he drew her from the blanket.
She saw the gleam of the knife and could not understand why her heart did not at once leap to her throat. Was it his purposeful expression or the absence of mal ice in his movements?
He sliced the cords at her wrists and her hands sprang apart. He rubbed her arms vigorously until they prickled and ached. She drew away and reached for the gag, but he spun her and released the knot. She spit out the wadding he had forced in her mouth.
Sky offered his drinking skin. Lucie had enough experience with captivity to know never to reject food or water. She drank as much as she could hold and then handed back the half-empty pouch.
Only then did she recall that he had returned her weapon. He was bigger, faster and stronger than she was. He’d already proven he could disarm her. So she remained seated as he released the bonds about her legs.
Why had they stopped so close to the school? The last time she had been taken, the Indians had ridden three days with barely a pause before stopping to eat and rest. They were within a mile or two of the school, too close to avoid pursuit, but far enough away that no one would hear her scream.
Lucie waited, uncertain of her situation or his purpose, for him to speak. He stared at her a long time, his face cast in shadows that made him all angles. But even in the starlight, his eyes glowed ghostly pale. His expression was serious. Did she see regret in his eyes? She hoped so, for she planned to pounce on any weakness like a kitten on a beetle.
He lifted his hand. She did not shy or flinch as his thumb brushed her cheek in a feathery touch that seemed too gentle for such a large man. Now her heart accelerated. There was no mistaking the caress. It made her wonder if his intentions did not run toward abduction but rape. Many white men thought she should count herself lucky if they took this sort of interest in her. Why had she thought him any different?
She’d learned that a man would say anything to have what he wanted. The boldest tried to take her by force. Until today, she’d always had her father or her brother, David, to protect her.
His eyes remained constant and his expression nearly pained as his hand dropped to his side.
“I’ve marked your face.”
Lucie lifted her fingertips to feel the creases on her cheek. Slowly she touched the skin beneath her mouth. “My face is already marked.”
She lifted her chin as if daring him to maintain the contact of their eyes. Here most men would flush and look away. But he did neither. Instead he cupped her jaw in his palm and studied her fanglike tattoos.
“It only adds to the beauty of your mouth.” As if to prove his point his thumb grazed over her lower lip.
The contact sent off a shimmering ripple of excitement inside her that alarmed her further. What was happening here?
He released her and her jaw dropped open. Had he said beautiful? No one had used that word to describe her since before her capture. Back then she was beautiful and darling and a joy. Afterward the words she heard to describe her were hideous and tragic and ruined.
She closed her mouth and straightened at his mockery. “It’s ill-mannered to say such a thing.”
He squatted back on his heels, resting his forearms casually on his knees. “Have you let them convince you that you’re not beautiful, Lucie? Have you let them take away your power? Don’t listen. They’re wrong.”
He seemed so sincere that she almost believed him.
“You are beautiful, no matter what you think.”
Lucie folded her arms over her bosom and glared. “Why did you bring me here?”
Her skin prickled again, but not in warning of danger. This was a different kind of warning, one that only happened when he drew near. She did not have experience with this feeling, but she recognized it—the pounding heart, the rapid breath, the light-headed feeling that came to her like a child spinning in circles. Somehow, against all reason and good judgment, she found this man exciting.
“Did you murder a man in Texas?”
“In Texas?” His brows rose and his smile did nothing to reassure. “No.”
That left a great deal of territory where he could have murdered.
“Are you a wanted man?”
His smile faded. “No. No one wants me. I am just like you.”
That stopped her and it took a moment to recover her thoughts. “But you left with that family. You don’t look different. It would be easy for you to…”
“To what? Forget who I am? Deny everything I feel inside? No, that is not easy.”
Lucie could not meet his cold gaze. After an awkward silence, she found the courage to look at him once more. “You didn’t stay with that Mormon?”
His lips drew into a thin line and he lowered his chin. He looked as dangerous as a bull buffalo defending the herd. She eased her hands to the blanket, preparing to flee.
“I did not bring you here to speak of him.”
Lucie allowed him to steer the conversation away from a sensitive subject. “Why did you bring me?”
He stood and extended his hand. She didn’t need it, but found herself slipping her fingers into his callused palm and allowing him to draw her up. He held her a little too long. She stood a little too close.
Sky released her and stepped back, but continued to gaze down at her, unwilling, it seemed, to break the contact of their eyes.
“I promised your husband that I would find you and deliver his message. I owe Eagle Dancer a great debt and could not refuse.”
Lucie turned her back on him, stepping off the blanket and into the tall grass that lined the bank. Beside her, the stallion yanked great mouthfuls of grass from the ground and crushed them rhythmically between his back teeth.
“If I listen, will you take me back?”
