The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series)

by Shirl Henke

  The horseman swooped downhill at an angle to intercept the sleigh. Snow flew up in stinging clouds beneath the stallion's churning hooves. As they neared the bank of the Neponset what he feared occurred. The sleigh tilted sharply to its side as one heavy runner sliced through the broken ice. Over the howl of the wind a sharp cracking sound heralded the breakup of the ice and freezing gray water bubbled up, sucking under the gleaming red and silver sledge. A woman's sharp scream echoed as she was thrown from her seat, tumbling into the icy grasp of death.

  Ignoring the stupid driver who was struggling to whip his team into pulling his fancy toy away from the water, the horseman urged his big black to the water's edge. The woman was clawing frantically at a broken slab of ice which bobbed in the rising current. Her heavy fur coat, so excellent a protection from the storm a moment ago, now might well prove to be her shroud as its waterlogged weight dragged her under.

  Stephanie felt her grip on the ice slipping as her whole body went from icy cold to a terrifying numbness in what seemed like only a heartbeat. The rushing gray water took her into its embrace. Suddenly a powerful vise seemed to squeeze the breath from her lungs. Stephanie was pulled from the water and flung soggily against the hard wall of another human body. The harsh force that had literally taken her breath away was a man's strong right arm. Before she could see her deliverer's face, he tossed her over his shoulder and dashed off the frozen river as the ice cracked and broke behind them.

  When he reached the bank, her deliverer put her down in front of him, still holding onto her arms to steady her. ‘‘Chase,” she gulped from frozen lips. Her mouth did not seem to work properly.

  “Don't try to talk. You're half-frozen,” he explained as he helped her to sit down on the snow-covered ground. Then he turned to the big black horse waiting patiently and unfastened a blanket from behind his saddle. He wrapped it around her shivering body.

  Frantically she looked over her shoulder at the river for a trace of Oliver Standish and his sled. One gleaming silver runner was lodged at a peculiar angle in the ice, all that remained visible of the conveyance. “Oliver! You must find my friend!” she gasped.

  Chase could see a man's head bobbing in the water as he clung to one of the two thrashing horses which miraculously began to scramble back onto solid ground a dozen yards away. “As far as I'm concerned that idiot can drown for pulling such a reckless stunt,” he yelled over the wind.

  “But he's hurt,” she cried, seeing the bright crimson stain spreading across Oliver's temple as he dropped from the horse onto the ground.

  Snow had begun to fall in earnest now. “I have to get you to a hot fire and dry blankets immediately.” Feeling her stiffen in his arms, he knew she would not allow him to leave her companion to freeze to death, no matter how richly deserved the fate might be.

  Oliver was up on all fours now, his head injury bleeding freely. With a particularly vile oath, Chase reluctantly left Stephanie and went to assist her companion. Stripping off his gloves, he reached inside his greatcoat for a handkerchief, which he quickly tied around Oliver's head to staunch the bleeding sufficiently for him to be able to see.

  “I'm going to boost you up on this horse as soon as I unhitch it from the other. You'll have to ride it bareback or else I'll be forced to leave you,” he yelled as he began unfastening the heavy harness in a race with the growing numbness in his fingers. Once the horses were free, Chase seated Standish on the gelding, then led it over to where Stephanie huddled on the bank. The blue blanket around her shoulders was already white and stiff with snow. He lifted her up onto his horse and swung up behind her. As the frozen trio headed up the hill toward the house, he was grateful it was only a few hundred yards beyond.

  When they reached the mansion, the steward, Essex, took one look at his master's two frozen charges and set to work with typical New England practicality, stripping the ice-encrusted clothes from the man, discreetly leaving the young lady for his womanizing employer to deal with.

  “See to his head injury. Once he thaws out it may start to bleed again,” Chase instructed Essex before carrying a semiconscious Stephanie down the hall to his bedroom at the end of the hallway. Sheltered beneath a huge chestnut tree, it was the coolest place in the house in summer and, because it faced south, the warmest in winter.

