Читать книгу Beloved Outcast - Pat Tracy - Страница 14

They ate the berries as they traveled. Sweetly tart, the juicy bits of fruit didn’t last long, yet they quenched Victoria’s thirst and temporarily took the edge off her hunger.

She smiled ruefully, recalling the wonderful meals her family’s cook had prepared. In the face of her present travails, it was remarkable that she’d taken those perfectly prepared repasts for granted, except, of course, during the horrific civil conflict that was only three years past.

At her country’s most vulnerable hour, Victoria had often thought about the Northern and Southern soldiers subjected to countless deprivations, including meager rations. Both she and Annalee had done their part to contribute to the welfare of their “boys,” by rolling bandages, sewing uniforms and donating their personal allowances to the cause. She remembered how good it had felt to be needed, to be of service.

She sighed, her glance straying to the silent man beside her. In battered profile, he was more than a little frightening. He had eaten the berries in what she was coming to view as his customary attitude of withdrawal. Because of his superior size, she’d assumed he would claim a greater portion of the plump morsels. That had not been the case, however, as he’d helped himself to only a few of the berries.

She was left to conclude one of three things: He didn’t care for the taste of the fruit; he wasn’t hungry; or he was demonstrating an unexpected degree of chivalry in allowing her to have the larger portion. None of those possibilities seemed likely.

Without warning, he turned to her. “Are my lips blue?”

“What?”

“The way you keep staring at me, I’m wondering if those berries turned my lips blue.”

A hot flush stole up her throat. He was right. She had been staring. She returned her gaze to the oxen’s swaying rumps. “Actually, your lips are a reddish color—due, no doubt, to their bloodied condition. It is your eye, however, that is the most remarkable array of hues, ranging from blue to black to purple.”

He surprised her by chuckling. “I must look like hell. That’s how I feel, anyway.”

She frowned, uncomfortable with the thought that he was in pain. “Do your injuries hurt terribly?”

From the corner of her eye, she could see that he was still looking at her. She kept her attention on the animals pulling their wagon. She was reluctant to meet his stare. Something about it disturbed her. She might tell herself that his pummeled features repulsed her, but she didn’t altogether believe that.

“Now and then I feel a twinge.”

He was being brave; she was sure of it. When she performed volunteer work at the military hospital, nursing wounded soldiers, they’d acted the same way, dismissing the severity of their injuries, even when they’d lost a limb.

She remembered the lines of agony gripping his face as he’d swung the ax. “I should have been the one to cut the trees.”

“And why is that?”

She heard the skepticism in his voice and suppressed a sigh. She was used to men undervaluing the contributions of women. Her father was a prime example of a male holding women in benign contempt. “Obviously, I could have spared you further suffering.”

“That’s quite a generous offer. Considering.”

“Considering what?” she couldn’t keep from asking.

“Considering that I’m your prisoner and you think you’re taking me to Trinity Falls to stand some kind of trial.”

She’d momentarily forgotten about that. “I don’t think I’m taking you there for that reason. I know I am.” Forgetting her earlier reservations about talking to the man eye-toeye, she turned to him. “It’s very important to accept responsibility for your actions. When you do something wrong, you must pay your debt to society. Otherwise, our country would be in anarchy.”

His stare was as intense as she recalled, but she didn’t glance away. He looked as if he had something important to say. Was he about to confess to his crimes? She prepared herself to hear anything. She promised herself that, no matter how depraved or violent his misdeeds, she would remain calm.

“You don’t believe any of the things I’ve told you, do you?”

“That you were falsely imprisoned after carrying a warning to the fort and not revealing the whereabouts of a tribe of friendly Indians?” she said dubiously.

His features tightened into a scowl. “It’s pointless for me to keep protesting my innocence, isn’t it?”

“I can’t believe soldiers of the United States Army would do anything as reprehensible as imprisoning an innocent man.”

He returned his attention to the trail. “There’s something you should think about.”

She didn’t trust the subtle deepening of his already husky voice. “What’s that?”

“If I’m such a terrible miscreant, why are you still alive?”

Her throat muscles constricted. “Wh-what?”

“If I’m as bad as you think, I would have had my way with your delectable body, hacked you up with your own ax, roasted you over a vigorous fire and made a hot meal of your tender flesh.”

Her heart pounded. That he could envision such deviltry proved he was dangerous. All her sympathetic thoughts about him rose to reproach her. She’d been a fool to release him from the stockade. And a greater fool not to arm herself with a knife.

Logan flicked a quick glance at his traveling companion. Damnation, she was as white as a ghost. It infuriated him that his careless words, words intended to reassure her, could actually terrify her. He didn’t know who he was angrier at, himself for uttering such hogwash or her for being so gullible.

