From the nervous look on her face, it wasn’t just snobbery that caused her outburst, but fear. Summer could partly understand the woman’s trepidation; there was something restless and dangerous about Lance, even when he was at ease. His hard, hawkish gaze warned people away, and just now the smoldering anger was back in his eyes, the quiet hostility. His look was enough to give any gently-bred female palpitations. Even so, that woman had no right to treat him with such sneering disdain, Summer thought indignantly.
Another of the passengers—an elegantly dressed man, perhaps the lady’s husband—glanced pointedly at Lance, a sneer on his face. “I assure you, we’re not traveling anywhere with any murdering savages.”
Casually, almost lazily, Lance reached down and drew his Navy Colt from the holster at his hip, causing the woman to gasp, and Summer herself to catch her breath.
His bronzed brow furrowed, Lance inspected the action of the revolver’s chamber, studying it intently. “I haven’t murdered anyone recently, as I recall. As for savage…” His mouth twisted in a cool smile. “I reckon that’s what I am, all right.” His black gaze lifted to the man, piercing and deadly.
The red-haired driver’s chuckle sliced into the tension. With an accusing look, the woman lifted a shaking hand to her heart. “I refuse to ride in a coach with someone like that.”
“Suit yourself, ma’am, mister. But I ain’t puttin’ Lance Calder out for nobody.”
The guard who rode shotgun turned to stare at Lance. “You’re Lance Calder?”
Lance’s shuttered look gave none of his feelings away. “That’s my name.”
Breaking into a sudden grin, the guard wiped his right hand on his pants and offered it to Lance. “I’ve heard tell about you, ‘bout the job you did for the Butterfield. I’m mighty honored to meet you, yessiree. I’m Petey Nesbeth. I hired on with this line last week.”
After the slightest hesitation, Lance accepted the offered hand and allowed Petey to pump his arm in a show of unbridled enthusiasm. “This fella,” Petey announced to the group, “was the best damn driver the Butterfield Stage ever had. Saved a lot o’ hides, never lost a passenger.” He turned back to Lance. “You’re welcome to ride up top with me. Shep told me about that time you kicked the Frazier boys off your route an’ then outran their ambush, but I shore would like to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”
Lance looked from Petey to the passengers, then to Summer. “Will you be okay?”
Something hard and bleak in his eyes tugged at her. She would have preferred to have his company, but apparently he was willing in the interest of peace to spare these good people his presence. Or perhaps he simply didn’t want to be subjected to their bigotry.
Summer forced a smile. “I’ll be fine.” Yet she couldn’t help but wonder, as she allowed Lance to help her inside the stagecoach, if this was what it was like for him, day after day, enduring the slurs and insults, the contempt of whites like her. She hadn’t realized it was so vicious. She was appalled that he had to suffer such treatment. No one deserved to be treated like filth. Especially a man as skilled and valuable as Lance.
She settled herself in the forward-facing seat beside the other woman. Then the remaining passengers climbed on board—one of the men beside her, the other two men facing the rear—and the drivers took their places. In another minute, Shep whipped up the fresh horses, and the stagecoach rolled out of the yard, picking up speed rapidly.
The deplorable state of the Texas roads, which often were no better than dirt trails, soon became apparent. Summer had to clutch the leather strap overhead to keep from being thrown from her seat, and soon the dust hung thickly in the air.
For a time no one attempted any conversation. Summer watched the Texas Hill Country flash by in a rolling blur of rocky outcrops and clumps of woodland, interspersed with grazing land that was beginning to rebound with green after the hot, dry August they’d just had. With her thoughts so absent, it was a moment before she realized the blond woman had addressed her.
“That Indian man…what does he call himself?”
A swift stab of anger arrowed through Summer, and she found herself leaping to Lance’s defense. “Why,” she said sweetly, “he calls himself Mr. Calder. And my husband.”
“Your…husband?”
The look of horror on the woman’s face reminded Summer forcibly of her new circumstances. A white woman who had married a man of mixed blood could hardly expect to be treated with the same respect and deference that the Belle of Williamson County had been accorded.
Indeed, such a reaction was even reasonable. She herself held conflicting emotions on the subject of Indians. Her own prejudice was deep-rooted. She’d been taught to hate the red man almost from the time she was born, ever since they had killed her mother so brutally, and her father had nearly gone mad with bitterness and grief. Few Texans who had carved homes out of the wilderness had escaped the atrocities committed by the various Plains tribes, particularly the Comanche: neighbors and beloved relatives murdered, captured, enslaved, outraged. It was only a few years ago that the last of the Indians had been driven from Texas, forced to live farther north in the Indian Territory. The fact that Lance still remained, that he hadn’t allowed himself to be driven out, only testified to his grit.
She would have to adopt some of that grit now, Summer realized bleakly. His own private battles would now become hers. She could tell by the way the other passengers were observing her—with faint contempt and undisguised speculation. The man directly across from her eyed her with a boldness that he would never have dared use if she had been protected by her father or brothers.
Abruptly Summer turned her face to the window. She couldn’t worry about that right now. She would have to deal with her marriage to Lance once Amelia had been safely returned, yes, but until then, she simply couldn’t let herself think about it. Until Lance succeeded in his goal, she would have to control her dismay and turmoil over her relationship with her new husband.
