by Shirl Henke
“Well, it sure as hell won’t be consummated!” she snapped before the implication of his remark sunk in. When it did, her hands curved into claws as she took a step toward him, itching to slap the insulting look of cynical disgust from his face.
“I wouldn’t try it,” he purred softly.
Suddenly an overwhelming rush of tears threatened to engulf her. Olivia turned away quickly lest he see the incriminating evidence of her stupidity. How could I have fallen in love with such a black-hearted, mule-headed, cold-blooded... “Leave me alone,” she said hoarsely, praying her composure did not crack.
As soon as he uttered the cruel insinuation, Samuel regretted it. Their situation was unpleasant enough without making a mortal enemy of her. They would have to learn to deal civilly together, at least until they got back to St. Louis. Making her killingly angry and ready to fly at him was stupid for a man who had always prided himself on his coolness in adverse situations. Why was it that he had lost his temper more times in the scant year he’d know Olivia St. Etienne than he had in all the rest of his life?
“Look, we’ve been through a lot the past few days,” he said placatingly. “Get yourself ready for sleep—you take the bed. I’ll take the settee. While you’re doing that I’ll go over to Father Louie’s kitchen and bring back that wedding supper his cook has supposedly prepared for us.”
“Fine,” she replied, looking dubiously at the rickety little settee by the front window, which surely could not accommodate a man of Samuel’s size. When she heard the door close, she turned around, almost as if she were hungry to capture his lingering scent on the chill evening air. “I really am a fool.”
She walked over to where her possibles sack lay on the table and opened the heavy leather pouch, rummaging until she found the simple cotton night rail she had sewn from a bolt of cloth Micajah had taken in trade. The fabric was yellowed with age but soft and comfortable. She held up the long-sleeved, high-necked sleepwear and wrinkled her nose. Hardly the sort of gown she had imagined wearing on her wedding night, but then this was hardly the sort of wedding night any woman envisioned.
Going through with the ceremony had been a mistake. She could see that now. She should have refused flatly, would have if she had ever imagined the way Samuel would react once they were alone. “It’s all over and done with now,” she murmured, slipping off her buckskin tunic and moccasins, then reaching for the gown. She had just slipped it over her head when a light rapping sounded on the door. Surely not Samuel back so soon.
Olivia opened the heavy door, only to be knocked backward into the room and seized by a tall rawboned man in greasy buckskins. He kicked the door closed with his foot while holding onto her with both hands.
“Make one little peep, my dear, and it will be your last,” he said as his eyes quickly scanned the room. “I can snap that pretty neck before you get out a scream.”
“Stuart Pardee! What on earth do you think you’re doing?” she gasped, but she knew he had ogled her from a distance on numerous occasions and she suspected that he was involved in some mysterious business dealings with Emory Wescott. Every instinct told her that her guardian had sent him to recapture her!
“Looks like you’re getting ready for your wedding night with Shelby,” he said, ignoring her question. “Too bad I have to interrupt the festivities.” His eyes swept over her body, swathed in the voluminous white cotton. One big bony hand held her slender throat lightly but menacingly while the other glided across the curve of her hip and over her belly, then moved upward to fondle a breast.
Olivia bit her lip, trying not to flinch. If she could only stall him for a few minutes, Samuel might return. “There won’t be a wedding night, Pardee,” she said quietly.
His free hand stopped. “That so.”
She could smell the feral lust oozing from him. He reeked of whiskey and old greasy buckskins that he must have slept in for weeks. “Samuel and I had a fight. I was just...retiring for the night,” she added suggestively, glimpsing the long shiny knife on his belt. If he released her neck for a fraction of a second, she could slide it free and slash him. Micajah had taught her the rudiments of self-defense.
“Well now...” he said in a low growl, “most peculiar that you never would look at me before when I saw you with Wescott.” His free hand reached up and pulled the tie at her neck open, then slid the gown down, baring one creamy shoulder.
Olivia leaned into him, letting her breasts bunch against his chest. She could feel his body go rigid and his breathing quicken. Now!
