Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

Author Note by Elizabeth Lane

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

ELIZABETH LANE

Copyright

She was free

But she could not thank him. She could not even say goodbye.

“Clarissa.”

At the sound of her name, she spun back toward him. Her heart leapt, then dropped like a stone as she saw that he was holding the parfleche, extending it toward her with both hands.

Fighting tears of anguish, she walked slowly back toward him. His face was in full sunlight now, the jaw set, the blue eyes narrowed against the glare. What colossal, stubborn pride he had! If only he would speak, or even look at her…

As she reached out to take the rawhide case, their fingers brushed. The light contact of skin to skin blazed like a flash of gunpowder through her body. Struck by the sudden, searing heat in his eyes, Clarissa let the case fall.

In the next instant he had caught her in his arms…

Dear Reader,

What a perfect time to celebrate history-the eve of a new century. This month we’re featuring four terrific romances with awe-inspiring heroes and heroines from days gone by that you’ll want to take with you into the next century! Wolf Heart is the fascinating, timeless hero from Shawnee Bride by Elizabeth Lane. Fans of Native American stories will absolutely love this authentic, emotion-filled love story about a boy who was orphaned at eleven and adopted by the Shawnee Now a fierce Shawnee warrior, both in his heart and mind, Wolf Heart falls in love with a beautiful white woman whom he rescues from river pirates. Will their love transcend the cultural barriers? Will she live as his Shawnee bride, or will she return to the white man’s world? Don’t miss this wonderful story!

In By Queen’s Grace by Shari Anton, Saxon knight Corwin of Lenvil heroically wins the hand-and heart-of his longtime secret love, a royal maiden. Antoinette Huntington is the unforgettable heroine in The Lady and the Outlaw by DeLoras Scott. Here, the English Antoinette has a romantic run-in with an outlaw on a train headed for the Arizona Territory.

Simon of Blackstone will steal your heart in The Champion by Suzanne Barclay, the launch book in the KNIGHTS OF THE BLACK ROSE miniseries. Simon returns from war to confront the father he never knew…and finds himself and his lady love the prume suspects in his father’s murder.

Enjoy! And come back again next month for four more choices of the best in historical romance.

Happy holidays,

Tracy Farrell

Senior Editor

Shawnee Bride
Elizabeth Lane

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Author Note by Elizabeth Lane

Before writing Shawnee Bride, I did extensive research on Shawnee history and customs. Even with the best of intentions, however, it is difficult to know everything about a culture that is not one’s own. If anything I have written here is found to be erroneous or offensive, I offer my apologies to the reader and to a people for whom I have nothing but the deepest respect.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to James Alexander Thom, whose fine biographical novel Panther in the Sky inspired the setting and background for Clarissa and Wolf Heart’s story.

Elizabeth Lane

Prologue

The Valley of the Ohio, 1747

Seth Johnson bolted through the underbrush, terror fueling the strength of his eleven-year-old legs. Brambles clawed at his threadbare clothes. Roots and vines clutched at his ankles. His heart hammered in anguished fire bursts as he ran.

Behind him, the silence of the forest was even more terrible than his father’s screams had been. Pa would be dead by now, God willing, and even if he wasn’t, there was nothing that could be done for him.

The marauding black bear had come out of nowhere, jumping Benjamin Johnson as he crouched to reset one of his beaver traps. Seth had flung sticks and rocks and screamed himself hoarse in a frantic effort to distract the monster, but none of his boyish racket had been of any use. In the end, he had been left with no choice except to run for his life.

Was the bear coming after him now? If he paused to listen, would he hear it crashing through the undergrowth as its great black nose smelled out his trail? Seth could not risk stopping to find out A charging bear, bent on killing, could run down the fastest man alive.

His bare feet, already large and rawhide tough, splashed into a shallow creek. He plunged upstream, praying the water would carry away his scent. His lungs burned. His breath burst out in labored gasps as he toiled uphill against the icy current.

Seth stifled a cry as his left foot slipped on a mossy stone, wrenching the ankle. Pain lanced his leg-a sharper pain, even, than the hot, flat sting Pa’s belt had caused last night when Seth had dropped a jug of whiskey into the river. For what it was worth, at least Pa would never beat him again.

Grimacing, Seth stumbled out of the water, crumpled against the overhung bank and curled there like a clenched fist. He could not see or hear the bear. All the same, he felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck, a sure sign that danger was close by, and he knew there was nothing he could do.

Helpless, he shrank deeper into the shadow of the high bank. “Pa!” he wanted to shout. “I’m here, Pa! Come and help me!” But he knew it would be no use.

He was alone in a thousand square miles of wilderness. Worse than alone. This was Shawnee territory, his father had told him. The Shawnee were savages who would just as soon cut out a white man’s innards and roast him alive as look at him. Better the bear than the Shawnee. At least a bear would kill him swiftly.

The way it had killed Pa.

The silence around him had taken on a dark weight of its own. The birds were quiet. Even the insects had stopped buzzing. A drop of sweat trickled along Seth’s collarbone, cool against his hot flesh, as he waited.

He heard a sudden dry rustling sound. Then something leaped off the bank, landing almost on top of him. Seth glimpsed a flash of bare brown legs and beaded moccasins. Then a rough, smelly blanket enfolded him, cutting off breath and sight. Powerful arms lifted him high. Wild with fear, he kicked, squirmed and punched the stifling darkness, mouthing every curse he had ever heard Pa utter. “Turn me loose, you filthy savage!” he screamed. “Let me go, or, so help me, I’ll have your hide!”

It was then that Seth heard, through the blanket, a sound that sent a shiver all the way to the marrow of his bones.

The sound was laughter.

Chapter One

Fort Pitt, April 1761

“Enough of this foolishness, Clarissa Rogers!” The older woman’s voice pierced the cool spring twilight. “It’s getting dark! We should all be getting back to the fort!”

“I’ll be there shortly! You go on, Aunt Margaret!” Clarissa tugged deftly at the long string, making the kite soar and dip against the roiling clouds. A storm was moving in over the spring-swollen river, the breeze was perfect for kite flying and she was having the most wonderful time of her life.

“You’d better do as she says.” The lieutenant, one of three young officers who raced alongside her, scowled worriedly. “Look at the sky. It’s going to rain any minute.”“You can go back anytime you want to.” Clarissa tossed her head, loosening her red-gold curls to stream in the wind. She could not remember having felt so free-not, at least, in the seven years since her father had died, leaving her in the care of her dour older brother

and their stern housekeeper, Mrs. Pimm. Junius Rogers had turned their once-cheerful Baltimore home into a gloomy, suffocating prison, banishing music, laughter and freedom. For Clarissa, this visit to her aunt and uncle on the Pennsylvania frontier was like a breath of fresh air.

Behind her, the stout ramparts of the fort rose against the sky. Stiffened by the breeze, the Union Jack, which had so recently replaced the French tricolor, snapped smartly from its pole on the blockhouse. On either side of the low spit of land, the river waters flowed brown with spring silt where the Monongahela and the Allegheny joined to form the Ohio. Flatboats, pirogues and canoes dotted the shoreline. Wooden shacks and lean-tos had sprouted around the fort’s outer walls like mushrooms around a tree stump. This growing sprawl of taverns, trading posts and settler cabins had already taken on a name of its own-Pittsburgh.

Clarissa laughed as she ran, one hand bunching up her embroidered petticoat to save it from grass stains. She had no illusions about the reason Junius had sent her here. She was seventeen, of marriageable age, and he wanted her out of the way, safely wed to some promising young officer. It was a practical plan, for she was neither impoverished nor plain, and there were plenty of eager suitors here. But there was one thing Junius hadn’t counted on. His headstrong young sister was having far too much fun to settle on any one of them.

“Clarissa, do come in now!” Her aunt’s impatient voice broke the gathering darkness. “They’ll be closing the gates soon, and Molly will be putting supper on the table! You can fly that ridiculous kite again tomorrow if you insist!”

Clarissa halted, causing two of her escorts to collide in mid-run. Lanterns had begun to flicker above the ramparts of the fort and in the settlement below. Lightning flashed in the east and, as thunder stirred across the horizon, she felt a single raindrop wet her eyelid.

High above, the kite tugged compellingly at its string, wheeling like a brave white bird against the darkening sky. Clarissa gazed up at it for a moment, then sighed. “All right,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ll be there as soon as I reel in the twine!”

“Now, Clarissa!” Her aunt’s tone clearly indicated that she’d lost all patience. “One of the young men can bring in your toy!”

“Oh…very well!” Not wanting to try the good woman further, Clarissa turned and was about to hand the twine ball to one of her companions when a stiff gust of wind struck the kite. Jerking at its string, the kite took an abrupt dive. With a suddenness that caused Clarissa to cry in dismay, it plummeted straight down, crashing out of sight somewhere between the cabins and the water.

“I’ll go after it!” Second Lieutenant Thomas Ainsworth, the youngest of her suitors, was off at a run, following the path of the string where it trailed across the grass. It was Tom Ainsworth who had made the kite, whittling the sticks of white birch for the frame and mounting the lightweight canvas with a skill that bespoke years of boyhood practice. Clarissa was truly fond of him. If only she’d been blessed with a brother like Tom instead of the stingy, unsmiling Junius! How much more pleasant her life might have been!

“Do be careful, Tom!” she called, shouting above the wind. “I’ll wait for you inside the gate, I promise! I won’t let the guards lock up until you’re back inside the fort!”

The young lieutenant gave no sign that he’d heard her. He raced toward the waterfront, heedless of the lightning that snaked across the sky, heedless of the sinister growl of thunder. Clarissa gazed after him until he vanished into the misting rain. Then, picking up her skirts once more, she spun on her slippered toes and hurried to catch up with her departing aunt. The two remaining officers trailed after her like devoted puppies.

Clarissa was true to her promise. After sending the others on their way, she stationed herself in the shelter of the gate, under the watch of the soldiers who patrolled the parapets. This would not be a long wait, she assured herself. At any moment Tom would come bounding up the slope, grinning as he held the precious kite aloft.

She would kiss him, Clarissa resolved-a playful, sisterly peck that no one could possibly misunderstand. Then, perhaps, she would invite him to supper. That was the least she could do to show her gratitude.

Minutes crawled by, and he did not return. Clarissa grew restless and more than a little hungry. Through the dark mist of rain, her sharp green eyes could just make out the white string, which Tom, in his haste, had left lying on the grass. The string had not so much as moved.

What was taking him so long? Had he met a friend? A girl, perhaps? Had he stopped for a drink m one of those unsavory little dens that had sprung up along the waterfront? Didn’t he know she was waiting for him?

Clarissa’s young, untempered patience frayed and snapped. Ignoring the shout of the guard who saw her leave, she strode out of the gate and stalked across the green. What harm, after all, could it do to find Tom Ainsworth and give him a piece of her mind? She was already wet. As for danger, there could hardly be any menace lurking within a stone’s throw of the fort.

The white string was easy to follow. It gleamed against the wet grass in the eerie half-light of the gathering storm. Clutching her skirts, Clarissa sprinted along its path. There was no guarantee the string would lead her to that inconstant rascal Tom Ainsworth, but at least, with luck, she would find the kite.

By day, the shacks along the riverfront had a seedy quality about them. Now, in the rainy twilight, every black shadow seemed a living, crawling thing. Slivers of lamplight glimmered through log walls. From somewhere in the darkness a man coughed and swore violently. A woman laughed.

By now the string had grown wet and muddy. Clarissa’s eyes strained through the murk as she picked her way down an alley. She was soaking wet and shivering with cold. Her slippers were ruined, and her aunt would likely be furious with her. Oh, what she would say to Lieutenant Thomas Ainsworth when she caught up with-

Her thoughts ended in a startled gasp as her foot bumped something soft and solid. It was a man, lying quite still, facedown in the mud.

