Rexanne Becnel (4 page)

“Jerusalem!” she swore under her breath as she struggled to keep her balance. She leaned on the slender whip, but it, too, sank in the mire. “Botheration!” she cried, for she knew she was going to fall right on her face in the mess. “Eenie—come here, Eenie!”

Such a fruitless cry for help. As if an ox would come to her aid.

To Abby’s surprise, however, a large animal did move right up beside her. Before she quite realized what was happening, a pair of hands reached down and plucked her effortlessly from the thick mud. To her complete amazement, instead of finding herself facedown in the slime, she was sitting crosswise on a tall gray horse, in the lap of a dusty man she’d never seen before.

“If you’d sunk any farther, ma’am, you’d have soon been in China.”

And so she would have, Abby realized gratefully. But though the man had saved her from one predicament, finding herself now in such an intimate embrace, and with someone she did not know, presented her with another, even worse dilemma.

Self-consciously she stared up at him, preparing to thank him while wondering at the same time how she was to make a graceful retreat. But her frantic thoughts stilled when she met his amused gaze.

He had the face of an angel, was her very first thought. A dark, thoroughly male angel. Though grimy with trail dust and sporting a shadow of a beard, the strong lines of his face were unmistakable. Then he smiled at her, and she amended her original opinion. His was the smile of a fallen angel. Sure. Easy. Seductive.

Her stomach gave an odd sort of lurch. If only the good Reverend Harrison had such a smile—

Abby abruptly drew herself up, aghast at such an unseemly thought. “If you would put me down,” she muttered, a bit too ungraciously considering the aid he’d extended her. She leaned away from him, readying herself to leap down from her high perch. But the horse swung around, its ears cocked forward in the direction of the water. Picking its way cautiously, it moved nearer the river, then lowered its head to drink.

“Be careful, miss. You might fall.” So saying, the man pulled her nearer, holding her altogether too boldly, with one large hand around her waist.

For a moment speech fled her. A pair of hard-muscled thighs pressed against her legs and buttocks, and the wide wall of his chest seemed to hug her back. With his arms circling her, she might as well have been in an intimate embrace with this stranger. Her face burned scarlet at the very idea.

“If you could just … just put me down,” she choked the words out.

“Surely not here.” He pushed his hat back on his head and peered at her more closely. “Anyway, what’s a woman doing driving oxen? Where’s your husband?”

“I don’t—” She broke off as common sense finally set it. “My
father
had to go up to the fort. But he’ll be back any moment. And he would be most outdone should he find me in this position,” she finished a little breathlessly.

To her vast confusion he only laughed. “Well, we surely can’t have him outdone, can we?” With a slight movement of his knee he turned the horse from its thirsty drink. Once they were on firm footing, she scrambled down from her seat and turned to face him.

“Thank you,” she mumbled, though a part of her knew he’d taken advantage of her momentary distress. She backed away another pace, but her eyes never left him. Up close she’d been conscious of his hard body, pressed so familiarly against her own. Now, however, with a little distance between them, she saw so much more. He was a big man, on a big horse, dressed as any other rider on the trail might be. But there were subtle differences.

The slight tilt of his wide-brimmed slouch hat. The width of his shoulders beneath his shirt. The way the damp cotton outlined his chest and arms. Some instinctive warning signal started her heart to racing as her eyes swept over him. He wore a gun on his hip and two rifle scabbards on his saddle, and he sat his horse like one born to it.

He was no farmer, she decided on the instant.

Then his eyes slid slowly over her, the same sort of inspection she’d given him, and her breath caught in her chest.

She’d been looked at by men before. The trail was filled with men traveling alone. Hard men. Men her father took great pains to shield her from. When they stared too boldly, however, she felt nothing but distaste—and a faint feeling of uncleanliness.

But this man …

Though she had even more reason to be offended by his stare—after all, he’d clasped her against him in the most intimate manner—she felt more embarrassment than anything else. Her dress was filthy, her hair bedraggled. And her face and nails …

In the midst of her horrified cataloguing of her awful appearance, his grin widened. “May I escort you home?”

