Wild Indigo (22 page)

But he was much the stronger. “I want you home safe.”

“I am not hurt. Set me down.”

Every taut, sweet curve of her demanded that he set her down. He bent his knees, lowered her legs, and her feet patted lightly on the ground.

“Not hurt?” He reined in rage, rage born of fear of what he did not know. “You could have been lost or shot or ravaged. You could have been killed.”

“They didn't really hurt me,” she asserted, her face set.

In the lee of the tanning yard, without a soul in sight, he pulled her to him. She felt so slim. So stubborn.

“Never, never, never go where I cannot protect you.” He ground out the words from the depth of his heart into the froth of her hair.

She pulled away as if to read his face. “You're angry with me.” Her golden eyes brimmed with tears.

“I was terrified for you. I didn't even know which direction to go looking for your body.”

“I see that now.”

She ducked her head, her chin dimpling. He lifted it, brushed her lips with his. Hers were unresisting, yet they trembled.

“Ah,
Leibling
, what did they put you through? You were so, so brave.” She had looked like some flame-haired Indian woman warrior. He didn't think he should tell her that.

She cleared her throat and straightened against him. “They talked. They said rude things. In English.” She gave a small, brave laugh. “Much of which I didn't understand.”

He stifled a snarl. “What else? What did Scaife do to you?”

She dropped her head again.

He lifted it, saw her distress, and lowered his voice. “You can tell me. I will not hurt you over this. He's the one I want to throttle.”

“No, Jacob! No!” She clutched at his shoulders with sudden alarm. Precious alarm. His heart
lurched with gratification at the gift of her concern. “You are already hurt because of me.”

“I will do naught,” he promised. But his promise went against the grain. He had a new, knife-sharp understanding of homicidal purpose. “This time. Some day, some way, one of us must stop that man from plaguing innocents. I pray God 'tis me.”

“Jacob,” she said earnestly. “Don't do it for me.”

“Then tell me what he did.”

She shook her head and lowered her hands, withdrawing. He thought she would not speak.

“You can tell me,” he urged. A few fat drops of rain splattered in the dust.

“Touched me,” she whispered finally.

“God, Retha,” he whispered back. “Touched you? Not only while he was riding behind you?”

Her head bobbled a faint negative. He could not bear her pain, her determined, embarrassed isolation. He wanted to share it. With care, he drew her back into his arms.

“Where then? Where did he touch you?”

“Mouth.” Her voice went small, childlike. “Fingers in my mouth.”

“
Liebling
,” Jacob consoled her, rubbing circles of comfort into her rigid spine. Anger streaked down his. “I would have done aught to spare—”

“I bit them,” she confided.

That startled a laugh out of him. “Brave wife,” he said, then sobered. Scaife would not have stopped with that action. And Retha needed, Jacob felt, without quite knowing why, to carry no more secrets than those she already bore. They needed none between them. “Was there more?”

“My—breasts. With his hands. All over.” She buried her face in his chest, and he took the trusting gesture to heart, plotting revenge, planning mayhem, even knowing he would likely never have the chance. He rested against her, swaying slightly to release his turmoil.

“Is there more, Retha? You must not endure this alone.” He cupped the crown of her head in his palm and steadied her against him, feeling his own head would burst if she had worse to reveal.

“My stomach. He…We stopped to water horses. The other men were in the creek.”

Jacob could not suppress a growl, and she lifted her head against his palm, her eyes shining with determination. “He did not touch me…there…where no man has the right but you.”

No man had the right to touch her anywhere. But she had not been raped. “
Danke Gott
,” he murmured, for her sake, not merely for his own. Despite her ordeal, she was safe at home with him. And suspected of being a spy. “Dear God, if only he hadn't found you at the Voglers.”

Retha lifted her chin. “Alice is my friend.”

“Your Cherokee friend, suspected of spying,” he pointed out gently.

“She had not heard that we are married.”

“What has that do with—”

“I wanted her to know that you married me.”

“
Gott im Himmel
, Retha! That was no reason to risk your life.”

She touched his face, placing cool, experimental fingers along his jaw. “She is very happy for me.”

He relished her touch but not her reasons for
taking her excursion. “War is no time for social niceties,” he said in the patient, paternal voice he used with the children.

