Merline Lovelace (6 page)

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Authors: Countess In Buckskin

BOOK: Merline Lovelace
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“I think I did not love Aleksei as you loved your Katerina,” she whispered. “Nor did he so love me. But still it gives one pain to remember the dying.”
Josh almost asked her how she’d lost her Aleksei, but stopped himself just in time. He’d revealed too much of the past already, more than he’d ever shared with anyone outside his family. Besides, there was still the matter of the immediate future to settle with this woman. Refolding the oilskin, he returned the portrait to the pouch and faced the Russian across the nest of pine boughs.
“I won’t tell you that we shouldn’t share a blanket,” he said with blunt if overdue honesty. “We should do whatever we can to keep warm at night. When we climb higher, we’ll be grateful for any source of heat, even the pony’s. The choice is yours, though. If you don’t feel right, or safe, or comfortable bedding down beside me, I understand.”
She lifted a hand and let it drop. Josh winced inwardly at the small, tired gesture. He’d pushed her hard today. Too hard.
“I want only to get to Fort Ross. To complete this journey, I will sleep where and beside whom I must, whether you or the horse, it matters not.”
That put him right where he belonged, Josh thought with a tight inner smile. Having finally set matters straight on one issue, he wanted to make sure she held no misunderstandings on another.
“I can’t promise to take you all the way to Fort Ross. I told you before we started that my path goes north once we clear the mountains. But I’ll get you through the passes and arrange safe escort for you to the fort, if that’s what you wish.”
“It is what I wish.”
Josh rubbed the back of his neck. They’d settled what needed to be settled. Talked out this business of sharing a bed. Agreed that they’d go their separate ways when they cleared the passes. The only thing left to do now was to get on with it.
“We’d better get some sleep. We have a hard climb ahead of us tomorrow.”
“Da.”
Assuming the tired murmur signaled acquiescence, Josh retrieved the blanket coat from where it had fallen and spread it atop the buffalo robe. Pine branches rustled as first he, then Tatiana, resumed their places. She held herself away from him, sharing the covering but not his warmth. That would come later, Josh knew, when sleep and the predawn cold drew them together.
He folded his hands under his head, listening to the uneven pattern of her breathing. Above him a thousand stars shimmered in the night sky. As was his habit, he courted sleep by mentally preparing himself for the next day’s march. Slowly, inevitably, his thoughts spun from the trek to the woman who would make it with him.
She hid a surprising vulnerability behind that prickly exterior of hers. Josh hadn’t missed the sadness in her voice when she spoke of her husband, or the bitterness. Why hadn’t she loved him? Why hadn’t the man loved her? Had theirs been a marriage of convenience, a merging of titles and properties? Even so, Josh couldn’t imagine her nameless, faceless husband not desiring her. For all her forward ways and irritating hardheadedness, Tatiana Grig... Grigor... Whoever... could start a man’s blood to pounding. She certainly wasn’t lacking any feminine charms. His brief, startling glimpse of her full breasts and slender waist had confirmed that.
Josh rolled his eyes, cursing under his breath. The last thing he needed to do was think about the Russian’s body! His own went hard as he fought to banish the image of her pale skin and rounded hips. In desperation, he tried to focus his thoughts on his memories of Catherine. His remorse over the way he’d treated Tatiana. The lost husband who had left those shadows in her eyes. Anything!
He was still trying to shove the image of her sleekly curved form from his mind when the branches beneath him sagged. Muttering in Russian, Tatiana burrowed into his side. The breasts that Josh had just been trying not to visualize pressed into his rib cage.
He closed his eyes. Opened them. Started counting the stars, as she’d done earlier. Gave up at 107, when she muttered again and nudged his shoulder with her chin. Resigning himself to a long, sleepless night, Josh brought his arm down. She sighed and cushioned her head in the hollow of his shoulder. Her breath washed his neck in warm, moist heat.
Josh started counting once more.
 
Tatiana woke to the rank scent of buffalo and a chorus of small, foreign sounds. Wrinkling her nose, she dug her face out of the curly, ticklish fur and breathed in a draft of cold air.
While her sleep-blurred eyes adjusted to the dimness that still blanketed the mountains, Tatiana identified the sounds that had teased her into wakefulness. The little stream trickled through its narrow, ice-encrusted channel. The pony huffed a short distance away. A faint chink confused her, until she recognized the sound of metal on metal. A spoon hitting a tin plate, she thought. Or the lid of the pot the American used to boil coffee beans.