It was Tom Ainsworth.

“Oh!” She dropped to a crouch, her anger swept away by concern as she saw the bloody red welt on his temple. She seized his shoulders, desperate to rouse him. “Don’t be dead, Tom,” she prayed aloud, shaking him hard. “Oh, please, don’t be dead!”

He moaned, and Clarissa’s heart welled with relief and gratitude. “Come on!” She struggled to lift him. “We’ve got to get you back to the fort!”

His head turned then, and she caught the stark flash of alarm in his eyes. “Run, Clarissa!” he whispered hoarsely. “Leave me and get yourself out of here!”

“Don’t be a donkey!” She gripped his shoulders, desperate to force him up. “I’m not going anywhere without you, Tom Ainsworth, and that’s that, so you may as well just-oh!”

Rough hands seized Clarissa from behind, wrenching her up and backward. Her scream ended in a muffled gasp as a greasy palm clamped over her mouth, wrenching her jaw. She found flesh and bit down hard.

“Hell-bitch!” The slap exploded in her head, igniting hot glimmering rings of pain. She sagged against her unseen captor, dazed but still conscious. As her vision cleared she saw Tom on his knees, struggling to stand. A second man, clad in grimy buckskins, had materialized from the shadows. His moccasin-clad foot caught the side of Tom’s head in a brutal kick. Tom crumpled in the mud and lay still.

“Let me go to him!” Clarissa writhed and twisted against the arms that clasped her like a vise. The stench of her captor’s unwashed skin and clothes made her flesh crawl.

“Well now, Zeke, looks like we’ve got ourselves a feisty one. Pretty one, too.” The man in buckskins fingered the knife at his belt as he looked Clarissa up and down.

“Damn good thing we got somethin’ outa this,” the man named Zeke growled. “Her boyfriend there didn’t have enough in his pocket to make rollin’ him worth our trouble. Leastwise, we can have ourselves a little fun. Wanna toss dice for who gets ‘er first?”

Clarissa could feel his breath, rank and steamy against her bare shoulder. Gulping back her fear, she glared at the wiry man in buckskins. “Don’t either of you touch me!” she snapped imperiously. “If the lieutenant and I don’t return straightaway to the fort, my uncle, Colonel Hancock, will have his whole regiment out looking for us. You’ll both be hanged on the spot!”

“Now ain’t you the uppity one!” Zeke’s grip tightened on her arms, hurting her. “You won’t be so high-an’mighty once you’ve had us atween your legs, will she, Maynard? Hell, she’ll be beggin’ for it, like they all do!”

The man in buckskins hesitated, scowling.

“Maynard?”

“Shut up. I’m thinkin’.” He scratched at his scraggly jaw. “If what the girl says is true, we’d be runnin’ a risk to take turns with her here in town. But if we was to carry her downriver with us…”

“Hell, Maynard, that’s the best idea yet!” Zeke responded with a whoop. “Ain’t nobody goin’ to trail us into Injun territory. We can keep the little spitfire tied to the boat an’ hump ‘er whenever we want. Atween times, she can cook an’ wash for us!”

Clarissa fought back waves of sick panic, forcing herself to stay calm. Her only chance of escape lay in keeping her head, she reminded herself. She would wait for the two men to lower their guard. Then, at the first opportunity”

We’re wastin’ time,” Maynard growled. “Let’s get to the boat.”

“What about the boyfriend?” Zeke glanced down at Tom Ainsworth’s limp body where it lay in the rainspattered mud.

Clarissa’s heart plummeted. She had been praying the young lieutenant was still alive and that someone would find him before it was too late. “Leave him here!” she urged. “Look at him! What possible harm can he do you now?”

“Plenty if he ain’t dead yet,” Maynard snapped. “And

even if he is, folks who find the body might piece together what happened. Only place this young bastard’s goin’ now is the bottom of the river.”

“Please.” Clarissa strained frantically against Zeke’s grasp. “Don’t kill him. I’ll do anything you say.”

Maynard laughed roughly as he bent to pick up Tom’s inert feet. “You’ll do it anyhow, girl. As I see it, you ain’t got much choice.”

The storm’s full fury was moving in, heavy rain whipping the river to a froth. Clarissa stumbled through the mud, pressed forward by Zeke’s painful grip on her arms. Through the downpour she could make out the river’s edge and the blocky outlines of the boats. Lanterns flickered through the darkness. Her heart leaped as she realized there were people on one sheltered deck-people who would surely not fail to heed a young girl’s cry for help.

Maynard had looped his arms around Tom’s feet and was dragging the young lieutenant facedown through the mud. Tom had not uttered a sound. Clarissa feared he was dead, but fearing was a far cry from knowing, and that uncertainty held her prisoner. If there was one chance in a hundred that Tom was alive, she could not break loose and abandon him.

“Step lively, now girl.” Zeke chuckled as he prodded her down the long slope toward the water. “The sooner we get you downriver, the sooner the fun can start!”

Clarissa trudged through the storm, willing herself to bide her time. Her gown was soaked, her shoes and petticoat caked with mud. Her hair hung in her face and streamed down her back in long, wet ribbons.

“I’ll wager you’re a virgin,” Zeke said, leering. “I can tell that much from the looks of you. Maynard an’ me, we always share the goods by half, but only one of us can break that cherry, an’ I aim for it to be me. I’m better equipped for it if I say so myself. Maynard, now, he’s just a little feller, if you get my meanin’!”

Clarissa steeled herself against his vulgar prattle. She had no illusions about what this unsavory pair planned to do with her. Just last month her newly married cousin, Jenny, had confided in breathless whispers all the details of physical love between a man and a woman. The description had fascinated Clarissa then. But what Zeke and Maynard had in mind was far removed from love, and the very thought of it made her sick to her stomach.

The lanterns were closer now. She could make out the silhouettes of three men in their light. They were staggering around on the deck, laughing raucously as they lurched against each other. They were drunk, she realized with a sinking heart. Drunk, and probably of the same evil stripe as her captors. But right now they were her only hope.

Another twenty paces, she calculated, and the strangers on the boat would be certain to hear her. Clarissa moved like a sleepwalker through the dark curtains of rain, every nerve quivering. Her life, and the life of Tom Ainsworth, hung in the balance, at the mercy of luck and timing.

She could hear the rush and tumble of the rain-swollen river. The lanterns were very close now, the strangers on board caught up in their own drunken revelry. Clarissa’s muscles tensed. It was now or never.

She spun hard away from her captor and plunged toward the lamplight. “Help us!” she screamed. “For the love of heaven-”

She saw one of the men turn. Then, without warning, a huge bolt of lightning split the sky and, in its booming echo, something cracked against the side of her head. She felt an explosion of pain. The lights spun, quivered then vanished in a dizzying spiral of blackness.

She awoke to the motion of the river.

For the first few breaths, the throbbing pain in Clarissa’s head seemed to fill the whole world. As her senses cleared, she became aware that she was lying on her side, her face pressed against a rough log surface.

Icy water surged between the logs, splashing her face and shocking her fully awake. Only then did she realize that it was near dawn. The rain was coming down in watery sheets, and the whole world seemed to be dipping and racing around her. When she tried to sit up, she discovered that her wrists were lashed to a support pole of a rude hut, built on to the log deck of a flatboat.

By the first pale light, she could make out a bulky figure at the rear of the boat. It was Zeke. Her scheme to rescue herself and Tom had come to nothing.

Tom! Where was he?

The thin rawhide cut her wrists, mingling streaks of blood with the rain as she writhed and twisted, her frantic gaze probing the shadows. When she could discover no sign of him, Clarissa knew, with a sickening certainty, that he was gone. She would never again see his eager grin. She would never again share his boyish laughter or watch his skilled fingers fashion a kite.

But there would be no time to mourn her friend. The boat was pitching crazily, spinning in the wild current. Zeke’s curses rose above the howl of the wind as he wrestled with the tiller. As Clarissa watched, numb with terror, Maynard staggered around the corner of the shack. He was fighting for balance on the lurching deck. “Take ‘er in to the bank, damn you!” he yelled. “We got to tie up till this devil storm blows over!”

“You take ‘er in if you’re so bitchin’ smart!” Zeke bellowed. “Blasted tiller ain’t worth no more’n a stinkin’ broom straw against this current! We’re gonna founder!”

Clarissa tumbled sideways, the motion wrenching her bound wrists, as the boat careened around a bend in the river. She could hear Zeke bawling helplessly above the roar of the storm.

“Give me that!” Maynard shoved him aside and grabbed the tiller himself. He was calmer and possessed more skill than Zeke, but he lacked the weight to manhandle the pitching craft. “Don’t just stand there!” he shrilled at Zeke. “Help me!”

As Clarissa watched the two men struggle, she suddenly became aware that the water-soaked rawhide thongs were softening around her wrists. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she twisted and sawed at the thin ties until, at last, they stretched enough to let her hands slip through. With every joint throbbing, she clasped the pole and clawed her way to a sitting position. Only then could she see the full scope of her peril.

Vast and black, the rain-swollen Ohio hissed between its banks. The flatboat shot along in the current, bobbing and spinning, out of control. Clarissa stared in helpless horror as a huge uprooted tree stump spun in an eddy and swept back toward them. She screamed as it swung to one side, then tumbled into the eddy again, missing the flatboat by a hand’s breadth.

Zeke and Maynard, if they had heard her at all, were too busy to pay her any heed. They grappled with the tiller, yelling curses at the storm and at each other. This, Clarissa thought, would be a perfect time to slip overboard and make her escape-except for one bit of irony. In all the years of her sheltered Baltimore girlhood, she had never immersed herself in anything larger than a copper bathtub. She could not swim a stroke.

The racing current funneled around a sharp bend, tilting the flatboat almost on its side. Clarissa screamed again as the hut tore loose from its fastenings. She glimpsed Zeke’s face as he hurtled past her to vanish into the darkness. Almost at the same instant, one corner of the boat struck something hard beneath the surface. The blow splintered the raft like a child’s toy.

Logs, boards and supplies flew in all directions, propelled by the same force that catapulted Clarissa into the air. For a heart-stopping instant, she flew through rain-filled emptiness. Then her body slammed into the river.

Dazed, she sank beneath the churning flood. The current’s icy embrace turned and tumbled her, sweeping her along like a helpless doll. Water filled her nose and roared in her ears. Something brushed her face-something cold and alive. Her body jerked with revulsion.

No! She couldn’t die now! Not here! Not like this!

As terror replaced shock she began to struggle. Her bursting lungs drove her instinctively to kick her way upward. A sheet of lightning, distant now, flashed against the dawn sky as her head broke the surface. She gulped a mouthful of precious air and, with it, a choking quantity of muddy water. Bubbles burst from her lips as the current dragged her under again.

Debris from the wrecked boat swirled around her. Clarissa jerked with pain as a big log crashed against her ribs. Miraculously she felt it pushing beneath her, lifting her upward. Clasping the log with her arms, she kicked until she broke the surface once more. The floating log stayed beneath her this time, keeping her there.

Choking and coughing, Clarissa filled her lungs with air. She was alive, but her peril was far from over. The unbridled current was still sweeping her downstream. Tree limbs, boat wreckage and things she could not even bear to imagine bobbed and swirled along with her. In rare moments of calm water, she caught glimpses of the wooded shore. There were no settlements here-no houses, farms or forts. This was wilderness, a land peopled by bears, snakes, pumas and naked copper savages who would kill her for the pleasure of hanging her scalp on their lodge poles. Drowning was a pleasant prospect compared to what might happen to her on land.

