And then she wondered what Jed would say—that is, if he came back—if she were to ask him to make love to her.
She would pretend that she was clean and fragrant, dressed in something becoming instead of the dirty remnants of her oldest dress—that she was beautiful, her features flawless, her body perfect, with plump, pink-tipped breasts and shapely hips, like a Botticelli Venus. And as long as she was wishing, she might as well wish that he loved her.
It took him more than an hour, during which the rain slacked off but the fog had grown even thicker, but Jed managed to find his way back. Recognizing the trail as another trapper’s run, he had followed it until he’d come across a rabbit gum. Cleaning one small rabbit had been the easy part. Finding dry tinder and kindling had taken much longer. Keeping it dry on the way back had been damned near impossible. He’d ended up stuffing everything inside the boxlike rabbit gum and carrying the whole thing back with him. He would leave the trap in the shelter, where eventually it would be found. He didn’t know what else to do.
Eleanor was asleep when he made it back just before dark. The fog, if anything, had grown thicker. It would take several hours of strong sunlight to burn it off come morning. Hours they didn’t have to spare. He was too far behind schedule as it was, after wasting nearly two weeks, thanks to the Millers.
But gazing down at the sleeping woman, he thought, not a total waste. Far from it.
While Eleanor slept, he built the fire, rigged a spit and set the rabbit to roasting. Later he would venture out to collect enough water for drinking, but for now he needed a few minutes to think. And to warm his hands and feet. Where there was wind, any rain at all was miserable, even a cool spring shower. He wished he had something to wrap her in. A blanket, or even his old buckskin coat. Sleeping raw didn’t particularly bother him, he’d done it too many times in the past, but Eleanor was a lady.
“Damn those heathens, every blasted one of them, for doing this to her,” he whispered fiercely as he shifted his bare feet closer to the flames.
God, he missed his boots. They weren’t just any old boots, they were his lucky boots, the first pair of custom-made boots he’d ever owned, paid for by his first big win. He’d worn them the night he had won nearly three hundred dollars and shoved half of it back to the center of the table against a deed for a few hundred acres of land that might or might not be worth a plugged nickel. He’d taken the pot that hand. According to the loser, it wasn’t that big a deal, as the property was practically worthless, more than half of it so steep even goats had trouble negotiating the slopes.
Turned out the fellow was dead wrong.
Jed had been wearing his lucky boots again—hell, they were the only pair he owned, his old ones having finally worn out—when the railroad agent had tracked him down to his hotel and offered him two hundred dollars for the same worthless land.
They were still dickering five days later when George had wired him that Stanfield was going to take over everything unless George could come up with two thousand dollars by the end of the month.
That settled the matter. The next morning, wearing his lucky boots and a store-bought suit, he had tracked the agent down to a hole-in-the-wall office and stated his price. Twenty-five hundred dollars.
While Jed might have resented the fact that his father had seen fit to leave everything to George, he’d been born in that ugly old house. He had grown up planting Loran Dulah’s tobacco, suckering the plants, picking the leaves, bundling them into hands and racking them up in the barn to dry. He had nursed his father’s dumb cows through colic, scours and difficult calving, driven the small herd from one pasture to another and bottle-fed the orphans.
Whether he wanted to admit it or not, that land still meant something to him, even though he hadn’t been back in eight years.
It had taken a few days. The land agent was wily as a fox. But Jed was good at reading his opponent. He had carefully read, without seeming to, the man’s face, his hands and his posture while he’d driven the price up to nine hundred dollars. And then he’d collected his hat, thanked him for his time and left.
Next day, the agent had sought him out. Jed had held out for twenty-five hundred and made his point. The fact that the agent had been willing to pay that amount told him more than words or plats on an office wall ever could. He knew—he knew—where the next section of Carolina Northwest tracks were going though, and it wasn’t Foggy Valley!