The thought of the dark, steaming, bitter brew spurred Tatiana to movement. She thrust off the fleecy blanket and sat up, tilting sideways in the shifting boughs. Righting herself with one hand, she shoved her tumbled hair out of her eyes with the other.
“Mornin’.”
The American’s deep drawl came to her from the shadows. Blinking the last of the sleep from her eyes, Tatiana watched him move toward the fire in an easy, noiseless stride.
“God give you good morning,” she murmured.
He knelt on one knee beside the banked fire and balanced the battered tin pot on the embers. “The coffee will boil in a few minutes. Keep warm until it does. You’ll have time enough to tend to your needs while I pack up.”
Tatiana had no objection to a few more moments in the bed’s warmth. Bunching the fleecy blanket coat around her shoulders, she propped her chin on her knees and studied the confusing, confounding man she’d slept beside.
The fire’s glow cast his face into sharp relief. Perhaps she’d been too hasty in her first assessment of the American’s appearance, Tatiana admitted silently. He had not Aleksei’s heart-stealing handsomeness or roguish charm, but neither was he quite the great hairy beast she’d first labeled him. Above his beard, his clear, gold-flecked brown eyes looked out on the world as though he owned it. His skin was weathered to a tanned, supple leather and carried no pocks or pits from the pox that afflicted so many of the sophisticated courtiers of Tatiana’s world. And his smile...
She bit her lip, thinking of that unexpected and altogether disturbing smile. Thinking as well of the quiet pain in his voice when he spoke of his lost love, and of his refusal to hold Tatiana to her bargain.
Perhaps she’d also been too hasty in her assessment of his character. Perhaps... perhaps this journey would not be the voyage into despair she’d imagined. Buoyed by a new, tenuous hope, she crawled out of the nest of pine boughs and joined the American at the fire.
Her brief surge of hope lasted only until noon.
Chapter Six
 
 
W
ith an eye to the graying clouds, Josh set a punishing pace.
Just before noon, he led the way around a spindletopped peak and headed for the bald upper slope of an otherwise impassable crag. Suddenly the temperature dropped and the wind began gusting in awful surges. Roaring and booming through the gorges like cannon fire, it stirred the snow and threw it up in the travelers’ faces.
They were halfway across the bleak, desolate stretch above the tree line when the clouds dropped and obscured all landmarks from view. Cursing, Josh picked up the pace as much as he dared. After only another mile the pony’s labored breath and heaving sides forced him to call a halt. The little packhorse would never make it with the load it carried. Grimly Josh went to work on the ropes securing the heavy packs.
Tatiana stumbled up beside him. The violent gusts whipped her hair until the tendrils danced around the tied-down beaver hat like dark, writhing furies.
“What do you do?” she shouted.
“We’ve got to get down to the timberline, and fast,” he yelled back. “I’m going to lighten the load.”
“Can we not...” The wind snatched her words away. “...here until the storm passes?”
“What?”
“Can we not stay here?”
“No. Without the trees to break the wind, the cold will cut right through to our bones. We’ll be dead before morning.”
Josh reached for the basket. Tatiana’s face went rigid with alarm.
“But...”
“No buts.” He dumped the heavy container onto the snow.
“But we cannot leave the basket!” Her mittened hands clutched at his sleeve. “We must not!”
He shook her off. “We must and we will. You’ve got two minutes to get out of it only what you need to survive for the next few days.”
The smaller of Josh’s packs landed beside the basket with a dull thud. He reached across the wooden support poles to even the remaining load. He hated to abandon the extra supplies he’d traded with Cho-gam for, but if he didn’t get himself and his charge below the tree line before the storm broke, they wouldn’t have much use for smoked salmon and coarse-ground acorn meal.
“You must...leave...another pack and take...the basket. Please.”
He almost missed Tatiana’s frantic plea in the shriek of the wind. He couldn’t miss the way she planted herself in front of him, blocking his reach for the pony’s reins. The desperation in her face brought Josh up short. Blue lipped with cold and staring a blizzard in the eye, she still wouldn’t abandon her belongings.
He stared at her through eyes half-closed against the wind and whipping snow. A few female fripperies wouldn’t cause this urgency.
“Just what’s in this precious basket of yours?”
“I told you! All I could save of that which came with me on the ship. I must take it to Fort Ross.”
