Beloved Outcast (14 page)

While Logan checked the oxen, she placed the biscuits on a plate to cool. The trout were almost fried to a succulent crispiness when an ominous buzzing caught her attention.

She glanced from the pan of sizzling fish and encountered the biggest, furriest bee she’d ever seen. It was the size of a hummingbird and boasted yellow stripes as wide as her pinkie.

“It’s only a bee, Victoria. Ignore it.”

At the sound of Logan’s voice, her gaze momentarily left the hovenng insect, which was flying back and forth over the skillet. She hadn’t realized he’d returned to the clearing until he spoke. She found she didn’t like his habit of sneaking up on her. It made for a disquieting lack of predictability.

“That’s easy for you to say, but bees and I don’t get along.”

“You’ve been stung before?”

“Once, when I was a little girl.” She returned her gaze to the hovering bee. “It was Easter Sunday. Annalee and I were in the flower garden, picking blooms to match our new dresses.”

“Annalee is.”

“My younger sister. We weren’t supposed to be in the garden. I don’t remember which of us instigated the act of misbehavior. It was probably Annalee. I was always very well behaved.”

“Of course,” Logan said dryly.

She took exception to the note of skepticism she detected in his voice. It seemed remarkably arrogant of him to harbor any doubts about her conduct, when his own was so appallingly unsuitable.

“What happened?” he asked.

Victoria’s attention was still focused on the restless drone of the menacing bee as it now stalked the plate of biscuits.

“I got stung, but not before I tried to outrun it. My escape attempt landed me in a sharp-thorned rosebush that our gardener had watered only that morning. You have to remember I was very young, Logan,” she explained, lest he think her a total nitwit. “My father overheard my wails and came out to investigate the ruckus.”

“It was a good thing he was close by.”

“Not really,” Victoria said, vividly remembering the painful childhood memory. “I’d ruined my dress—it was torn and muddy, you see. Father was furious. The carriage was ready, and it was time for us to attend church. My mishap was going to cause everyone to be late. And, of course, being late for Easter services simply couldn’t be tolerated.”

“What happened?”

“The family went without me. It was the only thing they could do.”

“What about your sting?”

“The pain was hardly noticeable the next morning.”

“And that’s why you’re afraid of bees?”

“I’m not actually afraid of them. I just respect them,” she muttered. “There was another incident with one where I definitely came out the loser. Look, I say we let the bee have the biscuits. You and I can eat the fish for breakfast.”

“I’m not sharing my food with any damned bee, Victoria.”

“It won’t actually eat them,” she pointed out, gingerly reaching for the cooking fork, lest she draw the creature’s notice. She removed a trout from the frying pan and put it on another plate. She kept careful track of their unwelcome guest.

Logan strode forward. “All we have to do it shoo it away.”

“Don’t!” she squealed, jumping back from the impending confrontation between the intrusive insect and Logan. “Some bees simply won’t be shooed.”

Her protest failed to deflect Logan from his course. She watched him swat at the circling intruder with his bare hand.
She didn’t think she’d ever witnessed such a display of raw courage—or foolhardiness. The fuzzy creature’s stinger was the size of a paring knife, or so it seemed.

“Be careful, Logan,” she warned, stepping back.

The bee returned three times to the plate of biscuits before finally departing. During the contest of opposing wills, Victoria forced herself to remove the other two trout from the skillet. For, even though her heart was in her throat, she refused to let Logan’s catch burn while he fought so bravely to protect them from the obviously savage bee.

Of course, she was reminded of Horace Threadgill and the debacle in her bedchamber that had precipitated her accepting Martin Pritchert’s offer of employment and coming west. She couldn’t help contrasting Horace’s cowardly reaction with Logan’s stalwart defense.

But then, to be fair, the bee didn’t fly up Logan’s pant leg. Still, she imagined that if it did, and she tried to assist him, he wouldn’t stand feebly by, screaming for help, while she did all the work. And it would be obvious to anyone who happened to walk in on such an episode that she had not divested Logan of his britches against his will.