By the time the morning sun crept above the trees, Clarissa’s strength was gone. She lay across the log, too numb to hold on to the rough bark. Her red-gold hair streamed like a net m the muddy water, catching twigs, leaves and drowned insects.

Her mind drifted in and out of dreams. She fancied herself back in Baltimore, waking up to the mouthwatering aromas of scones, bacon and porridge. She imagined curling into the warm feather bed to steal one last delicious moment of sleep, then rising, brushing out her hair, slipping into her warm flannel wrapper and pattering downstairs to breakfast. This morning, even the sight of Junius’s sour face filled her with tenderness. She smiled at himA sudden impact jolted Clarissa’s body, shocking her awake. Her log had struck a sandbar that jutted out from shore within a sheltered curve of the river. The current was already washing the sand from around the log’s end. Seconds from now the log would float free again, carrying her with it. There was no time to lose.

Gathering her strength, she dragged her bruised, chilled body off the log and rolled onto the sandbar. For a moment she lay there, gasping. Then, rousing herself, she crawled toward the bank. The sand gave way beneath her weight, leaving hollows of water where her palms and knees had pressed. A small snake-she had no idea what kind it was-slithered across the back of her hand and vanished into the river. Clarissa was too exhausted even to flinch.

Only when the ground felt solid did she allow herself to collapse facedown onto the grassy bank. The earth was cold against her aching body. Icy water dripped from the storm-lashed trees. A magpie scolded harshly from a branch, its call a sharp counterpoint to the chattering sound of Clarissa’s own teeth.

For a long time she lay where she had dropped, too numb to move. Little by little, the sun crept above the trees. Fingers of light probed between the budding branches of birch and chestnut, warming her through her wet clothes. From an elderberry thicket, the song of a thrush bubbled on the morning air.

Raising her head, Clarissa blinked herself fully awake. Threads of vapor were curling upward from the rainsoaked ground. Her skirts were steaming themselves dry in the bright sunlight. The storm had passed, as all storms did, and a new day had begun.

The rushing murmur of the Ohio filled Clarissa’s ears as she sat up and lifted a hand to her matted hair. Finding it hopelessly tangled, she swept the russet mass out of her face and sat clutching her knees, gazing across the sandbar at the muddy current, thinking how it had nearly claimed her. She remembered the storm and the two evil men who had vanished in the darkness. She remembered Tom Ainsworth, whose face she would never see again.

Clarissa slumped over her knees, shuddering in despair. How could a single careless moment so utterly destroy two lives?

At last she forced herself to sit up, pressing her palms to her burning eyes to stop the tears. This was no time for hand-wringing, she upbraided herself. She had no intention of dying in this wilderness. She had two strong legs and was quite capable of walking back to Fort Pitt. If only she knew the way…

Suddenly she stared at the river.

What a silly goose she had been, sitting here feeling sorry for herself! She was not lost at all. The flatboat had come downstream. To find her way back to the fort, all she needed to do was follow the riverbank upstream again.

Setting her jaw, Clarissa staggered to her feet She moved awkwardly, her joints stiff, her bare feet swollen and tender from hours in the water. Ignoring the pain, she forced herself to take one step, then another.

Her mud-stiffened skirts clung to her legs. Her wet petticoat dragged on the ground, hobbling her every stride. She had scarcely gained ground when a sudden misstep sent her sprawling again. The force of the landing knocked the breath out of her. She lay gasping in the mud, biting back tears of frustration.

I will not give up, Clarissa swore. If she had to crawl all the way to Fort Pitt on her belly, she would do it. She would survive to laugh again, to dance and flirt again, to love, marry and bear a house full of happy children. She would survive to grow old and wise, to cradle her grandchildren in her lap one day and tell them the story of her great adventure in the wilderness.

Marshaling the last of her strength, she willed herself to rise. Her right hand groped outward to brace her body-only to freeze in midmotion as her fingertips sensed an odd smoothness beneath their touch.

She glanced down and saw that her hand had discovered a shallow impression in the bare brown earth. Her throat jerked as she realized what it was.

She was staring down at the long, broad print of a leather moccasin.

Chapter Two

Wolf Heart watched from a stand of birch as the slender white girl scrambled to her feet. The panic in her wide green eyes could only mean one thing-she had discovered his tracks and sensed he was nearby.

His throat tightened as she hesitated, wheeling one way, then another. Her hair was a tangled cloud of flame in the morning sunlight. Her gown-the fabric too light and fine to be homespun-clung to her willowy woman’s body in mud-stained tatters. She looked as fragile as the wing of a butterfly.

Wolf Heart had seen her clinging to the log as it washed ashore. He had melted into the trees as she crawled onto the sandbar, keeping out of sight as she collapsed, trembling and exhausted, onto the bank. A whirlwind of emotions had torn at him. This ethereal young stranger was part of a world he had long since buried, a world he had grown to despise. She and her kind did not belong here.

The girl spun away and broke into a limping run, headed toward the riverbank. Wolf Heart’s blue eyes narrowed for an instant. As she vanished behind a clump of red willows, he stepped out of his hiding place and glided noiselessly after her.

Shadows flickered over his rangy hard-muscled body as he moved through the undergrowth. In this, the moon of mouse-eared leaves, the willows and birches trailed long catkins in the light morning wind, but the foliage was thin. The girl’s hair blazed like a signal fire through the trees, making it easy to trail her even at a distance. Wolf Heart eased his powerful stride, giving her plenty of room. He had no wish to confront her face-to-face. Not, at least, until he had made up his mind what to do with her.

As he paused for thought, his fingers brushed the small deerskin medicine pouch he wore on a thong around his neck. It contained objects of his own choosing, small tokens of memory, family and courage. Wolf Heart’s medicine pouch had been fashioned by his Shawnee mother, Black Wings. She had cut and stitched the leather, adding bands of fringe and fine quillwork to make it a thing of beauty. Inside it, Wolf Heart had reverently placed a tooth from the first bear he had taken, along with the bright indigo feather of a bluebird and, most important of all, his personal pa-waw-ka, a translucent shell he had seized from the bed of the ice-bound river during the ordeal that had marked his passage into manhood.

The medicine pouch was his badge of belonging, his proof to himself and others that he had abandoned all memory of Seth Johnson and become, in his deepest being, a true Shawnee. He had undergone the test and rituals. He had hunted bear, elk and puma, fought bravely against the marauding Iroquois and earned a place of honor among his brothers of the kispoko warrior sept. He had danced around the war pole. He had sung the death chant over Black Wings when she died of the coughing sickness. All this time, he had never questioned who or what he was-until now.

The coppery flash of her hair told him the girl was still running, darting in ragged bursts of speed along the bank of the Ohio-se-pe. She was headed upstream, toward the fort, most likely, or one of the grubby little settlements that pushed the white man’s boundaries ever closer to the world of the Shawnee.

Wolf Heart had met a fair number of white men since the death of his father. There were the French who traded their guns and blankets for furs. There were the English redcoats who were becoming more and more common now that the British had seized the fort at the joining of the rivers. White men, yes. But any images of white women-including his own birth mother, who had died when he was six-existed only in the dimmest recesses of Wolf Heart’s memory. He had never imagined, let alone seen, a fox-haired wisp of a girl like this one.

Any other Shawnee would have taken her prisoner by now, he reminded himself darkly. The tribe had sided with the French in this mad war against the English, making any English prisoner a trophy of war. So why then, when it would be so easy, had he not simply captured her? Was it her startling beauty that held him at bay? Was it the certainty that this girl would never survive captivity? Or was it something more subtle and disturbing-some long-buried tie of blood that even he could not deny? Whatever the reason, it troubled Wolf Heart deeply.

Far ahead now, he saw her stumble and go down in a patch of bog. His breath caught as she clawed her way upright then paused to glance back in his direction, her hair whipping the pale oval of her face. Her head went up sharply, and for an instant Wolf Heart thought she might have seen him. But then, just as abruptly, she wheeled and floundered on as before, dripping mud as she fought her way through the briars and willows that rimmed the flooded river.

The girl had spirit, he conceded. She was chilled, sore, exhausted and probably half-starved, as well, but she had shown no sign of flagging. Spunk and grit, combined with a healthy dose of fear, were driving her on, step by struggling step.

But for all her courage, Wolf Heart knew she could never make it back to her world alive. The journey was too long and too dangerous.

On impulse, he paused to examine her tracks in the mud. Crouching low, he traced the shape of one narrow imprint with his fingertip.

Where her foot had pressed, the damp brown earth was stained with blood.

Clarissa plunged along the bank of the river. Her ribs heaved painfully beneath the constricting stays of her corset. Her heart exploded with every beat, hammering the walls of her chest as she ran.

She had seen one fresh track. How many others had there been? How many pairs of savage eyes were watching her, even now, as she fled like a hunted animal.

A gust of wind whipped her long hair into her eyes, half-blinding her. She swept it back, only to feel the tangled ends catch on a low-hanging tree branch. A vision of the biblical Absalom, hanging lifeless by his hair, flashed through her mind as she jerked to free it. Any second now, she would feel the fatal thrust of an arrow in her back or, worse, the roughness of brown hands seizing her waist, dragging her off to an end so horrible she could not even imagine it.

She would die fighting, Clarissa vowed as she splashed through a patch of flooded willows. Whatever happened, she would not allow herself to be taken alive.

As she mounted the bank once more, pain shot through the ball of her left foot. She remembered, however dimly, stepping on something sharp earlier, but she had not dared to pause and investigate. Now the injury was getting worse. Her right sole, as well, had grown so tender that every step was agony. Sometime soon she would have to stop and wrap her feet, perhaps with strips of her petticoat. If only she knew where—

Clarissa’s thoughts ended in a gasp as her toe stubbed against something soft. That same gasp exploded in a stifled scream as she looked down and saw the body of a man, clad in waterlogged buckskins, lying facedown in the long grass.

Her stomach convulsed as she recognized Maynard.

Her first impulse was to run, but when he did not move she swallowed her fear and stood staring down at him He’s dead, she thought. He can’t hurt anyone now.

Flies swarmed around a blood-encrusted gash on the man’s temple, but there were no other marks of injury on him. Most likely he had struck his head when the flatboat capsized, drowned while unconscious, and finally washed up here on the bank.

Clarissa battled waves of nausea as she crouched over the inert form, steeling herself to touch him. Maynard had been armed with a hunting knife. If that knife was still on him, and if she could get it, she would no longer be helpless prey. She would have a weapon to defend herself.

Maynard’s dirty, wet buckskins reeked in the morning sun. The stench swam in Clarissa’s nostrils as she bent close, seized his arm and dragged him over onto his back. Yes, the knife was still there, large and evil looking, laced into the scabbard that hung from his belt. All she had to do was reach out and—

She froze as Maynard rolled his head to one side and groaned.

Panic seized her, and for an instant all she could think of was running away. But she needed the knife. She would have to get it now, before Maynard came fully awake.

She made a desperate lunge for the weapon, her fingers clutching at the leather-wrapped grip. For the space of a heartbeat, she had it. Then his sinewy hand closed around her wrist, twisting so hard that she cried out and dropped the knife.

“Well, hang me for a horse thief!” He grinned up at her, his small eyes glittering. “Heaven don’t get no better than this!” He rolled to a sitting position, his free hand darting out to grab the knife from where it had fallen. A single joint-wrenching move spun her against him with the blade at her throat.

“You and me got some unfinished business, girl,” he rasped against her ear. “And we’re gonna finish it here and now!” His hand released her wrist and slid upward to fondle her breast. “Treat me nice, and you won’t get hurt Hell, you might even get to like it.”

Clarissa struggled to keep her head. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she whispered, her throat moving against the razor-sharp blade. “Indians-I saw moccasin tracks-”

“Nice try, girl.” Maynard’s arm tightened around her. “But I know this country, an’ there ain’t no Injun towns anywhere near these parts. An’ even if you did see tracks, hell, plenty of white men wear moccasins, too. Now quit stallin’, you little bitch, and git down on your back!”

