Trace stared at her, obviously shocked. “Is that what’s got you riled?” he asked. “I was in a prison hospital, Bridget. I nearly lost my leg.”
It was her turn to be stunned. “But you didn’t mention that, in the letter—”
“Damn it, Bridget,” Trace went on, “Mitch was my best friend, and losing him was probably the worst thing that ever happened to me. I was thinking about that, and besides, it was three months before I could bribe a Reb into posting that letter.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was lower, softer. “When are we going to let the past rest with Mitch and move on?”
Bridget swallowed; she was still reeling. “You were shot? Thrown into prison?”
“Yes,” he snapped. He was holding her firmly by the upper arms, and she knew he wanted to shake her. She also knew he wouldn’t. “And don’t pretend you don’t know I was in love with you. In case you’ve forgotten, I begged you not to marry Mitch.”
She closed her eyes, remembering that interlude in her grandmother’s fragrant garden. Absorbing the dual realization that she had indeed known how Trace felt, and that she’d denied it ever since. Moreover, she’d disavowed her own passions as well.
Trace went on, his words picking up steam as his temper rose. He was relentless. “And what’s more, you loved me in return. You married Mitch because you thought you could keep him from going to war that way. You thought you could save him, Bridget, and that’s a damn pitiful reason to marry anybody!”
Tears burned behind Bridget’s eye sockets. “Stop it.”
“I won’t stop it,” Trace said, holding her wrists now. “I loved you then, and I love you now, and I’m not about to let you cling to a dead man’s coattails until it’s too late. I’m through living out that lie, Bridget, and so are you!”
Shame filled her, for she could not refute what Trace had said. She had always cared for him. She always would. But she had sworn her loyalty to Mitch, she had borne his son, all the while loving another man. His best friend. It was that she had to make up for: the deception. Mitch had died believing she loved him.
Trace caught her face between his hands, leaned in, and kissed her, hard. She melted, opened her mouth to him, opened her soul. Too soon, he set her away from him with a swiftness that was at once unwilling and resolute. His breathing was quick and ragged, and Bridget, with one palm resting against his chest, could feel his heart pounding. “Enough,” he said. “Enough.” He might have been speaking to himself, as well as to her. When he met her eyes, she was chilled by the sorrow she saw in his face. “I love you, and I want you. Oh, God, how I want you. But when you come to my bed, Bridget, you have to come alone. You can’t bring Mitch with you.”
The implication stung fiercely. She drew back her hand, ready to slap Trace hard across the face, but in the end, she couldn’t make herself do it.
It was then, as they stood facing each other, their fractured dreams lying between them, that the raid began.
It started with a single, blood-chilling shriek, swelling out of the darkness like a gust of the devil’s breath. In the next moment, Indians came from every direction, mounted on their shaggy, hungry ponies, spears and rifles in hand. Trace shouted a warning to the people in the barn—not that one was necessary—grabbed Bridget by the arm, and hurled her under the nearest wagon.
“Stay there!” he ordered.
Noah. Skye. Bridget went out the other side and raced toward the barn.
She heard the horse, felt the thunder rising up out of the ground, reverberating through her lower limbs like an earthquake, and then a steel-hard arm encircled her waist, and she was dragged up onto the back of a horse. She tried to scream, but the sound lodged in her throat.
The Indian growled something at her in his own language, but Bridget understood, all the same. He was warning her to be silent, and when he pressed the blade of his knife to the side of her neck a second later, she knew he meant it.
Dazed, sick with horror, Bridget watched as the beautiful new barn went up in flames. Noah! She screamed inwardly. Skye!
Gunfire erupted all around them after that, and out of the corner of one eye, Bridget saw that the house was on fire as well. Trace, she pleaded silently, Trace.
Fear gnawed at Bridget’s insides, brought a sticky sweat out all over her body. Crimson reflections danced off the flesh of Indians and horses, and there was so much noise, yelling and shooting. So much fire.
