by Shirl Henke
Lest he again catch her spying and accuse her of lascivious thoughts, she quickly withdrew from the window and set to work fixing supper. Where in tarnation was Micajah anyway? It seemed that he was spending an inordinate amount of time away from the cabin the past few days, almost as if he wanted her to be left alone with Samuel. But that was absurd. Whatever for? She had already made it quite clear that Shelby would never marry her—not that she wanted him either, the arrogant misogynist.
Just then her ruminations were cut short when the cause of her frustration walked into the cabin, his arms laden with wood. He had donned his shirt which clung damply to his body and hung open, revealing more chest hair than was at all proper. Far be it from her to comment and receive another of those smirking looks from him again!
Samuel watched her paring potatoes with small, incredibly soft hands. He had learned from Micajah that she treated them with mink oil each night to keep the heavy chores from reddening her sensitive skin. He cleared his throat after depositing the wood on the hearth. “There is something between us, Olivia, that seems to bring out the worst in me. I apologize for my behavior this morning.”
She plopped the last potato in the cookpot and started to lift it toward the fire. He gently took it from her and slid it in place on the iron rod, then turned back to her.
“Why do you always assume the worst about me?”
He shrugged uncomfortably. “You aren’t exactly a conventional female, Olivia. By your own admission you spent your childhood in Europe’s capitals, either living the high life or fleeing your father’s gambling debts in the dead of night. As an adult you’ve dressed in boy’s clothes to race horses at rough frontier tracks and flirted with bevies of drooling men in elegant ballrooms. Forgive me for sounding arrogant, but you did seem to pursue me that night at Chouteau’s. Was I to fall in line with all the other men panting after you? Was that Wescott’s plan?”
“When will you get it through your thick head that Emory Wescott never informed me of his plans,” she replied coldly. “I overheard them for myself—and your reply to them. My uncle knew you were married. I did not, more the fool I.”
“Yes, I was married,” he echoed bitterly.
“And you never intend to be again. You made that perfectly clear.”
“Tish was the perfect southern belle, when surrounded by suitors. She was meek and charming, everything I thought a wife should be.”
She could see the incredible bleakness darkening his eyes. “But you were wrong and she hurt you. When you were feverish, you talked about her,” she said softly. “But is it fair to blame all women because of Tish’s betrayal?”
“It wasn’t only my wife,” he replied tightly, not wanting to discuss this, uncomfortable with the empathy in her eyes, the softness in her smile.
“It seems you’ve spent your life dallying with the wrong sort of women. Perhaps because of the places a man like you frequents?” She could sense his withdrawal and wanted to share his pain. “What other women betrayed you?” she prodded gently.
“My mother,” he said flatly. “She was a self-centered, calculating French aristocrat. As wily as her sometime lover Prince Talleyrand. To date, she’s survived the rise and fall of three governments. When I was thirteen, she took my sister and sailed away from Virginia back to the gaiety of Paris, leaving me and my father behind. He died of a broken heart. Mine mended. Or maybe it just shriveled up until I quit missing it...and her.” He grinned but the smile was without warmth. “By that time I’d discovered a whole new use for women. I didn’t need a mother anymore.”
“Or a heart? I’m not so sure that little boy isn’t still locked inside you…still searching for love.” So much about him made sense now, the glib charm, the evasive answers, the hard-edged antagonism. At his cynical look she amended, “Well, perhaps not motherly love.”
“I’m not looking for any kind of love, Olivia. I took the plunge once, married a proper girl from a good family and settled down to have children—or so I thought. I was a fool.”
“You’ve been hurt and disillusioned, but that doesn’t make you a fool, Samuel,” she argued, drawing nearer, longing to hold him in her arms and comfort him. She could see by the rigid way he stood with his fists clenched at his sides that he was struggling to hold onto the black anger, the bitter pain from his past. “It doesn’t mean you can’t trust another woman.”
