Innocent Fire (9 page)

Bragg stopped whistling the moment he saw her. True to his word, he was holding a plump pheasant. Miranda had her back to him, and her long, thick tresses shielded her completely, but he knew she was naked. He could see she was washing herself furiously, no doubt rushing so he wouldn’t catch her in an immodest state. He stood frozen, his mind telling him to back away. He fought with himself, and was about to turn away and give her a little more time, when she turned to the side and began to scrub her arm.

It was then that he realized something was terribly wrong. He glimpsed a long, slim leg, the curve of her belly, one soft, high breast. Her skin wasn’t white, it was red—an angry red. He instantly realized she was rubbing handfuls of coarse sand on herself. From the vicious, frantic look she wore he saw that she was performing a kind of self-flagellation.

A cry of outrage came from his lips. Dropping the pheasant, he grabbed her hands to stop her from inflicting more pain on herself.

“No!” she screamed, wrenching free with a hysterical strength that took him completely by surprise. “No! No!” Before he knew it, her nails had raked down the side of his face, drawing blood.

He caught her wrists firmly. “Stop it!” he yelled. “Stop
it, Miranda, stop!” He shook her. She was twisting like a wild animal, panting and giving little cries, trying to kick him. They had both risen to their feet, and he shoved one leg between her thighs and wrapped the other behind her right leg, pinning her to him. “Stop it!”

Miranda froze against him and began to weep softly, her head falling limply against his chest. He relaxed his hold and lifted her to carry her to the blanket. Then he saw the extent of what she had done. Her skin was an angry red from her neck to her toes, even her breasts. And the insides of her knees were bloody. He felt sick. Her quiet weeping gave way to a moan, and he laid her gently down on the blanket. “Why, Miranda?” he said. “Why did you have to hurt yourself like this?”

“Chavez,” she moaned. “He touched me.”

Of course Bragg understood. He rose and went to his saddlebags. He knew she’d gone through them, although he didn’t know what she’d been looking for. He took the loincloth he carried as a spare blanket and laid it on top of her, covering her from her thighs to her breasts. He brought water back from the stream, and when he knelt at her feet, she had stopped crying, although tears glistened on her face.

“I’m going to clean up these blisters,” he told her evenly. He reached down and gently tried to move her legs apart.

“No,” she said, sitting up, holding the buckskin cloth over her breasts and trying to push his hand away. For once, she didn’t blush. “I’ll do it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said sharply. He tucked the loincloth between her thighs, ignoring her gasp. He was careful not to touch her womanhood, but his hand trembled, and he brushed her by accident. “You’re completely covered,” he said harshly, dismayed with himself once more. “Goddammit! Why didn’t you tell me you were getting blisters?”

“I didn’t know,” she whispered.

He studiously avoided her face, knowing that she was embarrassed. He was determined to clean her up and ignore his own involuntary desire. He bathed her legs and rubbed on grease containing healing herbs. He could feel
how tense she was at his touch, but he was glad that her fragile skin was no longer so red. He was furious with her for hurting herself.

“Miranda, I want you to put this all over your body.” He handed her the jar.

She gasped.

“I’m going to make a fire. I want you to do it. It’s healing,” he added, standing.

She stared at him, looking aghast.

“Everywhere, Miranda, and if you don’t do it, I will.” He started to turn, then put his hands on his hips, facing her. The thought had occurred to him that Chavez had probably hurt her while raping her. “Everywhere Chavez touched you,” he said. He looked right into her eyes. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

When she flushed, Bragg knew she understood. He knelt and made a small fire, all the while listening to her movements, as quiet as they were. He kept his back to her and began to prepare the pheasant. Finally, he said, “If you take off that damn loincloth it will be easier, Miranda.”

She gasped. She had left it on and was rubbing the grease onto her belly beneath the buckskin cloth. “You’re looking!”

“No, I just know you, that’s all,” he retorted. But he was pleased when he heard the sound of the soft material falling aside. It was hard to concentrate on plucking the pheasant, though. He had a very clear image in his mind of her stroking her own soft skin, massaging in the grease, and he was throbbing with untimely desire.

“I’m finished,” she said softly.