The broad steel blade caught a glimmer of sun as he jerked her around and slammed her onto the wet grass. Clarissa lay rigid and trembling, praying for an instant’s distraction when she might be able to catch him off guard. Maynard, she calculated, was capable of killing her, or carving her up so hideously that she would no doubt wish herself dead. If her timing was off, she would not get a second chance.

He was breathing hard now, muttering curses as he used his free hand to tug at the lacing of his breeches. The water had caused the leather ties to swell, and the knot was too stubborn to yield to Maynard’s one-handed fumbling. Clarissa tensed as he grew more and more impatient. At last he spat out an oath and tossed the knife, point down, into the grass.

In a flash she was after it, twisting sideways, stretching to seize the weapon where it had struck. But she was not fast enough. With blinding speed, his hand had clamped hard around her wrist.

“Stupid little bitch!” he cursed, twisting her arm so viciously that Clarissa felt her bones begin to separate, and she whimpered aloud in spite of her resolve. “So help me, I’ll fix you good!” he rasped, snatching up the knife and raising it high for a slashing blow. “I’ll show you who’s boss if it’s the last thing I-”

Maynard spoke no more. She saw him stiffen and arch as if struck hard between the shoulder blades by some invisible force. Only as he pitched forward did she glimpse the arrow point protruding through the front of his buckskin shirt, right where his heart would be.

Clarissa’s fear exploded into all-out panic as the lifeless body collapsed, still twitching on top of her. She thrashed and kicked in a wild struggle to throw off the horror, wanting only to be free of Maynard’s smothering weight.

Seconds passed, each one a small eternity, before she realized that her ordeal of terror was only beginning.

The knife—it had been in Maynard’s hand. She had to get it before it was too late. Her fingers groped desperately along the wet ground where he would have dropped the weapon. Her heart convulsed as she felt the tip of the blade, cold and sharp against her fingertip. Gasping with effort, she stretched to reach the handle. Her fingers touched it, almost clasped it.

Then the weight of Maynard’s limp corpse was snatched off her as if it had suddenly sprouted wings.

The morning sun struck Clarissa fully in the eyes. Dazed and blinking, she lay sprawled on the ground, her muddy skirts ruched up to her thighs. She was aware that Maynard’s body had fallen to one side, but that was no longer a concern. Her full attention was riveted on the masculine figure who loomed above her, his features silhouetted by the blinding light.

Sun dazzled, her gaze dropped low, taking in long, muscular, buckskin-clad legs. Little by little, her eyes focused upward, skimming the shadowed bulge beneath his breechcloth, then darting abruptly to the feather-trimmed tomahawk that hung at his waist and the elegantly crafted bow balanced in his left hand.

Flinging herself onto her belly, she made another lunge for Maynard’s knife. This time her fingers closed around the handle. She rolled swiftly, drawing in her knees and coming up in a tight crouch, the weapon raised in defiance.

The stranger had not moved, but from her new position, Clarissa could see him more clearly. His powerful chest and arms were bare except for the leather strap of his arrow quiver and a small decorated pouch that hung from a thong around his neck. His long wavy hair, decorated with twin eagle feathers at the scalp lock, was raven-black, tinged with an azure glow where the light fell on it. Flat silver ear studs, set into his lobes, glittered as they caught the rays of the sun. His eyes, shadowed by craggy brows, wereHer thoughts scattered like alarmed birds as he took a step toward her.

Clarissa tensed, clutching the knife. She had vowed to die fighting rather than be taken alive. Now that vow would be put to the test. “Don’t come any closer!” she hissed.

He took another cautious step, then one more. “Don’t be afraid,” he said gently. “I won’t hurt you.”

Clarissa was beyond hearing his words, let alone comprehending them. Her pulse exploded, pumping her system with the fury of a cornered animal as she sprang upward to meet this new enemy. The steel blade flashed in the sun as she struck wildly, blindly at the stranger’s chest.

She heard him grunt as the razor edge skimmed his flesh. His huge hand captured her wrist, its momentum whipping her against him, where he caught and held her fast. Clarissa had dropped the knife, but she continued to fight like a wildcat, her hands clawing his chest, her feet kicking his solidly placed legs.

A glancing blow from her raised knee caught him off guard. Still gripping her waist, he stumbled backward and stepped into the entrance of a badger hole. His fall carried them both to the ground. They rolled in the grass, legs tangling, knees jabbing as he struggled to subdue her.

Their tussle had displaced his breechcloth. Clarissa felt the masculine bulge brush her thigh. The contact triggered a disturbing tingle, flooding her body with rivulets of heat-but the sensation was swiftly dashed by terror. This man, this Indian would ravish her, she thought, just as Maynard had meant to do. Then he would use that deadly tomahawk to hack away her scalp, leaving her body here for the crows and buzzards.

He had managed to seize both her wrists and pinion them above her shoulders. Wild with fear, Clarissa twisted to one side and sank her teeth into the firm bronze flesh of his forearm.

“Stop it!” He jerked away, his voice raw with anger now. “Stop now!”

Clarissa went rigid with shock as the realization struck her. This half-naked savage was speaking to her in English.

“What…?” She struggled to form a question, but it was no use. The words died somewhere between her mind and her tongue as she found herself staring up into a pair of cold, angry eyes.

The irises of those black-centered eyes were a deep cobalt-blue.

Wolf Heart felt the girl’s body go limp beneath him. Where his hands gripped her wrists, he could feel her pulse racing like the heart of a rabbit in a snare. She was still frightened, but at least she had stopped fighting him.

“I don’t mean to hurt you,” he said, groping for the words of a language he had spoken but rarely in the past fourteen years. “But if you bite me again, you will wish you hadn’t!”

She stared up at him, her wide eyes the color of deep mossy pools. “You’re a white man!” she whispered incredulously.

“No.” Wolf Heart’s reply was as cold as the chill her words evoked. “I am Shawnee.”

Her gold-tipped lashes blinked as she strained upward. “But your speech, your eyes-”

“I was a white boy once, a very long time ago. I have never been a white man.” Wolf Heart raised his body, aware, suddenly, that he was straddling her hips in a most unseemly manner. “If I let you sit up, do you promise you won’t try to run?”

The girl hesitated, giving him a moment to study her thin heart-shaped face. She would be a beauty in the white man’s world, he thought. But he had grown accustomed to the robust darkness of Shawnee women, and this pale creature seemed as out of place here as a snowflake in summer. Her skin was streaked with angry red scratches from the brambles. Her hair was matted with river weed, and one side of her face was crusted with a layer of drying mud.

“What a sorry sight you are,” he said, the words springing from some forgotten well of memory. It was the kind of thing his white mother might have said to him as a child.

Her green eyes flashed with spirit. “And’what kind of sight would you be if you’d been kidnapped, shipwrecked in a flood and nearly drowned?” she snapped. “Are you going to let me up?”

“I’m still waiting for your answer,” he retorted gruffly. “Will you promise to stay put?”

“That depends.”

“Depends?” Had he ever known that word? A heartbeat passed before it surfaced in his memory.

“My answer depends on what you mean to do with me,” she explained as if she were talking to a backward child. When he did not answer at once, the fear stole back into her eyes. “All I want is to go back to Fort Pitt,” she said in a small strained voice. “Just let me go. Is that such a difficult thing to do?”

Wolf Heart scowled as the dilemma he had wrestled all morning closed in on him. “Fort Pitt is many days’ walk from here. These woods are filled with dangers, and you are not strong-”

“I’m stronger than I look!” she interrupted. “I came close to getting the best of you, if I say so myself!”

“You wouldn’t come so close to getting the best of a puma or a bear-or another man like that one.” He jerked his head toward the buckskin-clad body that lay in the grass, a stone’s toss away. “But I’d wager you’d be more likely to starve, or drown, or maybe get bitten by a copperhead.”

“You could take me back!” She strained upward against his hands, her eyes so hopeful that they tore at his heart. “My uncle, Colonel Hancock, would pay you a handsome reward.”

“What would I do with money? I am Shawnee!” The words burst out of Wolf Heart, resolving his own question. Shawnee law demanded that all captives be turned over to the village council for judgment. To defy that law, to go against custom and set the girl free, would be an abnegation of his duty as a Shawnee warrior.

He willed his expression, and his heart, to harden. “You are my prisoner,” he said. “I must take you back to my people.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Your people are my peoplewhite!”

“Sit up.” Wolf Heart ignored the sting of her words as he jerked her roughly to a sitting position and bound her wrists behind her back with a strip of deer hide. She did not speak, but he could feel the anger in her slim, taut body and see it in the set of her delicate jaw. When he pulled her to her feet, she did not protest, but he knew her mind was working. Given the chance, the girl would make every effort to escape.

When he motioned for her to walk ahead of him, she moved silently into place. She was footsore and hungry, and he knew he was being cruel, but he did not trust himself enough to treat her gently. Not yet, at least.

Abruptly she swung back to face him. Blazing defiance, her eyes flickered toward the dead man who lay facedown in the grass, the arrow still protruding from his back. “What about him?” she asked in a voice drawn thin by fury.

“That one is past our help.” Wolf Heart turned away from the corpse, which was already beginning to attract flies.

“I can see that,” the girl snapped. “But since you’re a Shawnee, I thought you might be wanting to take his scalp.”

Wolf Heart glared at her, his temper stirring.

“Go ahead,” she persisted. “He was an evil man, and his death was no loss. Show me what a true savage you’ve become!”

Her sarcasm cut as no blade could. Wolf Heart, who had never killed a white man before, let alone taken a white scalp, bit back the urge to seize her shoulders in his hands and shake her until she whimpered for forgiveness.

“Well?” she demanded, her eyes flinging a challenge.

Freezing all emotion, he caught her elbow, spun her away from him and shoved her to a reluctant walk.

Clarissa stumbled along the forest trail, feeling more dead than alive. Her blistered, bleeding feet were beyond pain. Her stomach was a clenched knot of hunger and fear. Only anger kept her moving-that, and her resolve to make this self-proclaimed Shawnee pay dearly for having taken her prisoner.

“It’s a lovely day for a walk, isn’t it?” She tossed her hair, refusing to give him the satisfaction of hearing her complain.

Wolf Heart’s only reply was brooding silence.

“I’ve always wanted to explore the wilderness,” she persisted with mock pleasantry. “And what a splendid guide I have! A man who knows every bird, every tree-”

“That’s enough!” His voice, behind her, was a low growl of irritation. “Keep that up, and every ear within a day’s run will be able to hear you!”

“Oh, how nice!” She forced her miserable feet to a lilting skip and began to sing. “‘In Scarlet Town where I was born/ There lived a fair maid dwellin’/ Made every lad cry well a-day/ Her name was Barbara-’’’

“Stop it!” he snapped, his massive hand catching her arm and whipping her around to face him. “Do you want me to gag your mouth, tie your legs and drag you along the trail?”

Clarissa gulped back her fear, forcing herself to meet his blazing blue eyes. “Well, at least that might save some wear on my poor blistered feet!” she declared saucily. “Yes, indeed, why don’t you try it?”

He shot her a thunderous scowl. Then the breath eased wearily out of him, and Clarissa knew she had won a victory, however small. “Sit,” he ordered her gruffly.

“There?” She glanced toward a toadstool-encrusted log.

“Sit anywhere. I don’t care. Just keep your mouth shut while I tend to your feet. We still have a lot of walking to do.”

“How much walking?” Clarissa sank on to the log, exhausted to the point of collapse but determined not to show it. “Where are you taking me?”

