The Beloved Woman (24 page)

“You call her Beloved Woman,” he said, speaking slowly so that she’d understand his poor Cherokee. “Everyone
on the trail has heard of her. She knows white medicine and white ways.”

“I hear nothing of such a one. Go away.”

Justis stood wearily, his shoulders slumped. Tonight he was nearly beaten by frustration and worry. Dully he noticed a lanky young man hurrying toward the campfire.

“Mother! The Beloved Woman won’t eat! And she’s gone to sit beside the big river alone!”

The woman gasped. “Be quiet!”

Justis ran for his horses. Behind him he heard the woman yelling for help.

K
ATHERINE SWAYED AS
a gust of wind swept off the wide, ice-choked river. She leaned forward, placed both hands on her blanket, and braced her arms. Her hair floated behind her as she tilted her face up toward the high, cold moon. She felt its silver fingers running over her.

This same moon was shining on Georgia, blessing her family’s graves and the Blue Song land. Katherine’s head swam and she shook it groggily.
Always mine
, she told herself.
Home
.

She cried out sadly.
Justis
. They were one and the same.

Staring blindly across the water, she at first didn’t hear the thudding of horses’ hooves racing up the river bluff. When she did, she lurched to her feet, staggered, then caught her balance and looked wildly toward the sound.

The moon silhouetted the dark figures of a tall rider and two big horses. The horses were only a few strides from her, and the rider reached out for her.

“I fight!” she warned in a voice too weak to hear. Her hands fumbled uselessly for the knife she’d traded days earlier for food.

She couldn’t even manage a scream when the horse’s
shoulder bumped her. She started to fall, then felt the rider’s hand winding into the neck of her ragged tunic. The material ripped as she tried to struggle.

“Katie gal, calm down!”

Justis
. Stunned, dreaming, she went limp, and he pulled her in front of him on the saddle. His arm went around her waist. She sagged against him, her hands digging into his furry coat, her face burrowed in his shoulder.

Her hazy grip on consciousness told her only that hope had come back into the world. She couldn’t understand the distant sounds of men shouting and horses galloping. Justis held her tighter and clucked to his mount. It went into a smooth, rocking lope, following the riverbank north.

Katherine tilted her head back and tried to look at him in the moonlight. Shock and happiness confused her until all she could manage to say was a plaintive “Home?”

“Someday. Thank you, God. Thank you.” He bent his head to hers and brushed a kiss over her forehead.

CHAPTER 11

T
HE WARMTH
woke her, the delicious warmth after months of shivering. Katherine moved a tiny bit and sighed. She was wrapped in a cocoon of soft, thick blankets. The mattress under her was lumpy, and it made a rustling sound. It was stuffed with coarse hay, she decided. But compared to cold, hard ground, it felt luxurious.

How had she gotten there? Vaguely she recalled being wrapped in warm blankets and carried on horseback through the night, the horse rocking under her like a cradle, protective arms holding her with strength and comfort, a much-loved masculine voice urging her to rest easy, to forgive, to live.

She heard the crackling of a fire nearby and turned her face toward its wonderful heat. Her eyes still shut, she inhaled and felt light-headed when the aroma of roasting meat filled her. Pangs cramped her stomach, and she made a keening sound of hunger.

Callused fingertips stroked her cheek. “Katie?”

The drawling bourbon-and-cigar voice caressed her name and brought her fully from sleep in a whirl of groggy emotion. She opened her eyes and cried out in recognition. Justis bent over her, frowning. His face was drawn and tired, his hair ruffled, his mouth set in a grim line. “You,” she said raptly, trying to smile. “You.” Pain stung her chapped lips.

“Shhh. Don’t do that.” He reached for something, brought it to her mouth, and rubbed gently. “You’re bleedin’.” She dimly felt soothing grease on her lips. Lost in gazing at him, she smiled wider. His expression darkened. “Stop it. Dammit, stop. You’re hurtin’ yourself—”

“Justis. Never thought … I would see you again.
Justis.
”

Her fervent, happy tone snapped his restraint. With a soft groan he cradled her face and rested his forehead on hers. She breathed raggedly, loving the scent of his hair and skin, knowing that the fragrances of woodsmoke and tobacco would always remind her of this moment.

“Christ, I was afraid you’d never wake up,” he whispered. “Could you take some food?”

After months of constant hunger, the irony of that question overwhelmed her. “Food?” Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes. “You have food?”

He drew his head back and gazed at her. His mouth worked for a moment without forming words. Finally he spoke in a low, barely controlled rasp. “Just lie still.”

“Where are we?”

“A little place I found last night. Owner’s out beyond the barn—what’s left of him—with a pile of kindlin’ scattered beside him. Must have been sick, dropped dead while he was toting firewood. Probably been dead for months. Bad luck for him, good luck for us. This place is way off the road. I found it only because I was tryin’ to lose your little private posse of Injuns.”

“I n-need some good luck.”

He cupped her cheek with his warm palm. “You got some now, gal.”

She watched him wistfully as he moved away. Her hazy mind finally realized that they were in a cabin of squared logs chinked with clay. The place was so little that Justis could probably lie down and touch one wall with his fingertips, the other with his toes.

Justis
. She drank in the sight of him while he knelt in front of a crude stone fireplace and lifted a black iron kettle from a hook above the flames. Firelight played on his strong, big-knuckled hands and shot red-gold streaks through his hair.