Bridget squinted, her eyes burning in the thickening smoke of her burning hopes, searching in vain for even a glimpse of her son, her sister, and Trace. Oh, God, where was Trace? Had they killed him, these marauding savages—not Paiutes, Bridget could see, but rogues and outlaws of many different tribes.
The man who held her prisoner tightened his grip and shouted something to the others. Then he spurred the pony hard with his heels, and they were jolting away, into the night. Into the terrifying unknown.
Bridget was numb where her own fate was concerned; she could not think beyond the terror that she would never see her family again. Oh, God, she prayed, don’t let them be dead. I can’t bear to lose any of them.
It seemed to Bridget that they rode endlessly, on and on, and at a teeth-clattering speed. Uphill, down again, through dark, gloomy trees, smelling incongruously of Christmas. Finally, toward dawn, they reached a camp of sorts, a smoky place, ripe with the smells of untanned animal hides, horses, and human beings.
When Bridget was flung to the ground, she scrambled immediately to her feet, running among the horses, searching desperately for her sister or her son. The renegades laughed at her efforts, and one of them put his foot out to make hard contact with her shoulder and send her sprawling.
She got up immediately and hurtled toward the offender, furious as a scalded cat. Like everyone else, she’d wondered, from time to time, if she were capable of killing. Now, she knew the answer.
She scrabbled halfway up the raider’s leg, clawing her way toward his face.
He swore—she didn’t need to know his language to recognize a curse—and kicked her again, this time harder. She struck the ground, felt a stone or a horse’s hoof stab at her left temple, and lost consciousness.
“Mizz Qualtrough?” The voice was feminine, a cautious whisper. A moment passed before Bridget realized the other person was speaking English. “Mizz Qualtrough, are you all right?”
Bridget opened her eyes. Her headache pulsed through her entire body, in time with her runaway heartbeat, and she found that she was seated on the ground, tied at the wrists and ankles with painfully tight rawhide, the rough bark of a tree biting into her back. She wanted to throw up but somehow managed to control the impulse.
“Mizz Qualtrough?”
She peered at her fellow captive—Miss Florence Coffin, until then a member of the Primrose Creek faction who pretty much kept to themselves. Bridget had always considered them somewhat standoffish, but such things hardly mattered in their present circumstances.
Florence looked some the worse for wear, with her hair straggling and her dress torn, but her chin was up, and her eyes snapped with the determination to survive, no matter what.
“Miss Coffin,” Bridget finally acknowledged, straining her neck to look around. “Are there others?”
“I don’t think so,” the other woman said. “And given the situation, I think you ought to call me Flossie.”
Bridget smiled to herself, in spite of everything, because she had never once imagined this usually dour woman as a Flossie. Of course, she’d only seen her at a distance, and they’d never spoken. “My name is Bridget,” she said.
“I know,” replied Flossie with a sigh. “What do you suppose they mean to do with us?”
The possibilities didn’t bear thinking about, but Bridget thought of them all the same, and bile rushed into the back of her throat, burning like acid. Again, she wanted to vomit; again, she stifled the impulse. “Let’s concentrate on getting out of here,” she said when she could manage
to speak. “They probably mean to trade us for something. Horses, maybe, or food.”
Flossie looked skeptical. She’d heard the same terrifying stories of slavery, rape, scalping, and all-over tattooing as Bridget had, no doubt, but she kept her spine straight. You had to admire a person with that much gumption. “Let’s hope you’re right.”
“Did—did you see—was anyone killed?”
“I don’t know,” Flossie replied, and now her gaze was gentle. Why, Bridget wondered, had she ever imagined these townswomen, however distant, as anything other than ordinary human beings, trying to make their way in a difficult world? “Seems likely, with all that shooting, that somebody’s got to be dead.”
Bridget couldn’t answer, and for a while, she and Flossie just sat there in silence, wrestling with their own thoughts. The birds began to chirp a morning song, and as light spilled across the camp, they saw that there were no tepees or lodges, just a campfire, a closely guarded band of some two dozen grazing horses, and about half that many Indians, all in various states of drunkenness. If there were other captives, they were somewhere out of sight.