“To the place where I left my canoe.” He crouched on one bent knee, his heavy black brows meeting in a scowl as he lifted and examined the bruised, blistered sole of her foot.

“And from there?”

“To my village, far down the river.”

“And what will become of me then?” Clarissa’s voice dropped to a choked whisper as the gravity of her situation sank home. This was no game, no idle contest of wit and will. This was a battle for her life.

He was bent low, his craggy features compressed into a frown as his fingers picked away the thorns and tiny rocks that had embedded themselves in her tender flesh.

“You didn’t answer me,” she said, feigning boldness. “What will happen when we reach your village?”

“You will be brought before the council,” he said slowly, his eyes on his task. “And you will be tried.”

“Tried?” Clarissa’s body gave an involuntary jerk. “Tried for what?”

He glanced up at her, his eyes the icy blue of a frozen lake in winter. “To see if you are worthy,” he answered.

“Worthy?” Clarissa could feel her heart fluttering like a trapped bird inside her rib cage.

“Yes,” he answered in a low voice. “Worthy to live.”

Chapter Three

Wolf Heart caught the subtle widening of her eyes. He saw the terror that glinted in their clear green depths. He felt the tension in her slim white foot where it balanced on his bent knee. The girl had courage. Perhaps too much courage for her own good.

At first, when she had defied him, even teased him, he had thought her merely foolish. Now he saw that she was well aware of her danger. Even so, she hid her fear, masking it with boldness.

“Tell me,” she demanded, fixing him with a brazen gaze. “What is your name?”

“In your tongue, my name means Wolf Heart,” he said, bending close to twist a stubborn thorn from her heel. She winced as it came free, the small wound oozing blood. How could she have walked so far on those sore, tender feet without a whimper of complaint?

“I mean your real name,” she persisted annoyingly.

He froze, scowling up at her. “I just told you my real name.”

“All right, -then, your old name. Your Christian name.”

“Seth Johnson.” The long-forgotten syllables were hard to form. They left him wanting to rinse out his own mouth for having spoken them.

“My name is Clarissa. Clarissa Rogers,” she said lightly, as if she were meeting some swain at a party. “May I call you Seth?”

“No.” Wolf Heart carefully brushed the last of the dirt and twigs from her left foot, wishing she would be quiet and leave him alone. But, he sensed she was formulating more questions, and he knew that she would allow him no peace until she had her answers.

“Since you’re bound to ask, I was adopted by the Shawnee when I was eleven years old,” he said. “They raised me as one of their own. I am Shawnee, and my true name is Wolf Heart.”

A quiver passed through her fragile body as he lifted her right foot, cradling it, for the space of a heartbeat, between his big rough hands.

“And did the Shawnee try you as they will try me?” she asked, lowering her voice to a taut whisper.

“Yes.” He worked a small, sharp stone from the ball of her foot and used his finger to stanch the bead of crimson blood it left behind.

“Tell me about it,” she said. “I want to be ready.”

“When you need to know, then I will tell you.” He gazed down at her bruised, bleeding legs, trying not to think of the gauntlet and what it would do to her pale flesh. At that moment, he wished with all his heart she could be spared the ordeal. But that was not the Shawnee way.

“Are you hungry?” He spoke into the gulf of silence that had fallen between them.

“I could probably force myself to eat a bite or two.” Her eyes glittered defiance. “Untie my wrists, and I’ll help myself to whatever you’re serving.”

Wolf Heart hesitated, then shook his head, knowing he could not trust those swift hands of hers unfettered. “First I will finish with your feet,” he said decisively. “Then I will feed you myself.”

He drew his own steel hunting knife and saw her shrink back from him, her eyes as startled as a doe’s. Without speaking, he seized a handful of her ragged petticoat and began slashing a strip as wide as his hand from around the hem.

Her spunk returned as she realized what he was doing. “You owe me for one fine English petticoat!” she bantered.

“I’ll pay you in food.” He finished cutting the strip and began wrapping it in tight layers around her foot. The cloth would wear out rapidly, but at least it should protect her bleeding soles long enough to reach the canoe.

The girl watched him in tense silence as he worked. Clarissa. His mind toyed with her name, turning it over like a glistening river stone. It was a flower name, a name that whispered of pink satin ribbons, dancing slippers and tea in thin little china cups. Clarissa.

“What happened to your family?” she asked, the question pushing into his thoughts. “Did the Shawnee kill them?”

He shot her a glare. “No. I was an orphan. Even that is more than you need to know.”

“I’m an orphan, too,” she said, studying him with those disconcerting eyes. “My brother Junius sent me to Fort Pitt to find a husband.”

“And did you find one?” He had finished wrapping her left foot and started on her right. He was looking down as he spoke and, thus, was totally unprepared for the responding tinkle of laughter. It was a musical sound, as light as the trill of a bird. He glanced up at her, halfstartled.

“Find a husband? Gracious, no!” she exclaimed, her pale cheeks dimpling. “Unless, of course, you’d be willing to fill the job. Junius isn’t fussy. He just wants me out of the way.”

Wolf Heart bent his attention to the wrapping of her foot. Shawnee girls could also be bold and saucy. That he knew all too well. Yet this fragile creature, bruised, starved and probably frightened half to death, was the most impudent female he had ever met in his life. Her spirit moved and astounded him.

But he could not soften toward her, Wolf Heart admonished himself. This intriguing prisoner was not his to judge. She belonged, even now, to the people of his tribe, and he could not let himself be swayed, either by her fragile beauty or by her white blood. Her fate was out of his hands.

“You need to eat.” He reached into the small parfleche that hung at his waist, drew out a thin strip of smoked venison and thrust it toward her.

“Ugh! What’s that?” She drew back, wrinkling her elegant nose m distaste. “It looks awful and smells even worse!”

“It’s just deer meat,” Wolf Heart said irritably.

He tore off a small chunk from the dark, dry slab. Her gaze widened sharply as his fingers moved the morsel toward her mouth. “It looks raw,” she said, shrinking away from him.

“Smoked and salted. Try it.”

She shook her head in a show of defiance. This, Wolf Heart swiftly realized, was to be a contest of wills. “How long has it been since you ate?” he demanded.

“What difference does it—” Her question ended in a choking sound as he shoved the sliver of meat into her open mouth, seized her jaw between his two hands and held it shut. Inches from his own, her green eyes blazed like a bobcat’s.

“You are going to eat if I have to stuff this down your throat!” he said in a low, menacing voice. “Now chew!”

Her gaze shot daggers as he held her, his fingers framing her temples, his thumbs bracing her jaw. She smelled of river moss, and her cheeks were as soft as the petals of the wild hawthorn blossom. A vein throbbed beneath the translucent skin of her throat.

Wolf Heart found himself growing acutely aware of her body and the way the mud-stiffened bodice of her gown had molded to her small, perfect breasts. He remembered their savage struggle on the riverbank, her slim legs tangling so wildly with his own. Even now, the thought of it triggered a freshet of heat that trickled downward to pool in his loins.

This was not good, he lectured himself. Being this close to her was filling his head with thoughts that would only weaken his resolve and make everything more difficult. Clarissa Rogers was nothing but a red-haired bundle of trouble. She was the kind of female who could get under a man’s skin and fester there like a blackberry spine. He would be a fool not to keep a safe distance.

With a sharp exhalation, he forced himself to let her go. She sagged backward, her gaze searing his senses.

“Very well, I won’t force you to eat,” he said evenly. “But you’re going to need all your strength in the days ahead. Your life will depend on it, Clarissa. That much I can promise you.”

For an instant her pride wavered. Then a single tear glimmered in her angry eyes. Without a word, she began to chew the venison he had given her, gingerly at first, then with ravenous hunger. Her swanlike throat jerked as she swallowed.

Bit by bit, he fed her nearly half of the smoked venison. She might have eaten it all, but Wolf Heart feared that so much meat on an empty stomach might make her sick.

Her eyes watched him guardedly as he replaced the leftover meat in the parfleche. She had not uttered a word the whole time she was eating. Only now, as he stepped back and motioned for her to stand, did she clear her throat and speak.

“Don’t expect me to thank you for the food,” she said. “If you really want my thanks, you’ll untie me and let me go.”

“You wouldn’t last a day out here on your own.” He stepped back onto the trail and waited for her to take her place in front of him. She moved obediently ahead, then swung angrily back to face him.

“Are my chances any better with the Shawnee?” she flared. “What if I don’t pass my so-called trial? What if I’m not judged worthy to live? What then? Why don’t you just kill me here and now?”

Wolf heart met her eyes, steeling himself against the fear in their green depths—the fear that was already eating away at his conscience. He remembered his own boyhood ordeal, the stark terror that had kept him on his feet and driven him through the gauntlet. Maybe it would be the same for Clarissa. Her delicate body housed a fighting spirit, that much he already knew. But would it be enough?

She glared up at him with the ferocity of a trapped animal, and for an instant Wolf Heart was tempted to reveal everything she would be facing. He swiftly checked himself. Knowing would only heighten her fear. It would only serve to worsen her ordeal.

He forced himself to give her a hard look. “Turn around and walk, Clarissa,” he said quietly. “We have a long way to go.”

The canoe lay at the river’s edge, concealed by a thicket of overhanging willows. Fashioned of birch bark, the brown inner side facing outward, it was an elegant little craft, as sleek and graceful as the point of a spear.

The sight of it filled Clarissa with a mingled rush of relief and dismay. Wolf Heart had set a grueling pace on the trail, draining every drop of her endurance. Bone weary and sore, she welcomed the prospect of resting her battered feet. But reaching the canoe also meant they were nearing the Shawnee village where she would face a fate so terrible that he had refused even to speak of it.

Tossing her hair out of her eyes, she slumped against a tree. She could feel Wolf Heart’s keen blue eyes watching her every motion, but he had not touched her since their encounter over the meat. He had scarcely spoken, in fact; not even earlier, when she’d insisted that he turn his back while she squatted wretchedly in the grass to relieve herself. He had shut himself away to become as silent and mysterious as the forest itself.

His sun-gilded body glistened with sweat as he bent to slide the canoe into the river. Except for his eyes, this man, christened Seth Johnson, could have passed for a full-blooded Shawnee. He had dark bronze skin overlaying a lithe, muscular body. His flowing black hair and liquid way of moving blended with the elements of wind and water, sunlight and shadow. His face was satin smooth with no trace of beard. How could that be? Clarissa wondered. Perhaps later she would ask him—if she lived long enough.

The canoe lay rocking gently in a shallow bed of water. “Climb in,” Wolf Heart ordered her gruffly. Then, seeing that she would not be able to balance in the wobbly craft with her hands tied, he straightened, moved close to her and began loosening the knot of the leather thongs that bound her wrists.

Clarissa stood very still, her heart hammering as she felt the brush of his fingertips and the stir of his breath in her hair. His skin smelled lightly of rain and wood smoke. She fought the strange compelling urge to strain forward and taste him with the tip of her tongue.

For the space of a breath, time seemed to freeze. Then the leather thong fell away, freeing her arms. He stepped back as Clarissa rubbed the circulation into her tingling wrists.

“No tricks,” he warned her gruffly, “or I’ll truss you up like a dead deer and sling you into the bottom of the canoe.”

She nodded, more in acknowledgment than promise. If any chance arose to escape, Clarissa knew she would take it.

He crouched to hold the canoe’s edge until she could sit down in the prow, facing forward with her muddy ragged skirts piled around her. “Hang on to that cross brace,” he said, his glance indicating a smooth wooden bar in front of her. “There’s some rough water out there.”

She twisted back to look at him. “You don’t have to do this,” she pleaded. “Let me go and forget you ever saw me. I’ll take my chances in the woods.”

The only answer to her plea was the subtle tightening of Wolf Heart’s jaw.