He looked down at the earnest expression on her face, aching to drown himself in her sweet allure, to accept the marvelous oblivion of her silken flesh. But she was Emory Wescott’s ward, perhaps his victim, perhaps his accomplice. He smiled but not with his eyes. “I’m afraid I’m a rotten judge of women. I’ve always been attracted to the sort who draw blood.”
The implication was as unmistakable as the rejection. The pain slammed into her heart with a sudden rush. Instinctively she raised her hand and slapped him hard, then spun around and ran from the cabin. Her parting words, “Yes, you are a rotten judge of women,” seemed to hang suspended on a choked sob in the empty room.
Samuel debated going after her but knew it was no use. He had spent the entire time he’d known the infuriating woman alternately insulting her and then apologizing to her. They were just no good for each other—even if she was what she claimed to be. And his years as a spy made him highly suspicious of that.
Skimming along the periphery of his consciousness was a nagging accusation—as long as he held firmly to the belief that she was in league with her guardian, he had a secure wall erected to protect himself from the maddening attraction to her that had plagued him since the first time he laid eyes on her.
Shaking his head, he looked about for something to occupy his mind until Micajah returned. Then he spied the woodsman’s rifle standing in the corner. Perhaps it could use a good cleaning.
Outside Olivia ran, heedless of where she was headed. Tears blurred her vision and she swiped at them with the back of her hands as she stumbled through the woods near the cabin. When she heard the low burbling sound of the creek, she sank down onto the ground and crumpled over. The tears fell silently, bitterly. She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth, unable to bear the desolate realization.
"I’m still in love with him. I always will be."
Finally, her tears subsided enough for her to blink them back and compose herself. Micajah would be home expecting supper and here she was sitting out in the sand, blubbering like a fool schoolgirl. Just as she started to rise a low feral growl emanated from down by the side of the creek.
Olivia looked into the glazed eyes of a coyote standing with its legs rigidly braced, its fangs bared in a snarl. Normally coyotes were timid animals who hunted by night and avoided any contact with humans. But this one was out in broad daylight, openly challenging her. Something was definitely wrong. Then she saw the saliva dripping in long strings from its open mouth, foaming down over its chest. Micajah had described what a rabid animal looked and acted like. Frantically she glanced around her for a weapon but nothing larger than a twig was in sight.
Samuel had just finished reloading and priming the rifle when he heard Olivia’s scream. Reacting to the sheer terror in her cry, he seized the weapon and raced toward the creek. He saw her first, crouched on an open sandy stretch of the bank, staring with fixed intensity into the shadows a dozen feet away. The coyote growled again, more like a gurgling moan, as it stepped forward, stiff legged. Samuel’s blood froze.
“Don’t move a muscle,” he commanded. His voice was breathless and ragged as he slowly raised the rifle and aimed, praying. Only one chance. If he missed...it did not bear thinking on.
Samuel squeezed the trigger gently and a loud report echoed across the clearing. Smoke stung his eyes. He charged through the cloud as he quickly reversed his hold on the rifle, preparing to use the stock as a cudgel to bludgeon the dangerous beast if his shot had missed its mark. It had not. The coyote had been flung backward against a hollow log where it lay stone still as blood gushed from it
s chest.
Carefully he walked over to it, the rifle stock still raised. Then he lowered it and used it to prod the carcass, making certain it was dead. Once assured, he dropped the gun and rushed to where Olivia still knelt. Without a word he enfolded her in his arms and held onto her for dear life.
Olivia felt the solid, life-affirming warmth of his big hard body when he pulled her to him. Of their own volition her arms came up, wrapping around his neck as she pulled him closer, wanting nothing more than to melt into the cocooning safety of his embrace.
He repeated her name over and over, murmuring soft love words mixed with curses, almost indistinguishable as he buried his face in her long glorious hair. His hands traced the soft curve of her spine, then cupped her buttocks, lifting her tighter against him. “If you had been killed... If I had lost you...” He did not know if he spoke the words aloud or not, for he was drugged by the euphoria of her warmth, her life, the way she clung to him.
