Blackthorne's Bride
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Praise for Joan Johnston
“Joan Johnston does short contemporary Westerns to perfection.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Like LaVyrle Spencer, Ms. Johnston writes of intense emotions and tender passions that seem so real that the readers will feel each one of them.”
—Rave Reviews
“Johnston warms your heart and tickles your fancy.”
—New York Daily News
“A master storyteller…Joan Johnston knows how to spin a story that will get to the readers every time.”
—Night Owl Reviews
“Johnston has a keen eye for quirky circumstances that put her characters, and the reader, through a wringer. Laughing one moment and crying the next, you’ll always have such a great time getting to the happy-ever-after.”
—Romance Junkies Reviews
“Johnston is a writer who can combine romance side by side with tragedy, proving that there is magic in relationships and that love is worth the risk.”
—Bookreporter
Blackthorne’s Bride is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Joan Mertens Johnston, Inc.
Excerpt from Surrender by Joan Johnston copyright © 2017 by Joan Mertens Johnston, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Dell, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
DELL and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming novel Surrender by Joan Johnston. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
ISBN 9780399177743
Ebook ISBN 9780399177750
bantamdell.com
Cover design: Lynn Andreozzi
Cover illustration: Alan Ayers
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By Joan Johnston
About the Author
Letter to Readers
Excerpt from Surrender
SHE WAS TIED to a pole in the center of the Sioux village, naked from the waist up. What was left of her bodice was tangled at her waist above a striped muslin skirt. She still wore a pair of dusty boots. The top of one creamy shoulder was unblemished, but the rest of her back was so crisscrossed with bloody stripes that there was barely any flesh left. The blond pigtail that ran a short distance down her nape was crusted with dried blood. Her head had sunk forward, and he wondered if she was dead.
As he watched, she lifted her head and straightened her shoulders almost defiantly, emitting a harsh, wrenching sound that caused his insides to clench in sympathetic response to the excruciating pain she must be feeling. He turned his gaze to the Indian holding the bullwhip being used to torment her.
The Sioux’s cheek had been laid bare almost to the bone, in a red slash very much like the ones on the girl’s back. The Indian had paused briefly to note the two white men riding into camp with the reservation Sioux guide who’d brought them, but he was obviously impatient to return to his brutal work.
Marcus Wharton, the Duke of Blackthorne, turned to his guide and said, “Ask him why he’s whipping the girl.”
The Sioux with the bullwhip answered the question in a guttural tongue, gesturing first to his cheek and then to the girl’s back, his mouth twisted in a malicious smile.
“She strike him with whip when he attack her wagon,” the guide translated. “Hurt face. Knock him off pony. He punish. No one laugh at Three Crows again.”
Blackthorne shared a look of disgust and disbelief with his future brother-in-law, David Madison, the Earl of Seaton. Seaton had joined him on his journey across the American West, a last desperate bid to enjoy his freedom, before he married the earl’s sister, Fanny, and settled down to his responsibilities as the eighth Duke of Blackthorne.
As he stared at the scene in front of him, Blackthorne suddenly realized that he’d had his fill of adventure. He’d seen a great deal of cruelty in his twenty-five years, but nothing as savage as this.
To his horror, before he could say or do anything to rescue the poor girl, the Sioux called Three Crows sent the whip cracking toward her wounded back. The tip caught the untouched flesh at her shoulder, creating a bloody gash where none had previously existed.
The horrible cry of agony that escaped her lips had not yet died before Blackthorne was off his horse. He wrenched the whip from the Sioux’s grasp and threw it away.
Three Crows pulled a knife from a sheath at his waist and stabbed at Blackthorne’s belly.
Blackthorne twisted his body so the blade that would have gutted him merely ripped through his waistcoat. He kept his eyes on his foe, avoiding another slash of the Indian’s knife, as he retrieved his own knife from his boot. He gripped the haft so he could stab or slice, moving in a cautious circle along with the Sioux, as they took each other’s measure.
Three Crows was shorter than Blackthorne’s six-foot height, with a thick, muscular body and arms. He stared with hate from eyes that were almost black, breathing hard through a flat nose and an open, thin-lipped mouth. He said something in his guttural tongue that needed no translation.
The Sioux clearly intended not just to kill him, but to cut him into painful little pieces.
The crowd that had been oddly missing while the Sioux whipped his prisoner suddenly surrounded them.
Three Crows’ teeth were bared, his muscles taut, as he waited for his adversary to make his move.