Two thousand and two hundred dollars had been wired directly to the bank in Asheville the next day. The other three hundred, less the amount he’d owed the hotel and the livery stable, had been in his saddlebags when he’d been jumped, beaten and robbed beside Miller Creek. He hoped whoever was wearing his lucky boots now was enjoying them.
Like hell he did. The drunken dumb-asses had damn near broken his leg twisting them off. He hoped the bastards ate bad meat and caught the world’s worst case of back-door trots. He hoped their hair fell out. He hoped their dogs turned on them and their wives took off with a traveling salesman. He hoped—
“What are you so angry about?” Eleanor asked, her voice thick with sleep.
From across the fire, he saw her eyes widen as she yawned. Watched the way she winced as she sat up. “Not angry,” he corrected. “Just hungry. You about ready for some roasted rabbit?”
Dinner was quickly devoured. They tried to make it last, as the next meal might be a long time coming, but there wasn’t that much meat on a spring rabbit. Hands and face gleaming with grease, they faced each other across the fire. For once Jed could find no telltale signs to read. No smiles, no frowns, no shifting of the eyes. No lust lurking just under the surface.
Another time, he thought.
Or maybe not.
“You might as well know, I’m slightly lost,” he said after checking to see if the water had started to boil.
“How slightly?” She didn’t sound quite as upset as he’d have expected. Too exhausted to react, probably.
“When the sun comes up tomorrow I can probably give you a better idea. Let’s just say that as the crow flies, we’re still about a day and a half from where we’re headed. Trouble is, we can’t fly. All we can do is switch back and forth over the top of the next ridge and work our way down the other side. Near as I can figure, we’re somewhere near Cat Cove.”
She hesitated, then asked, “House cats?”
It took him a moment, then he said, “Could be, I never heard what it was called for.” He’d lay odds it wasn’t for any tabby cat, though.
Carefully, Jed poured hot water from the boiler into the two cups he had brought along, knowing in advance what kind of trip lay ahead of them. Wrapping her grimy fingers around the delicate flowered china cup, she said wistfully, “I’d almost rather use it for bathing, but there’s not much use in getting clean and having to put on filthy clothes.”
“Build up a good enough layer of dirt, it’ll keep the bugs from biting.”
She laughed, and he felt something inside him turn over. After all she’d been through—not just today and yesterday, but being held prisoner for so long by a bunch of wild, gold-crazy heathens—she could still laugh. A woman born into a world of china plates and lace-trimmed gowns. A woman who called a sofa, a chair and a makeshift bookshelf crammed into one corner a parlor.
A woman who not only knew things, but knew enough to teach school.
“Did I happen to mention how much I admire you?” he asked.
He thought at first she was going to cry. Instead, she bit her lip, tilted her head and said, “Thank you. If this is—”
From several yards downhill where McGee was hobbled, came a sound that brought Jed instantly to his feet. “Wait here,” he said tersely. Then he drew the butcher knife from his belt and handed it to her. “Use this if you have to. I won’t be far away.”
Jed moved silently, using instincts born of experience and bred into him by generations of Cherokee ancestors. The fog was thick enough to cut with a knife and he’d left the knife
behind. If the horse had been spooked by a bear or a big cat, chances were he’d have heard it moving through the underbrush. This time of year, with the warm days and cold nights, copperheads and rattlers came out after dark to soak up heat from sun-warmed rocks. Not that there’d been much sun in the past few hours, but if he had to bet on it, he’d bet on a snake. McGee hated snakes.
The gelding sounded off again. From fear, not from pain. After traveling together all these years, Jed knew the difference.
Easy, boy, hold your water—I’ll take care of it.
His bare foot came down on a fallen branch. Quickly, he withdrew his weight before it could snap. When he judged the distance to the place where he’d hobbled the horse to be about five yards, he paused to listen, all his senses alert, open and receptive.
Definitely not a bear, then. This early in the year they still stunk of the cave.