Just as she slipped her hand upward toward the knife, the door opened. Samuel stood frozen in the sash, incredulously taking in his half-naked wife in an embrace with the ruffian from the racetrack. “First you try to break her neck, now you’re sampling her feminine charms. We seem to have something in common, my friend,” he said with false geniality as he stepped inside the door, still holding their covered tray of food.
“Samuel, this is Stuart Pardee. He works for Emory Wescott.”
“Pardee,” Shelby purred, at once remembering the name Man Whipper had used. A slow, chilling smile moved across his face. “So at last I’m privileged to meet the Englishman, although I’d expected it to be under slightly different circumstances. Get your hands off my wife.’
“And if I do not?” Pardee said with a taunt in his voice, still holding Olivia’s neck in his big hand.
“I’ll beat you to death with my bare hands for touching her,” he replied in a conversational tone belied by the icy look in his eyes.
“You’re amazingly difficult to kill. Man Whipper was one of my most trusted allies among the Osage. A pity about him,” Pardee said with negligent regret. “Bad Temper reported that you survived the gauntlet and then killed his companion and eluded the war party. Quite a resourceful feat. I expect you would prove a worthy adversary.” His grip on Olivia’s neck tightened fractionally. “I am inclined to linger and test your mettle, but I really must be on my way. So sorry to disrupt your wedding night but...” He slid the pistol from his belt and raised it intending to fire point-blank at Samuel. Olivia used that instant of inattention to break free of his choke hold and smash her fist into his gun arm, deflecting the shot, which discharged into the roof.
As soon as she moved, so did Samuel. He flung the tray he was holding into Pardee’s face, then lunged for him as Olivia jumped out of the way. The gun was knocked to the floor, spent.
The two men went down on the floor rolling and punching. “Samuel, he has a knife!” she shrieked as Pardee slid it from its sheath and scrambled to his feet, grinning evilly. Shelby rose too, keeping just out of reach of the blade as he circled Pardee. Olivia frantically looked around the room, searching for another weapon. Inside her possibles sack she had a primed pistol, but that was in the opposite corner. Plastering herself to the wall she started edging slowly around.
Before she got more than a few feet, Pardee lunged, slicing Samuel’s forearm lightly as Shelby deflected the blade. Seizing Pardee’s knife arm with both hands, Shelby twisted it upward while at the same time he used his right leg to sweep behind the Englishman’s left knee. Again they went down onto the floor but this time Samuel came up on top.
Pardee had lost his blade when he had been slammed to the ground. The knife slid across the floor, stopping near Olivia’s feet. She reached out and scooped it up but saw no way to use it without risking Samuel. The two men were on their feet again, circling each other in fast arching movements, punching and retreating, knocking aside the chairs, overturning the table. They moved with blurring erratic speed, each searching for an advantage.
“You are good, Colonel, but a bloody damned inconvenience. And I am a man who dislikes being inconvenienced,” Pardee said as one long arm snaked out, punching with lightning rapidity.
Olivia winced at the sickening sound of bone smashing into bone. Samuel staggered back but stayed on his feet, lunging in low and landing several hard body punches that drove the air from his foe’s lungs in lo
ud wheezing grunts. It was apparent that this was a no-holds-barred contest. Both men were utterly ruthless, using every advantage they could find. If only someone heard that shot and came to investigate! She held the knife ready, waiting for a clean chance to use it on Pardee.
They went down onto the floor again, rolling around in the muck created by the spilled coffee from the tray Samuel had thrown. Pardee seized hold of a piece of shattered crockery and tried to use the jagged edge like a knife, drawing a bloody furrow across Shelby’s chest, missing his throat by scant inches when Samuel jerked away, but by this time the American was on top. He slammed his knee into the Englishman’s groin, then smashed his fist into his foe’s face over and over until the jagged piece of crockery fell limply from Pardee’ s hand.
Stuart Pardee was unconscious but Samuel continued battering him. “I told you I’d beat you to death with my bare hands,” he grated out between blows.
“Samuel, stop—you’re killing him,” Olivia screamed, attempting to pull him off Pardee’s inert body.