Blackthorne had been told that this band of Sioux were renegades who’d fled the reservation, but who might be willing to include him in their buffalo hunt, if he traded a few trinkets with them. He realized he should have tried that road first where the girl was concerned. He and Seaton might find themselves in dire straits if he ended up wounding—or killing—this man. Not to mention how devastated his grandmother would be if he ended up getting himself killed in a knife fight before he’d married and produced an heir.
The Sioux’s glinting eyes were focused intently on the knife in Blackthorne’s hand.
Blackthorne suddenly realized that the Indian’s gaze wasn’t
aimed at the very sharp blade, but rather on the intricately carved whalebone handle. He took a step back and opened his hand, so the knife lay flat on his palm.
The Sioux’s eyes narrowed as he considered whether this was some ploy to distract him, so the white man could attack.
Blackthorne kept his gaze centered on Three Crows as he said to his Sioux guide, “Ask him if he’d like to have the knife.”
“Blackthorne, you can’t bargain with—”
He cut Seaton off and repeated in a steely voice, “Ask him if he’d like to have the knife.”
His opponent looked confused, and then disdainful, as he first listened, and then replied to the guide’s speech.
“Three Crows says he will take knife when you are dead,” the guide interpreted.
“Tell him I’ll give him the knife in exchange for the girl.” Blackthorne saw the Indian open his mouth to refuse and reached into his pocket to pull out his grandfather’s gold watch. He let it dangle from the watch chain so the sunlight reflected off the shimmering surface. “Along with this.”
“You can’t—”
“Be still, Seaton, and let the man think.” He could see the Sioux was as covetous of the watch as he was of the knife.
Three Crows glanced toward the girl, whose body lay slack against the pole. He abandoned his crouch and tucked his knife back into its sheath, then held out his hand.
Blackthorne dropped the watch into the Indian’s palm, then flipped the knife and offered it to him by the carved handle.
“The girl’s probably going to die anyway,” Seaton hissed in his ear. “Why would you give up your grandfather’s watch? And that knife goes back to the first Duke of Blackthorne. It’s priceless. And irreplaceable.”
Without warning, Three Crows slashed out with the knife Blackthorne had given him. He grabbed the Sioux’s swinging wrist with one hand and balled his other hand into a fist that connected with the Indian’s chin. He let go as Three Crows fell in a heap.
Blackthorne felt his friend edging toward him and turned to eye the Indians gathered around them. He reached down and took his knife from the Sioux’s hand, then walked to the pole and used it to cut the woman free. As she fell into his arms, he let the knife drop to the ground. A bargain was a bargain. He’d promised the knife and his watch in exchange for the girl. A Blackthorne’s word was as good as gold.
As her head dropped back over his arm, and he saw the damage to her face, he wished he hadn’t bargained with the Sioux. He should have eviscerated him.
The girl’s features were unrecognizable. Her eyes were so puffy and bruised, he couldn’t tell what color they were. Her nose had been broken. Her lips were split, and blood ran down her chin. He was pleased to see dried blood under her ragged nails, proof that she’d fought back.
“Now that you have her, what do you plan to do with her?”
He turned to face his friend. “Get her to a doctor.”
“The closest doctor is at Fort Laramie. It’s the opposite direction from home. Considering the telegram from your grandmother saying you’re needed there, I don’t think we can stay around for the weeks—or months—it’s going to take that girl to recover.”
“Then we’ll take her with us.”
“She’s likely got family around here somewhere. We should try to find them, instead of hauling her halfway across the world.”
“Her family could be anywhere. For all we know they might be dead.”
“She needs help we can’t give her.”
“I’m not leaving her behind,” Blackthorne said, knowing his behavior was irrational but finding himself strangely unable to abandon the girl. “I want to make certain she gets the best help possible.”
“Fine,” Seaton said. “Can we go now? That Indian’s starting to wake up. I don’t want to be here when he does.”
The girl moaned as Blackthorne shifted her in his arms. He brushed a strand of bloody hair away from her battered face. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “I have you. You’re safe now.”
THE DUKE OF Blackthorne was sitting in a wing chair at his gentleman’s club in London, drink in hand, staring absently out the window, when his best friend said, “It’s the girl, isn’t it? You’re thinking of the waif you rescued from that savage.”
“What if I am?” It irritated him to be so predictable. And embarrassed him to have his late wife’s brother point out his preoccupation with a girl he’d barely known, rather than the woman who’d been his wife for a year, before she’d died bearing his son.