He stepped so close she could feel his breath on her neck. She had an almost irresistible urge to lean against his broad chest and wrap herself in the strength and comfort of his arms. Would he be a gentle lover or as fierce as his reputation? Lucie could not keep her mind from wandering, even though she knew she could not have what other women took for granted—a husband, children, a home of her own. She’d resigned herself long ago—hadn’t she?
His voice broke her musings.
“If that is your wish.”
She spun to face him. “Of course it is.”
“Why would you want to go back to such a place?”
“Because I am needed and…”
He cocked his head as if doubting that she was needed. Hadn’t he already said as much—no one wanted her, just like no one wanted him. She glared.
Her words stabbed out like a sword thrust. “And I am happy there.”
His snort made it obvious he did not believe a word. She drew herself up, preparing to defend her fib. But he reached into his pocket and withdrew something. Slowly he unfolded a wrinkled piece of paper. Sky extended the page so it was just before her nose.
Sky watched her face and could tell by the lifting brow and the sudden widening of her eyes that she recognized that this was the letter she had written to her parents.
“You lie,” he whispered.
To Sky’s ear, the words seemed more an embrace than an admonishment. She had captivated him since the first moment he had seen her at the school.
“Did you read it?”
He recited from memory. “I have made a terrible mistake coming here. Nothing has changed.”
She made a grab for the letter but he was too quick. He folded it and returned it to his pocket. This small piece of her he would keep.
“That does not belong to you,” she said, her voice a growl between clenched teeth.
“I only stole what you did not protect.”
“Just like an Indian.”
He nodded and smiled. “If only that were so.” His smile disappeared as he stared into her shimmering eyes.
Her eyes widened. “You’d go back to them?”
He could not speak past the rock of pain now choking him
. It was his one unreachable desire, to return—back to that moment in time and change what he had done.
Sky swallowed hard and nodded his answer. Then he took her hand. She allowed it. It required a purposeful effort not to stroke the soft skin on the back of her hand or to rub the tender mound of plump flesh at the base of her thumb.
He knew he could not allow himself to want her. Everyone and everything he loved had been taken from him. He knew better than to try again, especially with this woman.
She is not a maiden, but your friend’s wife.
Sky led her back to the blanket and drew her down beside him. He faced the water, listening to his horse grazing and the crickets singing, as he shut his foolish longings back away.
“I have great respect for your husband. He was everything I wanted to be. It is only because of him that I am here today. I have not repaid his kindness. In fact, I am shamed by my actions toward him, for I—” He broke off. Why would he speak of this to her? She was not here for him to share his burdens. But somehow he felt connected to her in a way that he had not felt since before his exile.
Sky released her hand. “When your husband asked me to deliver this message I could not refuse.” It helped to say it aloud, to remind himself that this one could never be his. “Are you ready to hear his words now, Lucie?”
She stared straight forward but he could see her head bob once in the starlight.
“He asks that I tell you that he has kept his heart only for you. He has never married although there are many widows who desire him. He does not believe you ran, but insists that you were captured and have been searching for him all this time, just as he prays each day for your return. As he predicted you are not a wife or mother.”
Lucie’s head hung at this as if his words hurt her deeply. He resisted the instinct to wrap her in his arms. Did she also long for a family, a place where she belonged? It would be too easy to bring this woman into his heart. But this he must never do. He was an honorable man, not some seducer of a friend’s wife. His past mistakes had already cost him his people. He would not lose his honor as well.
Without even realizing it, he slipped into Lakota, the tongue of his birth. He cleared his throat. “He still loves you, Sunshine. He asks you to return to him so he can cherish you as his first and only wife once more.”
Chapter Five
Lucie sat before him in silence beneath the gentle glow of starlight.
“Do you hear?” said Sky. “He sends me because he is not permitted to leave the reservation to come himself.”
She grew brittle inside, like the fragile layer of ice that first forms on the edges of a lake. Eagle Dancer had summoned her.
“Lucie, he still loves you.” His voice was low and his tone gentle, almost as if he spoke the words to her himself.
Her anger erupted and her tone was sharp. “Yes, yes. He loves me. He has loved me since he first laid eyes upon me.” She spoke in English. “He wanted me, he took me and kept me against my will. I begged him to let me go home to my mother, but he refused.” She leveled him with a glare of cold disdain. “Does that sound like love to you?”
“He cherished you.”
“Like a lapdog.”
His brow wrinkled in confusion. “But…he could not marry you without your consent.”
Her chin sank to her chest as all the defiance drained away. Her sigh was deep and long, but still her shoulders sagged. Finally, she lifted her gaze, peering at him from beneath her lashes, cautious as a deer at a watering hole. “Please don’t tell them. I couldn’t lift my head up if they knew.”
There was no dishonor in being the wife of a great warrior. Sky scowled, not understanding this woman. Her husband was head man, a leader, war chief and he loved her. What more could she want?
“If it shames you, why did you marry him?”