What mattered most was finding Amelia and bringing her home alive.
Chapter 5
The two-hundred-plus-mile journey by stage to Fort Belknap took three and a half exhausting twelve-hour days—and then only because the weather remained good. The trip, though dusty and dry, was blessed with sunshine, moderate daytime temperatures, and cool evenings, with none of the rains that could turn the Texas prairies into fields of mud and the streams into dangerous torrents.
After leaving Round Rock, the stage stopped in Georgetown to pick up two more passengers, and then headed north through the hills, eventually spilling out into more open country bordered by forest known as the Cross Timbers. Mile after endless mile of undulating terrain—half prairie, half woodland—rumbled by. Seas of wild gamma grass followed the dip and roll of the land, melding with clumps of scrub cedar and thickets of post oak and pecans, broken here and there by willows and cottonwoods that grew along the sandy creek beds. Occasionally pounding herds of buffalo thundered by in great clouds of dust to alleviate the monotony, and sometimes there were signs of civilization—farm acreage whose sandy soil was planted in corn or melons, or ranches that raised cattle or horses.
From the very beginning of the journey, Summer received a firsthand taste of the rejection and scorn that Lance had lived with all his life. While nothing overt occurred, the grim silences and the bold sneers of the other passengers served to clearly emphasize her changed status. Before the end of the first day, she had begun to understand Lance’s anger at white prejudice and his own inferior position in society. It was no wonder that respectability and acceptance were so important to him, if he’d had to face this sort of bigoted hostility day after day.
For the first time she could imagine what his life had been like. Lance carried himself with a kind of hard self-awareness and defiance—a combination that had always dangerously fascinated her before, but now seemed to be entirely justified. The remoteness, the damn-your-eyes attitude, had no doubt been bred into him by years of being
shunned. As a child, he would have learned from painful experiences not to expect approval or acceptance. As a man he would have learned to fight for every inch of respect and acknowledgment he could muster, even while pretending that the rejection, the rebuffs, the contempt, didn’t matter—a strategy with which she was quickly coming to sympathize.
She had few chances to speak to Lance alone initially. The relay stations where they stopped for the night boasted primitive accommodations that afforded little privacy. The first night was the best. The small stone building doubled as an eating establishment and bunkhouse. The men slept in the hard, cramped bunks, while the two ladies shared a bedtick stuffed with prairie feathers—wild grass—near the fireplace. The second night there were no bunks, only a dirt floor and blankets that hadn’t seen a good washing in months. The fare for every meal never varied—salt pork and cornbread.
Neither night did Lance attempt to claim his rights as her husband, as Summer feared he would, or even try to remain near her. He bedded down outside in the open air, along with Petey, not pushing the issue of his acceptance.
Summer didn’t know whether to be relieved or offended by his neglect. She could sense that his withdrawal was as much emotional as it was physical, and it left her feeling acutely alone and somehow abandoned. The naked intimacy they had shared on their wedding night might as well never have happened—except for the sharp memories that frequently assaulted her. The feel of his hands on her breasts…the heat of his mouth covering hers…his steel-hard body pressing her down…his fingers moving in hungry, quickening rhythm between her legs…the fierce pleasure he had given her against her will.
The memories of pleasure conflicted with other, darker feelings toward Lance. Her resentment at his forcing her to wed had been repressed temporarily by her determination to get on with the difficult task ahead, but during the endless weary hours of the journey, it returned full force. Lance was greatly to blame for the silent treatment she was receiving at the hands of the other passengers. If he hadn’t demanded their marriage in exchange for his help, she would still be Miss Weston, admired and courted, accepted unquestioningly—Summer shook her head fiercely at the ignoble thought. She didn’t want to return to being the spoiled, pampered darling she’d once been, but having to deal with the disapproval, the silent scorn of the other passengers, was unnerving. Despite her contention with Lance, it comforted her to know he was near.
During the lonely, numbing hours of travel, jostled by the unrelenting rock and sway of the stagecoach, lulled by the monotonous landscape, she even found herself wondering what it would have been like if they had met under different circumstances. If they had married without the tension between them, without the resentment of the past, the uncertainty of the future. If Lance were white—
But then, that was a moot issue. If Lance were white, he wouldn’t be the man he was now, and she wouldn’t need him to rescue her sister. Indeed, if Lance were white, there would be little question of his acceptance. He would probably have women fawning all over him. The ladies who shunned him now would be the first to flirt with him and seek his attention. He might not be a gentleman, but there was something primal and intently masculine about him, an attraction that drew a woman against her will, that led her to imagine dark, forbidden fantasies. Fantasies that entailed Lance making love to her, hungering for her, looking at her with the hot gleam of desire and arousal in his midnight eyes. Fantasies where she held him to her breast and tamed the savage within, softened the hard, unforgiving man he had become.
She certainly wasn’t immune to such feelings—despite Lance’s Comanche heritage, despite his dishonorable demands that had forced her hand, despite her determination to forget what had happened between them in their marriage bed. Indeed, that night had only served to heighten the physical attraction between them.