Clearly, the man was capable of getting out of his trousers.

V
ictoria walked alongside the wagon as it wound around another curve in the trail. For almost two weeks, she and Logan had made their way through the seemingly limitless forest that had become their world. They advanced five to seven miles each day, depending upon whether they were going uphill or downhill.

Living with Logan had become a way of life, she thought as she stepped around a white-blossomed thistle blocking her path. Every sunrise she awoke upon their pallet under the wagon, locked within his protective embrace. Outwardly, they ignored the intimacy, never speaking of it. There were many things of which they never spoke. It was safer that way, Victoria acknowledged to herself, and she was sure Logan had reached the same conclusion.

They were. careful with each other, discussing only the immediate circumstances of their forced togetherness. Conversation was limited to where they would camp, what they would eat and how much ground they expected to cover that day.

Where words could not, Victoria had learned, silence wove its own dangerous spell of intimacy. Her thoughts went their own merry way where Logan was concerned. They dwelled upon his remarkable capacity to provide for them in the wilderness, upon his hard, masculine body, and upon
the occasional burning hunger she saw reflected in his brooding gaze.

Since the episode with the bee, they had not participated in one spontaneous burst of dialogue. The guarded, polite exchanges spun out between them until Victoria wished their seemingly endless journey was completed. Then she would realize that their arrival in Trinity Falls would end forever her contact with the man guiding the oxen over the next rise, and quiet despair would fill her heart.

No more Logan Youngblood. No more snuggling against his strong, virile body during the cool Idaho nights. No more watching his beard grow each day. No more waiting for the moment when he might take her into his arms again and cover her mouth with his. No more possibility of experiencing that fierce, close heat he stoked within her.

According to Logan’s clipped remarks when they broke camp that morning, they’d already spent their last night on the trail, which meant she had spent her last night in his embrace. He’d informed her that sometime late this afternoon they would leave the mountains and descend into the valley. By nightfall, they would reach their destination. She struggled to suppress any useless pangs of regret, but it wasn’t easy to dispel the feeling that she’d missed an opportunity to truly know Logan, an opportunity that would not come her way again.

There was so much about him that she didn’t understand. Why did he lead a life on the wrong side of the law? What had his childhood been like? The thought of him not having loving parents made her heart twist. Her own father might be overly stern. But deep in her soul she believed he loved her and always acted in what he regarded as her best interests. Likewise, her mother might be preoccupied with her circle of friends and a hectic social schedule, but Victoria was certain the sometimes distracted woman loved her. Was there no one who had cherished and watched over Logan as a boy?

The wagon halted. The sun was high overhead. Breakfast that morning had consisted of a few wild berries and a rabbit Logan had snared. Victoria’s stomach rolled. She knew it was foolish, but it had been difficult for her to choke down more than a couple of bites of the roasted meat.

During their wilderness odyssey, Logan had provided other game—squirrel, raccoon, and even a young elk. Since she was used to eating chicken, beef and pork, he’d pointed out, her squeamishness about eating the meat from the animals he successfully hunted was illogical. In theory, Victoria agreed with him. But in practice, she found it difficult to wolf down a creature that had been scampering through the woods minutes before it appeared in her cooking skillet.

She watched Logan jump from the wagon. He now moved with an easy male gait that seemed natural to him and indicated that his ribs no longer pained him. Nor did his face boast any signs of the beating he’d suffered at the fort. It was still impossible, though, to clearly discern the specific angles of his sharply defined features, because a thick black beard covered his jaw.

What with his prominent dark eyebrows and his blade of a nose, he definitely looked the part of a villain. A pirate, she thought. If he’d lived in an earlier century, he probably would have become a buccaneer, sailing the seven seas in search of adventure and treasures of gold. All he required was a loop earring and an eyepatch to complete the image.

“Are you hungry, Victoria?”

His question returned her thoughts to the present.

“What did you have in mind?” she asked uneasily, wondering what adorable woodland creature he meant to slay.

“I could spear us some more fish,” he said, his dark eyes studying her closely. “You seem to like trout.”