“She says you are a good man.” Retha's fingers edged his jaw, his chin, and touched his lips.

Every fiber of his being flashed like lightning in the distant sky, and he dragged her fingers from his lips and crushed her mouth with his.

J
acob's kiss was firm, demanding, hot, but the day's events collided in Retha's mind, distracting her. Alice's earthy counsel clashed against Scaife's invasions. Yet Jacob had stood up for her against the militia men. Her husband had defended her. Her spirit soared.

And now beneath her cold, wet dress, her skin warmed to his caress. But the captain's hands, too, had roamed her back, her neck, her breasts, the very places Jacob claimed. Valiantly she struggled to shake off those vile images. Her husband's confident embrace, she told herself, was not her captor's insulting clasp.

Jacob prolonged the kiss, his appetite seeming voracious, unending. A corner of her mind struggled to understand his hunger and her own sense of floating. To understand this kiss. It went on and on, lasting far longer than any they had yet shared. Alice had not warned her that a kiss could last so long. Retha wanted to answer his intensity, his enveloping embrace. She wanted to yield to the claim he made. She wanted…air. Under his mouth, she gasped for breath.

With a low baritone growl, he released her, granting her one breath and then beginning again, softer. His hot, moist tongue edged her lips. When he had kissed her so before, she had been startled. This time sensation skittered over her lips, the tingling as acute as if he had touched an open wound. Yet for all the race of feeling, she felt no pain, nothing but his effort at restraint and his reassuring warmth. A whimper of surprise sounded in her throat, a small, strange animal sound she had never before made.

Chagrined, she parted her lips to apologize. His teeth clinked against hers. She cringed at her clumsiness, but he held her tighter, reassuringly.

What did he want? Alice had said nothing of this.
Trust him
, she had said. Trust him to do what? Retha wondered. She didn't know.

His breath caressed her face. Her skin shivered. His damp, broad chest lifted and fell, flattening her breasts under the stiff bodice of her dress. They tightened strangely. His tongue probed against her teeth. Her very teeth, she marveled, could feel his touch.

He broke away, his mouth a thread's breadth from hers. “Open for me,” he rasped softly. “
Liebling
, open your mouth.”

With a small, speechless shock, she did, slackening the jaw she had clamped shut unawares. The tip of his tongue pushed against her teeth. He must really mean for her to open her mouth, and so she tried, uncertain of his intent and awkward in this unaccustomed position. Then his tongue touched hers.

He tasted rich, she mused, rich and manly, of hearty bread, ripe cheese, strong ale, not the stale tobacco fumes Sim Scaife had blown into her face. Retha shuddered at the awful thought. She would not let that man intrude, not with her husband comforting her. Sustaining her, like daily bread, as necessary as the air she breathed. She would not.

Jacob's tongue swirled in her mouth, inviting her to let him kiss away the thoughts, the fear. She opened her eyes, fighting the insidious image of Scaife with the pure sight of her husband's face. So close, so intimate. His still-lowered eyelids were lightly veined, and his lashes thick and golden. Sun had flecked the hint of skin that she could see. Nothing Alice said of kissing measured up to this glory.

The mounting urgency of his hot tongue burned away the images of her captivity, the endless gallop home. The iron certainty of his massive arms banded her, blotting out her skin's memory of Scaife's cruel fingers. Soon, for Retha, sensation overpowered thought. But still she did not know what he expected her to
do
. Tentatively she moved her tongue to meet his. He groaned, and tightened his arms. She yielded, relaxing her body into his strength and finding wondrous freedom in his close embrace.

A blade of lightning cut the distant sky. Moments later its thunder rumbled toward them.

Lifting his mouth from hers, Jacob glanced at the looming clouds as if he had forgotten they were there. Then he gazed into her eyes with a slight, self-conscious smile. “Ah, Retha. Forgive me. I am a selfish man.”

Hardly selfish, she thought. His embrace seemed a generous gift. He was offering her his world, protected and secure. She shook her head against the landscape of his chest.

“You must be tired and hungry,” he went on. “And I am caked with mud.”

She couldn't speak. Her fatigue didn't matter, or his disarray. Only this mattered: the unexpected refuge of his arms.

