Blackstone's Bride

by Bronwyn Williams

  It didn’t bear thinking about, and so she turned her attention to getting ready to ride. Or walk, as the case may be.

  She put on her shoes—they were still damp, but the kidskin lining helped enormously. Why hadn’t she thought of it herself?

  “Thank you,” she called, wriggling her foot in his direction.

  “Won’t last long,” Jed replied. “I saved some buckskin, we’ll use that next.”

  Carefully looking away from where she sat lacing her shoes, her face still creased from sleep, Jed rolled up her nightgown and crammed it into a pillow slip, then began scouring the soot from the boiler before packing it in the other one. The dictionary was ruined but he couldn’t bring himself to leave it behind. That went in on top of the boiler, which also held their cups and cutlery.

  She purred like a kitten when she slept. He’d never heard a woman purr before…but then, he’d never before spent an entire night with any woman. Certainly not Vera, and not the women who charged by the hour.

  Two nights they had shared now. A few more they would share before they reached the farm. It would have to be enough, he told himself, knowing it wouldn’t. Knowing that forever wouldn’t be enough.

  “Looks like McGee fared pretty well,” he said without glancing up from the bridle he was reworking. “Found him a patch of new grass.”

  “How far do you think we’ll get today? I just hope it doesn’t rain again.”

  This time of year, showers could pop up out of nowhere, but Jed didn’t see any reason to tell her that, if she didn’t already know it. For a schoolteacher, there was a surprising lot she didn’t know.

  “Probably won’t. I know of a cave about eight hours’ walk from here,” he said. “We’ll try for that, but if we don’t make it, there’s other places we can stop.”

  “How do you know all these things? There’s nothing here—no roads, no towns…”

  “Be surprised how much traffic there is in these hills,” he said calmly. “Hunters, trappers, sang-getters.” She would know about ginseng, a valuable commodity for those who knew where to find it. She’d mentioned one of the Millers—he’d forgotten which one—who collected the herb.

  Chances were small, but he’d just as soon avoid meeting anyone on the trail. George needed every advantage he could hang on to, and the element of surprise was a big one.

  They didn’t talk much for the first few hours. As the trail was clear and easy to navigate, they started out walking. Surrounded by millions of trees, some the deep color of evergreens, others a tender shade of green that would turn the hills into a blaze of red and gold in another few months, they trudged on, crossing the next ridge at an angle. Occasionally Jed would lead them off onto a shortcut, a track left by animals on their way to water. Eleanor kept a wary eye out for possible predators, but he assured her she was safe.

  “They kept my gun, dammit. I should’ve gone after that, too, before we left.”

  “Would your gun have come to a whistle?” She knew he didn’t really mean it. Guns could be replaced. Lives couldn’t. No telling what would have happened if he’d gone after whatever else Alaska had stolen from him.

  “You’d think we were the only two people in the world,” she said later on when they paused at a convenient flat rock for a breather. She examined the sole of her shoe with her fingers.

  “How’s it holding up?” he asked, meaning the improvised patch.

  “It’s still there,” she said, not bothering to add that it was thin as silk and probably wouldn’t last out the day.

  “You can ride for a spell.”

  “I’d rather walk, but thank you. You don’t have enough leather to line my…” She broke off, closing her eyes.

  “Behind,” he said, chuckling. “We’ll save McGee for when the going gets rougher then. You ready to go?”

  If there was a village or even so much as a single cabin anywhere nearby, Eleanor never saw it. Once she thought she smelled smoke. Another time she was almost certain she heard the sound of a distant train whistle, the melancholy “whoo-woo” so familiar she nearly cried.

  They passed two waterfalls, one with a small pool that she eyed longingly. As cold as it was, she would have loved nothing better than to submerge her entire body and stay there until hunger drove her to surface.