“That … that won’t be necessary,” Abby answered, struggling to regain her composure. “I’ve the oxen to tend.”

He nodded slightly, but his gaze never wavered. “You and your father heading to the Oregon Territory?”

“Yes.”

“Just the two of you?”

There was something in his eyes when he spoke, something that suddenly made her wary. “I’ve got to be going.” She turned toward the oxen, and retrieving the willow whip, she carefully stepped nearer to them, just touching Eenie’s shoulder.

“What’s your name?” the man called from behind her. When she didn’t respond, he laughed low in his throat. “I’ve been on the trail too long, it appears. I’ve forgotten my manners. I hope you’ll accept my apology.”

At that she chanced a sidelong glance at him. He swept his black slouch hat from his head and gave a good approximation of a bow from the saddle. “May I present myself. I’m Tanner McKnight. At your service, Miss … Miss …”

Abby straightened up when he removed his hat, and watched in fascination the dark fall of his hair across his brow. His hair was black, as were his eyes. No, his eyes were blue, only a very dark, midnight blue. His brows were a dark slash across a strong, tanned face, lean and square-jawed. His nose was straight, and his lips … the way his lips curved as he stared at her made her heart speed up. Only when he swept his hair back and replaced his hat on his head was she able to drag her eyes away.

“I’m Miss … Miss Morgan,” she finally answered, remembering only at the last second not to give him her real name.

“Miss Morgan.” He said the name slowly, huskily, as if testing it out. And all the while he continued to study her with his compelling midnight eyes.

Where their disturbing conversation might have led, she did not get to find out, for Victor Lewis arrived at that moment, driving his two mules and four oxen. He rode his saddle mount right up to Abby, placing himself between her and her disquieting rescuer. “Is everything all right here?” he muttered for her ears only.

“Oh, yes. Yes,” she replied a little too brightly. A part of her was inordinately relieved by Victor’s appearance. But another side of her was still curious about the man. About Tanner McKnight. “Be careful of all that mud,” she added unnecessarily.

Victor nodded and edged past her toward the sluggish waters of the Platte. Abby touched Eenie again with her whip, starting him and the others in the direction of the wagon train’s community grazing area. Only when she was what seemed a safe distance away did she look back for the stranger, but he was gone. She saw him in the distance cantering away. He was hard to miss, sitting so erect on his tall gray horse. He rode in the direction of the fort, toward the ramshackle assemblage of sod buildings that was the last outpost of civilization for at least the next month.

For a moment she saw once more that dark, sardonic face, and she couldn’t help feeling her initial reaction was right. His was the beautiful, knowing visage of one of the fallen angels, and she was both frightened and fascinated by him. She knew she should avoid him at all costs even as she wondered if she would ever see him again.

She drove Eenie forward, and the other three oxen followed. But Abby’s mind was not concerned with the great, lumbering beasts. Instead she debated over and over whether the man was traveling east or west.

A
BBY’S MIND SIMPLY WOULD
not stay focused on Reverend Harrison’s sermon.

“… with us in our hour of greatest need. Most especially,” he added, his voice dropping from its thundering roll to an imploring whisper. “Most especially address the needs of our sister in the faith, Rebecca Godwin, who was attacked so cruelly yesterday.”

All around her, people nodded and leaned forward, clutching the prayer books they kept so well protected in waterproof caskets in their wagons. Her father sat beside her, concentrating on his prayers. But he must have noted her lack of focus, for he gave her a sharp but unobtrusive nudge.

Abby immediately bowed her head and concentrated on her own prayer book. How could she be so absent-minded when tragedy lay all around them? Graves along the trail. Rumors abounding that cholera had broken out ahead of them. And now a young girl on their wagon train had been attacked. Had someone not come along and frightened the thug away, who knows what the villain might have done to the twelve-year-old girl.

But despite her best intentions at prayer, Abby’s mind was completely uncooperative. The same inappropriate thought kept surfacing. Was the man from yesterday attending services also?

She managed to restrain herself from peering over her shoulder to see. As always her father had insisted on arriving early for Sunday-morning services and had seated them just below the pulpit.

