Judith E French (3 page)

“Aye. Do your hurts trouble ye?” Her huge liquid eyes watched him warily as her deerskin skirt followed the moccasins. Under the skirt, she was wearing nothing more than a narrow loincloth of dark smooth fur. Still eyeing him cautiously, she tugged her sleeveless vest over her head. Brandon caught a quick glimpse of her shapely breasts before he turned his head away.

“Damn you, woman,” he said, flushing with embarrassment. “Can you do nothing but strip yourself bare in front of strange men?”

Leah’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. “Have I insulted ye?”

Brandon glared at the broad stitches that held two sections of bark wall together, his back rigid.

She laughed softly, and he heard the faint pad of her bare feet on the deerskin rug. “I did not mean to offend thy honor, Englishman. But my clothes be wet. What would ye have me do? Catch my death?”

His head snapped around, and the breath caught in his throat. She was wearing a white fringed skirt that fell to mid-thigh. Her breasts were bare.

She smiled at him, and he felt heat rise to his hairline. “Would you have me treat you as a common streetwalker?” he demanded roughly. There was no denying the familiar tight sensations in his loins. He swallowed hard, remembering the stake. This woman had snatched him from a fiery death . . . but it could be that her own flame burned hotter. Instinct told him that a misstep could cost him his life.

Her brow furrowed as she crouched before the fire pit. “I do not know this word . . . this
streetwalker
. It be bad?”

“I’ve not had personal association with your race before, but it can’t be the usual practice for respectable Indian women to offer themselves to the enemy.”

Leah’s eyes narrowed, and her voice took on a thread of steel. “I’ve offered ye nothing but your life, Englishman. As ye say, you be the stranger here. Do not judge what ye dinna ken.”

“When a woman climbs into my bed, I assume that’s an offer,” he replied hotly. “That’s what happened last night, unless my head wounds are worse than I think.”

“Ye be in
my
bed,” she corrected stiffly, “and in
my
wigwam. I took ye from the stake to save your life, and”—she sighed—“and for reasons of my own. There was no other way but to make ye my husband.” She took two corncakes from a basket and laid them on stones before the fire. “It may be that we will both regret what I did, but if I had not”—she spread her hands gracefully—“your soul would be wandering on the endless river this day.”

“If I’m to play your game, m’lady, at least be good enough to tell me the rules. Am I permitted all the usual rights of a husband?”

It was Leah’s turn to blush. “A Shawnee husband has no
rights,
as you call them. The pleasures of the mat are the gifts a man and woman give to each other. I have no wish to share pleasures with a barbarian.”

“Damn you, woman! Speak plain! What in the name of all that’s holy are you about? Is this some new kind of torture?” He stood up, ignoring the ringing in his head, and took a wobbly step in her direction. She tensed, and he sensed her fear. Another second and she would spring up and flee. “Don’t run from me,” he said. “I told you I wouldn’t hurt you. I just want to know the rules before I break one and end up with my head on that bloody stake out there.”

“I’m not afraid of you.” She averted her eyes and busied herself with the corncakes. Her hands were trembling.

Brandon exhaled slowly and settled back down on the sleeping platform. He rested both hands on his knees. “Woman . . . Leah . . . what do you want of me? Am I to consider myself your prisoner?”

Her finger touched the hot stone and she flinched, popping the burned finger in her mouth like a child.

Leah’s eyes met his, and he sensed the force of emotion behind her gaze. Damn, but she’s a rare beauty, he thought. Any other time, any other place, and he’d . . .

“It be our custom,” she said softly, “when a woman has lost a husband or a bairn . . .” She rose to her feet and approached him hesitantly. “My husband was killed in battle by the English. It is my right to choose a captive to take his place. If I do so, that man . . . you . . . take his place. When I called the men to witness our bedding last night, it was . . .” She sighed heavily. “I am nay certain I ha’ all words. ’Tis like handfasting among the Scots. Do ye ken?”

He nodded. “A common law marriage.”

“Aye. So in the eyes of my people, we be man and wife.”

“If I’m your husband, then why did you tell me some bloody buck was standing outside the hut ready to put an arrow through my gut?”

“ ’Twas true. Ye be my husband, but ye be not Shawnee—not yet. Ye are”—she chewed at her lower lip in search of words—“on trial yet.”

“And how do I survive this trial?”

A smile played at the corners of her lips. “Ye maun be verra good. Ye will be permitted the freedom of the village. Later, ye will hunt for this house. Ye will sleep and eat here in my wigwam. In time, if the people believe ye to be human, they will make ye Shawnee.”

“You don’t look like a woman who would have to take these measures to find a husband. There must be Indian men willing to—”

Her obsidian eyes flashed warning. “Aye, there were men willing. But I was not.”

He caught the scent of honeysuckle from her hair, and he felt a sudden urge to pull her into his arms and taste those ripe, rose-tinted lips. “You know this can be no true marriage,” he challenged.

“True enough for my need,” she flung back.

“How long do you expect to keep me here? As your . . . your
husband?”

“Aiyee,
Englishmanake,”
she murmured softly. “Ye do not ken, do ye? Once ye become a Shawnee, there is no going back. So long as ye draw breath, ye maun remain here.”