She had liked trout once upon a time, before Logan had provided it at every meal. It was after she innocently remarked that she was sick of fish that he’d begun decimating the forest population of small, cuddly animals.
Considering her choices, trout didn’t sound so bad at the moment.

“Fish would be fine.”

He nodded in satisfaction. “Good. There’s something I want to show you before we leave here.”

She couldn’t imagine what, unless he’d hidden the loot from one of his robberies in the vicinity. Was that why he knew this part of the forest so well—because he’d used it to hide himself and his booty from the law?

Since this had all the appearances of being a brief stop, Victoria stole a moment of privacy to take care of her need to relieve herself. She’d discovered along the trail that it was easier for a man to accommodate such bodily functions than for a woman. A major complication, she reflected, lay in her bulky skirts and petticoats.

When Victoria completed her mission, she took her customary stroll around their temporary resting place. She’d almost reached her starting point when she found what she’d been searching for. Four books from the wagon. She picked up the neatly stacked volumes. Brushing away the dust, she noted that they were
Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, Tess
and
A Tale of Two Cities.

Since she’d already recovered these particular books on previous occasions, she suspected this was a silent game she and Logan played. Unless, of course, he couldn’t read and had no idea that he kept discarding the same few books over and over again.

Frowning, Victoria glanced around and, seeing no sign of him, made her way to the wagon to tuck the volumes inside. She hadn’t considered before the possibility that Logan didn’t know how to read. It wasn’t that she doubted his ability to learn if properly instructed. No, she reflected, if he hadn’t mastered the accomplishment, it was because he’d never been taught.

She’d given up trying to fight the compassion and sympathy Logan stirred so effortlessly within her. If a woman wasn’t careful, Victoria could see quite clearly how she could
lose her heart to Logan Youngblood. He was at times bold, clever, rakish and. and quite splendidly reckless. And yet there was a solidness to him that invited fantasies of bearing his children and growing old with him. It was as if he were larger than life, Victoria mused. In fact, now that she thought about it, he
was
very much like a hero from one of her books.

But, above all things, Logan was also a thief. A woman would be a fool to surrender her heart to a man whose uncertain future might involve a prison sentence or harsh justice dispensed at the end of a rope. She knew they did that in the West—hanged men. And among the other commodities Logan had admitted to stealing he’d listed horses and cattle. Stealing either was a capital offense.

Yes, it would be lunacy for a prudent woman to waste her heart on such a man, no matter how accomplished a woodsman, or how passionate a lover, or how magnificently physically proportioned. Victoria feared she’d become that lunatic, for she couldn’t seem to help her growing feelings of attachment to Logan. She found herself thinking about him all the time, even now, as she began gathering pieces of wood to make a fire to cook the fish.

Face it, Victoria. You’ve grown to care for him beyond anything that’s sane. The man
is
trouble with a capital
T.

She nudged a branch with the toe of her shoe. She very much feared that, despite her determination not to, she’d already lost her heart to…trouble.

“I wondered when I would see you again, my friend.”

At the distinctive tone of Night Wolf’s deep voice, Logan looked up from the stick he was sharpening.

The Shoshone stood less than three feet away. As usual, Logan was impressed with the man’s ability to move silently. Bare-chested, wearing buckskin leggings and moccasins, the Indian was well suited to his environment.

“Since I’ve been wandering around your territory for almost two weeks, I’d guess you had more important things on your mind than catching up with me.”

The corners of Night Wolf’s mouth twitched. “I would not say you have been ‘wandering,’ Logan Youngblood. You have charted as direct a path as possible through this land. Not once have you deviated from your course, though it would have not added many days to your journey to visit our village.”

Logan stared into the Indian’s bold features. It wasn’t his custom to notice another man’s handsomeness, but Night Wolf cut such a striking figure, it was impossible to ignore the chief’s compelling visage. Logan hated to stoop to Colonel Windham’s pathetic level of jealousy, but the truth was, Logan had not particularly wanted Victoria to meet the Shoshone chief. She already had a hopelessly romantic view of life among the primitives. She would probably take one look at Night Wolf and…and be hopelessly ensnared by the man’s exotic appearance.