“It’s been two years,” Seaton said. “You need to forget about her. You have more important things to consider, if you want to rescue Blackthorne Abbey from ruin. You need to find a woman with means and marry her before the month is out.”
Blackthorne made a face. Within a month of marrying Fanny, which was to say, within a month of his return to London from America, he’d learned that the Blackthorne estate was badly strapped. His father had made a number of risky investments that had not paid off. Then his younger brother, Montgomery, had died in a carriage race, and Blackthorne had been pressed to settle his brother’s outrageous gambling debts and find somewhere for his brother’s two sons to live, since Monty had died not only destitute, but a widower, whose late wife had no family.
Blackthorne had done his best to economize and had put Fanny’s dowry to good use, but it soon became apparent that, without an infusion of capital, land that had been in his family for eight generations was destined to be lost forever.
He’d spent the months of Fanny’s pregnancy filled with hope that she would bear him an heir to the dukedom, and with despair that he might be leaving his child an estate with only a glimmer of its former glory.
Unfortunately, things hadn’t improved in the year since Fanny’s death. In fact, they’d gotten worse. Now there was some doubt whether he could keep anything at all.
After his terrible experience losing Fanny and their son, he hadn’t been inclined to marry again. Now circumstances demanded it. He needed a rich wife, and he needed her in a hurry.
The New York Times lay open on his lap, so he could see the text of the advertisement his solicitor had inserted in all the major American newspapers several months ago—along with the London Times, of course, in order to catch any American heiress who might already have crossed the pond to secure a British title in exchange for a bit of her father’s wealth:
WANTED: American heiress for purposes of matrimony to titled gentleman.
The notice then gave the name of the Blackthorne solicitor, in an effort to make the duke’s search for a wealthy bride somewhat anonymous. Not that everyone in Society didn’t know the straits to which he’d been reduced. His grandmother had paraded a number of eligible English heiresses in front of him, but he’d insisted that, if he was forced to marry for filthy lucre, he wasn’t going to do it among the ranks of his peers.
There was another reason he’d advertised for an American bride. Although he hadn’t admitted it to anyone, he kept imagining that, somehow, the mystery woman he’d rescued all those years ago would show up again in his life.
Blackthorne thought more often than he ought to of the girl he’d nursed on the sea voyage across the Atlantic. He knew so little about her, not even her name. Perhaps that was why she’d remained so intriguing. Where was she now? How was she? He could have left her with an American family who’d been willing to take her in, but he’d refused to let her out of his sight. Why? What was it about that suffering girl that had so captivated him that he’d insisted on taking care of her himself?
Was it the courage that had kept her from begging for mercy at the sting of the lash? Was it that stubborn chin lifted in defiance of the pain the savage had inflicted upon her? Or was it the enormous strength of will that had kept her alive in spite of the terrible wounds she’d endured?
A doctor had straightened her nose as best he could, but it would always have a bump where it had been broken. Her battered face and her blackened eye
s, which had remained mere slits for the balance of the journey, had left her unrecognizable. Blackthorne had feared that infection would kill her on the voyage across the sea, but she’d survived, although fever had plagued her all the way to England.
Day after day, she’d remained out of her head with pain from her ravaged back, but she hadn’t complained, hadn’t screamed or cried. She’d hissed when a hot cloth touched her flesh. She’d thrashed as Blackthorne held her still for the doctor’s examination. Sometimes, she released a moan that was almost a sigh. He’d talked to her to keep her mind off the agony he knew he was causing, when he tended her ragged flesh.
“I’ve never seen a girl so brave,” he’d told her as she bore his ministrations. He’d waited anxiously for her fever to break, for her to speak intelligible words, to say something—anything—to prove that what she’d suffered hadn’t driven her mad.
“You have to let the physician mind the girl,” Seaton had admonished him. “He knows best. You’re liable to cause more damage, if you try to manage her treatment yourself.”
He’d barely looked up from the girl’s face, as he sat vigil beside her bunk in the captain’s cabin, while the fever raged. “I bought her. She’s my responsibility.”
“Listen to yourself,” his friend chided. “You rescued a damsel in distress. Your duties as knight in shining armor are over.”
“Not until I know who she is,” he’d murmured.
“What difference can that possibly make?” Seaton asked. “From the way she was dressed, it’s clear she’s one of the lower classes.”