Lance had initiated her to sexual intimacy. She had experienced passion at his hands…rough, tender, incredibly arousing…She couldn’t possibly ever forget that.
Summer told herself it was loneliness, not desire, that caused her to seek him out the third morning of their journey. Loneliness and nerves. Even more than she wanted to share his familiar company, she wanted the reassurance that his steadying presence gave her. The blond woman had disembarked yesterday afternoon with her husband, leaving her alone inside the coach with only the male passengers. One man’s stare—the brown-haired Mr. Yarby’s—had grown bolder, more brazen, to the point of making her acutely uncomfortable.
It was barely daybreak when she left the station building and went in search of Lance. Her muscles ached from the hours of sleeping on the hard floor and the longer hours of being cramped in the coach, so it was a relief to be able to stretch her legs.
She found him in the stone corral, checking the soundness of one of the stage horses, while Pete and Shep rigged the others. For a moment she watched Lance…watched his lean hand moving carefully down the animal’s left foreleg. She stood mesmerized by the sight, remembering the feel of those same long fingers stroking, probing, her body…remembering the heat of his bare skin beneath her own clutching fingers…his naked torso that was so different from her own…the hard sculpted muscles, the broad, deep chest, the taut, flat belly…
He must have sensed her presence, for he glanced sharply over his shoulder to find her watching him. Summer was grateful for the morning air, cool and crisp, that wafted over her heated cheeks.
“I thought that was the drivers’ job, to handle the horses,” she murmured conversationally.
Lance’s jaw hardened at what he took to be a criticism. “I don’t like to be idle. And I don’t want one of the team pulling up lame before we reach Fort Belknap. We can’t afford the delay.”
He heard her push open the picket gate and step inside the corral, felt her move to stand behind him. His muscles tensed with awareness as they always did when she was around, all his senses becoming acutely alert.
“When you finish with that, would you mind…would you tie my bonnet strings? I have no mirror.”
Lance frowned, wondering what game Summer was playing now, even as a sharp memory from five years ago assailed him: a laughing Summer rigged out in Sunday finery before a buggy drive, gazing teasingly up at one of her countless beaux as he adjusted the bow under her chin. A flirtatious, beautiful Summer casting sideways glances beneath long eyelashes to see if the breed was watching, smiling when she realized he was. Her suitor’s name was Albert. Lance had hated that prissy name with a passion ever since.
Clenching his teeth as he finished with his inspection, he gave the bay’s shoulder a final pat and turned to his wife. His hard look was skeptical, but he grasped the ribbons of the low-crowned velvet bonnet she’d placed on her head and tried to tie them.
To his disgust, he found his fingers unsteady. Her upturned face, kissed by the rays of the breaking sun, looked as beautiful as he’d ever seen it, the pale skin flushed rose and gold, her green eyes soft and uncertain.
“There,” he said gruffly, straightening the bow and stepping back.
Summer regretted that he had finished the task so soon. With Lance so close, she’d fought the need to turn her face in to the cradle of his palm. Yet such a public display of intimacy, of need, of weakness, would do her reputation with the other passengers no good, nor did she think Lance would appreciate it.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
When she didn’t leave, Lance eyed her impatiently. “You want anything else from me?”
She smiled faintly, almost wistfully. “Well…yes…actually there is something.”
Without warning he felt hot desire pulsing to life within him, unwelcome but undeniable. That flush of heat, that pure raw wanting, was powerful enough to make him catch his breath.
Lance cursed himself. He’d done his damnedest to control his powerful need for her. For the past two endless day he’d kept his hands off Summer, leaving her alone even though it had near killed him.
Yet all she had to do was smile
at him now and he swelled up like a randy stallion. All she had to do was look at him with those pleading green eyes and he was ready to do nigh anything she asked.
“Would you ride inside the coach with me today? I’d prefer your company to the others’.”
He didn’t want to deny her anything—except that. Slowly Lance shook his head. “That’d be a mistake. I’m not exactly welcome in white society, or hadn’t you noticed?”
He saw her mouth tighten briefly. “So? Those people have no right to object to your riding inside. You’ve paid your money just like everyone else.”
He heard the edge of anger in her voice and wondered if Summer was incensed for his sake or her own. Probably her own. She’d never before had to deal with rejection from her own kind, the kind of rejection she’d been faced with the past two days from the other passengers.
“In any case,” she added, “our drivers would take your side, I’m sure of it.”
Remembering Shep’s response when the blond witch had tried to keep him off the stage the other day, Lance looked away restlessly. He didn’t need anybody sticking up for him, but he wasn’t sorry Shep and Petey had. His brief career driving the Butterfield Mail cross-country, over thousands of miles of hostile territory, had earned their respect, and he was proud to have something he didn’t have to be ashamed of in front of Summer. But he also knew what a liability he was for her with the other passengers.
“I wasn’t just thinking of me,” he said finally, in a low voice, “but you. It’ll only be harder on you if they see you with me. It’s best I keep away.”
Her brow furrowed as she looked at him sharply. For a moment she gazed at him intently, her eyes filled with an unspoken accusation he thought he could read: You should have thought of that before making me marry you.
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