  “I’m so sleepy,” she murmured thickly, her head lolling against his chest. She felt so safe held tightly in his arms. When he laid her on the big bed and moved away, she cried out, bereft of the solid comfort of his body. Her eyes roamed blearily around the room which was spacious and masculine. She was barely aware that he frantically tugged off her wet clothing, beginning with her boots.

  “Did you shoot that deer?” she asked, staring at a magnificent rack of antlers hung above the fireplace.

  “No. My people don't waste meat killing for trophies,” he replied, cursing to himself as his fingers, numb from the cold, fumbled over the loops holding the heavy fur coat closed. The first time in years I've been clumsy undressing a woman, he thought wryly as he pulled her up against him so he could peel off the coat. As soon as her arms were freed from the coat, she threw them around his neck, hanging onto him with surprising strength.

  “You're so warm,” she breathed next to his ear.

  “Well, you're not,” he replied, slinging the ice-covered coat onto the carpet, then unpeeling her arms so he could lay her back and attack the myriad of tiny buttons down the front of her heavy twill suit. By the time he reached the frilly white lawn blouse beneath, he was not cold anymore. In fact, parts of his anatomy were most definitely heating up.

  By the time Chase rolled her over on her stomach and began to unlace her corset stays, Stephanie was beginning to thaw as well. His hands touching her bare skin felt blissfully warm and incredibly deft. “Bet you've had a lot of practice doing this, haven't you?” she blurted out as he pulled the damp restricting garment from her waist. Lord above, here she was lying in a man's bed nearly stark naked while he touched her in unmentionable places and that was all she could say!

  Ah, but could she feel! Her frozen arms started to tingle as he massaged them with powerful long fingers until the blood seemed to roar in her ears. When he moved down her legs and took one small foot in his big dark hands, she closed her eyes in bliss, giving in to the utter madness of the moment.

  Chase watched her thick dark lashes flutter down, closing over those fathomless amber eyes. His own eyes were drawn to study her lithe young body as he worked over it. Her skin was alabaster pale as much from residual shock as from her fair coloring. But he could feel the pulse thrum steady under the silky skin behind her knee. His hand glided up over the curve of a long, slim thigh. She was slender but sweetly rounded, poised on the brink of womanhood. Against his will his eyes were drawn to the steady rise and fall of her chest as she started to drift off to sleep. Palest pink nipples puckered tightly in spite of the torrid warmth penetrating the room. Her breasts were small but perfectly formed, upthrust proudly without need of whalebone supports. The foolish corset was completely unnecessary. Her waist was tiny, her belly flat and sleek.

  Before he allowed his hands to trespass down the path his errant eyes traveled, Chase reached for several of the blankets at the foot of the bed and tucked them securely around the dozing girl. She is only a girl, he reminded himself sternly. A beautiful fairylike creature, virginal, innocent and completely unsuited to a man like him. A white woman from a wealthy family who would demand marriage as the price of her purity.

  And he was a half-caste who belonged two thousand miles away...or at least he hoped that he still did. Unless he rejoined the Cheyenne, he would not have any identity, for he could never be a Remington.

  Stephanie opened her eyes and met Chase's troubled gaze as he looked down on her. In spite of the warm room, she began to shiver beneath the scratchy wool blanket.

  “Your hands...they warmed me,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and husky.

  “You're still cold inside. Here, this
should help you,” he said, rising to step over to the bedside table where a crystal decanter of brandy sat. His legs were actually weak and his hands trembled as he poured the drink. He knelt beside her and raised her head so she could swallow.

  “Why is it you're always forcing spirits on me, Mr. Remington?” she asked dreamily.

  But she swallowed obediently as he held the glass. “Not for the usual reason, I fear.”

  “Too...too bad,” she said through chattering teeth, not really aware of what she was saying. The hot silky warmth of the French cognac eased the chill a bit but she still shivered.

  He smiled bleakly. “Yes, it is.” Leave now while you still can, an inner voice of conscience screamed at him. “I’m going to fetch some hot soup from the kitchen—”

  “N-no! P-please don't 1-leave me, Chase.” She sat up and her arms reached out to him. “I don't n-need soup—I need you.”