“You must admit.. the idea...has merit,” Samuel panted out, but he stopped, slumping over the unconscious Englishman, laboring for breath.
Just then the sound of footfalls echoed outside and one of the voyageurs came through the door. “I think I hear a shot, but maybe not. Then I hear a white woman scream and know something is wrong.”
As he climbed off Pardee, Samuel looked up at the wiry trapper. “Does this post have someplace that can serve as a jail?”
The man shrugged. “Oui. Father Louie has no need of such, but now and then the voyageurs, they get drunk and fight. Monsieur Califon’s agents, they put such bad ones in the smokehouse. Come, I will show you.”
By this time several more white men had arrived, along with a smattering of local Indians who traded at the post. The sound of Micajah’s voice drew nearer as the big man thrust everyone else aside to enter the room. “Sparky, yew all right, gal?” His eyes fastened on her pale face and the bruise forming on her throat, then he enveloped her in a hug. “Me ‘n th’ padre went outside th’ post fer a walk by th’ river. Thought we heerd a shot but figgered it wuz some drunk trapper—till yew screamed.”
“I’m not hurt,” she said, then quickly explained what had occurred with Pardee.
“Good thang yore husband got him ‘stead o’ me. I’d o’ scalped th’ bastard with a flint hide scraper fer whut he done ta yew,” he said grimly, turning to Samuel. “Whut yew figger on doin’ with his lordship, here?”
“Lock him up in the smokehouse until morning. Then take him downriver to St. Louis. The army will have some very pointed questions to ask him about his dealings with the Indians in this area.”
“Reckon I kin take keer o’ thet. Yew look like yew cud use some tendin’,” Micajah said, observing Samuel’s bloody and battered condition. With that he knelt down and hauled up Pardee’ s long-limbed body as if it weighed no more than a feather comforter. Slinging the Englishman across his shoulder, he strode from the room after giving Olivia a reassuring wink. “See yew both in the mornin’!”
As Johnstone ushered the rest of the gawkers from the wrecked cabin and closed the door, his voice carried on the night air. “Leave them young’uns be. They’s jist been hitched.”
Father Louie’s voice added, “Oui, this is their wedding night.”
One of the voyageurs said as their voices faded, “Then it is good that the bed was not broken!”
Samuel and Olivia stood in the center of the room, facing each other. Their features were cast in shadows, since the only light remaining was that of the flickering fire, that had burned low. Neither could read the other’s thoughts and both spoke at once.
“I’ll get some water to wash those cuts—”
“Let me stoke up the fire before it dies—”
Nodding, Olivia walked over to the dry sink in the far corner of the room where a basin and pitcher of water stood. She poured the fresh water into the basin while he added logs to the fire until it crackled brightly again. Then he sat down on the hearth and leaned back against the stone wall surrounding the fireplace, sighing wearily. She searched for linen with which to cleanse his injuries, finding a small stash of folded towels beneath the dry sink.
This is their wedding night.
Such a wedding night, Olivia thought dejectedly. She looked at Samuel sitting on the hearth. His profile was outlined by the firelight, boldly handsome, yet angry, forbidding. He was a stranger to her and always would be even though they were legally bound together. She could never again return to the simple life at Micajah’s cabin. Once again Samuel Shelby had robbed her of her place, disrupted her life. She should hate him...but she could not.
Nervously she approached, setting the basin and linens on the hearth. “Let me wash those cuts,” she said softly, reaching out with a wet cloth in her hand.
“Cover yourself,” he snapped as his eyes caught sight of the creamy swell of her breast when her night rail gaped open.
She gasped and clutched the torn drawstring, dropping the cloth back into the bowl and fumbling to cover herself. “Pardee ripped it when he...” She shuddered in revulsion.
“You didn’t seem to be repelled by his touch when I interrupted you,” he said, his eyes studying her intently.
“I wanted his knife and there was only one way to get close enough to grab it. Merde, you cannot think I have a tendresse for that loathsome man who nearly caused Gypsy Lady to break a leg! I saved your wretched life when I hit his gun hand. He would’ve killed you. I should’ve let him,” she added, willing her anger to burn away the pain.