She could not make out the words, but her body understood the urgency of his as they caressed each other. When his hands left her hair and glided down to pull her against him, she tipped her head up and looked into his eyes. They were dark, stormy blue, burning with an intensity that lit an answering spark in her. She felt it leap between them as she raised her mouth and he lowered his. What happened next was once again inevitable.
His lips claimed hers with a slowly building desperation, tentative and gentle at first brush, as if waiting to sense her answering hunger. The instant her lips parted and he felt the soft heat of her mouth, the sweet tingle of her tongue tasting hesitantly of him, he was lost. He savaged her with his kiss, plunging his own tongue inside her mouth with a low possessive growl.
She was afire, enveloped in living flame, so near death, now never more alive. And life was Samuel. Her nails dug into the muscle of his shoulders, then her hands swept up to his shaggy mane of hair and her fingers tangled in it, pulling him nearer as the kiss grew in white-hot intensity.
They sank from their knees to the soft sandy earth, lost to everything around them, both murmuring indistinctly, speaking in the age-old language of lovers everywhere. She felt his hands on her breasts, cupping them from the sides, then gliding inside the soft tunic to touch the aching tips, hard and burning with need. Cool evening air brushed her upper body as he tugged the lacings of the tunic free but then his warmth replaced it as he lowered himself on top of her, pressing her to the ground.
Olivia longed to feel the abrasion of his crisply furred chest against her bare breasts. Her hands clawed at his partially laced shirt, easily stripping it away from his shoulders as he raised his head to look down at her beautiful lithe body, spread open before him, inviting him, waiting for him to take her. Her nails raked through the hair of his chest, then her hands slid around to his back, pulling him down to her once more.
Samuel kissed her throat, feeling the pulse beat wildly, then lowered his head to taste the sweet fruits of her delicate pink nipples. When she moaned and arched up with the sudden new surge of pleasure, he could wait no longer. One hand swept down the subtle curve of her hip and over her thigh to push up the barrier of the fringed skirt.
Before he could complete his task the sharp click of a rifle hammer being pulled back intruded, followed by Micajah Johnstone’s voice, low and almost congenial, saying, “I reckon yew kin save thet part till after th’ weddin’, Shelby. Now, jist git up real slow and straighten yer britches as best as possible.”
Olivia felt the icy cold dash of humiliation, exacerbated by the sudden removal of Samuel’s body heat as he rolled off her. Cool air touched her breasts—thighs. At once shamed and mortified she struggled to pull down her tunic and close the gaping front of the garment so her breasts were covered. Clutching the tunic front closed, she struggled to her knees before Micajah’s words finally registered. Wedding!
Samuel shrugged his shirt back over his shoulders but there was little he could do about the obvious bulge in his tight buckskins until nature took its course, which it did with sudden impact when Johnstone’s pronouncement struck him. Wedding!
Both young people mouthed the word in horrified unison, then glanced from Micajah back to each other, staring at the incriminating flushed dishabille of their situation. Samuel was the first to gather his thoughts enough to speak coherently, looking quickly away from Olivia back at Micajah.
“Look, Johnstone. Nothing happened. We were just overcome by the danger of the moment. She could’ve died horribly,” he said, gesturing to where the dead coyote lay. “But luckily for us, you came along to return us to our senses before things got out of hand. There’s no need for me to make an honest woman of her. Her virtue didn’t suffer at my hands.”
Olivia sat huddled in misery, unable to meet Micajah’s eyes, fumbling to relace her tunic so that she was decently covered while Samuel spoke. Her virtue didn’t suffer at my hands. But he believed it had suffered somewhere else before, no doubt about that! How could she have been so blindly stupid as to fall into his arms yet again? He would never love her, didn’t think she was good enough to be his wife. He desired her—and hated himself for the weakness.
But he could never feel half so disgraced or foolish as she did for sharing that weakness. Her excuse might be better, for she did love him, but that changed nothing.
“There won’t be any need for you to dishonor the vaunted Shelby name by bestowing it on me,” she said scathingly. Forcing her eyes to meet his, she held her chin high and stood up on rubbery legs. Olivia St. Etienne knelt before no man. “The blood of the French nobility flows in my veins and although you’ve made it abundantly clear how much you despise it, I take pride in my heritage. I would not wed with you if my life depended on it.”