Clarissa felt the canoe scrape the bottom of the shallow inlet as he took his place behind her and pushed off with the paddle. Swiftly they glided out into the flooded river.

Clarissa gasped as the flood-swollen current struck the canoe, sweeping it into an eddy, swirling it around and around like a windblown leaf. She clung white knuckled to the brace, spray lashing her cheeks as the bow dipped and danced through the water. Haunted by the nightmare ride on the flatboat, she battled rising waves of panic.

Behind her, she could hear Wolf Heart laboring with the paddle. She could hear the deep, steady passage of air in and out of his powerful lungs. He was not afraid, she suddenly realized. He knew the river’s nature and how to use it, how to move in harmony with the current, not against it.

Clarissa felt her fear easing. She leaned forward, the breeze lifting her hair as the water foamed along the narrow bow. Her hands kept their tight grip on the cross brace. Except for the persistent churning of her stomach she could almost believe she was going to survive this wild ride.

Moments later they shot out of the rapids and entered a calmer stretch of water. Clarissa slumped over the bow. “Are you all right?” she heard Wolf Heart ask.

“I’m just dandy,” she snapped, feeling dizzy and nauseous. “For someone who’s been half-drowned, forcemarched barefoot through the woods, stuffed with halfraw meat and taken on a giant whirligig ride, I’m doing magnificently! Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

She leaned over the side of the bobbing canoe and proceeded to lose everything he had so insistently fed her.

Behind her, dead silence had fallen. In the midst of that silence she heard Wolf Heart chuckle. The sound was so deep and warm and startling that, for all her miserable condition, it sent a shock of pleasure through her body-pleasure that was swiftly replaced by outrage. Shawnee or white, this backwoods ruffian had no right to laugh at her discomfort.

She turned around and shot him a malevolent glare, only to see him grinning broadly at her. “Clarissa Rogers, you’re a caution,” he said.

“A caution?” She shook her head at the homeyness of the word, coming as it did from a bare-chested savage with silver disks in his ears and two eagle feathers jutting from his scalp lock. “I have no idea what you mean by that!”

Sunlight rippled on his massive shoulders as he maneuvered the canoe expertly around a large boulder. “You’ve been through enough to undo most white women,” he said. “But you still haven’t lost your spunk.”

“I can see you don’t know much about white women!” Clarissa huffed, still feeling light-headed. “Did you expect me to swoon? Did you expect me to whimper and cry like a helpless little ninny? For your information, I’m way beyond that now. I’ve long since had all the crying scared out of me!”

Turning her back on him, she frowned down at the greenish brown river, wondering how deep it was. If she could touch bottom, she might be able to wade ashore and flee into the woods. She would be taking a dangerous chance, but even drowning could prove to be a kinder fate than the unknown terrors awaiting her in the Shawnee village.

“Where do you come from?” she asked, resolving to bide her time and wait for exactly the right spot in the river. “Your speech, some of the things you say—you don’t sound as if you started life in a log hut on the Allegheny.”

When he did not answer, Clarissa realized she had stepped on to forbidden ground. As a man who had buried his past, Wolf Heart was clearly uncomfortable with her question.

“Very well, if you won’t talk, I will,” she said, setting out to distract him with chatter. “My father was a cloth merchant. He owned one of the finest shops in Baltimore. He and my mother were very happy, as I recall, but she died when I was six, and the rest of my upbringing was left to our housekeeper, Mrs. Pimm.”

She spoke into the breeze, letting her words float back to the brooding presence behind her. “My father passed away seven years ago, and, of course, my brother Junius, who was already grown, inherited the house and the business. We never did get on well, Junius and I. He’s made no secret of counting the days until I take my dowry and leave him alone with his precious, moldy, old ledger books.”

Clarissa glanced back over her shoulder to see if Wolf Heart was listening. His stony face had assumed a mask of studied indifference.

“My dowry includes a fine ten-acre parcel of land just outside the city and fifty pounds in gold,” she continued, ignoring his silence. “All of it, of course, will go to my husband when I marry.”

Her voice trailed off as it struck her that, in all likelihood, she would not live to bestow her dowry, or herself, on any future husband. Her land and money would go to the penny-pinching Junius, to gather dust with the rest of his possessions. Her bones would lie in unmarked earth, somewhere in this alien wilderness, unmourned and unremembered.

Tears blurred Clarissa’s sight. She blinked them furiously away, determined not to show emotion before her grim captor. Straightening her shoulders, she cleared her throat to speak again, but no words would come. Her hands whitened on the cross brace as the silence grew more and more oppressive.

“I was born in Boston.” Wolf Heart’s voice, low and husky behind her, sent a tremor through Clarissa’s body. “My father was a schoolmaster, a good and gentle man until my mother died. Then he took to drink, and that changed everything.”

He lapsed into silence once more, and Clarissa sensed the struggle that raged inside him. He was not a man who revealed himself easily, that she already knew. This slow opening of his past left her strangely touched, as if, in exchange for her empty prattle, he had presented her with a rare and valuable gift.

Quiet minutes passed, broken only by the ripple of the water and the calls of morning songbirds. At last he cleared his throat and spoke again, each word laced with the pain of memory.

“The whiskey turned my father into a violent, foulmouthed stranger. The more he drank, the more he cursed and beat me. I should have run away, but I was only a boy, and he was all the family I had.

“After we lost our home to the moneylenders, he began having grand dreams about making a fortune in the fur trade. He hired both of us out until he’d saved enough for traps. Then we headed west—farther west than any reasonable white man would have gone alone. We were trapping beaver near the mouth of the Little Miami when a bear came charging out of the willows. She grabbed my father before he could even turn around.” Even now, Wolf Heart’s words quivered with self-blame. “I couldn’t save him. All I could do was run for my life.” He emptied his lungs in a ragged exhalation. “The boy named Seth Johnson died that day. He was reborn as a Shawnee.”

Stillness lay like a wall between them, growing thicker, heavier. “The Shawnee found you and took you in?” Clarissa prompted when she could bear it no longer.

“They offered me everything I thought I’d lost,” he said. “Family. Honor. Kindness. A life filled with meaning and purpose.”

“And when they put you on trial—” a bitter undertone had crept into Clarissa’s voice “—did you prove yourself worthy to live among them?”

“Yes.”

She strained to hear his half-whispered reply.

“As I have had to prove myself many times over. Even now.”

The canoe shot forward as he drove the paddle hard into the current. Clarissa stared bleakly ahead—trees, willows and water blending into streaks of muted spring color. She knew now why Wolf Heart had taken her prisoner, and why he would never let her go. To show compassion for a white captive would prove, to him and to all his adopted tribe, that he was not a true Shawnee. He would be an outcast, torn from a world he had come to know and love.

She could expect no mercy from him.

They were passing through a level stretch of river. Here the floodwaters had crept outward across the bottomlands to form a lake, so calm and glassy that the current was scarcely visible. Clarissa stared down at the clouded water, wondering what lay beneath it. Surely, with the river spread so wide, it could not be more than a few feet deep in any spot. Better yet, the bank on the near side was thick with brush and willows. If she could reach them, it might be possible to duck beneath the water, then surface and hide in the shelter of the trailing branches until Wolf Heart gave her up for drowned.

Clarissa’s mind reeled with the daring of her idea. It was a reckless scheme, to be sure. But a fighting chance at escape was better than no chance at all.

She glanced back at Wolf Heart, hoping to catch him off guard. He was watching her intently.

“How far is your village?” she asked in a ploy to lure him back into conversation.

“Not far.” His paddle rippled through the silky water. “We will be there before sundown.”

“You were a long way from home when you found me,” she ventured. “What were you doing?”

“Trailing a bear.”

“A bear?” Clarissa’s reflexes jerked. She imagined herself lying unconscious on the riverbank, the monstrous beast lumbering out of the trees to sniff at her inert body.

“It came to nothing,” Wolf Heart said. “I lost the trail not long before I found you.”

“At least you won’t be coming home empty-handed.” Clarissa made a show of finger-combing her matted curls, drawing his gaze upward as, beneath her skirts, her legs shifted for the leap to freedom. Her pounding heart seemed to fill her whole chest and throat as she tensed, then sprang upward and hurled herself out over the surface of the river.

For the barest instant she hung suspended between sun and water. Then the cold strangling wetness closed around her and she began to sink. Her kicking feet groped for the bottom that, by all reason, should have been within easy reach. It was not there.

Too late, Clarissa realized how wrong she had been. The nver was far deeper here than it had appeared from the surface, and now its strong undertow was pulling her down. Her bursting lungs released a trail of bubbles in the darkness. Her mouth gulped for air and took in water. Her legs and arms thrashed frantically as her oxygenstarved mind began to dim.

She was already beginning to drown.

Chapter Four

Wolf Heart cursed under his breath—a white man’s curse—as his prisoner plunged over the side of the canoe and vanished headlong into the brown swirl of water. His annoyance was directed more at himself than at Clarissa Rogers. He should have known she would try something like this.

His first impulse was to dive in after her, but he swiftly checked himself. To jump into the river would mean losing the canoe and all his provisions. It would be easy enough to paddle to shore ahead of her. That way he would be there waiting to confront her when she staggered, dripping and exhausted, onto the bank.

He turned the canoe broadside to the current, expecting at any moment to see Clarissa’s head bob into sight, her russet hair streaming behind her like a long wet foxtail as she stroked through the water. The undercurrent was strong in this part of the river, but the bank was no more than a stone’s throw away. A good swimmer would be able to cover the distance in a few minutes’ tune. And surely, if Clarissa was not a good swimmer, she would not have jumped.

Seconds passed, measured in long deep breaths and expectant heartbeats. More seconds crawled by, and still she did not appear. Wolf Heart’s instincts shrilled in alarm as he realized something was wrong.

In a flash his lean body knifed into the river, leveling out an arm’s length below the surface. Water filled his vision, so murky with silt that he could barely see his own hands, let alone any sign of Clarissa.

Sick with dread he stroked deeper, heading downstream, the way the current would have carried her. The boyhood ordeal by which he had earned his pa-waw-ka served him well now. Every morning, for four long winter moons, he had forced himself to dive naked into the frigid river. On the final day, with the whole village looking on, he had made three dives, the last one carrying him beneath the ice to the Ohio’s dark bed, where his searching hand had clasped the translucent shell he carried now in his medicine pouch.

That long dive came back to him now as he groped for Clarissa’s slender, elusive body. He remembered the fear, the darkness, the deadly cold. As he had once found his pa-waw-ka, he knew he had to find her.

Lungs bursting, he surfaced at last. His eyes scanned the milky surface of the river as he gulped air, then dove again. Could she be playing with him, hiding somewhere out of sight, laughing behind her hands as he searched frantically in the water? He would not put that past the little vixen—but no, a black inner certainty told him the danger was real.

The current was rougher here. Wolf Heart could feel its pull as the river swept him toward an outcrop of rocks. If he did not find her soon…

His pulse leaped as his fingers brushed a mass of flowing hair, long and fine and silky to the touch. He seized it, and in the next instant felt her head, her throat, her face. He reached lower and caught her waist. She did not respond.

With a wrenching tug, he pulled her body clear from where it had wedged between two underwater boulders. She drifted beside him, as lifeless and unresisting as a doll, as he kicked for the surface, made a final upward lunge and broke with her into the sunlight.

Clarissa lolled in his arms, blue from lack of air. A vein pulsed along the curve of her throat, but she was not breathing.

He plunged for the shallows, lifting her in his arms as his feet found bottom. Her wet hair fanned over his arms, its color like polished cedar. Her gown clung in water-soaked tatters to her delicately curved body. Wolf Heart glanced down at her closed eyelids, remembering her laughter, her maddening questions, her astounding courage. Bursting with effort, he surged ahead, bulling his way through the resisting water. Time and distance crept at a nightmare’s pace as he fought his way toward the river’s edge.

