Beloved Outcast

Chapter Four

The man before Victoria was unlike any she’d ever seen. He filled her entire field of vision and, with every foot he drew closer, seemed to grow in stature. Her mouth went dry, and she took a stumbling step back.

The morning breeze ruffled the tattered remnants of a white shirt that, despite its torn state, managed to adhere to his muscular shoulders. She had never seen an uncovered male chest before, and thus was unprepared for the shocking sight of the lush pelt of black hair that grazed his bared flesh. Goodness, surely no American Indian roaming the western plains could appear more awesomely proportioned than Logan Youngblood.

Or more distressingly primitive.

“Where’s the kid?”

The gruff question jerked her gaze from his almost naked torso to a dark pair of glittering eyes. She swallowed. The man looked as if he’d been pummeled by an angry mob. His blackened right eye was almost swollen shut. He also sported a bruised, whiskered jaw and a split bottom lip.

The single thought that danced in her head was that, if she hadn’t released the devil himself from the stockade, she’d surely freed one of his henchmen to murder, plunder and pillage.

“The—the kid?” she repeated stupidly.

He took another step forward. She tipped her head back to keep his daunting visage in view.

“The one I’ve been talking to since last night.”

“I told you I wasn’t a child,” she answered, hearing the wobble in her voice and regretting it.

His savage gaze shriveled to a blistering slit. “You mean all this time I’ve been talking to you? A female?”

The derisive way he pronounced “female” caused a hot flush to singe her cheeks. She stood taller, digging for a measure of her normal pluck. “I should think that would be obvious to anyone of reasonable intelligence.”

Usually she didn’t approve of cutting remarks designed to wound another’s sensibilities. But in Mr. Youngblood’s case, she felt justified in making an exception. Clearly the criminal possessed no sensibilities with which to concern herself.

His glare was of sufficient scorching intensity to fry a buckwheat biscuit without benefit of fire.

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true.” Had his confinement addled his senses, making him incapable of grasping that she had only pretended to be of the male gender? “I can assure you I am traveling alone. There is no one with me, least of all a child.”

She couldn’t make her explanation any simpler.

His good eye, the one that wasn’t fiercely swollen, studied her balefully. “Why?”

“Why what?” She assessed the challenge of getting the confused man to Trinity Falls. Of course, there was a positive side to his apparent simplemindedness. It was possible that he was mistaken about the Indians being on the warpath. “Are you wondering why I wanted you to think you were talking to a man?”

He shook his head, then winced. “I don’t give a damn about your theatrics. I want to know why you’re alone.”

“Oh, that.” She glanced from his ruthless stare. She hated admitting to this disreputable stranger that she’d been banished from the wagon train. She attempted a reassuring smile. “I don’t have the plague, if that’s worrying you.”

A grave expression settled over his battered features. “Were you attacked?”

Victoria’s thoughts immediately went to her late-night mishap with Hyrum Dodson, the unfortunate discharge of her rifle, and his piercing howl as he’d hopped about on one foot while trying to ascertain the damage to his other one. “I wouldn’t call it an ‘attack’ so much as a misunderstanding.”

Mr. Youngblood’s good eye narrowed. “Misunderstanding?”

“You see, I thought a bear was invading my wagon.”

Confusion seemed to sweep his countenance. “A bear?”

The man really was limited in his reasoning abilities. She regretted her earlier cutting remark about anyone of reasonable intelligence being able to comprehend her explanations.

But she hadn’t known that Logan Youngblood was blighted by limited mental prowess. Her gaze made a quick foray across his virile physique. What a pity that his physical endowments were not matched by an equally keen intellect. Had his lack of mental fortitude led to an association with unsavory men who’d introduced him to a life of crime?

“Of course, as it turned out, there really wasn’t a bear.” She carefully enunciated each word so that he could grasp what had happened. “But I had no way of knowing that at the time, did I?”

His cracked lips parted, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he seemed to regard her with a kind of morbid fascination.

Since leaving Boston, Victoria had become familiar with that look. As usual in her encounters with Western men, she was mystified as to why he had difficulty understanding her.

“The point is, I didn’t mean to hurt Mr. Dodson. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“How did you. hurt him?”

She sighed. “I shot him.”

Mr. Youngblood retreated a step. “You what?”

“I heard something outside my wagon in the wee hours of the morning. The day before, one of the men mentioned seeing a black bear in the vicinity. He warned us to be on the lookout.”

“Couldn’t you tell the difference between a man and a bear?”

“It was dark.”

Mr. Youngblood’s good eye blinked spasmodically. “Lady, you’re the one who should be locked up.”

At the reminder of how she’d found the battered Logan Youngblood, Victoria’s gaze drifted to the stockade. “I didn’t mortally wound Mr. Dodson. I just winged him.”

“Where?”

“Does it really matter?”