“Are you truly unharmed?”

She looked up into his caring blue scrutiny. “Yes, unharmed. Truly.”

Fat raindrops splattered on her exposed skin. Icy raindrops. She shivered.

Tenderly, futilely, he brushed her wet cheek. “We'll get drenched.”

She smiled and found her voice. “You needed a bath.”

Jacob chuckled with relief. The kiss had done her no harm, had done him much good. His wife was in his arms, accepting the best comfort he could give her. Perhaps she even asked for more. He bent to her and whispered, “I never meant to come to you like this, all dirt and sweat.”

“The rain will rinse you off.” He thought he heard a plucky note of teasing in her remark.

“Not if we outrun it,” he tossed back, doubting that they could make it home before the heavens broke, not caring. A curtain of heavy rain marched up the meadow, drenched the peach orchard, and overtook Sister Baumgarten's plump
milch
cow.

Retha pushed her glistening long hair over her shoulder. “I couldn't run a step.”
Taking that as a challenge, he scooped her up. “I can,” he said, and strode off briskly. His anger was only a coal of memory at the back of his mind, for his wife was in his arms.

Halfway home, the sky let loose. Cooling raindrops pelted his old work shirt and splashed on her upturned face, her still-uncovered throat and chest.

“I'd rather run, Jacob!” She laughed, wriggling to be free.

Scarcely missing a stride, he set her down, keeping one hand in his and pulling her to the house. Once she stumbled, but he helped her to her feet, bracing her with his arm. Once she almost jerked him off the road.

“Stop here!” she urged, veering toward the wide, protected porch of Brother Meyer's Tavern.

“No need. We're almost home.”

He ran on, exhilarated by the unrelenting rain and his young wife's mettle. By the time they reached the house, she had caught his spirit. She laughed at him—with him—when he fumbled with the latch. They huddled under the tiny roof that failed altogether to shelter the front stoop. He shepherded her into the narrow entryway.

Hands on knees, she bent over, panting. He supported her, confidently clasping her slim waist in his large hands for the first time since their wedding night. And he watched, fascinated, as her thick flame of hair, darkened by the downpour, fell forward, trickling rainwater onto the floor.

“'Twas but a shower, wife, and 'twill soon be ended.” He chuckled as she shook a spray of water into the air.

Straightening, she removed his hands and glared. “'Twas a thunderstorm.”

With her apron, she blotted her wet face and then dabbed self-consciously at the tops of her breasts, ungauzed, unguarded. He could not resist the sight.

He did not have to. She was his wife.

“Small wonder they invented neckerchiefs,” he said wickedly, running a finger along the square neckline just above her cleavage. “The sun has burned you.”

Already flushed from their run, she blushed still deeper and touched the angry pink skin of her chest. “I took it off…in the heat…to walk…they gave me no time…”

Then he remembered. “We haven't time. The boys will be home shortly,” he interrupted, ushering her into the bedroom and latching the door behind them. He plucked his clinging shirt away from his body. Muddy water puddled around his bare feet. “It won't do for Nicholas to see me looking as though I've been in a fight.”

“What about Anna Johanna?”

“Sister Ernst will keep her safe until we fetch her,” he said, peeling his shirt over his head.

Retha did not move. She gaped, dazzled by the sight of her husband stripping to bare skin, talking all the while. What was she to do?
Trust him
, Alice said. That had been easier outside with him fully clothed.

“Don't I have a clean shirt in the clothes cupboard?” he said in a normal voice.

Somewhere, Retha thought, so distracted she could only nod. The sight of him mesmerized her.
Shirtless, the body that had held her and consoled her was all mountains of strength. Tawny hair whorled around the bundled muscles of his chest, drawing her gaze to his dusky nipples. She had never seen them on a white man, she realized with a start. She had never thought about seeing them on a white man. Their small peaks mimicked hers as if he were chilled.

Or aroused, as Alice had explained that
she
would be.

Oh, her friend had not told her everything.

He wadded the shirt and dropped it on the floor. “I'll have to rinse this for tomorrow. I have not finished at the millpond. For
Singstunde
tonight, my Sunday clothes will have to do.”