The defiance was back, flickering hot in her eyes. “The first night of our capture one of the women killed herself. That was her choice. Months later, another captive and my only friend, Alice French, learned her master would marry her. She ran. That was her choice. A few days later he brought back her bloody scalp. My choice was to remain the slave of his mother.” Lucie touched her chin. “She gave me these when she thought I meant to run. So you are right, the decision was mine. I picked life and paid the price.”
“You speak as if you hate him.”
“I do. I hate him for not loving me enough to release me before I was ruined. I hate that he sought to bind me against my will. And finally, I hate him for saving my life and showing me tenderness so that I could not kill him when I had the chance.”
His mind reeled with all she had said. No wonder she did not go back.
Lucie drew her knees to her chest and hugged herself. “Without him, I would have died. Because of him I have lost the life I might have led.” She stared directly at him in a focused stare that disconcerted him. “As you pointed out, I have no husband, no children, because no decent man will have me. I cannot even get a proper teaching position.”
She stared out at the water and said no more.
He stood, feeling hollow inside. “I’ll bring you back to the school.”
She did not rise. Instead, a strangled sound came from her. “Likely they’d be glad to see my back. What would you do, Mr. Fox, if everywhere you looked you were met with curiosity, abhorrence or pity? How would you like it if you were welcome only because it is the Christian thing to do?”
He wouldn’t. Bad enough to feel different on the inside. He had thought them the same, but they were mirror images. He looked white, but inside felt he was Sioux, while Lucie believed she was white, but everyone could see she was no longer one of them.
“Then I will bring you to California. To your parents.”
Her eyes widened. “You would do that?”
He nodded. “Or I will bring you to your husband. The people would accept you there. You would hear no insults. You would have a better life—be his wife again and you could have children.”
“No.”
“Then he deserves to know you do not love him.”
Her voice was so quiet he had to strain to hear her. “Will you tell him?”
What she asked, he could not do. Only she or Eagle Dancer could break this marriage. He shook his head. The whites thought divorce a shame or sin, but the Sioux understood that time and trouble could draw two people together or apart. There was no sin in that. Lucie need only say the words before a witness.
He squatted beside her.
“You must say it,” he whispered in Lakota.
She drew a breath. “Eagle Dancer is no longer my husband. I am a single woman.”
He scowled, not sure if she did not know the proper way or only pretended not to know. “You must say these words to him.”
He did not know what to expect, but he didn’t think she would lower her forehead to her knees and weep. The tortured cries pierced him like the tiny thorns of a rose briar. He clutched his own knees, not knowing what to do. Her shoulders shook as she gasped for breath.
Sky lifted one hand and rested it gently on her shoulder. She did not pull away. Instead, she reached for him, taking his wrist in her small hand. Her fingers did not quite circle him, but her grip was strong and warm. Her shoulders still heaved as if she could not draw enough air past the cries of anguish.
His palm circled her soft, slender neck and he drew her forward, cradling her against his body. She remained huddled to him, not resisting his embrace but not wrapping her arms about him, either.
They were strangers, born of common experience. But she had been a slave, while he had enjoyed the privileged position of being only son to Ten Horses. If he had not made that one mistake, he would have fought with his people at the day the world ended. The day the Sioux won and lost the battle to control their destiny.
Her body shook against his. He rocked her slowly as the summer breeze rocks the cottonwood. His throat burned and he lowered his cheek to the top of her head and let the t
ears fall. He understood regret and loss. In that, they were well matched.
Her sobs rasped on. Was it so hard to say aloud the words that broke the bond of marriage? She did not sound like a woman happy to regain her freedom.
“Enough now, Lucie.”
She gripped the front of his coat, small pale fingers glowing like bone in the starlight. He rocked to his heels, drawing back. She let him go instantly, using her hands to brush the tears from her cheek, succeeding only in spreading the water, making her face glisten. She stared up at him.
How could she not know how beautiful she was? Even in her sorrow, she touched his heart. He rose, knowing he must take her back now.
“No one knows,” she whispered.
He did not understand.
“I tried to tell my mother once but she said I mustn’t speak of it and I never have—until now. I pretended it didn’t happen, but inside, I knew what I had done.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “That I was married.”
Sky nodded. “And you are still married until you speak these words to him.”
She gaped. “But I need only speak these words before a witness.”
He shook his head. “You must say them to your husband before a witness. He deserves that much.”
She lowered her chin to her chest. “No, I won’t.”
He sighed away his disappointment that she would not do what was right. “Then you remain his wife, for I will not tell him.”
Lucie stared up at him with big round eyes. She chewed upon her lip a moment. He could almost hear her debating with herself, do what was right—do what was easy.
She dropped her head again and he knew her decision. Why was he so disappointed in her?
He sighed. She would not do what she must to free them both, so they would remain tied together forever. “Where would you go now, to the school or to your parents?”