But cats had their own wild smell, the same subtle, distinctive gaminess he detected on the damp air now. Not that a bobcat was any real threat to a full-grown horse unless the horse was already foundered. With plentiful small game, a horse was hardly worth the effort, but some cats were just plain mean.
Then again, so were some horses.
McGee knew he was close by. So did the cat. Now let’s see which one of you fellows is going to spook first, Jed thought, bracing himself to make his move.
First making sure of his footing, he suddenly leaped into the air, clapped his hands loudly and shouted at the top of his voice. “Yip, yip, yip, oolay! Oolay! Scat, scat, scat!”
The trick was to scare the cat away. Sounding like a demented fool was irrelevant. McGee wouldn’t spook. Recognizing the sound of his voice, the horse whuffled a greeting. As for what Eleanor must be thinking, he couldn’t worry about that now. He stomped and shouted a few more times for good measure.
The threat, whatever it was, took off through the underbrush and moments later he was leading McGee back to the shelter, back to the fire that would keep any would-be predators at bay. Once there, he tied him off to a dead pine, giving him as much slack as possible. What with one thing and another, the clothesline was getting damned short.
Out of gratitude, the horse only tried to bite him once.
“See if you can stay out of trouble until morning, will you?” He slapped the gelding on the hindquarter and turned away.
“Is that you?” Eleanor called softly. All he could see through the thick fog was the rosy glow of the small fire. She was huddled near the back of the shallow overhang, watching with wary eyes as he approached. Not until he dropped down on the other side of the fire did the tension appear to leave her. “What was it?” she asked.
“Cat. Probably a half-grown bobcat, feeling his oats.”
“I didn’t know cats ate oats.”
“Figure of speech.” He grinned, grateful once again for her resilience. He’d heard it said that city-bred ladies were made of sugar and spice. This one was made of grit and gumption. “Whatever it was, I put on the whole show, chapter and verse.”
“The show?”
Holding his hands over the fire, he rubbed them together. “Stomping’s for snakes, shouting’s for cats.”
“What if it had been a bear?”
He peered into the boiler to see if there was any hot water left. There wasn’t. “Reckon I’d have tried to slip in and cut McGee’s line, then we’d have both run like hell.”
“And ended up at the bottom of the mountain with a broken neck,” she said dryly.
“Yeah, I tried that recently. Didn’t much care for it.” He deliberately made light of what had happened, just as he made light of how he’d been feeling just before McGee had sounded off. If he remembered correctly, he had just told her they were lost.
Sliding around to the other side of the small fire, he took one of her hands in his, caressing the calluses that marred the satiny skin. “Eleanor, listen to me. Wherever we are now, we’re safer than we were a few days ago. Will you take my word for that?”
She nodded. A thatch of matted hair flopped on top of her head like the broken blade of a windmill.
“I’d rather come up against bears, bobcats and a whole passel of snakes than face another run-in with those inlaws of yours,” he made an effort to inject a little humor into the situation.
He heard her stomach growl and wished he had something more than water and another day and a half of rough traveling to offer her. Maybe more than that if they were too far off track.
“Better get some sleep,” he said. It was the best he could do for now. “Tomorrow the fog’s bound to burn off. Once we see which way the wind’s blowing and hear that train whistle again, I can pretty well tell where we are.” To within twenty-five miles or so, he added silently.
“Mm,” she said, picking up on his usual way of answering the unanswerable.
They slept spoon fashion again. Jed thought he just might qualify for sainthood, holding her in his arms throughout the long, chilly night, feeling her soft bottom press against his aching groin. Smelling the ripe woman scent of her body.
She had to know how she affected him. There was no way she could mistake his erection for anything other than what it was. Rampant, unabated, unsatisfied lust.
If she was offended, she didn’t show it, knowing that it was either put up with his embarrassing condition or sleep cold. Spring or not, the hours just before daylight were cold as a banker’s heart.