  The blankets dropped to her waist and those perfect little upthrust breasts gleamed like pearls. Not half as much as I need you. With an oath, he began stripping off his boots.

  Chapter Three

  Chase slid beneath the sheets and pressed Stephanie's shivering body against his, then pulled the warm blankets over them. Inside the soft cocoon he could feel her heart pounding in cadence with his own. In his haste to get her out of the frozen clothes and warm her numb flesh, he had left her hair coiled tightly in a heavy chignon. Seeing the pins digging into her delicate scalp, he rolled up on one elbow, partially covering her body with his and began to work them loose, using his long fingers as a comb.

  “You have so much hair,” he murmured hoarsely as the thick, lustrous waves spilled across the white pillowcases like bronze satin.

  Her trembling began to abate. His trembling began to accelerate when her small hands reached around his shoulders. Stephanie levered herself more tightly against him and felt the buttons on his shirt press into the tender skin of her breasts, which had inexplicably begun to ache. The tautness of that ache quickly spread lower into her belly and throbbed in her most secret place when his rough wool trousers scraped against her lower body.

  If only he had removed his clothes, some devilish inner voice whispered, as she clung to his big, hard male body. The idea of their flesh pressed together without any barrier of clothing should have horrified a proper Boston virgin. However, Stephanie Renee Summerfield had been raised by a free-thinking woman little concerned with the strictures of society. But Aunt Paulina had been a spinster, completely unaware of the powerful currents that could surge between a man and a woman.

  Stephanie had overheard the tittering whispers of classmates at the academy but until her debut the past spring, she had virtually no contact with boys since childhood. And none of the young men courting her had interested her in the slightest—intellectually or physically.

  No one but Chase...

  And now fate seemed to have gifted her with him...alone...half-naked...in a bed! She could feel the pounding of his heart and sense the tension in his bunched muscles. He was holding himself back from her. Being honorable. Or, the shattering thought suddenly struck her—what if he did not find her desirable? She was just a green girl, too thin and too plain for his jaded taste.

  Stephanie had to know. With the wisdom born of Eve, she ran her fingers down the swelling biceps in his arms, then glided her hands across his chest, reaching between them to unfasten the buttons of his shirt. He groaned and buried his face in her hair but did not stop her as she placed her fingers on the springy pelt of night-black hair on his chest. When she nuzzled her face against the hard slab of muscle, he shifted his weight suddenly, almost like a bucking horse. His hips ground down into hers and she could feel something hard prodding low against her belly through the placket of his trousers.

  If Stephanie had felt any lingering doubts, she no longer did, even though in her innocence she possessed only the vaguest intuition about what men and women did in bed together. The sudden change in his anatomy and the harsh rasping of his breath certainly indicated that she was soon to find out. Instinctively she raised her face to his and pursed her lips for a kiss, murmuring softly, breathlessly, “I love you, Chase.”

  I love you, Chase.

  He felt the virginal innocence of her lips, primly closed, pressing against his as the words registered. The fiery heat of a moment ago evaporated as surely as if he had been dropped beneath the ice in the Neponset River. He rolled from the bed flinging the covers back over her with an oath, still gasping for breath like a drowning man. The rigid erection in his pants was not as easily subdued as he stood towering over her with his shirt hanging open and his fists clenched at his sides.

  When she let out a soft gasp of dismayed surprise and sat up, reaching out for him, he backed away, snarling angrily, “Cover yourself before you catch pneumonia.”

  Tears of mortification and misery welled up in her eyes as she coughed. Clutching the blankets, she pulled her knees up to her chest and laid her head on them, letting her unbound hair fan down her bare back as she sobbed. “I...I'm sorry, Chase. You m-must despise me.”

  He cursed again and dragged in a deep gulp of air trying desperately to bring his body under control. Looking down on her huddled there so small and forlorn with all that glorious bronze hair spilling across her milky shoulders made his groin ache with renewed viciousness.