He swore a foul oath. “Then I am still a prisoner.”

She shrugged daintily. “Aye, husband . . . but a live one.”

 

“Leah?”

She tossed her head, throwing one arm against the side wall of the wigwam. The back of her hand struck the smooth bark, and her eyes snapped open.

“Leah? What’s wrong?”

She sat bolt upright and stared across the fire pit to where Brandon lay on his bed of skins on the far side of the hut. Her cheeks grew hot as the memory of her vivid dream filled her mind. She drew in a long, shuddering breath and closed her eyes to shut out the sight of Brandon’s face. To her dismay, the image of his sinewy body and the sensuous feel of his golden hair came rushing back with terrifying intensity.

“Are you all right?” he demanded.

Leah opened her eyes again, flung back the feathered cover, and rose from the sleeping platform. Quickly, she pulled on her short deerskin skirt and a quill-worked, laced vest that covered most of her breasts. “’Twas nothing,” she said. “A dream.” She wiggled her feet into her moccasins and tried to clear her mind of the disturbing images.

What had put such thoughts into her head? This marriage with Brandon was not a true one. She would never think of taking the pleasures of the mat with a barbaric Englishman . . . or would she? Leah inhaled deeply and tried to push the thought away.

No man had shared her blanket since the death of her husband. According to the custom of her people, a widow was free to enjoy sex with any man she pleased—at least with any man who was unwed. She was a matron, a grown woman. What she did with her life and her body was her own choice. An unwed maid might be considered unchaste if she allowed men too many favors, but no such laws restricted a widow or a divorced woman.

Sex had never been a problem between her and her late husband. It was—she remembered with a twinge of regret—the best thing about their marriage. No, she corrected herself, the best thing was their child, Kitate.

Brandon rose and squatted beside the fire pit, adding small twigs to the coals and blowing on them to make them catch fire. He wore the remains of his tattered breeches, now streaked with soot and bloodstains. He was barefoot and unclad from the waist up. His corn-colored hair was held back from his face by a rawhide thong.

Leah watched in silent approval. In the three weeks since she had brought him to her wigwam, he had learned something of building and maintaining a proper fire. “Today we must hunt,” she reminded him. “Too long ha’ we depended on the charity of our neighbors. We finished the last of the meat yesterday.”

He looked up. “Three weeks, and they”—he motioned toward the entrance flap—“haven’t let me get far enough away from the camp to piss in private. What makes you think
they’ll
let me go hunting?”

“It is time.” She joined him by the fire. From a birchbark container, she took a little cornmeal mixed with dried berries. She measured several handfuls into a cedar bowl and added water from a gourd. In seconds, she had patted out several flat patties and laid them on a clean rock to bake.

“I’ll be back before those are ready,” he said. He went to the entranceway, ducked low, and disappeared outside.

Leah repeated his words softly, trying to catch the rhythm of his speech. English was not spoken as she spoke it, Brandon had informed her haughtily. He had said that what Leah spoke was “badly accented Scottish.” His mocking had smarted, and she’d made an effort to imitate his speech when they were alone. After all, if she was ever required to translate English for her tribe, she’d not want the Englishmen to believe she was an ignorant savage.

Of course, Brandon had shown his lack of proper upbringing by making fun of her speech. No Shawnee would ever think of doing such a thing. She’d reminded him that he hadn’t known a word of Shawnee before his capture and that she understood more languages than he did. He hadn’t been impressed. “An Englishman has no need for knowledge of an obscure Indian language,” he’d said condescendingly.

“I can think of one
Englishmanake
who did,” she’d snapped back.

Bringing Brandon into her wigwam and into her life hadn’t been easy. Having charge of him was nearly as bad as keeping a pet bear. The women and children were afraid of him, the men hated him, and the half-grown boys taunted him. Once, she’d even caught boys throwing stones at Brandon by the river. Her son, Kitate, couldn’t even sleep in his own bed. He was still living with Amookas, and Leah wasn’t certain when it would be safe to bring him home.

Brandon was so different from any other man she had ever known that she wasn’t even sure she
liked
him. She sighed. That was why the dream had been so disturbing. It was one thing to live with a creature of another species—a pet bear—and quite another thing to find out she was thinking of him as a desirable man.

Not that there was anything wrong with his body. Other than being too pale, Brandon was well built. His belly was taut, his legs corded with muscle, his shoulders and arms brawny. In height, he towered over most of the Shawnee men; when she stood beside him, her head came only to his shoulder. No, his size and form were not reason to find fault.

His hair was impossible. Leah had never seen a man or woman with hair that color. Her own father’s hair had been dark red, the color of autumn leaves, a sensible color for a barbarian. Most Englishmen had earth-colored hair; Alex had told her so. So why did her Englishman have to be so outrageous? A man should have hair as black and glossy as a crow’s wing, hair like Matiassu’s or her own. A person could not take a man seriously if that man had sky eyes and yellow-gold hair.

And now, those eyes and that sun-tinged hair had invaded her dreams. Dreams were nothing to scoff at; they were serious. Often one could see into the future by reading dreams. Was it possible that she and Brandon . . .