  They met up with the creek again a few miles farther on. It was well past noon, judging by the angle of the sun. Eleanor’s stomach growled. She was so weary she was beginning to stumble, and so they made camp in the middle of the day. Jed built a fire and heated water, boiling the last shreds of sassafras bark. She was growing almost used to the taste by now. With sugar and perhaps milk, it would have been an acceptable substitute for coffee.

  “How are your feet?” Jed asked.

  In a movement that would have shocked her senseless only days earlier, she lifted her left foot and propped it on her right knee. “Well, I can’t quite see my stocking through the hole yet, but it won’t be long.”

  While they waited for the tea to brew, Jed cut two strips of buckskin and handed them to her. “Might as well do it while we’re stopped, else you’ll have blisters, sure’s the world.”

  He knew her too well. She might be somewhat lacking when it came to common sense, but she had copious quantities of pride. “How are your feet?” she countered.

  Grinning, he shook his head. “Give me another few hours and I’ll be an inch taller than when I started out this morning.”

  “My blisters are bigger than yours,” she taunted.

  “Wanna bet?”

  “Did I ever tell you about my little boys? How they always had to be the biggest or the best? If one of them claimed to have been bitten by a black widow spider, the other one would swear he’d been bitten by a boa constrictor, even after I read them about the way boas dealt with their prey.”

  “Both of ’em lived to tell the tale, though, huh?”

  “That tale and many more.”

  They talked about silly things, avoiding uncomfortable reality. Travel was going to be increasingly difficult before they reached Jed’s valley, but they had no choice but to go on. Jed had important business—he’d told her about the trouble his family was in, and the means he had to deal with it. She had an idea there was more to the story than the simple repayment of a debt, but he hadn’t gone into detail, and she hadn’t asked.

  Weariness was a constant companion as they trudged on, taking turns riding, but mostly walking as the terrain was increasingly difficult. It was too early in the season for nuts or wild fruit. Greens were easy enough to find near the streams, but without seasoning, they were tasteless and did little to stave off hunger. Twice Jed trapped squirrels, which he roasted on a spit over the fire. Even without salt they were delicious. Eleanor knew she would never again look at a squirrel in the same way.

  “I could probably catch us another trout, but it would take too long. We need to move on unless you need to rest your feet some more?” They had just finished the midday meal on the second day—or was it the third? Time had lost all meaning.

  She really did need to rest. Not only her feet, her entire body. Jed insisted she ride for a part of every hour, but watching him leading McGee and knowing that his feet were as sore as her own, she pleaded the need for exercise.

  Walking behind him gave her ample opportunity to study the way he moved. Sore feet or not, he moved as if he owned the forest. As if he were intimately acquainted with every rock, every tree—every faint game trail along the way.

  Watching the easy way his limbs moved, the way the muscles of his narrow hips bunched with each step, she thought about that odd mark on his buttocks. He had mentioned a man named Sam Stanfield. Did the double S have anything to do with the man who held the mortgage on his family’s farm?

  There was so much she wanted to know, but lacked the courage to ask. So much she knew without having to ask. Honor and integrity were qualities she had once assumed that most men possessed—train robbers, bank robbers and a few politici
ans excepted, of course. That was before she had learned that men could smile and say nice things and all the while be thinking of ways to rob a woman of her possessions.

  “I’m a bloody idiot,” she muttered, stepping over a sharp ridge of granite.

  “You say something?” Jed called over his shoulder.

  Twitch, twitch, twitch. If there was a reward for following the leader, she thought, half amused, half shocked at her own boldness, it was watching the leader’s muscular behind and picturing him in the altogether.

  “I said, I hope it’s not going to rain again,” she replied.

  “We’ll stop in another hour or so. I think there should be another cave somewhere ahead. If it does rain, we’ll have a dry place.”

  “Us and how many bears and snakes and wildcats?”

  “Pick one. They’re not likely to hole up together.”

  She shuddered. “Rain’s not so bad. I really do need a bath, anyway.”

  They walked another few feet and then Jed stopped to pry a rock from McGee’s hoof. He used one of her knives for a pick and it occurred to her that, left to her own devices, she would never even have thought to bring a knife.

