The Ruination of Essie Sparks (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 2) (18 page)

They ate a rabbit stew for dinner with flavors Essie had never tasted before. When night fell again, she curled up beside him under the buffalo robe, leaning against his warmth. He stirred long enough to slip his arm around her and pull her close to him. She fell asleep that way again, tucked into the curve of him.

* * *

Sometime later, instinct jerked Cade awake. It took him more than a moment to drag himself out of the nightmare he'd been having and realize where he was.

His arm tightened around the woman whose back rested against his chest. She was still sleeping, tucked against him like she'd been designed to fit there. Her chest rose and fell beneath his arm in a steady, even way that calmed the sudden plunge of his heartbeat.

His dream came back to him in fragments, but the bristling tug of a rope around his neck lingered there in the dark. He believed in dreams, as most Cheyenne did. But if it was a warning of things to come, then so be it. At least for the moment they were safe.

How long had he been sleeping? It felt like days. He had a memory of rain lashing the tepee, but now the night was silent except for the crickets chirping outside and the soft crackle of the fire beside them.

His skin was cool and dry. Bless Walks Along Woman and her medicine. He felt almost human again. Weak and sore, but better.

Looking up toward the smoke hole in the tepee, he caught glimpses of stars.

A hard rain would have washed away their trail if they were lucky.

Lucky. A strange word to use, considering not much had gone their way since this whole thing had begun. Yet here they were, both still alive. An ending even he could not have predicted a few days ago.

How had they come to this? One minute she'd been fighting him, and the next, she was sleeping willingly in his arms. She was exhausted, as he was. But he was not fool enough to think it was motivated by anything more than necessity.

He turned back to her, pressing his nose against her hair. It was something he'd unwittingly done many times over the last few days. Though the lingering scent of soap had worn off sometime during their plunges through trees, rivers and death-defying escapes, that essence of her that had drawn him that first morning was undiminished. He felt himself tighten with want.

Which was all wrong. Even he recognized this. Take away the circumstances they found themselves in and she was like every other white woman he'd ever known. If they'd met on the street, she would have snubbed him. Walked past him. Even now, he supposed.

But she would have lingered in his mind on any day. For more than a day, though he had no right to imagine even friendship with her after what he'd put her through.

He hadn't planned to take her. Reckless decisions were his trademark, according to his father. But this one was, perhaps, the most reckless of his life, second only to the decision he'd made to liberate his nephew in the first place.

He slid his hand up and rested it on her ribs. She felt small beneath his palm. There was no changing who and what he was. And he would never be enough for a woman like her. But it didn't change the fact that he wanted her. Wanted her like he'd never wanted another woman.

Probably since the first moment he saw her. Despite everything he knew and didn't know about her, she was a light that drew him. A light that reached into his darkness. And despite the hot bolt of desire that poured through him whenever she was close, and even now, pressed against him, the imaginings of something more itched the back of his mind. More of what, even he couldn't articulate yet.

Maybe that bullet had knocked something loose inside him. He had no business with this woman. But the past few days had nothing to do with good sense. He should hate her and she should hate him. But he admired her when she fought him and argued and stood her ground. When she'd stayed with him, back in the woods, when she could have abandoned him.

Firelight flickered nearby, glimmering in her red hair. He breathed in her scent again. Smoke and rain and... Essie.

If he had any sense, he would take her back and make sure he never came within a mile of her again. God knew what would happen if he did.

Chapter 11

In the morning, Cade was up and gone when she woke. The others were nowhere to be seen either. Suddenly frightened that he'd left her, she dressed quickly and stepped outside the tepee. A soupy fog still lingered along the backs of the horses standing tied beneath the trees. A hunting party was readying to leave. Beside them, she was relieved to find Cade, sitting on a log near the creek with his leg outstretched, in conversation with several men of the band.

She felt barely decent, in a vagabond sort of way, in his long shirt and her trail-muddied petticoats—bare feet and all. So she wrapped herself in the blanket again.

Fragrant wood smoke rose from every tepee and several large dogs wandered camp, looking for scraps. On a much smaller scale, this camp might have been any camp twenty years ago, before her kind had routed the Cheyenne from their territory. The place seemed orderly and peaceful, even, despite the armed guards perched on lookouts on rocks high above them. But the impoverished band had left the reservation and come into the mountains to hunt. Their people were still half-starving down below with the game wrung out of the Yellowstone Valley like water from a wet rag. The buffalo, antelope and deer were nearly all gone. The wolves decimated whatever was left and the Cheyenne were forced to settle with the remainder. A bitter pill to swallow after so many bitter pills.

Some, she'd heard, had begun farming, homesteading reservation land to feed themselves. She supposed this small hunting party was not the only one up in these mountains, but if they were caught off the reservation, there would be consequences she hardly wanted to imagine.

In the light of day, she counted four tepees, eight men and a handful of women. A working camp; there were no children here. Essie headed toward Cade. The memory of him holding her last night wound around her like a warm breath of air. She'd woken once or twice in the night, her backside nestled against the curve of his belly, his arms around her. She'd felt safe. Impossibly safe, in the arms of the man who'd stolen her. A man as at home in an Indian camp as the buffalo robe they slept on. She couldn't quite wrap her mind around the change that had happened between them, but seeing him now across camp, talking to the others—looking handsome and dangerous and completely... completely himself—stirred something thrilling inside her. Something she was quite sure she'd never felt before.