Bragg brought her his shirt. “Why don’t you put on the cloth too, as a skirt. You can fasten it with some vine.”

Miranda nodded.

Later, they ate in silence, Miranda wearing the loincloth as a skirt, with Bragg’s shirt tucked into it. Bragg saw that she had no appetite. He didn’t understand why she had seemed fine all day and was now suddenly so withdrawn. “You need to eat,” he said.

“I’m not hungry.” Her voice was barely audible.

“Please try,” he said, surprised again at the words that came unbidden to his mouth. The word
please
was com
pletely foreign to him. He was a man who took, not asked. He rose abruptly.

Of course she didn’t eat, and he wondered if she’d be nothing more than skin and bones by the time they got to John’s. With his back against a tree, he stared at the stars while she crawled beneath the single blanket they possessed.

It was cool in the mountains, but he could survive a blizzard with nothing but a loincloth if he had to. He sighed and closed his eyes, worrying about Miranda until sleep overtook him.

He was awakened by her cry of pain. He knew immediately that she was dreaming; her moans were anguished exactly like those he’d heard outside of Chavez’s tent. He went over to her and shook her gently. She was thrashing about restlessly, lost in her nightmare.

“No, please,” she moaned, her eyes flashing open.

He gave in to his urge to put his arms around her and sank down onto his side. “It’s me, Miranda. Bragg. You’re just dreaming, princess, just dreaming.”

“Ohhh,” she moaned, curling up hard against him.

Like the beast she had accused him of being, his body caught fire. He ignored it and held her gently, but she burrowed against him. “It was so real,” she cried. “I’m ruined, ruined…”

What could he say? “You have to put it all behind you,” he said, relishing the feel of her body pressing against him even as he tried to control himself. He shifted slightly so that she wouldn’t feel his body’s treacherous but unmistakable response to her closeness, her softness, her scent.

“I’m ruined,” she cried. “Oh, this is so silly! Can’t you just take me back to Natchez?” She was talking into his buckskin-clad chest. “John is just going to send me home anyway, after he finds out what Chavez did.”

Bragg was completely startled. “Miranda, John is in love with you. I can’t tell you he won’t care about what happened, but he will still want to marry you—gladly.” He grasped her shoulders and moved her away so he could look down into her face. In the moonlight, he could clearly make out her expression—and she was so close.

I’m lying in my bedroll with a woman, he thought derisively, a woman I can’t touch. Is that ever a first!

“He will?” Her eyes searched his, still glimmering with moisture.

“Absolutely.” He tried a smile but failed. Their position was beginning to torture him.

“But you don’t understand,” she said haltingly.

“I do.”

“No—Chavez touched me.”

“I know.”

Miranda shook her head. “He touched me! In—my—” She broke off.

“I know,” he said, a tremor overtaking him.

“I think he raped me,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

Bragg sat up, abruptly releasing her. “You think?” His mind was racing. How could she not know? Could an innocent, ignorant virgin not know when she was raped? Impossible! “Miranda? What do you mean, you think?”

She lay on her side and shook her head mutely.

He pulled her up into a sitting position. “Don’t you know?”

“No,” she whispered.

He sat there a moment, thoroughly confounded. There was no question in his mind that he was going to find out whether she had been raped. He didn’t for a moment stop to think that it was John’s concern, not his. “How did Chavez touch you, Miranda?” he asked bluntly.

She gasped, her eyes widening.

“Please, this is important,” he said evenly.

“With his hands,” she finally said, her voice barely audible. He was sure her face was crimson. “His fingers.”

Bragg stared. “Did he mate with you?”

Miranda gazed at him blankly. “I—I don’t know.”

“You said he hurt you. Did you bleed?”

She stared. “I don’t think so.”

Bragg cursed. “Miranda, did he put his rod in you?”

Her mouth fell open. “His—what? Where?”

Bragg stood. “His rod, dammit. Men have rods.” He pointed at his own evident bulge. Her eyes followed his hand, and she gasped.

“Christ,” Bragg said. “I take it the answer is no.”

She nodded mutely.

He took a deep breath, laughed shakily, and gazed down at her. “I think you’d better stop staring,” he said hoarsely.

Miranda uttered a horrified cry and fell onto her side, curling up with her back to him.