“Ptahh!” Leah jumped up and brushed the cornmeal from her hands. Foolish thoughts! What had she come to, that she would imagine such a thing? If she wanted the embrace of a man, she had only to ask. There were many warriors in the camp who would be only too happy to oblige.

She shook out her feathered blanket and rolled it neatly out of the way before settling cross-legged on her sleeping platform and beginning to comb out and braid her hair. “I never meant to keep him,” she murmured to herself. “It was only to hold Matiassu or some other man like him at bay.” From the first, she had known Brandon must return to his own people. But it would take time—months, or even years. If he tried to escape too soon, the warriors would recapture him. If they did, nothing she could say or do would save Brandon from death.

The way out for both of them was to have patience. In time, Brandon would be accepted by the tribe and would be adopted into it. Even then, he would not be free to leave. But eventually the men would slacken their vigil. She could help her husband return to the coast, and she could still claim to be married. Matiassu would be forced to keep his distance, and she could continue her life as she pleased.

She had accepted the fact that it would be easier to live together if she and Brandon were friends. She wasn’t certain if he wanted to be her friend, and she didn’t know how to go about forming a friendship with a barbarian. He had angered her when he’d suggested she was a loose woman by undressing before him, and he’d made it clear he disapproved of her wearing only a skirt as most Shawnee women did in the summer. She wasn’t certain what it was about her bare breasts that offended him, but she had taken pains to cover them as much as possible.

Now she was troubled. She’d believed she was treating Brandon as she would have treated one of her cousins. Was it possible that she had been enticing him, sending silent signals that she was willing to share her body with him? Instead of decreasing the tension between them, had she only made things worse?

Leah heard a rustle and turned toward the doorway. Brandon appeared with an overflowing pot of water and an armload of sticks. “I brought some more fuel for the fire,” he said. He glanced back toward the entranceway. “Only two guards this morning. They threatened to skin me with oyster shells and make a drum of my hide.” He grimaced. “I won’t repeat what I told them.”

Leah rolled her single braid and secured it with a carved bone ornament. “Pay them no heed. Young men always say such things. Besides,”—she grinned—“the women cherish their oyster shells. They ha’ to coom many days fra’ the sea. They’d nay gi’ the men their shells for such a purpose.”

“It’s a comforting thought.” He placed the water bowl in its accustomed spot along the far wall and covered it with a piece of hide. “And the word, Leah, is
come
as in
drum,
not
coom
as in
boom
. Don’t pucker up like a dried turnip. Your English is improving.” He began to stack the kindling beside the water pot.

Her face flushed with anger. “Did ye ever think, me great Viscount Brandon, that it could be my Uncle Alex who is right and ye wrong aboot the way words are to be spoken? I’ve only your own say-so on the matter, and I’ve heard the English lie easier than they break wind.”

“The Scots should know about wind,” he retorted with an edge of amusement in his voice. “They were always more talk than action.”

Leah struggled to follow his meaning. She thought she knew English well, but Brandon twisted the words about to make a different purpose. An argument with him was like the braves’ competition for dancing on hot coals. Even if you won the contest, you had doubts if you had really won anything worthwhile. “My father spoke in the manner of Alex, and he was a real lord,” she insisted. Actually, it had been so long ago that she wasn’t certain how her father had talked. “If he was here, ye would soon see.”

“I’m sure of it,” he replied mildly.

Leah glimpsed the hint of mischief in his eyes. “Ye dinna believe me, do ye? Well, it matters nay whether ye do or dinna. “’Tis true, and there be an end of it.”

“As you will, my Highland lady, but the word is still
come.”
He reached for a corncake, and she smacked his fingers sharply.

“They’re nay ready yet.”

He chuckled. “I bow to your superiority in the kitchen.” He licked his burned fingertips. “What did you have in mind to hunt today?”

“Aatu,
the deer.” She turned the corncakes. “Did the men call you
equiwa?”

“How’d you guess?”

“Men—married men—dinna fetch water and firewood unless their wives be sick or heavy with bairn.” She rummaged in a basket and came up with a wrinkled man’s vest. It was decorated across the back with porcupine quills and fringed along the bottom. “In the forest ye will need protection. Your back is tender yet. Put this on.”

He frowned. “You think to make a savage of me so easily?” She held it out to him and he took it. “It stinks,” he grumbled.

“Nay, ’tis ye who stink. Ye didna bathe today in the river, nor yesterday.”

“In England, a man who bathes once a month is considered a milksop.”

“I dinna ken this
milksop,
but a mon who doesna wash is nay human.” She wrinkled her nose. “Those”—she pointed at his breeches—“are nay fit for a mon t’ wear.”

“Keep your hands off my breeches, woman,” he warned. “They’re all I have left of civilized attire. You’ve already stolen my boots.”

“I gave ye moccasins in return. Elkskin. They will last many years. Do they not fit as your own skin?”

“They fit well enough, but they’re heathen footwear. My boots were Spanish leather, made by the same family who does them for the duke of—” He broke off with a low oath. “Damn me, girl. They cost more than a country parson would see in two years.”