I should have been the one to cut the trees.

Her gentle comment cut through his thoughts. She’d been concerned about him. And he’d repaid her generosity with a nasty remark about raping, dismembering and cannibalizing her!

“You can start breathing again. I won’t hurt you.”

“I don’t need you to tell me to breathe.”

Her bravado sparked a tug of admiration. The woman might be scared, but she wasn’t going to let him know it. The best way to deal with her so that she didn’t run screaming into the forest was to establish a rapport with her. Which meant he would have to learn more about her. He had to foster a degree of trust in this Eastern woman, because both their lives might come down to her obeying his orders without question. But he knew she wasn’t ready to hear that he was the temporary mayor of Trinity Falls and owned a bank. She’d think he was lying and become even more difficult to deal with.

“Why are you traveling alone?”

“You don’t recall?”

Her vivid green eyes looked.bewildered and, he thought with repugnance, filled with pity. Hell, she was back to treating him like a half-wit.

“Recall what?”

“I—I already explained that the wagon master was unwilling to slow his pace. And remember my books? The ones you wanted to leave behind at the fort—that large wooden structure with the big gate?”

He gritted his teeth so hard that his already aching jaw shot new waves of pam through his skull. “I meant, why were you alone in the first place? Most women travel west with their parents or husbands.” He couldn’t resist adding, “Parents are the people who give birth and raise you. A husband is a man a woman marries when she’s ready to start a family. A family—”

“I get your message.” Flags of scarlet decorated her cheeks.

Satisfaction warmed him. It was time Miss Amory understood how it felt to be treated like a simpleton.

“And?” he prompted.

“And what?” she snapped.

Logan realized he wasn’t making much headway in establishing a bond of trust between them, but at least she didn’t look as if she were in imminent danger of fainting.

“Why are you traveling alone?”

“It didn’t start out that way.” Her vibrant green eyes looked into the distance. “I was to make the trip with another family. Their oldest son was going to manage the team. At the last moment, however, their plans changed.”

Her explanation told him little. “Why did you decide to leave your home in the first place?”

Victoria’s already flushed face turned a brighter shade of pink. Logan sensed his question had struck a deep chord.

She was lying. That caught him off guard. She didn’t look like the kind of woman to prevaricate about anything. “And your parents let you go?”

“They. accepted my decision.”

There were a lot of things she wasn’t telling him. He sensed that leaving home had been painful for her.

“And your husband?” He was baiting her now, and he knew it.

She puffed up like a furious little red-feathered bird.

“I do not have a husband.”

“Fiancé?”

“That is hardly any of your business, Mr. Youngblood.”

“Call me Logan,” he commanded softly. “I intend to call you Victoria. It’s only fair I allow you the same privilege.”

She blinked at him. She’d done that before when something he said surprised her. The very feminine gesture appeared to be her way of getting her bearings.

“How do you know my first name?”

“You must have written it in every book you own.”

“Oh.” She studied him gravely. “Under the circumstances, I suppose it would be foolish not to be on a firstname basis.”

Such a well-bred, reluctant concession.

He liked the way her lips shaped her words—so precisely, so daintily. They were inviting lips—shaped with delicate fullness. Despite her mouth’s soft beauty, she didn’t look like the kind of woman to invite a kiss. Instead, she projected a directness that dared a man to cross the boundaries she’d set.

He pulled his gaze from hers before he did something totally asinine, like find out how those delectable lips tasted.

“Well, Victoria, what’s your answer?”

“My—my answer?”

“Are you engaged, married or widowed?”

Has any man been able to break through that formidable facade of yours?

“Mr. Young—”

“Logan,” he corrected firmly.

“Logan, ours is strictly a temporary association, and as I stated before, there’s no reason for you to know whether or not there’s someone. special in my life.”

“When this is over, suppose a man shows up, claiming you belong to him, and he demands to know what happened between us?”

“First of all, no such person exists.” Exasperation laced her cultured voice. “Second, the only thing that’s going to happen is that we’re going to reach Trinity Falls alive.”

It was hard to accept that the woman next to him was bound to no man. It was obvious from her independent manner that she felt no need to justify her single state. He tried to guess her age, which was no easy accomplishment.

A frown scrunched her lips. Her delicately proportioned chin was thrust at a disapproving angle. Her lashes were a golden red, reflecting the same tawny highlights that burnished her bound hair. She might have been eighteen, but her bearing was that of someone older, maybe twenty-four or twenty-six.

He scowled. She had no business being on her own, in the Idaho Territory or anywhere else. She was too attractive not to have a father, brother or husband watching over her. She was also too headstrong to be left to her own devices. Her present situation proved that. Good Lord, what if Windham had left a real hardened criminal locked up in the stockade? Victoria would have freed him and then been at the brute’s mercy.