Not that it was much of a pulpit. Reverend Harrison stood behind an upended crate, his Bible and notes laid out on a bedsheet that had been draped over the rough wood. The capricious wind constantly ruffled the pages of his book, and twice he’d lost his place. Yet all things considered, Abby thought today’s place of worship the finest sort of church to be found. God’s sweeping blue heavens above them; His living green carpet beneath their feet. The sweetest of His music—a mockingbird’s trill—to serenade them.

Abby smiled to herself, forgetting for a moment the reverend, the tribulations of the trail, and even yesterday’s stranger. How lovely this land was, green and rolling, with more varieties of birds than she’d ever seen. And yet Oregon was said to be even finer. Lush. Fertile. At times like these she truly relished the journey they’d so precipitously undertaken.

“… exhort you to embrace your fellow travelers, your brothers and sisters. See to them and their needs, for they are the children of your Father, and His love will descend on you a hundredfold.”

Abby joined in singing the final hymn, though an uncomfortable blush stained her cheeks when she recognized the selection. It was “Holy, Holy, Holy,” her favorite hymn. She’d revealed as much to Reverend Harrison just the other day, and the fact that he had selected it for this morning’s service, and moreover was staring straight at her as he sang, was not in the least lost on her.

She made a point, during the milling pleasantries after the services, to dodge both her father and the reverend. She was simply not in the mood. Not that it would do much good, she knew. Her father undoubtedly would invite the reverend to share the midday meal with them. At this rate he would soon have her washing the man’s clothes! All the wifely chores and none of the—

Her mind veered away from that thought. What
was
her perverse fascination these days with the dealings between husbands and wives? She frowned, and hurried away from the gathering, struggling to bury her untoward feelings in the comforting rote of prayer.

“Our Father who art in heaven …”

She hadn’t gone even half the way toward their camp when all at once the oddest shiver coursed down her spine. She paused in her purposeful departure from the Sunday meeting, and it was then she spied him. He stood beside a small canvas tent, currying his horse. But he was staring straight at her.

At once all the inappropriate feelings she always managed to keep suppressed rose up inside her. Her heart thumped madly while the most disturbing knot curled up deep in her belly.

He smiled at her—that same smile, wicked and beckoning, as if they shared some secret—and Abby actually stopped breathing. The pleasures of marriage—once more that wanton thought popped into her mind. The reverend was good husband material, but this man … this man made a woman think the most sinful sorts of things.

Shocked by her thoughts, knowing an unmarried woman was wrong to think such things, Abby started to turn away. But his low, compelling voice halted her.

“Good morning, Miss Morgan.”

She stood there, indecisive as she seldom ever was. Her father would not want her to speak to this man. She knew that for a certainty. But she seemed unable to resist. Slowly she turned.

“Good morning. Mr. McKnight.” She added his name in a voice gone breathless.

Their eyes locked across the short stretch of dirt and grass between them. At least she looked presentable this time, she thought. Her hair was neatly coiffed. She had on her best bonnet, the one she’d just added new ruffles and ribbons to. She’d brushed her plain reefer jacket until it appeared almost as good as new, and wore it over her favorite blue gored skirt.

By contrast he wore neither hat nor coat. She’d known yesterday that he was a big man, but seeing him now—his legs long and lean beneath his black nankeen trousers, his shoulders so wide that his shirt pulled across them—she felt tiny and helpless, not at all her normal self.

His hair hung nearly to his shoulders, black as pitch, yet gleaming in the bright morning sunlight. It looked almost too silky to belong to a man.

Despite the brisk spring winds, he had his sleeves rolled up as he worked. How strong his forearms looked with their light sprinkling of dark hair. Was his chest also—

She squelched that thought with a gulp. Whatever was wrong with her these days? She clutched her prayer book as if it were her only hope. “Well. A good day to you, then.”

“Wait. Wait, don’t run off so fast.” He tossed the brush down and gave his horse a pat on the neck. Then he grinned, and her composure slipped another notch. “Come say hello to Mac.”

“Mac?”

“My horse. And over there.” He gestured to another sturdy animal nosing around for the tenderest grass shoots. “That’s Tulip.”