He wore a heavy wool shirt, and trousers held by leather braces. The arms of white long johns showed beneath the shirt’s rolled-up sleeves and in the V made by its floppy lapels. His face was thinner than she remembered, and older. It no longer held a hint of youthful smoothness. His wavy chestnut hair was ragged, and so long that it brushed his shoulders in back. And the mustache—it badly needed a trimming.

She thought him more handsome than ever. “
Très beau,
” she whispered. “
Tu es très bien.
” Almost crying with happiness, she added hoarsely, “
Je t’aime
, Justis.
Je t’aime beaucoup.
”

He hurried to scoop some sort of stew into a wooden bowl. “Aw, it’s nothin’ good enough to speak French over. It’s just rabbit mixed with cornmeal.” He carried it to her and sat down on the bed, a narrow structure of rough-hewn wood built into the cabin’s corner. After placing the bowl on the cabin’s dirt floor, he slipped his arms under Katherine’s shoulders. “Can you sit up, gal?”

She nodded, not caring whether she could or not. She stared devotedly into his worried eyes. “Still as green as new leaves.”

“Shhh. Your mind’ll be all right soon as you eat something.” He lifted her to a sitting position and moved around behind her on the bed.

“I want to look at you,” she protested weakly. “See your mustache.”

“Katie, please. Just try to eat.”

He reached for the wooden bowl and set it on her blanket-wrapped lap, then lifted a small strip of meat to her mouth. She lunged for it with sudden, single-minded desperation, swallowed it whole, and licked his fingers like a grateful dog.

“Oh, God,” he said in pained shock. “Easy, now, easy.”

Trembling, she whimpered again. “More. More.”

He made a gruff, sorrowful sound and brought the food to her mouth as swiftly as she could eat it. “Slow down. You’ll be sick.” She ignored him until he grabbed the underside of her jaw and held it firmly. “Slow,” he ordered.

She forced herself to chew each bit of meat a few times. When her stomach stopped begging for more, lethargy took over. Between one bite and the next her eyelids grew heavy and her head drooped forward.

“Katie!” He tilted her head back and looked at her anxiously.

“Sleep,” she murmured, turning her face toward the crook of his neck. “Warm. Strong. You feel so good. Hold me. Have to sleep again.”

He almost sagged with relief. “You sleep all you need,” he said in a low, shaky voice. “I won’t ever let go.”

“I should have known that,” she murmured, her voice trailing off. “Should have known.”

A
TINY DRAFT
of cold air curled between the cabin’s chinking and touched the tip of Katherine’s nose. She groggily pushed a blanket down and opened her eyes. On the opposite wall a line of dawn light shone at the bottom edge of a window covered with a deerskin. The fire was no more than a bed of weak embers, and her breath made white mist in the air.

She looked at her chapped, aching hands in bewilderment. They were covered with grease. She touched her lips. The same. He’d oiled her as if she were a rusty gun, she thought with giddy amusement.

She burrowed into the lovely heat under the blankets and the wall of warmth that cupped her back, hips, and thighs. The wall shifted, curving closer against her, and she sighed with pure, uninhibited pleasure. Justis. His long, rock-hard arm was draped over her waist, and as she lay there smiling, he slid it farther around her. It pulled sleepily, fitting her hips into the angle made by his belly and thighs.

Katherine plucked at the long, heavy shirt she wore and realized that it was one of his. She was too exhausted to feel any embarrassment that he’d changed her clothes. In fact the only thing that did bother her was her ugliness. What a sight she must be, all bony and sunken.

She shifted swollen, overused feet and discovered that they were covered in coarse stockings—obviously another of Justis’s belongings. Moving her legs closer to his, she sighed with delight at the feel of his soft long johns against her bare skin.

She stroked the arm he’d wrapped around her, ignoring the pain in her sore, cracked fingertips. Finally she determined where the sleeve of his long johns ended and his thick, hairy wrist began. She slipped her fingers downward and curled them around his hand. With another sigh, infinitely peaceful, she grew drowsy again.

His face was buried against the back of her neck—apparently he’d gathered her hair into a nest there—and his deep, even breathing cascaded onto her skin. But just as she was about to drift off he mumbled incoherently, then flexed against her.

She blinked in slow surprise as he grew hard, his robust stiffness fitting neatly against the cleft of her hips, its size impressive even when obscured by clothing. His breathing quickened, and he arched languidly a few
times. His arm slid from around her and she felt him fumbling with the material that covered his groin.

She was too weak to be aroused but not too weak to be curious. Justis wasn’t the kind of man who’d take her in her helpless, unresponsive condition. She sensed that strongly. But what did he intend to do?

Slowly he pulled her shirt up in back. She felt his hand caress her bare hip—gently, more like a loving pat than a touch designed to excite. Then he grasped himself and stroked slowly. Her eyes widened in amazement as a satiny, rounded surface rubbed up and down on her hip. He stroked faster until his whole body tautened and he groaned softly. Warm fluid tickled the small of her back.

He wiped it away with the hem of her shirt, then eased the shirt back down and fastened his long johns. His arm slid over her again, snug and possessive, and he nuzzled his head closer to hers. “Oh, Katie,” he murmured. “Katie.”

The tenderness in his voice made tears crest in her eyes. He hadn’t tried to find her right away, but he
had
searched for her eventually. Why? To salve his lust and anger? To make her sorry for breaking their bargain? To force her to accept it? Maybe all of that, but his stubborn pursuit held a world of affection, too, a sort of love.