Once her breathing evened out, he moved his face closer to the back of her neck. The shallow valley there was one of the most beautiful places on a woman’s body, to his way of thinking. Gently, he laid his lips against her skin, tasting the salt there, feeling the grit—inhaling the essence of something so uniquely Eleanor he knew he was doomed.
She’s under your protection, you randy bastard!
Evidently he was more of a gentleman than he’d thought. After a while, he sighed, moved away slightly and eventually slept.
Chapter Seventeen
Eleanor woke and lay still for several minutes, flexing various parts of her body that were stiff and aching. She was too grateful to be alive for another day to complain. Not that complaining would do any good.
Hunger gnawed painfully at her belly. Water would help—lots and lots of water, but that would mean stopping to duck behind the bushes every few miles. Just as well she was long past embarrassment. How much more humiliation could she possibly face, as Jed had already seen her at her worst?
Carefully, she lifted his arm from her waist and rolled a few inches away. He snorted in his sleep, but didn’t open his eyes.
Good. She could do her business behind the bushes, splash her hands and face as clean as possible, perhaps even wet her hair and pat it into some semblance of order, never mind that it was matted beyond repair, and then greet him with a cheerful smile.
Men couldn’t abide a miserable woman. Devin had told her so too many times to forget. She hadn’t bothered to remind him that if he hadn’t brought her to his back-of-beyond cabin, sold everything of worth she possessed and then blown himself up, leaving her to the tender mercies of his crazy cousins, she might not have been quite so miserable.
Lifting her skirts, she squatted behind the thicket of rhododendrons, making mental lists of all she needed to do before they set out again. There really wasn’t much she could do.
Suddenly, pain streaked through her. She screamed, jumped up and slapped a hand to her bottom, feeling something there besides her own flesh.
Eyes wide with fear, she danced around in a tight circle, screaming for Jed. “Hurry, it’s a snake!”
He thrashed through the bushes, knife in hand. “Where? Did he bite you?”
Wailing as much in embarrassment as in pain, she thrust her bottom at him. “Right here,” she sobbed. “On my—under my—my skirt.”
Casting a swift glance around, he bent over. “Let me see.”
She glared at him and dropped her skirt, horrified that he would even suggest such a thing. “I can’t
do that.”
“Eleanor, if it was a blacksnake, the bite wouldn’t have hurt. If it was any kind of a viper, I’ll have to cut through the bite and suck out the venom. It’s the only way. Now be sensible.”
“Where is he? Go find him and cut off his head before he bites you, too.”
“That won’t cure whatever happened to your, uh—your behind.”
She swayed on her feet, her hand never leaving the burning lump. “Am I going to die?” she whispered.
Without bothering to answer, he caught her to him, looked over her shoulder and lifted her skirt. He had to pry her hand forcefully away from the site of her injury.
She waited, her heart pounding so loud she could actually hear it. She knew all about snakebites. At least, she’d read about how painful they were, and how the victim could swell up, turn black and die within minutes.
“How—how long?” she whispered, meaning how long do I have to live.
Gravely, he said, “Be still, I’m going to have to use the knife.”
A poisonous snake, then….
She braced herself. “Lord, I wish I’d been a better wife,” she muttered. “I wish I’d been a nicer person, but I guess it’s too late now. Tell cousin Annie I’m sorry about her pump organ and all the other things, and I—”
She broke off when Jed stood up again. Her skirt tumbled down unevenly and she waited to hear the sentence of death pronounced.
Wasn’t he supposed to—to suck the venom from the wound? As mortifying as the thought of such an intimacy was, if it meant she might live, she would bear it gladly.
He was grinning. “Bee sting,” he said. “Hurts like the dickens, but it probably won’t kill you unless…”
“Unless?” Her ears were already ringing, but that could be from holding her breath.
“Take a deep breath and let it out.”
She did, her eyes never leaving his face. “Unless—?” she prompted.
“Now swallow.”
“Swallow what?” She gulped twice.
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