At last he broke free of the water, lurched onto the bank and rolled Clarissa belly-down onto the grass. With his knees, he straddled her waist, his urgent hands working her ribs, lifting, squeezing to imitate the motion of breath.

Why hadn’t he let her go free, back there in the woods? She was such a harmless creature, as fragile and innocent as a fawn. He could just as easily have trailed her back to Fort Pitt, protecting her from a distance until she reached safety. Now, whether she lived or died, it was too late. He had destroyed whatever life she had known, as surely as if he had crushed her skull with a war club.

A sudden shudder passed beneath his hands, a quiver of life that sent a thrill through Wolf Heart’s body. Knowing what must be done, he lifted her by the waist, letting her head hang down. Clarissa choked. Her corseted ribs convulsed as she vomited up a stomach full of dirty brown water.

Wolf Heart steeled himself as he lowered her trembling body to the grass and rolled her onto her back. It would have been easier if she had drowned, he lashed himself. Now, if anything, he was even more deeply torn than before.

She lay with her eyes closed, color flooding her pale cheeks as she breathed. The bodice of her gown, or what was left of it, molded wetly to her small firm breasts, the tatted edging of her camisole stained brown with river mud. The wet tangle of her hair lay pooled on the grass, framing her porcelain features with flame.

Wolf Heart looked down at her for a long moment, then glanced swiftly up at the sky, his fingertips brushing his medicine pouch.

Weshcat-welo k’weshe laweh-Pah. The words of his Shawnee mother, Black Wings, echoed in his memory. May we be strong by doing what is right.

His gaze dropped once more to Clarissa’s pale face. Weshemoneto, Master of Life, make me strong, he breathed in wordless prayer. Help me remember who I am and what I must do.

Clarissa opened her eyes to find him crouched over her, his hair dripping, his gaze deeply troubled. A muscle twitched in his cheek as their eyes met. As she stared up at him, the line of his mouth hardened into an angry scowl.

“What did you think you were doing?” he growled, the black tips of his brows almost touching above his nose. “I thought you had at least enough sense to stay in the canoe1”

“What…happened?” She blinked up at him, her mind still emerging from the fog of unconsciousness.

“You almost drowned, that’s what! Why did you try such a crazy thing, anyway?”

“I didn’t realize it would be so deep.” Clarissa’s throat felt as if she had swallowed a length of knotted hemp. Her ribs ached with every breath. The sun was a blur of light against the hot blue sky.

“You’re saying you don’t know how to swim?” He glowered down at her, angry and incredulous.

“Young ladies in Baltimore don’t usually take swimming lessons,” she retorted coldly.

“So you just jumped into a flooded river and expected

to float?”

“Of course not! I meant to wade ashore, not swim. I just underestimated the depth of the water, that’s all.”

He shook his regal head in disgust. “Did you think it would be that easy to get away from me?” he demanded.

“Not really.”

“Then why did you take such a foolish chance?”

Clarissa pushed herself up onto one shaky elbow, her hair tumbling into her water-reddened eyes. “The way I saw it, I had nothing to lose,” she said.

“Nothing to lose?” His eyes contained the fury of summer lightning. “That’s where you’re wrong. You’ve managed to lose something very important to both of us.”

His gaze flickered toward the river. Only then did Clarissa realize that the canoe was nowhere in sight. And only then, as she noticed the water drops glistening on Wolf Heart’s coppery skin, did she understand that once more she owed this man her life.

“Not only is the canoe gone,” he said with an undertone of menace, “but also my bow and arrows, my blanket and the corn cakes I was going to feed you as soon as you felt well enough to eat again. Even my parfleche was lost in the river. Now we will both go hungry.”

He rose to his full height, looming above her, his face a thundercloud. With one great fist, he caught Clarissa’s hand and jerked her upward. She staggered to her feet, her senses reeling dizzily.

“I tried to make this journey easy for you,” he said, turning her around and maneuvering her roughly ahead of him. “Youchose not to go along. Without the canoe, we have only one way to get to the village. Walk.”

It was his voice, rather than any perceived touch, that prodded Clarissa ahead. She willed one leaden foot to move, then the other. Her whole body ached. Her mouth tasted of sickness and river mud. The ground swam like water in her vision. But she would not give Wolf Heart the satisfaction of hearing so much as a whimper from her.

One foot. Then the other. She moved like a sleepwalker, conscious only of the dark presence behind her. Wolf Heart would not let her rest, she knew. He would march her all the way to his village.

She stumbled ahead, forcing each step. Then, abruptly, she blundered into a rain-filled hollow. Her leg buckled beneath her and she collapsed flat on the muddy ground.

Biting back a moan of despair, she braced her arms and worked her weight onto her knees. She would crawl if she had to, Clarissa swore, but she would die before she would beg this arrogant savage for mercy.

She inched forward, fingers clawing the mud. Suddenly the earth seemed to fall away beneath her. She gasped as Wolf Heart’s big hands enclosed her waist. His powerful arms swept her upward, turned her deftly in midair, and slung her face-backward over his shoulder. Without a word, he struck out downriver, covering the ground in long, swift-moving strides.

Dazed, Clarissa bobbed limply while the breath returned to her body. Then she began to struggle. Her legs kicked uselessly beneath the clasp of his arm. Her fists pummeled the only part of him they could reach—his muscular buttocks—only to stop abruptly when she realized she was pounding bare flesh.

Her face reddened in spite of her fear. “Put me down!” she sputtered. “Put me down this instant!”

“You’re saying you’d rather walk?” Wolf Heart did not break stride. His tone was almost pleasant, but Clarissa did not miss the edge to his question.

“That’s not the point! I’m a lady, for your information, and no man has a right to handle me this way!”

“Oh?” Disdain sharpened his voice. “And how would you like me to handle you?”

“With dignity! With respect!” Clarissa’s spirits sagged as she realized how ludicrous her demands must sound to him. Here she was, slung over his shoulder like a bag of oats. She was filthy, footsore, and facing a fate so horrible that she could not bear to imagine it. Dignity and respect had long since gone the way of the wind.

“Just let me go,” she pleaded, abandoning all pretense. “Turn your back and let me take my chances in the forest with the wild animals. Is that asking so much?”

Wolf Heart did not answer her. When Clarissa twisted her head, she could see that he was gazing upriver, his body tense and expectant

“Please, Wolf Heart,” she persisted. “I’m not your enemy. I mean your people no harm. Just leave me here. Forget you ever set eyes on me.”

His throat moved against the curve of her body. “It’s too late for that,” he said softly. “Look.”

Stooping, he lowered Clarissa’s feet to the ground. The blood rushed out of her head as she stood erect. She swayed dizzily, her vision swimming into darkness. Groping for Wolf Heart’s arm, she clung to his solid flesh with both hands. Slowly the world stopped spinning around her. Little by little her vision cleared.

She stared past him, her gaze following the sundappled river upstream. A blue heron took flight from the shallows, its long neck folded into its shoulders, its slender legs trailing behind like ribbons. Dazzled, she traced its streaking flight along the curve of the bank.

Only then did she see the three canoes. Still small in the distance, they were bearing swiftly downstream toward the sandbar where she and Wolf Heart stood.

It’s too late. His words spun in Clarissa’s mind as she stood helplessly, watching the canoes approach. It was too late to run. Too late to hide. Too late to plead for her freedom. She had run out of hope.

Wolf Heart raised an arm and waved. A lone paddler in one of the canoes waved back and, in a moment, the narrow craft had broken away from the others and was angling across the current, moving toward the bank.

Clarissa remained silent, her heart a pulsing knot of dread. Wolf Heart had not spoken to her in minutes-had not, in fact, even looked at her. He was all Shawnee now, every remnant of Seth Johnson buried beneath the visage of a warrior.

The canoe glided into the shallows. Its bow nosed up to the bank and crunched onto the sand. The brave wielding the paddle paused to rest, a grin spreading across his lean, pockmarked face.

“Tap-a-lot brother!” He greeted Wolf Heart, but his curious eyes were already devouring Clarissa in fascination. “You told us you were going to hunt bear. Is this a new kind of bear you have taken alive? No, it looks more like a fox! How splendid that red pelt will look on your bed!”

Wolf Heart scowled, his gaze flickering to Clarissa. She could not understand a word of what Cat Follower was saying, of course. But in the hours to come she would be the butt of many such good-natured jokes, and he silently ached for her. Yes, he lashed himself, he should have let her go while there was still time. Now it was too late.

“And what has become of your canoe?” Cat Follower’s grin widened, showing the gap of a missing tooth. “You look very wet, brother, as does your fox. Could it be that she spilled you both into the water? What a shame!”

“Never mind that,” Wolf Heart retorted a bit sharply. “It’s a long walk back to the village. Will your canoe carry all three of us?”

Cat Follower chuckled, one hand indicating the empty hull. “As you see, this was not a good day to go hunting. But my bad luck is your good luck. Since I have no game of my own, there is room for you, and for your whiteskinned fox, as well.”

“Then I owe you my thanks.” Wolf Heart nudged Clarissa toward the canoe. His fingertips brushed her back, feeling the fear in her taut muscles. This time, however, she did not try to fight or run away. She had no strength left.

He seated her in the prow of the canoe, then, pushing the craft off the sandbar, he slipped into place behind his friend and took up the spare paddle. Clarissa sat in rigid silence as the canoe glided into the current, her hair fluttering like a flame in the afternoon breeze.

Cat Follower’s wiry muscles rippled beneath his pockmarked skin as he guided the canoe. Years ago, his family had taken in a French trapper who had stumbled, delirious with fever, into their camp. The white man had recovered and moved on, but the sickness he carried had swept through the small Shawnee village. Only Cat Follower, then a youth of sixteen summers, had survived.

“What do you plan to do with her?” He was staring raptly at the play of sunlight on Clarissa’s hair.

“That is not for me to say.” Wolf Heart spoke around the painful tightness in his throat. “You know our law as well as I do. It is for the council to decide.”

“That will mean the gauntlet.” Cat Follower glanced back at Wolf Heart. “The council will demand it.”

“Yes, I know.”

“This one is not strong, brother. Look at her. She is as thin as a willow.”

Wolf Heart heard the note of caution in his friend’s voice, and he knew it was meant for him. Even for a man, the gauntlet was a brutal test. He could hardly expect a fragile, city-bred girl like Clarissa to weather such punishment.

Even so, as he watched her lean into the wind, her hair flying like a banner, Wolf Heart knew he could not abandon hope. “A willow bends,” he murmured quietly, “but it does not break.”

Clarissa heard the low voices behind her, speaking a tongue as alien as the chatter of wild geese or the baying of a wolf pack. The two men were talking about her—of that much she was certain. But maybe it was just as well she didn’t understand what they were saying. She was frightened enough as it was.

Her hands gripped the sides of the canoe as the slim craft sliced through a stretch of white water. The spray was cool on her skin, the canoe’s wild, careening plunges strangely exhilarating. Clarissa allowed herself to savor the moment. Soon, perhaps forever, all such pleasures would end.

With two paddlers, the canoe soon gained on its mates. Clarissa sensed the excitement among the other young braves as they turned to gaze at her, staring openly at her russet hair and pale skin. Resolving to be bold, she stared back at them. This, at least, gave her the opportunity to study her captors.

Earlier that day, she had observed that Wolf Heart, with his black hair and sun-burnished skin, could have passed for a full-blooded Shawnee. Now she saw how wrong she had been. He was far too large, for one thing. The Shawnee braves were compact and wiry, without an ounce of extra flesh on their bones. The rich coppery hue of their skins could never have come from the sun alone. The color seemed to glow in them, like light flickering beneath the surfaces of their bodies. For all the terror their sharp gazes struck in her, Clarissa had to admit that these Shawnee were beautiful people.