“I’m sure it did to him,” Youngblood countered.

“His foot.”

“What were you aiming for?”

She licked her lips, not at all liking the feeling that she’d lost control of their conversation. If anyone ought to be answering questions, it was him. He was the one who’d been incarcerated.

Strictly speaking, even if he wasn’t behind bars, he was still a prisoner. To be more specific, he was her prisoner. And, as she saw it, she was duty-bound to escort him to Trinity Falls to answer for his ill deeds.

“Everything happened so quickly, I didn’t really have time to aim at anything in particular.” She straightened. “But we seem to have strayed from the central topic.”

“So they kicked you off the wagon train for shooting one of its members?” he asked grimly, ignoring her efforts to get their discussion on track.

“Oh, no, they just took away my rifle for that.”

The nervous tic quickened. “Then what happened? I mean, other than the wagon train being attacked and everyone but you being killed, I can’t think of a single reason for you to have been separated from the others.”

“Of course you can’t,” she conceded, striving for the patience one used when dealing with a child. The trouble was, she hadn’t been around that many children.

“Let me guess,” he interjected softly. “They tossed you off the train because you drove them crazy with your damned riddles.”

She’d heard head injuries caused confusion. Was that why he seemed incapable of understanding the simplest of concepts? “How many blows to the head did you receive?”

Logan bit back an oath. Swearing at the contrary female who’d released him from the stockade would do no earthly good. He raked a hand through his hair. The subsequent flash of pain made him suck in his breath.

He looked toward the morning sun. Time was running out for them. They needed to leave the fort. “Look, lady, I—”

“My name is Miss Amory,” she told him in that dainty, haughty voice of hers.

“Which will make no difference to an Indian with justice on his mind.”

Her greenish eyes widened. “Justice?”

“The red man’s kind of justice. It’s swift and hard.”

She looked over her shoulder, as if expecting an arrow to come flying at her. Framed by a splash of yellow sunlight, she appeared achingly vulnerable. A slim woman, with reddish hair that was in the process of escaping its anchoring pins.

There was little logic to it, but he felt compelled to protect the foolish creature.

“We need to be on our way,” he repeated.

“I wasn’t the one asking all the questions.”

He scowled. Irritating female.

He would find out later how she’d become separated from the wagon train. He was sure that when he did, he’d learn she was responsible for her predicament. As his gaze dropped to the pert curve of her breasts and the slight fullness of her hips, outlined by her dusty dark green dress, there was something else he was sure of. Mr. Dodson with the shot foot had been prowling around Miss Amory’s wagon with mischief on his mind.

The kind of mischief that had been going on since Eve had plucked that forbidden apple from its branch and offered it to Adam. The kind of mischief that would probably shock this red-haired Eastern woman to the soles of her sensible little black walking shoes.

Again he was struck by how vulnerable she appeared in her makeshift campsite in the middle of the abandoned fort. He turned again to the six placid oxen munching on the loose hay scattered around them. “I’ll hitch the wagon.”

“I’ve been responsible for my team since leaving Independence, and I’m fully capable of attending to them now.”

Miss Amory’s raised voice halted him in his tracks. He turned on his heel and glared at the contrary woman. “Are you turning down my help?”

“No, but I don’t need a felon ordering me about. While we’re on the subject, there’s something else we need to clear up.”

Her casual use of the word felon made Logan yearn to shake her. Instead, he swallowed his anger. He didn’t have time to trade insults with Miss Amory, not with warring tribes of Blackfeet and Shoshones on the verge of attacking.

Later, he promised himself, he would delight in making this overbearing woman take back every insult she’d heaped upon him.

“Do you want to live or die, Miss Amory?”

Her slender hand shot to the bodice of her simple dress. “Are—are you threatening me?”

“Hell no, but we’re in a tough spot and need to move.”

“So you keep telling me.”

He closed the eye that wasn’t swollen shut and prayed for patience. “They’re still out there.”

“I’m aware of that. But surely we have enough time to establish our…er…chain of command, as I believe it’s called.”

Feeling not one iota of increased patience, Logan opened his eye. He felt downright mean and put-upon. He’d ridden to the fort to deliver Night Wolf’s warning. His reward for leaving the safety of Trinity Falls had been a nasty showdown with Windham, a brutal beating, and being left to die.

Almost miraculously, he’d been freed. But, evidently, fate still wasn’t done having a laugh at his expense, because his rescuer was the craziest female he’d ever had the misfortune to meet. And something about her well-bred, faintly censorious voice grated on his already savaged nerves.

His gaze narrowed. A shot of pain radiated from his right eye. “Where are you from, Miss Amory?”

“I hardly think that’s relevant.”

“Boston, right?”

“Not that it matters, but yes, that is my hometown.”