Logan figured he’d learned his lesson about such matters with his fickle fiancee, Robeena Stockard. It would have been better had the woman never met his brother, Burke. Evidently, to the female of the species, vows of love and devotion meant little when measured against an unexpected attraction for another man.

Logan had always believed it was Burke who had seduced Robeena. Enough time had passed, however, for Logan’s thoughts to clear, and he was no longer so certain about his conclusion.

Logan acknowledged that he and Victoria were
not
engaged. Still, he would be damned if he dangled her under Night Wolf’s nose. His sense of possessiveness might not be logical, but he’d given up fighting the need to protect Victoria the second day he’d known her. He had come close to telling her more than once that he was her employer and that Madison was his ward. Only the conviction that such an effort would be wasted had checked the impulse. A man had
his pride, and Logan’s had been savaged enough by the exasperatingly naive Bostonian woman.

One thing was certain—when they reached Trinity Falls, he was going to demand his pound of flesh. Afterward, he would be magnanimous and accept her apology for thinking the worst of him. The glow of that imagined scene warmed him as much as the thought of seeing her on a daily basis once she assumed Maddy’s instruction.

As much as he might want to deny it, he was reconsidering his vow never to marry.

“What thoughts do you think, Logan, to make your expression so grave?”

At Night Wolf’s question, Logan started. He glanced self-consciously at the Indian. “I guess my mind wandered.”

“Usually it is old men, women and children who let their thoughts drift like smoke from a poorly lit fire.”

Logan chuckled. “That’s what I like about you, friend. You have such a colorful way of talking.”

“A young brave in love,” Night Wolf continued, “also allows his thoughts to float in no particular direction.”

“Like a poorly paddled canoe caught in a whirlpool?” Logan asked, unoffended by the Indian’s attempt to bait him.

Night Wolf broke into a full-fledged grin. “You are learning the People’s way of speaking, Logan.”

“It’s probably the time I’ve been spending with a certain redhead that has me expressing myself so poetically.”

“Your woman is poetic?”

“She’s a dreamer,” Logan explained.

“Ah, she is a seer, then.” Night Wolf nodded sagely. “She has the power to know of what is to come.”

“Not exactly.” Logan thought about how wrong Victoria was about him. If she was a seer, she was a poor one. “It’s more that she has her head in the clouds. She’s got her wagon packed with books and her mind stuffed with all kinds of nonsense.”

“She is not an ordinary woman,” Night Wolf remarked. “She has the protection of powerful spirits watching over her.”

Victoria wasn’t ordinary, but Logan wasn’t convinced she had the protection of the Indian gods to whom Night Wolf referred.

Logan had no intention of ridiculing Shoshone beliefs. “She’s lucky she’s alive.”

“Fort Brockton no longer stands,” Night Wolf announced starkly.

Logan wasn’t surprised by the news. Still, a shiver teased the back of his neck. “What happened?”

“What I warned. The longknives built their walls upon sacred ground.” The Shoshone considered Logan somberly. “Why did you remain after the soldiers left?”

“I didn’t have much of a choice.” Logan didn’t bother keeping the bitterness from his voice. “Colonel Windham rode out with me locked in the stockade.”

The Indian’s eyebrows climbed. “You were left to die?”

Logan nodded. “He had some crazy notion I’d been keeping company with his wife.”

“And for that he sentenced you to death?”

“That and the fact I wouldn’t lead him to your village.”

“To save his life, another man—one with less courage—might have shown the bluecoats the way.”

“I wasn’t being brave. I didn’t know Windham was going to have me beaten and thrown into the stockade.”

“Knowing would have made no difference to you, my friend. It is not in you to betray a trust.”

Logan shifted uncomfortably. After spending the past twelve days with Victoria, he wasn’t prepared for such unvarnished praise. “Windham was acting so crazy, I doubt he would have let me live even if I had shown him the way to your village.”