  “I don't despise you, Stephanie.” He barked a harsh, self-deprecating laugh. “Hell, look at me. Do I look like I don't want you?” When she raised her head and timidly inspected his body, blushing at the protrusion against the soft wool of his trousers, he muttered, “You don't have the slightest idea what you do to me, do you?”

  Her cheeks blazed fiery hot. “I thought...that is, I hoped you wanted to...”

  “Oh, I wanted to all right.”

  Her eyes dared to meet his. “But then, why did you get angry and jump away?”

  “Among my father's people it is a great shame to a man if he takes advantage of a maiden before they are properly wed. I may have broken most of the rules of Cheyenne honor, but this is one thing I will not do.”

  “So, it would seem you're more honorable than I am,” she said, swallowing down her tears. “After all, white civilization teaches the same thing.”

  “There is seldom honor among the veho...but you...you're different. Pure and good and honest. My only happy memories of this place came from my time with you. I don't want that to change.”

  “You're remembering our childhood, but we're not children anymore. Things have to change.” Do you still care about me, Chase?

  He turned away from her and paced over to the window where a wilderness of white howled outside the frosted panes. “You live in Boston, Stephanie. Things never change there. And we're stranded alone until this storm abates. We have to think of your reputation. God knows I've none of my own to worry about.”

  “Oh yes, you do. You've worked hard building a reputation as a carousing libertine. Is it permissible in Cheyenne society to carry on with married women?” Her jealousy was out of control and she knew it, but she also wanted to know why he lived as he did.

  His smile was rueful. “Well, it can get pretty expensive. A man has to make restitution if he dishonors another's wife—sometimes as much as his whole herd of ponies, his lodge, all his possessions. Unmarried men live under the same rules of chastity as unmarried women.”

  “But here among the veho—is that what you call us—you've abandoned the rules.”

  He shrugged. “I had some encouragement,” he replied bitterly. “Hell, you should remember how it was even when I was a boy—‘the dirty Indian.’ When Jeremiah found us fishing in the creek, after your father's servants dragged you home, the old man caned me within an inch of my life.”

  Stephanie remembered that day, the last time they had played together. It was etched forever in her memory, the heat of the afternoon and his tall, skinny, twelve-year-old's body. He had stripped down to his trousers, rolling up the legs so he could s
how her how the Cheyenne caught fish with their bare hands. It looked like such fun, she had wanted to try it, too. With her typical eight-year-old pluck and disregard for convention, she had taken off her shoes and socks and hiked up her skirt between her bare legs to wade in after him. She could still feel the fierce wriggling of that fat trout she'd caught. The sounds of their childish laughter echoed through the tall stand of alders as they tossed the slick, plump fish onto the bank, splashing each other with water in the process.

  Now, she looked at his tense body, the broad shoulders hunched as he leaned his hands on the window sash, standing barefoot across the room, so long-legged and tall, refusing to face her. The harshly beautiful profile of his hawkish face gleamed like a copper mask of some fierce Aztec god. Her throat constricted remembering the lonely boy, always an outsider. “Was that what made you run away back to your father's people?”

  He stiffened as the old shock and dread seized hold of him. “No. I endured lots of beatings before that one. Old Jeremiah tried his damnedest to whip the Indian out of me. Couldn't change the color of my skin no matter how much he prayed or used the hickory cane. The only reason I'm tolerated in society now is because of the size of the Remington bank account. Most of the good mamas of the city lock up their daughters when the dirty half-breed walks in.”

  “And you've taken pity on me because I don't have a mama to protect me.”

  The trace of impatient asperity in her voice caused him to turn around and face her. Unwillingly, he felt himself start to smile. “All this nobility is wearing on both of us. Why don't you bundle up in those blankets and I'll see about getting us some of that soup Essex made this morning?”

  The mention of the manservant suddenly brought back visions of him stripping a bloody bandage from Oliver Standish's head. She bit her lip and asked, “Is Oliver all right?” Overcome by guilt, she added, “He was bleeding.”