Hatred spilled through Bridget’s heart, cold and bracing. Her headache eased a little, and so did the nausea centered in her middle. If they’d harmed any of the people she loved, Skye and Noah and, yes, Trace, she’d see every one of these miscreants in hell, even if she had to lead them there by the hand, one by one.
As if discerning her thoughts, one of the men got up and staggered toward her, a foul grin creasing his filthy, painted face. Only then, in the light of day, did she see that the man was white, merely posing as an Indian. A quick glance around the camp confirmed that most of the others were, too.
Bridget was sure this particular scoundrel was the one who had kicked her to the ground, and she glared at him.
“Well, now, pretty lady,” he drawled, showing rotted teeth. “I reckon somebody will pay a good price for you. And you’ll only be a little the worse for wear.”
Bridget tried to kick at him, but her feet were still bound.
He laughed, pulled a knife, and held it close to Bridget’s face for a moment, no doubt expecting the gesture to subdue her into cowed silence. It didn’t work, for Bridget was past caution; she had nothing to lose at this point, and she meant to go for broke.
“Leave us alone,” Flossie said.
“Shut up,” said the man without so much as glancing toward her. Then he proceeded to cut Bridget’s bonds, freeing her feet first and then her hands. “I believe I’ll just take you out into the woods a little way,” he said. “Teach you how to behave like a lady.”
There was a sound, only a slight cracking, but it drew Bridget’s awareness like metal shavings rushing toward a magnet, and she caught the merest glint of fair hair, just out of the corner of one eye. She gave none of this away by her bearing, however, and, gathering as much spittle as her dry mouth would provide, spat into her tormenter’s face.
The man drew back his arm to strike her, and Bridget was getting ready to spit again, when suddenly the camp was filled with men and horses. The “Indians,” taken by surprise and still reeling from a night of revelry and thieving, fled in every direction, like chickens with a fox in their midst.
Bridget didn’t take time to assess the situation; she snatched up the knife her would-be assailant had dropped and hurried to cut Flossie loose and drag her out of the fray.
She saw the paint stallion in the center of the skirmish, with Trace on its bare, glistening back, wielding the butt of a rifle like some sort of medieval weapon. He was covered in soot, from the top of his head to the soles of his boots, and his shirt was soaked through with sweat. Their eyes met, and as the other men, Jake Vigil among them, along with the marshal and Tom Barkley and a number of posse members, rode down the rest of the outlaws, he reined the paint in her direction, bent down, and lifted her up in front of him.
He looked a sight, and she was absolutely certain she’d never seen a more beautiful one.
“Fancy meeting you here, Mrs. Qualtrough,” he said with a grin.
The grin told her that Skye and Noah were safe; she let her forehead rest against his shoulder for a long moment, then looked up into his eyes. “I’ve been a fool,” she said.
He touched his mouth to hers, but only lightly. After all, they were in the middle of a crowd. “And?” he prompted.
She flushed a little. “And I love you.”
“And?” he persisted.
“And—”
He waited. He wasn’t going to make it easy, that was plain.
Bridget swallowed, glanced around, and lowered her eyes briefly before meeting his gaze again, steadily. “And the sooner you finish that bedroom, the sooner we can start having babies.”
He kissed her again, this time on the bridge of the nose. “Oh, I don’t think we need to wait quite that long,” he responded, in a gruff tone meant for her ears alone.
“Skye and Noah—?”
“Skye and Noah are fine, and you know it,” he said. “Unlike you, they stayed put and hid, just like I told them to.”
“The house and barn?”
He sighed. “Gone. But we’ll start over. There’s still time enough to get some sort of shelter built before winter.”
“Where will we stay in the meantime?” She hooked a finger idly between two of the buttons on his shirt.
“I reckon we’ll have to sleep in that old lodge for a while, anyhow. The marshal sent them back to town for the night. His wife will see to them.”