He flinched. He should have known. Few good things had happened to him in Boston, which was why he’d left. As far as he was concerned, it was the hypocrisy capital of America, a place where men and women cared too much about appearances and not enough about integrity. It was where trust and loyalty fell before expediency and selfish desire.

“From your dour expression, I gather Boston is not one of your favorite places,” Miss Amory observed.

Nothing like a bit of understatement. “You might say that.”

“But where I come from hasn’t really anything to do with our present situation.”

She was speaking slowly again, as if she thought he were having trouble understanding her. Which he was, of course. But his lack of understanding had nothing to do with how fast or slowly she spoke. It was her confusing habit of talking in circles that made his head throb with more than the pain of the beating he’d survived.

Logan’s glance flicked to the stockade. He felt nostalgic about his internment there. While inside its dark interior, he hadn’t been forced to deal with a flame-haired harpy.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Stop.”

She licked her damnably soft lips. “What is it, precisely, that you wish for me to stop doing?”

“Addressing me as if I were some kind of half-wit.”

Her already rosy cheeks flushed a brighter shade of pink.

Was that it? Did she really think he was dim-witted?

Indignation tore through Logan. That this capricious female considered herself superior to him was the last straw. Her words kept darting off in a dozen different directions. Trying to speak with her was like carrying on a conversation with a bundle of colorful butterflies.

“There’s no need to be sensitive about it.” Her Boston accent was crisp and officious. “Not everyone can boast a keen intellect.”

Astonishment popped the bubble of anger that had built within Logan. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so soundly offended. Not even Windham, with his ridiculous claim about Logan bedding his wife, had struck such a deep blow.

Logan found he disliked having his intelligence insulted more than he disliked having his honor impugned. A man could redeem his honor in a fair fight. There was no quick and final way, however, to convince this green-eyed witch that he was her intellectual equal. He told himself it didn’t matter what she thought.

“Now, about who’s in charge here,” she continued, as if she hadn’t just mortally insulted him. “As it’s my wagon, and my team, and you are now in my custody, I should be the one to decide who does what.”

“All right,” he managed to say through his clenched jaw, not wanting to waste time arguing.

She smiled. “Why don’t you go ahead and load the wagon, then, and I’ll.”

He said nothing, contenting himself with images of her being bound and gagged and tossed into the back of her wagon.

She gestured toward a row of privies. “Well, you know…”

He maintained his stoic silence.

Only after she left did Logan let out the breath he’d been holding. He stalked toward the team, each step making his ribs ache. Little Miss Boston Accent didn’t know it, but marauding Blackfeet were the least of her troubles. She would be damned lucky if she made it to Trinity Falls without him throttling her.

A short while later, with the climbing sun raising a bead of sweat on his skin after his exertions in harnessing the team, Logan looked into the back of Miss Amory’s covered wagon.

At first he didn’t believe what he saw.

When it finally dawned on him that he wasn’t imagining things, a heartfelt oath escaped his cracked lips.

“Well, hell, that’s why they left her.”

He lofted himself into the wagon, ignoring a stab of pain from his bruised ribs. He would demonstrate to Miss Amory that the West had its own code of survival. It was a lesson he’d learned, and he would see that she damn well learned it, too.

For both their sakes.

After performing her morning ablutions, Victoria felt revived as she walked back toward the wagon. She’d overcome her aversion to entering the abandoned domiciles and scrubbed her face and hands in a floral ceramic washbowl she’d found in one of the eerily silent bedchambers. She’d also borrowed a comb and refashioned her hair into a semblance of order.

Gazing into the mirror above the washstand, she’d studied her features. The freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose and cheeks were more prominent than ever. The Western sun was responsible for that, no doubt. There was one good thing about her profusion of freckles, Victoria had decided as she refastened her cuffs. Men did not find freckled women attractive, which meant that even a disreputable sort like Logan Youngblood wouldn’t direct any unseemly attentions to her.

As Victoria crossed the gravel yard, she said a hasty prayer on behalf of those who’d fled the fort. She included her own welfare on the list of those needing Divine assistance. When she added Logan Youngblood’s name to the silent litany, however, she felt that her prisoner needed a series of independently voiced prayers pronounced on behalf of his felonious soul, as well as his physical well-being.

He had already hitched the oxen and loaded up the campsite, and was hunched over, reaching into the back of the wagon. When he emerged, two things registered. The first was that he’d found a blue military shirt to replace the tattered white one that had been falling off his powerfully sculpted shoulders. Thank goodness for that.

Her sense of relief was short-lived, though, when she realized he held several of her treasured books in his broad hands.

She raced forward. “What are you doing?”

He looked up from the volumes, a narrow-lipped frown making his already pummeled features even more menacing. “I’m lightening the load so we can make better time.”

Victoria recoiled. He couldn’t have hurt her more if he’d shot her. “You will return those books to where they belong.”