His scowl deepened. For her own good, she needed to learn that a lone woman couldn’t go traipsing across the country as she pleased. Logan realized his sense of outraged possessiveness was illogical. Yet he couldn’t seem to help himself.

It had been this same sense of heretofore-unacknowledged protectiveness that resulted in his accepting Madison Earley as his ward. When a prospector showed up at the bank with the story that a white girl was living with the Shoshones, Logan had taken it upon himself to ride to Night Wolf’s camp and retrieve her. It had turned out that Madison’s mother had died a long time ago, and the child had been raised by her father, who’d been working a small gold claim.

Bushwhackers had murdered the man for his small cache of gold dust. Night Wolf’s tribe had sheltered Madison for a while, but dearly her place was with her own people. Logan could easily have sent her to an orphanage in the East, yet something within him had balked at casting her adrift in the world.

He shook his head. It was hard to believe he’d lived thirty years without knowing he had this lamentable streak of sentimentality coursing through his veins. It had been this same latent sense of caring, no doubt, that sent him to the fort to deliver Night Wolfs warning about the attack.

And now he was saddled with a woman who cherished her collection of rare books more than she valued her own life. She was wrong if she thought he’d yielded to her insistence to keep them. Tonight, when she was asleep, he meant to lighten the load the oxen were struggling with to get over the next small rise. By the time they reached Trinity Falls, she would be lucky to have one book left.

He leveled a hard glance at her. All right, maybe he would be selective. He’d let her keep Cooper’s ridiculously romantic yarn about the Mohicans. Louisa May Alcott was going to go, though. Little Women was a new novel and could be purchased at any bookshop.

His dark mood was appeased by the knowledge that the domineering woman would ultimately be put in her place. Logan visualized their arrival in town. He could see Victoria marching him off to the sheriff’s office, all self-righteous and determined to have him get his just punishments. It would be a pleasure to watch the entirely too smug woman discover that her prisoner was none other than the acting mayor and the president of Trinity Falls’s largest bank, along with a dozen other financial institutions.

He decided watching her eat crow would be the most satisfying thing he’d done in a long time. When the oxen seemed to hesitate cresting the next pine-covered slope, Logan reached for the whip to offer them a little encouragement.

His thoughts turned from Victoria to their immediate destination, a small tributary feeding into the Ruby River. They should reach it before dark. Once there, he might believe they had a chance of making it to town alive. They would be in Night Wolfs domain, and that much closer to keeping their scalps.

She’s not a complainer.

Logan’s mind again filled itself with thoughts about Victoria Amory. One way or another, he decided, he’d find out why she’d left Boston and what she planned to do in Trinity Falls.

Everything about her manner bespoke Eastern refinement.

There wasn’t a single reason for her to be running loose in the Idaho Territory. He knew one thing for sure; she wouldn’t be looking for work at Jubilee Joe’s or any of the other saloons dotting Main Street.

A grin caught him by surprise as he visualized the prim and proper Victoria Amory serving drinks at a local saloon. She’d probably present each glass of whiskey with a linen napkin and a severe warning about the moral dangers of intemperance.

The image of Victoria in a spangled red gown rose fully blown in Logan’s mind. The dress was low-cut, and short enough to show her knees. Her perky little breasts would be all but spilling out of the tight-fitting bodice and her ankles would be trim and well shaped. There would be a scattering of golden freckles across her creamy flesh, he was certain. Surely those impudent little spots wouldn’t stop at the high collar of her conservative green dress.

Logan swallowed, trying to curb his runaway imaginings. He couldn’t believe he was sitting next to this prissymannered female, seeing her in a flashy outfit that she’d probably rather be shot in than be seen wearing. It was the time he’d spent in the stockade, he assured himself, that was making his mind play tricks on him. That, and the fact that it had been a while since he’d been able to keep company with one of Trinity Falls’s cheerfully irreverent fancy women. Ever since Madison had become part of his life several months ago, he’d been reluctant to pursue his usual nighttime encounters with Cherry, Jasmine, or any of the other gals who didn’t demand a wedding ring in exchange for their favors.

That was definitely going to change when he returned to town. He would find a way to pick up the threads of his former life without tarnishing Madison’s world. Either that, or he was going to become a menace to decent women, because, like it or not, all he could do was think carnal thoughts about Victoria’s sensuously shaped mouth and her tidy little breasts and her gently flared hips and—

Lord, he was losing his mind. There was nothing the least bit appealing about the prudish woman. And he was going to keep repeating that small lie to himself all the way home.