She made it only halfway across the camp before she felt a hand on her arm. It was Walks Along Woman, who spoke to her in Cheyenne, then held out a pair of worn, soft-looking moccasins.

Essie stared down at them in surprise. "For me?"

The older woman shoved them into her hands.

"I don't know what to... Thank you.
Hahóo
," Essie said, accepting them from her. "Very much."

The woman nodded curtly and, in spite of herself, allowed her mouth to twitch with a smile. As she walked away, Essie admired the soft moccasins. They were not new. They were worn, well used, cut from deerskin, and plainly decorated with beading of blue and green across the top. Hours of work had gone into them once upon a time and it wasn't as if this band had anything to spare. That included shoes. But Walks Along had simply given them to her because she had none.

Hugging them to her chest, she glanced around the camp to find the younger girl from two nights ago, who'd taken Cade's horse, staring at her now. After getting caught looking, the girl glanced Cade's way, then stalked off in the other direction. Essie sighed. She wanted to tell the girl there was nothing to be jealous of between her and Cade, but it would do no good. She was here as Cade's woman, a pretense she needed to keep up.

There was a creek running through the canyon, not far from the camp, and Essie walked there to wash her feet before putting on the shoes. Her feet were a mess, with cuts and bruises all over them. She looked like she'd run a footrace through a briar patch.

"Morning," Cade said, appearing in the clearing nearby, startling her. He looked better. Still favoring his leg as he walked, but better.

"I woke and wasn't sure where you'd gone," she said. "How are you feeling?"

"Human again. I lost a day, I hear. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You needed to rest. I'm glad you're still with us."

He tipped his head with a smile. "Did Walks Along Woman give you those?"

She nodded. "I don't know why she would do that for me."

"Because you needed them. That's how it works here."

"Their generosity shames me."

He sat down beside her, easing his leg gingerly in front of him. "You would do the same for them."

"Would I?" She lowered her feet into the chilly water and rubbed the tender bruises with her fingers. A cloud of dirt muddied the crystalline water. "I'm not sure I would have before"—she lifted her gaze to meet his—"before we met. I would have been afraid. Like I was afraid of you."

"I gave you reason." Beside them, the creek ruffled by over buried stones and fallen branches, glimmering in the early morning light. "What about now?"

"Now?" She gave a quiet laugh. "I think I will never be that girl again. The one you stole in the middle of the night."

He studied her hands for a long moment before turning to stare into the creek. "I must take you back."

An inexplicable sort of disappointment knifed through her. Disappointment which made no logical sense. Of course she should be relieved he was taking her back. Of course she was. She blinked up at him. "I know. I suppose it will relieve you to be rid of me at last."

He didn't reply, but merely stared out over the water, as if his thoughts were already elsewhere.

"At least you could lie," she muttered before turning her attention to her feet in the cold, clear water.

"I could," he said, "but I won't. I won't be relieved. But it's what must be."

She exhaled a sharp breath. "Do you find it odd that we know each other so little after all we've been through?"

He frowned, but didn't answer.

"Tell me something about yourself," she said softly.

"What?"

"Something you've told no one else."

"Why?"

"It isn't too much to ask, is it? Considering."

"And if I do?"

She shrugged. "Then I will, in turn, tell you something. If you want."

"I am not that interesting."

She laughed.

"That's funny?" he asked in all seriousness.

She straightened her expression. "I was just imagining what my old friends back in Baltimore would say if they heard you say that. You would, by far, qualify as the most interesting man any of them would ever meet. Yet they would be shocked to their very cores if they could see me in your company."

A frown pulled at his brow and a muscle worked in his jaw. "I am sure they would."

"No, I don't mean that," she said, touching his arm. "I only mean that my life in Baltimore was exceedingly safe. Or so I thought. Even the man I married, I thought was safe. It turned out to be quite the opposite. So, being out here in the wilds of Montana Territory wearing nothing but my... well,
unmentionables
and your shirt, with you... well, no one could have conceived it for me. Which is why, sometimes, our expectation for our own life is the very thing that keeps us from who we might become, because we cannot see the open doors for the walls we erect around ourselves. Much less walk through them."

"There are no open doors here, Essie. Not with me. And you would do well to keep those walls intact."

She wouldn't argue this with him. Not now. "Whatever the outcome of this," she said softly, turning away from him, "I've decided I won't regret it. Not a minute of it."

"Not the kidnapping? Or the blisters on your feet? Not the pain in your backside or the days spent running with the likes of me?" When she shook her head, a disbelieving smile tipped one corner of his mouth. "You are a puzzle, Essie Sparks."

"No more than you. So will you? Tell me one thing?"

He lifted a small, flat stone from the riverbank and skipped it across the water. "What do you want to know?"

She rubbed her foot thoughtfully, her fingers numb in the cold water. "Anything." But her eyes drifted to the scar on his cheek before she checked the impulse to ask about it.