Josh turned and strode back to the objects in the snow. Panting, she hurried alongside him.
“The basket is perhaps a little heavy, it is true. But I must...what do you do? Stop! Stop at once!”
Ignoring her screeched command, Josh drew out his knife and went down on one knee. In two fast slashes, he sliced through the rawhide thongs securing the basket’s top. A quick wrench sent the lid skimming across the snow.
Incredulously Josh gaped at the contents. Sticks! Nothing but sticks. In neatly bound bundles, tagged and identified in Russian script. His mittened hand fumbled through several layers, searching among the brittle twigs for something that made sense of Tatiana’s desperation. He found only more sticks. Disbelieving, he drew out one of the tagged bundles.
She snatched it out of his hand. “You must not expose them!”
Like a mother putting a child to bed, she knelt and carefully tucked the bundle back in the basket. “They were in the sea. I don’t know...”
Josh wrenched her around so hard she almost toppled over. “What in the hell are these?”
“They are cuttings.”
“Cuttings?”
“From the trees my father has nurtured.”
“You’re hauling
trees
through mountains covered with stands of virgin timber?”
“Yes!”
She tried without success to pull free of his hard grip. Josh tried without success to rein in his soaring fury.
“You’re risking your life and mine for
trees?”
“These cuttings came from most special trees!” She blinked rapidly to clear her wind-teared eyes. “From the peaches, and the pears and the apples of a most hardy kind. My father himself developed this apple. He named it in honor of...” Her mouth twisted. “He named it in honor of Nikolas, the Tsar of all Russias. It is called the Tsar’s Treasure.”
Josh surged to his feet, yanking her up with him. The absurdity of the situation staggered him. They were standing on top of the world, caught in a sea of wind, moments away from a blinding blizzard, and this addlepated female worried about a basket of dried, twisted sticks.
“I don’t care who the hell they were named for,” he roared in a voice to match the howling wind. “Those twigs are staying here.”
“No!”
Without another word, he shoved past her and grabbed the pony’s reins. He’d taken three stiff-legged strides across the snow-covered slope before Tatiana caught up to him. Her feet slipping and slithering on the steep incline, she dragged at his arm.
“Wait! You do not understand! I must get this stock to Fort Ross before the sap begins to rise in the trees that are there. Only then can I...”
“You
don’t understand!” Josh hurled at her. “If we don’t get to shelter, and quickly, you’re not going to make it off this mountain, much less to Fort Ross. Make tracks, Countess. Now!”
Pulling free of her frantic grip, he put his head down and stepped into the stinging flurries. The pony followed, its hooves muffled on the snow. They were still five miles to the timberline on the west slope, Josh estimated. Once there, he could fashion a shelter under the branches of a tall pine. If only the damned clouds would lift for a few moments so he could get his bearings.
Instead of lifting, the grayish light merged with the snowy surface until a hazy, shimmering luminescence coated everything and created dangerous false illusions. Large stones that Josh went out of his way to skirt around weren’t even there. Others, he whacked right into. Once he stepped high to avoid what looked like a drift and fell flat on his face when his foot went down into a deep depression. Swearing, he dug himself out He was brushing the snow from his face and beard when he noticed that Tatiana was nowhere in sight.
His hand froze in midair. Sudden, pounding fear clawed in his throat. Had she wandered off the path in this treacherous light and gone into a crevasse? Had the wind swallowed up her scream? An instant later, another, far more likely possibihty hit him.
She’d gone back for her damned basket! He knew it as surely as he knew his own name.
Eyes narrowed to slits, Josh stared back into the hazy grayness. If she was so pigheaded, so insane, as to risk her life for a few bundles of kindling, that was her choice. He wasn’t going back for her. No way in hell he was going back for her. If she didn’t show up in the next ten seconds, he’d leave her. He’d damn well leave her.
One...two...three...
The Haps of his capote lifted in a gust of icy wind. The packhorse shivered and nudged its face against Josh’s shoulder.
Eight...nine...ten!
The opaque whiteness remained an unbroken, impenetrable curtain.
Damn it! Damn it to hell and back!
With a vicious yank on the pony’s lead, Josh plowed back the way he’d come. The icy wind should have heated from the searing curses he poured into it. Instead, it slashed at the skin above his beard like a thousand tiny knives.