Bridget nodded, looked deep into her husband’s eyes. “I’ve always loved you,” she said.
He smiled. “I know.” His arms tightened around her, and she settled close against him, a strong woman content to be held and soothed and protected. For a while, anyway.
“Trace?” She did not look up at him this time, for she felt suddenly shy.
“Yes?” His voice was low, and it echoed through her like a caress.
She kissed the hollow beneath his left ear. “Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
Bridget McQuarry Qualtrough would certainly not have been the first bride to lie with her husband, beneath a blue canopy of sky and a fragrant arch of pine branches, but she might well have been the happiest. They made their bed in the tall grass, near the creek, where Trace had set up his lean-to when he first arrived, and their privacy was complete, Skye and Noah having gone to town to spend a day and a night with the marshal and his wife.
He kissed her, gently, almost reverently, and smoothed her hair back from her face with a light pass of his hand. “Bridget,” he said, as though tasting her name, marveling over it, and then he grinned. He took her breath away, even covered in sweat and soot as he was. “I’m about to make love to you,” he announced. “Unless you have an objection, of course.”
Bridget’s face heated, but she shook her head. She might have been a virgin, she had so little experience. “I’m not sure just how—”
He laid an index finger to her lips. “Everything will be perfect,” he said, and the promise sent waves of desire rolling through her, heating her blood, making her body restless. “Let me prove it.”
She swallowed, then nodded.
He was fiddling with the buttons at the front of her dress, which was no cleaner than his clothes were.
She trembled. “What—?”
Trace smiled, smoothed one side of her bodice away, revealing the thin camisole beneath. Her breast strained against the fabric, reaching for him, and he smiled at that, bent his head, and touched the nipple with his tongue, leaving a wet spot on the linen.
Bridget groaned and arched her back.
“Oh, yes,” Trace whispered. “Yes.” Then he uncovered her breasts entirely, worked the soiled dress skillfully down over her hips. He fell to her hungrily, and she cried out in welcome, both hands cupped behind his head, pressing him close.
Trace took his time, attending to each breast in its turn, extracting whimpers and pleas from an increas
ingly frenzied Bridget. All the while, he was undoing the ribbons that held her now-crumpled camisole closed, and when he slid one hand down the front of her drawers to caress her private place, she nearly went mad with the want of him.
“Please, Trace,” she whispered.
He kissed his way down her breastbone and made a circle around her navel with the tip of his tongue. His low groan echoed in her very bones, but he did not increase his pace. Instead, he pushed his palm through the damp nest of curls at the juncture of her thighs and began a slow, light rubbing motion.
Bridget strained against his hand, gasped when she felt his fingers slide inside her. And still it continued; he returned to her mouth, kissed her deeply, demandingly. She thought her heart would burst, it was racing so fast, and a pressure was building under Trace’s palm that threatened an incomprehensibly sweet mayhem.
She had never known, never guessed. . . .
“Oh,” she cried as fresh, delicious shock rocketed through her veins. “Please—”
He continued to kiss her, continued to ply her toward absolute madness. And then the sky split apart, and the earth trembled, and Bridget clung to Trace with both arms and sobbed while her body convulsed in ecstasy.
He brought her down slowly, as slowly as he had raised her to heaven, and when she lay still at last, dazed and breathing hard, he kissed and nibbled and teased her back to the same heated state of delicious madness she’d been in before. This time when she begged, however, he parted her legs and mounted her, and just when she thought she might claw his bare back to ribbons in her desperation, he entered her. The thrust was powerful but exquisitely controlled, as were the ones to follow, and Bridget rode back up through the clouds, careened past stars and planets, and returned to herself only when a long, timeless interval had passed.
“I love you,” she said, curled against his chest, when the faculty of speech came back. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
He rolled onto his side, and she lay on her back in the fragrant grass, naked and free. He took a blade of that grass and teased her nipple with it, grinning. “I believe that can be arranged, Mrs. Qualtrough. And just in case I haven’t said it yet, I love you, too. I think I always have.”
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