“I have reason to suspect you if Pardee works for Wescott.”
“I told you he did and I have sufficient reason to hate Emory Wescott for what he tried to do to me.” She finished tying the gown the best she could and picked up the washcloth again. As she reached out and took his hand, pulling the cut arm closer so she could wash it, she glanced up and his dark blue gaze held hers. Trying to ignore the warm tension that sprung between them whenever they touched, she asked, “Do you ever trust anyone, Samuel?”
He sighed, staring at her small pale face, shadowed by the firelight, then said softly, “Very seldom. I’ve found it safest in my line of work.”
“You’re not just a soldier, are you?”
Damn, he hated her astuteness! “Samuel Sheridan Shelby, Colonel, Army of the United States, nothing more,” he replied with a lazy mocking drawl. “If anyone is not what she appears to be, it’s you, a French aristocrat playing at being a frontier woman,” he said, knowing that would goad her to anger and shift the conversation away from his work.
“Playing! Do you think the life I’ve carved out with Micajah was just some sort of game to me? I’ve learned to cook and cure hides. I’m a darned good shot and I can track a deer through the woods for hours, if need be, until I bring it down,” she said with pride.
“For the warm months, it was a good diversion, but I suspect you might begin to miss civilization during the long cold winter in that cabin.”
“How shallow you must think me,” she murmured more to herself than to him as she concentrated on her task. Finishing with the arm that had been cut, she took his right hand in hers and examined the bruised, swollen knuckles.
He winced slightly when she pressed a fresh cold cloth onto them.
She continued the pressure, saying, “You nearly carried out your threat to beat him to death bare-handed. Was it because of me?” What had made her ask that! She held her breath, drawn against her will to look up and meet his eyes.
Chapter Seventeen
Time hung suspended as they sat in the firelight amid the wreckage of the cabin. She held his larger hand in both of hers, the washcloth now forgotten.
“What is it about you?” he murmured low, more to himself than to her, almost unaware he had spoken the words aloud. He looked into her fathomless green eyes, reliving the shock and horror of seeing her in Pardee’s arms, her body half-naked, leaning into
the renegade as if ready to surrender herself to him. Did he believe her story about reaching for the Englishman’s knife? Hell, he did not know. And right now he did not care.
Olivia watched him, trying to gauge his mood. Was he still angry with her, still jealous, mistrustful? She was uncertain of how to react to his apparent confusion. She said the first thing that came into her mind. “Our supper is all over the floor. Are you still hungry? I am sure the cook—”
“No, I want no food. My hunger is of another sort.” His eyes continued to study her face while he felt the pulse in her wrists accelerate at his remark.
Was this his answer to her earlier foolish question? Best that he did not answer it at all; yet some perverse, self-punishing instinct drove her to press. “We have very little to base a relationship on...” she said, faltering over the words.
“We have this,” he replied raggedly, taking her chin in one hand, tilting it up as his lips descended, slowly, inexorably.
His mouth brushed hers with surprising gentleness, almost as if he waited for her to protest, withdraw. She did neither. Instead her body leaned forward, returning the soft kiss as her fingers tightened their grip on his hand, the soft pads massaging his bruised knuckles and scraped skin. He had been frighteningly angry when he found her in Pardee’s arms, but he had also been possessive.
Get your hands off my wife.
She was his wife in name. It would take so little right now to make her his wife in fact. He would learn the truth. All his ugly suspicions about her virtue would have to end. Once she had vowed never to let him know that truth, but that was not when he was so near, drowning her with his male vitality, drinking her in as if she were the last drop of water and he a man lost in the desert. I am the one who is lost.
Samuel felt her melting into his arms. He was all too willing to draw her against his body and hold her next to his heart as it slammed in his chest. He was trembling with need for her in a way he had not ever needed a woman before, not even when he had been a green and randy schoolboy. “Oh, hell, it isn’t as if we’ll ever get an annulment anyway,” he muttered against her lips as he kissed her again, this time with greater intensity, letting himself submerge in the hypnotic allure of her lithe, lovely young body.