One of the braves called out, laughing. Wolf Heart’s reply was brusque, almost angry. What had the young man said? Had it been something about her?

She risked a glance back at Wolf Heart. He was sitting in the rear of the canoe, the muscles rippling in his arms as he drove the paddle into the water. His hair streamed back in glossy waves from his impassive face. What was he thinking? Why wouldn’t he look at her?

Fear tightened its cold grip on Clarissa’s throat. Her eyes gazed out at the sun-sparkled water. Her ears heard the laughter of the paddlers and the squawk of a passing crow. It was a sham, all of it, she knew. Death and danger lurked beneath the peace of this golden afternoon. Wolf Heart’s face had told her so.

The three canoes had drawn abreast now, and suddenly a shout echoed across the water. The braves leaned vigorously into their paddles. The canoes surged forward with a swiftness that made Clarissa gasp. It was a race! A race to the village!

She strained forward, caught up in spite of her fear. The canoe in which she was riding carried the most weight, and thus rode lowest in the water, but this handicap was balanced by the power of its paddlers. Even Wolf Heart had flung his strength into the contest, his mouth tightened in a grim line as he drove his paddle into the water.

The speed of the canoes became more labored as they turned into a narrow tributary of the Ohio. Now they were moving upstream. The bronze limbs of the young Shawnee gleamed with sweat. Their backs rose and fell with the strain of fighting the powerful current.

Just when it seemed they were all beginning to flag, the pockmarked brave behind her—Wolf Heart’s friend—started to sing. Clarissa felt the hair rise on the back of her neck as his thin voice rose to a high-pitched wail then dropped abruptly into a guttural, rhythmic chant that the other paddlers swiftly joined. The canoes surged ahead with renewed vigor, driven by the throbbing beat of the song.

Glancing back over her shoulder, Clarissa saw that even Wolf Heart was singing, although not with any great enthusiasm. She watched him furtively, her own spirit reflecting the blackness that had settled over him with the arrival of the canoes. If only she could talk with him, but that, she knew, would no longer be possible. He had withdrawn into his Shawnee self, and even now he was far beyond her reach.

Turning away from him, she gazed ahead to where the river curved and vanished behind a low, wooded bluff. A fresh breeze cooled her face. She inhaled deeply, flooding her senses with the faint but unmistakable aromas of wood smoke, roasting meat, tobacco and hominy.

Her ribs tightened sharply as if someone had jerked a noose around her. The very smells she was savoring meant that the Shawnee village could not be far. Soon she would know what her fate was to be.

The brightness had faded from the day. The sun lay a finger’s breadth above the trees now, blurred by a haze of low-lying clouds. Soon it would be dusk, then nightfall.

Clarissa filled her gaze with the dying light, with the deepening blue of the sky, the pale green of budding trees and the soft earthen red of spring willows. These she would hold in her memory to save for the time when darkness closed around her.

She did not expect to see another sunrise.

Wolf Heart’s village was nestled in the lee of the bluff, overlooking the river. Cook fires flickered in the gathering twilight. Smoke curled from the roofs of loaf-shaped bark lodges that ringed from a larger building made of logs.

As the three canoes glided toward shore, Clarissa could see people running down the path to the river—children of all sizes, women, some with babies in their arms, and a few men. They clustered along the bank, pointing and jabbering. She turned to ask Wolf Heart what they were saying, but the coldness in his eyes withered her halfformed words. She would get no answers from him—not in front of his people.

But what did it matter? She needed no interpreter to know that the people clustered along the bank were talking about her, exclaiming over her red hair and pale skin. She held her head high, battling the urge to hide her head beneath her ragged skirts.

Wolf Heart and his pockmarked friend had paddled the canoe in a half circle, rotating it so that when the small craft touched land, Wolf Heart was able to leap out and pull it onto the beach. Clarissa, now in the rear, turned to meet his stony gaze. His head jerked toward the village, an indication, she guessed, that she was to climb out of the canoe and follow him.

Only when she tried to stand did she realize how weak she was. Dark blotches swam before her eyes. Her cramped legs threatened to buckle beneath her—and would have, perhaps, if the pockmarked brave had not caught her arm. She allowed him to steady her as she climbed over the edge of the canoe and stumbled on to the sand. His leathery hand released her cautiously. His curious eyes followed her as she lifted her head and, summoning the last of her strength, tottered up the slope on her blistered, swollen feet.

The Shawnee people were all around her now. Inquisitive fingers caught her hair, tugged her skirts and poked at her strange white skin. Panic tightened its stranglehold around Clarissa’s rib cage. She fought back a scream as one wrinkled crone seized a handful of her hair, yanking so hard that Clarissa feared she was about to be scalped.

Terror exploded in her. She spun wildly, flailing at the groping hands and peering faces. She wanted only to get away, to breathe, but they were clawing at her limbs now, their sheer numbers dragging her down. She felt herself stumbling, falling.

“Wolf Heart!” The cry tore from her fear-strangled throat. “Wolf Heart!”

Suddenly he was there beside her, his arm catching her waist, lifting her as she went down. Clarissa heard his voice speaking quietly but firmly in Shawnee. The people were listening. They were backing away, clearing a path.

She sagged against his shoulder, trembling as they moved forward together. “It’s all right,” he muttered, leaning close to her ear. “They won’t hurt you. They’re only curious.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” She gripped his arm, her broken fingernails pressing anxiously into his flesh.

“That’s for the council to decide.”

“And when will they do that?”

“Tonight. Maybe tomorrow.” He spoke tersely, his voice revealing no trace of emotion. “You’re to be given food. Eat it all. Rest tonight while you have the chance.”

“And tomorrow?” She swung back to face him, ignoring the pressing crowd as she forced him to meet her gaze. “Tell me! What happens then?”

Something flickered in his eyes as he looked down at her, then his gaze hardened. “It is forbidden to speak of it,” he said. “You will know when the time comes.”

Clarissa’s taut nerves frayed and snapped. “You insolent savage!” she hissed with a fury she had not known she possessed. Her hand went up, and she would have struck him if he had not seized her wrist. Fury blazed in the depths of his cold blue eyes.

“Never do that again,” he whispered, his voice a menacing rasp. “Now turn around and walk—unless you’d rather be tied up and dragged!”

Stunned by his ferocity, Clarissa did as she was told. Anger fueled her strength as she stalked up the slope of the bank toward the village. She felt his looming presence behind her, sensed it in the parting of the crowd. Wolf Heart was clearly a respected man in this savage place. But it was equally clear that he would never use his influence to save her. From this point on, she could depend on no one but herself.

Chapter Five

The sounds, sights and smells of the village were all around her. The acrid scent of wood smoke blended with the savory aroma of simmering beans, corn, squash and wild onion. A wolflike yellow dog sniffed at Clarissa’s leg, then backed away, growling at her alien scent. From inside one of the long bark lodges, a woman’s voice was crooning what might have been a lullaby.

People seemed to be everywhere—working, eating, resting or simply staring at her in undisguised fascination. The younger children, many of them naked, cavorted around her unafraid, their soft black eyes dancing with excitement. Even the women were lightly dressed, some in long fringed buckskin chemises, others in nothing but beads and short leather aprons. From somewhere beyond the clustered lodges came the nicker of a horse.

“Here.” Wolf Heart stopped before a small barkcovered hut. There were several of these, clustered close together in the shadow of the spacious log building she had seen from the river. “For prisoners,” he explained curtly. “This one is yours.”

She stared at him.

“Go inside,” he continued as if he were talking to a backward child. “You’ll be safe as long as you don’t try to leave.”

“And if I do try?” Clarissa feigned a bravado she did not feel.

“You’ll be caught. Your feet and hands will be lashed together behind your back and you’ll be forced to lie that way all night.” His expression softened, but only for the space of a heartbeat. “Do you want to live, Clarissa?”

Her exhausted body had begun to shake. Her legs quivered beneath her, threatening to buckle. She battled the need to sink against him, to draw strength from his broad, hard chest. “Yes,” she whispered, trembling, “I want to live.”

“Then you must do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you. Is that clear?”

She stared up into his face, only half-aware of the Shawnee milling around them. Her lips tightened as she swallowed and nodded.

Wolf Heart exhaled raggedly. The fading light cast his features into sharp relief, making them look as if they’d been hacked from rough stone. “Go into the hut,” he said. “Eat the food you’ll be given. Then try to sleep.” His eyes narrowed. “No matter what happens, whatever you hear—or think you hear—stay inside and don’t look out. Do you understand?”

Clarissa barely had time to nod again before he shoved her through the low entrance and dropped the deerskin flap behind her. Terror clutched at her as she stumbled into the darkness. She had been fighting fear all day. Now that she was alone, danger and despair finally came crashing in on her.

Clutching her knees like a frightened child, she crouched in the center of the small space, fearful of what might be lurking in the deeper shadows. Her shoulders shook. Her throat jerked in spasms of tearless weeping.

Time passed, how much time Clarissa could not be sure, but all at once she was startled into full alertness by the rustle of the hide that covered the hut’s entrance. Firelight glimmered through the narrow opening, silhouetting a low figure that had come inside and was moving toward her.

“Wolf Heart?” The words strangled in her throat. This was not Wolf Heart. It was not anyone she knew.

Clarissa shrank into the darkness, muscles tensed to spring at the first sign of attack. “Don’t come any closer!” she hissed at the hunched, shaggy-looking form that was edging toward her. Her broken fingernails clawed at the hut’s earthen floor, scraping out a handful of dirt. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but tossing it at the intruder’s eyes might at least give her the advantage of surprise.

She was reaching back with her arm when she heard a thin cackle of laughter. In the next instant, the mouthwatering aroma of roast meat and vegetables assailed her senses. Her hand unclenched, releasing the dirt back to the floor. Wolf Heart had said she was to be given food. This creeping presence who had frightened her so was nothing more than an elderly woman bringing her a meal.

Still wary, Clarissa edged deeper into the shadows. The crone spoke to her in Shawnee, her ancient voice raspmg like the stone wheel of a scissor grinder. “We-sah,” she said, thrusting out a bowl made from a hollowed gourd. “We-sah!”

The old woman did not appear dangerous, or even unfriendly, but Clarissa had endured a long and dreadful day. Famished as she was, she could not bring herself to reach out and take the food from the gnarled hand. She cringed like a captive animal, refusing to move.

Only when the woman had backed out of the hut and gone, leaving the bowl on the floor, did Clarissa summon the courage to creep forward. The stew, or so it appeared, was still warm. Its fragrance floated into her nostrils, triggering hunger pangs so intense she almost moaned out loud.

Her hands groped for utensils in the dark space. Finding nothing, not even a napkin, Clarissa managed an outraged little sniff. How on earth did these people expect her to eat? With her fingers?

Apparently so.

Salivating in spite of herself, she poked a tentative fingertip into the stew and licked off the juices that clung there. The earthy taste was so rich it made her head swim.

She used her thumb and forefinger to pick out a small chunk of meat and taste it. Venison—she had eaten it before, at the fort. And here was corn, onion and a slice of vegetable that smelled like squash…

Suddenly she was picking up the bowl, tilting her head back and scooping the stew into her eager mouth, making tiny animal noises as she chewed and swallowed. Clarissa had never been so ravenous. Only the fear of getting sick again kept her from bolting it all down at once like a hungry dog.

Within minutes she had finished off every morsel and cleaned the bowl of juices. Abandoning all pretense of manners, she licked her fingers and wiped them dry on the ragged remnants of her skirt. Crawling forward, she pushed the empty bowl under the deerskin flap. She did not want to give the old woman an excuse to come in and startle her again.

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