Turning to his basin, he quickly poured water into it, wrung out a cloth, and began washing his body, speaking of inconsequentials. Retha did not hear. At least his back was to her so that she could gawk unseen. She wished, she craved for him to slow down. When he raised his hands to sponge his face and neck, his muscles rippled over his shoulder blades. Like water over rocks, she thought. As Jacob disrobed, minute sensations streamed throughout Retha's body, overwhelming her.

Clumsy as a schoolgirl, she stepped backwards, stumbling over the willow sewing basket, thumping against the door.

With a warm, quizzical smile, Jacob set down the cloth, closed the distance between them, and took her hands. “Are you all right?” His knowing gaze searched hers.

She felt her neck heat, then her face. He had
caught her again looking at him. This time shamelessly.

“I am your husband, Retha, you can look at me,” he said softly, earnestly. “I want you to look at me.”

But she couldn't. Alice's advice was far too simple. Trusting him was difficult. Looking at him—and knowing that he knew she looked—was…was…Retha dropped her gaze.

It stopped at the fall of his breeches.

At that swelling.

“There too, wife,” he said, his voice smoky. “I want you to look at all of me.”

She swallowed hard and curled her hands into fists.

“No,
Liebling
, don't. Don't be afraid. I don't want you to be afraid of me ever. Not of any part of me. Here.” With strong fingers, he uncurled her fists and flattened her palms against his naked chest. “Touch me.”

Touch him
, her friend had said. And now he was asking her to do just that. Embarrassed, emboldened, she did. She spread her fingers—they were not quite still—and let them sink into his flesh.

She heard his sudden inrush of breath.

Her fingers sizzled. The tawny hair crinkled as she shyly glided her hands across his immense breadth. His chest was damp, hard, manly. Private. But what did he want her to do to it? She stopped.

“More,” he said. “I won't break. You cannot hurt me.”

He was twice her size and strength. Larger, more powerful unclothed than dressed. Gingerly she pressed her palms against his solid chest, testing for
texture, for knowledge. He radiated heat, warming her cold hands.

Touching him was not so difficult after all, she mused. Surprised at the silky skin of his nipples, at their hard pebbles of arousal, she paused. She could have sworn his heart leapt to meet her trembling, cautious hand.

“Lower,” he grated softly.

She hesitated.

“Please.”

Reach for him
. She let her hand slide down.

Lower, he was just as solid, just as hot. At his rib cage, his skin was clammy to her touch, and lower still, his hard abdomen was ridged. Sanctuary, she thought with wonder at the sheer strength he held in check for her. She lifted her gaze to his.

With a shivering breath, Jacob sucked in his stomach and pulled her hands away. It was a mistake, he realized, seeing the first light of desire in her eyes. Her simple, trusting touch had almost spun him out of control.

He knew she wasn't ready to see him, let alone love him.

He knew there wasn't time.

A sudden frown spelled her confusion.

“Thank you. I love this, Retha,” he said, kissing the frown away. “I love it so much I want more. We had best stop while I still can.”

He had to wash and change. With grim determination, he poured water from the pitcher to the basin and began to scrub.

He had never made love in the afternoon. He had never wanted to this badly. Outside, the rain had
stopped. School would be out any moment now, and the boys would soon be home. They had to go to services, united as a family. Rapidly he unbuttoned the fall of his breeches and loosed their ties.

Before Retha could think to avert her eyes, her husband had stepped out of the rest of his clothes. Fascinated, she studied him, his exposed body vulnerable—yet to her invincible. From a thicket of fawn-brown hair where his powerful thighs met, his manhood jutted out, proud with wanting her.

She averted her gaze. A surge of blood pooled in her belly. Now that she had an inkling of what his desire and her response meant, she didn't know, at this moment, what to do.

He ran the cloth over his most private parts and down his legs, bending to swab caked mud off his thick calves and sinewy feet. As he turned and bent and flexed, he neither hid his arousal from her nor tried to protect her from the sight. She could not watch, even though he showed none of the reserve or modesty she felt herself. But did he really mean for her to watch? Or should she honor his privacy? At her sides, her closed hands felt large and ignorant.

But her friend had told her not to shrink, to let him know that she was willing. Retha summoned all her nerve and edged up to her naked husband.