“Hit ‘pears ta me thet neither one o’ yew younguns is payin’ much mind ta th’ plain facts,” Micajah said patiently, still holding his rifle leveled at Shelby’s chest. “Now yore life might not depend on marryin’ him, Sparky, but I kin promise thet his does depend on his marryin’ yew. I seen whut I seen and hit ain’t comin’ ‘round no other way.”
There was sufficient steel in his tone of voice to make both of them realize the gravity of the situation. Micajah Johnstone was formidable and he was pig stubborn and he was holding the only loaded rifle.
Samuel looked at him in blatant amazement. “Is this some sort of trap you’ve cooked up between you? Because if it is—”
“Why, certainly,” Olivia cut in sharply, “we planned and rehearsed the whole thing with that charming coyote. I even infected him with the rabies!”
Samuel made a sardonic sweep of her with eyebrows raised. “Now that I would believe.”
“I despise you. Whatever makes you think I’d plot to lure you into marriage? No, don’t answer—I already know. Your overweening male arrogance!”
She started to flounce away but Micajah’s voice stopped her. “I ain’t funnin’ with this, Sparky. Yew warn’t ‘xactly fightin’ Shelby here off. Yew both know what would’ve happened if’n I hadn’t come along.”
Her cheeks blazed crimson. She held Micajah Johnstone’s good opinion in higher esteem than anyone else’s on earth, and she had shamed him, the man who had taken her in, treated her like his own daughter, taught her everything she knew to restore her sense of self-worth. In return she had betrayed his trust in her.
Micajah could see his stern voice was having the desired effect on Sparky. As for the mule-headed soldier boy, well the rifle would work well enough for now. “Sparky, fetch me a rope from the smoke shed.”
“You’re not going to tie him up?” she choked, horrified at the picture of Colonel Samuel Shelby delivered before a priest bound hand and foot.
Johnstone shrugged his massive shoulders like the great bear for which the Osage had named him. “Don’t make me no never mind. I kin always cudgel him a good smack ta thet hard head o’ his’n. Either way, we’s all headin’ ta a old French mission a couply days north. They got them a priest there. Ole Father Louie’ll marr
y yew onc’t I tell him th’ way thangs are.”
* * * *
Early the following morning they set out for the small mission outpost on the Missouri. Olivia St. Etienne sat in the prow of the canoe, back ramrod stiff, eyes staring straight ahead like a French aristocrat on her way to the guillotine. The colonel lay in the bottom of the craft trussed hand and foot, body rigid, a silently furious “cargo.”
Johnstone chuckled to himself. He had accomplished what he set out to do without having to fire a shot or wait half as long as a patient man such as he had been prepared to do. When Samuel had rushed out to rescue Olivia from the coyote, Micajah had already seen the menace since he had been going out into the woods to observe the two of them, hoping to catch them in precisely the compromising position he had. His rifle had been sighted on the rabid animal ready to fire if Shelby’s shot had missed its mark.
No, sir, he hadn’t had to fire a shot. He was pleased as a possum inside a pig carcass.
Chapter Sixteen
Emory Wescott sat in his dining room, a Spode demitasse cup paused at his mouth, inhaling the delicate fragrance of the specially blended French coffee he had brought upriver from New Orleans—among other items. It was those other items, fifty barrels of rotgut whiskey and twenty cases of old Brown Bess muskets, that had caused him some loss of sleep the past nights. That accursed shipment was delayed. Again. It seemed every enterprise he undertook in recent months had turned sour.
Wescott had made a tidy profit as a smuggler during Jefferson’s embargo the past decade, and in so doing had cemented excellent contacts in the highest circles of British industry. But during Madison’s administration the international economy had gone into a slump. To further add to his woes, he had made a series of bad investments and only this dangerous dealing with Stuart Pardee on the frontier stood between him and the wolf that was beginning to sniff at his door. At least such was true until war broke out, which was bound to occur within the next six months if not sooner.