Ride the Fire (Blakewell/Kenleigh Family Trilogy, #3)

  Bethie heard herself cry out, felt a shaft of searing heat shoot from her breast to her belly, then turn to dew between her thighs. It felt so good, and before she realized it, she had twined her fingers through his hair, pressed him closer.

  “I’ve waited so long to taste you, Bethie.” His voice had a ragged edge to it, and she felt his hand open her shift, bare her aching breasts to the cool night air. Then he cupped one breast in his callused palm, drew lazy circles over its tight peak with his thumb, descended on her again, his mouth closing over her other nipple this time.

  Never had she felt anything like this. Sensation overwhelmed her. The rasp of his tongue. The sweet tug of his lips. The deep vibration of his mouth as he moaned.

  “Nicholas!” What was happening to her? What had he done to her to make her feel so hot, so reckless? What was that wet, throbbing emptiness between her thighs?

  “Mmm, warm and sweet.” He flicked his tongue against the sensitive underside of her breast, then drew her nipple back into his mouth, sucked it, grazed it gently with his teeth.

  “Oh, aye!”

  He caught her pleasured cry with his mouth, ravished her with his lips and tongue.

  The throb between her thighs became an ache.

  As if he knew what she was feeling, he slid a hand down the heated skin of her belly, began to move it in slow circles over her womb.

  She felt her hips lift off the furs, seeking, seeking . . . Oh, she did not know what!

  Then he slid his hand down over her woman’s mound, cupped her most intimate flesh.

  A lightning shard of panic. A wave of nausea.

  “Nay!” She pressed her legs tightly together, tried to push his hand away. “Please, stop!”

  Nicholas felt her body stiffen. But he felt something else as well. Even through the cloth of her shift, he could tell she was wet. Her body wanted him, was more than ready for him.

  But her mind was not. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her face turned away from him.

  “It’s all right, Bethie.” He fought the raging of his blood, ignored the animal drive inside him that urged him to take her despite his promise, withdrew his hand. Then he pulled her into his arms, stroked her hair. “Tell me what you fear, love. Tell me who hurt you.” So I can kill the bastard—if he’s not already dead.

  For a moment she said nothing, but trembled in his arms. “Th-there is nothing to tell.”

  Because she seemed so fragile, because he did not want to upset her further, he let the lie pass. He pressed his lips to her hair. “Sleep. We’ve a long journey ahead of us.”

  Soon her trembling stopped, and her breathing deepened.

  But Nicholas lay awake for a long time, burning.

  * * *

  Bethie awoke just before dawn to a chorus of birdsong—and the scent of frying fish.

  “I’ve made more willow-bark tea.” Nicholas rose from his seat by the fire, walked toward her carrying a cup. His wet hair told her he’d bathed in the stream while she’d slept. “Drink.”

  Despite the thoughtful gesture, his furrowed brow, the grim line of his mouth, the tension in his jaw told her he was in a dark temper.

  Was he angry because she had refused him?

  She sat up, winced. Her bum was tender. Her inner thighs felt as if they’d been stripped of skin. Even her neck and shoulders ached, no doubt from holding Isabelle all day.

  She took the cup from his hand, unable to meet his gaze, her shame from last night still fresh in her mind. “Thank you.”

  Tell me who hurt you, Bethie.

  How did he know?

  Beside her, beneath the bear skin Nicholas had laid over them sometime during the night, Isabelle had begun to stir.

  By the time the baby was awake and ready to nurse, Bethie had drunk her tea, eaten her breakfast, washed her dishes in the stream. She picked up her baby and settled down for a feeding.

  Nicholas smothered the fire with sand, began to scatter the ashes. “We need to travel far and fast today, make it difficult for anyone who finds signs of our presence here to catch up with us.”

  She glanced down at Isabelle, worried. “I have only the one diaper cloth. Once it’s wet, she’s sure to start wailin’.”

  Nicholas nodded, then began to dig through his pile of furs. As Bethie finished feeding Belle, he pulled out a couple of small rabbit skins, cut away bits and pieces until two small hourglass-shaped furs remained. “Try this.”

  While Nicholas packed his saddlebags and rolled their bed of furs into a bundle, Bethie laid Isabelle on the trimmed rabbit fur and folded it around her like a diaper. The corners were thin and supple enough that Bethie was able to tie them to keep the fur in place.

  Isabelle kicked and cooed, as if in approval, her chubby cheeks pink, her eyes bright.

  “Line it with moss. I think the fur will absorb some of the moisture.”

  Bethie tucked the dried moss in place. “We’ll still need to stop to change her.”

  But he had already ducked beneath the arch, saddle and saddlebags in hand.

  Bethie quickly fashioned her shawl into a sling again and tucked Isabelle safely inside it. Then she followed him through.

  Without a word, he draped the heavy saddlebags across the stallion’s back and saddled Rona. Then he turned to lift Bethie into the saddle. “I know this won’t be comfortable, Bethie, but we need to cover as much ground as we can. Tell me if it becomes too painful.”

  Strong hands gripped her around her waist, lifted her onto the mare’s back.

  Bethie bit back a cry as she settled into the saddle and her raw thighs came to rest against the leather. The pain was already excruciating.