After five minutes, the trail he’d made in the snow such a short time ago disappeared. After ten, his fury had settled like a cold lump in his gut and fear once more pulled at his chest. Had he missed her in this eerie light? Had they passed within a few yards of each other and not realized it? He shouted her name again.
“Tatiana! Damn you, where are you? Tatiana!”
Head down, heart pumping, he plowed on.
“Tatiana!”
“Here!”
The cry sounded thin and high above the roaring wind. His blood pounding, Josh pushed forward. Moments later, a blurry, indistinct figure staggered toward him through the swirling haze. She was bent double against the force of the gusts and the weight of the burden she dragged.
Josh halted in his tracks. Under his beard, his jaw clenched so hard it cracked.
She came closer, her breath shooting white puffs into the air with each step. “I...I could not...leave the Tsar’s Treasure, Josiah Jones.”
Exhaustion added a sharp, brittle edge to her words. Far from softening Josh’s anger, the utter weariness in her voice stoked him to a hot, deadly fury. He was beside her in two strides. One hand twisted up her wrist. The other tore the makeshift thong handle from her mittened fingers. Yanking her unceremoniously behind him, he hauled her to the pony.
“No!”
Josh ignored the shrill screech, just as he ignored her fierce struggles. But when her free hand swung through the air and connected with the side of his jaw, he’d had enough. Fumbling at the pack, he ripped off one of the rawhide ties. She grasped his intent when he pulled her around and brought up her wrist.
“No! You shall not bind me!”
“You’ll be lucky if that’s all I do, lady.”
While he looped the strip of hide around her wrist, her uncaptured fist pummeled his head and shoulders. Josh hunched a shoulder to ward off the blows. In the process, he inadvertently gave her an opening. Her hand went to his knife. Quick as a flash of summer lightning, it was out of the scabbard and at his throat.
“You shall not bind me!”
“Or what?”
“Or I shall slit your throat,” she hissed.
When he didn’t loosen his bone-crunching hold, she dug the tip of the knife deeper into his throat. A warm trickle traced a path down Josh’s neck. His lips drew back in a slow, feral smile.
“Go ahead. Carve out my windpipe. Then get yourself through the mountains.”
Josh saw her thoughts turn inward, as if weighing her chance of surviving without him. Realizing she was crazy enough to take that chance, he put an end to their standoff. With an agility born of countless wrestling matches, some friendly, some not, he hooked a heel around her ankles. His head jerked away from the knife tip at the same moment her feet went out from under her.
She landed with a bone-jarring thud. Josh followed her down, straddling her hips almost before they hit the ground. He had the knife out of her hand before she’d drawn a single breath.
He didn’t waste time celebrating his victory. He had none to waste. If they found shelter before the skies opened up, the Russian would learn the consequences of pulling a knife on him. If not, it wouldn’t matter.
Shoving the blade into its scabbard, he grabbed the end of the rawhide thong and lashed both of her wrists together. She screamed protests and threats in Russian, French and English, all of which Josh ignored. With a final tug on the knot, he clambered up. A yank on the thong pulled her up as well. Wrapping a hand around the back of her neck, he drew her forward until her breath pearled with his.
“If you drag your feet or try to slow us,” he warned savagely, “I’ll come back and burn every one of your precious twigs. I swear it.”
She read the promise in his eyes. Her protests subsided into silence and a despair Josh refused to acknowledge. His only concern now was survival. Looping the end of the rawhide thong to his belt, he grabbed the pony’s lead.
If
he could find a path across the slope in this blinding, iridescent haze, and
if
the full fury of the storm held off for another hour, and
if
the Russian didn’t pull any more stupid tricks, they might make it to shelter. When they did, Josh decided, the countess was going to regret this piece of work. Mightily.
Head down, he started off.
Tatiana threw a last, desperate glance over her shoulder to imprint the basket’s location on her mind. A sharp yank on the hide tether pulled her forward. She stumbled after the American, twisting her wrists together in a futile attempt to loosen her bonds. The thick beaverskin mittens that protected her flesh from the cruel knots also frustrated all attempts to pick them loose. Inside the warm protectors, her fingers curled into claws.
With each step, she repeated a fierce, silent vow.
If
she survived this nightmare of cold, white light, she would reclaim the Tsar’s Treasure.
If
she had to crawl through the snow on her hands and knees, she would so crawl. And
if
the American tried to stop her, she would do what she could not do a few moments ago and plunge the knife into his throat!

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