  But then, left to her own devices, she would still be up on Devin’s blasted hill, waiting for someone to bring her a sack of flour and a jar of buttermilk, and perhaps stay to exchange a few words. “Jed, have I thanked you yet for helping me get away?” she asked, taking the opportunity to sit while Jed dealt with McGee.

  “Believe you did. Couple of times, in fact. You could’ve done it without me.”

  “And how far do you think I’d have got? Anyway, thank you again. I can’t imagine where I thought I was going, all those times I tried to get away on my own. I certainly couldn’t have walked to Charlotte, even if I knew how to get there.”

  “You’d have stopped at one of the outlying farms and they’d have helped you.”

  “How can you be so sure? They might have kept me on as an indentured servant.” She was only half joking. Without help, without friends or family to search for her, to make inquiries, she could have spent the rest of her life lost in the hills, less than thirty miles from civilization, yet unable to find her way out.

  “You good for another hour or so?” he asked, holding out a hand to help her to her feet.

  Just then they heard another distant train whistle. Eleanor lifted her face, blinking away the sudden tears. “How is it possible,” she whispered, “to be so close and yet so far away?”

  It was the most natural thing in the world for Jed to pull her into his arms, to hold her, swaying gently, murmuring soothing, meaningless words. “Wanna call it a day?”

  She shook her head, her face burrowed against his neck. He smelled of sweat, horse and earth. So did she. “I’d give a hundred dollars for a bath,” she said, laughter struggling against tears of sheer exhaustion.

  “I’ll send for the maid and have her draw you a tub. You want some of that sweet-smelling stuff ladies dump in their bath water?”

  “To be sure. Gardenia, if you please, and lotion to rub on afterward. Oh, and have her lay out my best blue muslin with the matching shawl. I do believe it’s turning off cooler, don’t you?”

  They had played the same game before, when the going was hard and seemingly unending. She knew he was worried about the time it was taking them to get there. Knew also that without her, he would have made far better time, riding partway, walking fast the rest, taking steeper, faster trails instead of the easier switchbacks.

  Holding her away, he plucked a twig from her hair and brushed it off her forehead. It was now matted beyond recovery. Laughter caught in her throat and she said, “You might as well do my hair while we wait for the maid, Blackstone. Shorter, I believe…much shorter, in fact. Start whacking and don’t stop until you see the pink of my scalp.”

  “Hmm, words have a familiar ring to ’em. Didn’t some famous general say something like that?”

  “You’ve been reading the encyclopedia again, haven’t you?”

  “Not lately, love, not just lately.” Cupping her face in his hands, he searched her eyes for a moment, then leaned closer and touched her mouth with his. He tasted of sassafras and the wild mint they both chewed while they walked.

  His kiss was so sweet, so giving, not at all demanding. She could have wept all over again. She knew he’d been aroused the past two nights when they’d slept curled together under layers of her clothing, yet not once had he touched her improperly. With her bottom cupped securely against his hard groin, she had lain there, afraid to move a muscle, wondering what would happen if he were to touch her breast.

  Now, shocked by her own thoughts, she drew away. Jed didn’t try to hold her. He smiled, his dark eyes tired, but still twinkling. “Thank you, ma’am. I needed that,” he said.

  “I’m the one who needed it. But I think if we’re going to find accommodations for the night, we’d better hurry. We don’t have reservations, and I don’t like the way those clouds are moving in.”

  Not even to himself would Jed admit he was lost. Going east all those years ago had been easy. Relatively easy. The first time he’d cut cross-country, wanting only to get as far away as possible from the pain and humiliation of what had happened, he had simply followed the first trail he’d come to. Two days later, by following wagon roads and ducking off to the side whenever he heard a traveler coming, he’d reached the Catawba River. Too miserable to go on, he had bedded down a few hundred feet off the road, uncertain where to go from there, not sure he could make it, even if he knew where he was headed. He’d still been there when a circuit-riding preacher had come along, needing help with a loose wagon wheel.