“They belong in Boston.”

She shook her head. “They are my possessions and will come with me.”

“I think not, Miss Amory.”

She straightened and leveled her most chiding glare at the obtuse man. “We’ve already established that I’m the one who gives the orders, and I say my precious cargo goes with me to Trinity Falls.”

Not looking at all chastised, Youngblood’s good eye narrowed to pinpoint fury. “This is your precious cargo?”

“That’s right, and I’ve no intention of leaving it.”

“Lady, they’re not loved ones, they’re books,” he said flatly, tossing her beloved copy of The Last of the Mohicans into the dust. “And they’re certainly not worth dying for.”

At his callous gesture, outrage filled Victoria. She bent instinctively to gather Cooper’s epic to her bosom.

“How dare you!”

He startled her by kneeling across from her. “Lady, there’s lots more copies of this book around. When we get to Trinity Falls, you can order another one—of it and all the others.”

“This is a first edition!”

With an absent flick of his wrist, he discarded Louisa May Alcott’s new volume, Little Women. Victoria’s indignation grew. She hadn’t even had a chance to read it yet!

“The wagon master may have been willing to ride off without you, Miss Amory. He probably figured you’d come to your senses and lighten your load. He made a mistake I’m not willing to. The books stay. We go.”

Victoria stared into Mr. Youngblood’s unwavering gaze and knew intuitively that he would not yield to any pleas to spare her beloved volumes. Yet a spark of defiance still burned within her.

Inspiration struck. “It would take half the morning to unload the wagon. Don’t you think we should leave now?”

She forced a determined smile onto her stiff lips. Oh, there was a rational part of her that knew it was foolish to risk her life over inanimate objects. But there was another part that was convinced she could keep both her scalp and the works of Cooper, Hardy and Bronte. After all, man did not live by bread alone.

Youngblood rose to his full height. A look of frustrated resignation stamped his rugged features. Victoria held her breath as she silently counted off the passage of seconds. She truly had no idea what the barbaric man might do.

Abruptly he turned his broad back to her.

“Get into the wagon,” he ordered brusquely.

She scooped Alcott’s book from the ground, shook the dust from it, then hurried up onto the wagon’s high bench seat. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised that her surly companion was there ahead of her, already taking his place behind the reins.

She swallowed back her protest, counting herself fortunate that he’d agreed that there wasn’t time to unload all the volumes she’d spent days meticulously organizing and arranging in the corners and crannies of her wagon’s interior.

Victoria had scarcely clambered beside Youngblood before he released the hand brake and reached for the bullwhip. In a careless gesture, he uncurled it above the animals’ backs.

A loud crack sounded, cutting through the fort’s stillness. As one, the team lurched forward toward the open gate.

With a start, Victoria realized she’d linked her hopes for survival to a total stranger. She couldn’t help wondering whether she’d just made the worst mistake of her life.

Chapter Five

From the corner of her eye, Victoria sneaked covert glances at the man sitting beside her. They had been following this fairly wide stretch of wagon-rutted roadway for close to an hour, and he had yet to address one word to her. His profile was harsh and unrelenting. As luck would have it, his swollen eye faced her. Whenever a wheel struck a particularly deep rut, the jostling provoked a tight-lipped grimace from him.

At this evidence of his pain, her feelings toward him might have softened, had he offered a friendly word or two. His continued silence, however, grated on her nerves. It seemed unfair that fate should shackle her to a companion who was no more inclined to conversation than her plodding oxen. At least the animals had never glowered at her disapprovingly.

The wilderness continued to roll by, mile after mile of lush greenery. The air was redolent with the unrestrained scent of pine. Nearby, the Ruby River splashed across granite boulders.

The sun climbed higher in the cloudless blue sky. It didn’t take long for the warming rays to intensify to an uncomfortable degree. She shifted on the wooden seat, convinced she could feel new freckles popping out on her skin. By the time they reached Trinity Falls, she would probably have a hundred more of the unattractive little devils spotting her face.

She tried to think where she’d left her sunbonnet, recalling that she’d worn it the day before. She remembered removing the bonnet when she crawled beneath the wagon to sleep. With a pang, she realized she’d left the wide-brimmed covering on her makeshift bed when Youngblood’s voice jerked her awake. Had he thought to include the bonnet when he packed up her campsite?

She turned to peek into the wagon’s interior. One of their wheels slammed into another deep rut. Caught off balance, she steadied herself by clutching at the closest thing of substance, which turned out to be Youngblood.

She let out a startled yelp. At the same time, Youngblood’s powerful arm curved around her, anchoring her to his side. Several impressions struck her. First and foremost, she was aware of the muscular strength in the arm that bound her to Logan Youngblood. Secondly, she sensed that same latent power leashed in the rest of the strong body she was pressed tightly against.