“Miranda, I think you should know, you’re still a virgin. I can’t believe any woman could be so ignorant,” he added, and walked down to the creek.

Miranda had never felt so completely alone in her life.

She lay huddled in the bedroll, alone, her mind overwhelmed with everything she had found out. She was still a virgin. John wouldn’t send her back.

She could remember, now, how Chavez had felt when he had been lying against her back. She remembered very clearly the rodlike thing pressing against her buttocks. She flushed in the darkness at the image of Bragg pointing to himself—at the bulge she had seen. She still wasn’t sure exactly how the act of mating was accomplished.

If John didn’t send her back, he was going to do things to her with that male part of him. It would be much, much worse than what Chavez had done. She stifled an anguished moan. Why wouldn’t he send her home? Why?

Miranda closed her eyes tightly. Her loneliness overwhelmed her. She had no one to turn to—no one to help her face this marriage to a complete stranger, a barbaric Texan. No one to ask questions of…no one…no one…

She felt tears, those endless tears, starting again. “Oh, why can’t I go home?” she whispered to herself. “
Why
?”

She hadn’t known where Bragg was, nor did she hear him approach until she felt his strong, warm hand on her shoulder. “Don’t cry,” he said gruffly.

“I want to go home,” she said brokenly, fighting the urge to weep.

He stroked her shoulder through the blanket, but she didn’t turn. “I know,” he said finally. “I’m sorry.”

“I hate Texas.” Miranda sobbed, giving in to her fear and anguish.

“Miranda, please don’t cry,” he said, distress in his voice. He didn’t know what to do. She was so fragile, so young, so vulnerable. He had never faced a woman’s tears before. His mother, an Apache, had never cried, not even when his father had slapped her for some wrongdoing. His wife, now dead, had never cried either, or at least not in front of him. Even after he had found her, sold to a brothel by the Comanche, she had not cried, not even for their son…. For some reason, at that very moment, Bragg felt like crying with Miranda. From deep inside, the long-buried grief of his life welled up and threatened to burst.

He had never cried. Although Apache men did cry when in mourning, Bragg’s white father had told him at an early age that crying was a womanly weakness—he would not stand to see a son of his cry. Even the time he’d been badly hurt as a boy, Bragg had learned to control himself—a lesson he would carry with him forever. As a young boy growing up, he had thought his father a giant among men, a god.

Bragg knelt helplessly by Miranda, touching her shoulder gently. “You’re not alone, Miranda,” he tried. “I’m here.”

“Maman is dead,” she wept. “Aunt Elizabeth is dead. Papa hates me. The sisters are in France. I’m marrying a man who won’t be able to bear the sight of me, not after…after…”

“John isn’t like that.” Bragg said quietly, his voice soothing. He felt very tense with the unmanly, commiserating grief he was feeling as he struggled over whether to hold her or not. “And you can always turn to me, Miranda, always.”

She rolled over to face him, then sat up and wiped away her tears. Her face was almost on a level with his, and their knees touched. He patted her shoulder. She was
looking at him with such trust, and it yanked at him, disturbed him. “Why?”

“I feel responsible,” he said, and shrugged. He started to rise, but she grabbed his shirt. Startled, he felt his heart start to hammer and sank back down by her side.

Miranda stared at him, wet her lips, then dropped her hands. “Are you sure?”

He couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about. He now knew that she wet her lips in that unconscious, sensuous way when she was nervous. Still, it didn’t lessen the impact on his senses. He had a brief fantasy of her running her tiny pink tongue over his lips, probing past his teeth. “Sure of what?” His voice was hoarse. Any other woman would have known how aroused he was becoming.

“That John won’t despise me.” She searched his face for the truth.

“I know he won’t,” Bragg told her, coming back to reality with difficulty. “What happened wasn’t your fault, it was mine.”

Miranda started. “It wasn’t your fault,” she protested.

He held up his hand. “I refuse to discuss it.”

She sighed, rubbing her eyes with a childish gesture.

“We have a long day tomorrow,” Bragg said softly, touched despite himself. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”

He stood and turned his back to her, hoping she wouldn’t cry herself to sleep and hating the feeling of vulnerability she aroused in him.