  By that time he’d been feverish, his wound badly inflamed. Walking had been miserable, riding out of the question. The Reverend Pepperdine had nursed him back to health and talked him out of going back to the valley for revenge. He’d ended up staying with the preacher—a learned man, if a bit narrow-minded—for nearly two months, finally parting ways on the outskirts of Hickory. By that time the inflammation on his buttocks had healed to the point where he could sit without suffering the agony of the damned.

  By then he had also worked out a plan for the future—a plan that included riding triumphantly back to Foggy Valley on a fine, blooded stallion, wearing fancy boots and expensive clothes, just in time to save Stanfield from some horrible unnamed fate. And of course, a weeping Vera would throw herself at his feet, thanking him for saving her father and pleading with him to marry her.

  Eight years was a long time, he thought now, carefully picking his way along the abandoned trapper’s trail. He was returning, all right, barefoot and wearing rags—penniless until he could claim the money he had wired to the bank in Asheville. By no stretch of the imagination could McGee be mistaken for a fine, blooded stallion, not that it mattered. Somewhere over the past few years the revenge that had driven him for so long had lost its power.

  He thought of all the days he’d spent reading after Pepper had introduced him to the public library. He had stumbled over half the words until he’d discovered dictionaries. Once he and the preacher parted ways, he’d spent his nights refining a modest skill at cards, building on each small win, never betting his last cent but keeping back enough to stay in the game.

  Luck had been with him over the years, but luck hadn’t been entirely responsible. He had learned a lot about judging his opponents. For instance, he could tell by a fleeting smile when a man thought he held a winning hand. Eye movements, posture—something as subtle as swallowing, could signal either an opportunity to grab or a risk not to be taken.

  Now, looking at the woman up on McGee’s back, her slight body drooping with exhaustion, he had a feeling this game might well be the most important of his life. And as high as the stakes were, he had a feeling he just might be holding a winning hand.

  Time would tell.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was the direction of the rain that gave him a rough idea of where the
y were. It blew in from the west, gusts of wind-driven leaves and creaking branches preceding the first wave of showers. “Over here,” Jed yelled, pointing to a jutting rock formation. It wasn’t one of the caves he remembered from years past, but it should keep them dry as long as the wind didn’t switch. Once a long time ago he had spent a few days in this same area, hiding out, healing and plotting revenge. That was before he’d met Pepper. Thanks to the reverend, he had eventually gotten past his initial rage.

  They were both soaked to the skin by the time they huddled in the shallow shelter made by an uprooted tree and a small rockslide. Jed gave Eleanor a gentle push, tossed the two grimy pillow slips in after her and then led McGee to a place farther downhill where there was a stand of knee-high grass beside a sliver of a stream.

  “Another few miles and we’d have made it,” he said, ducking into the scant shelter and flinging water off his face with one hand.

  “Foggy Valley?”

  “The cave I promised you,” he said ruefully. “The one with the pond.”

  “Oh. Then I suppose my warm bath will have to wait.”

  “And the beefsteak and fried potatoes.”

  “And the gardenia bath salts.”

  “And the coconut pie and brandy.”

  She sighed. It had been hours since they had stopped to eat, and even then, it had only been wild greens seasoned with wild onions. As hungry as she was now, she’d have given a fortune to be clean, even if she had to wade out into an icy creek and soak until all the dirt and any insects that had set up housekeeping in her matted hair floated off downstream.

  Only, not when it was raining too hard to see. Not when thunder rumbled just over the mountain. Now when even her cabin on Devin’s Hill was beginning to look good to her in retrospect.

  “Wait here,” he said abruptly, after studying her forlorn face long enough to make her even more uncomfortable.

  “Where else would I go?” she whispered as he disappeared into the gray nothingness.

  With the rain had come fog. Absently, she wondered how that could be. And then she wondered if they were lost.