  They rode at a quicker pace than they had the previous day, following the course of the river but holding to the shadow of the trees. Nicholas again took the lead, riding bareback on the stallion, dismounting every so often to search the ground for tracks, his mood pensive. Bethie rode behind him, Belle resting in the sling draped over her shoulders. Rosa followed them as Rona had done the day before, drawn down the trail by her loyalty to her tiny herd.

  Bethie tried not to complain. She could tell Nicholas felt there was reason for haste, and she trusted his instincts to keep her alive. She didn’t want to slow them down. But it was not yet midmorning when the pain was so bad that she was close to tears. “Stop! Please!”

  He looked back over his shoulder, reined the stallion to a stop. He dismounted with one easy leap and strode over to her. “We’ll walk for a while.”

  Strong arms lifted her from the saddle, placed her on her feet.

  And so they walked in silence. Nicholas led the horses, while Bethie carried Isabelle and tried not to step on thorns or sharp rocks with her bare feet.

  It was late in the afternoon when Nicholas stopped abruptly, motioning for her to do the same. He crouched close to the ground, examined the forest floor, then stood and pulled his pistols from the waistband of his breeches.

  Bethie’s heart began to hammer.

  “Stay here. I’m going to scout ahead.” He handed her one pistol and took his rifle from his saddlebags. “I assume you know how to use this.”

  “Aye.”

  “Good. If anything steps out of the forest that isn’t me, shoot it, and don’t miss. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. “Nicholas, what—”

  He pressed a hand to her lips. “And keep Belle quiet.”

  Then he was gone.

  For a moment Bethie stood staring into the forest gloom where he’d disappeared, her pulse racing. Then she chided herself for her lack of courage. “Think, Bethie! You willna be of any use to him or Belle if you cower at the first sign of trouble.”

  She tied off the stallion’s reins, then looked for a place where she and Belle could hide.

  * * *

  Knife and pistol drawn, Nicholas followed the tracks away from the river. He guessed there were about a dozen of them—another war party. Judging from their moccasin prints, which were placed far apart,
they were moving fast. Strange that they had done so little to conceal their tracks. That meant they felt confident—sure of what lay both before and behind them.

  He picked up his own pace and soon smelled smoke. He knew what he would find before he got there.

  In the midst of a clearing stood the burned-out remains of a cabin. Smoke still rose from the charred ruins, a grisly pennant against the blue sky. Apart from a few chickens that strutted and pecked in the mud, nothing moved.

  The bodies were scattered in the grass outside the cabin—a red-haired man, a dark-haired woman, two small dark-haired children. They had been slaughtered with war clubs and knives, their lives lost, all their worldly goods and everything they had worked for reduced to ash.

  Fury, like a sickness, churned in his stomach.

  So much killing. Senseless death. Insatiable violence.

  This wasn’t the first time Nicholas had encountered such brutality. He’d seen many frontier families slaughtered these past six years—men, women, children, infants. They came to build lives for themselves, but found only death.

  Of course Indians weren’t the only ones capable of such mindless violence. Europeans committed their share of atrocities, too—Indian children butchered and scalped by French and British soldiers and settlers, babies on cradleboards dashed against rocks, women raped and mutilated, old men killed while on their knees begging for their lives.

  Violence, it seemed, was not the province of one race but a human trait.

  Nicholas knelt beside the woman, closed her eyes, which stared unseeing at the blue sky. She was pretty and young, just a year or two older than Bethie. But there was nothing he could do for her or her slain children and husband.

  * * *

  Bethie fought to ignore her discomfort. Her stomach grumbled, and her legs had long since grown cramped from sitting confined in this dark thicket. Insects buzzed around her. Spiders and millipedes skittered over the carpet of rotting leaves beneath her. The tail of a snake slithered through the underbrush. She began to imagine—or perhaps she was not imagining—the cobweb brush of many tiny legs crawling over her skin. And once she thought she heard the low, grunting snuffles of a bear.

  Remembering how the stallion had given them away last time, she had chosen a hiding place well away from, but in sight of, the horses and was forcing herself to stay put, so as not to create a trail into and out of the thicket. It didn’t matter how uncomfortable she felt. She would do nothing to give herself away. Her life—and Belle’s—might depend on it.

  An eternity had passed since Nicholas had left them. Where had he gone? What would she do if he did not come back? What if he were overcome, taken captive, killed?

  Fear jolted through her at the thought.

  He would come back. He had to come back.

  But the afternoon lengthened, and still he did not return. She was beginning to imagine that the most horrible things had happened to him, when the stallion whinnied.

  She froze, pressed Belle closer to her breast, held her breath.

  It was Nicholas. He called for her softly. “Bethie?”

  A warm rush of relief swept through her. She crawled out from the thicket, Isabelle in her arms.

  He held three chickens by their feet, their wobbly heads proof their necks had been broken. Over his shoulder hung a new set of saddlebags. But what she noticed was the look in his eyes.

  Bleak. Dark. Anguished.

  He draped the chickens and saddlebags across the stallion’s back. “We need to ride.”

  Bethie reached out, touched his arm. “What—”

  “There’s a burnt farmstead a couple of miles south of here. No survivors.”

  Horrified, Bethie realized what he was telling her. A family had been attacked nearby. Their home had been burned, and they had all been killed.

  She asked the question, though she already knew the answer. “Indians?”

  “A Delaware war party.”

  A shiver of terror passed through her, but she tried not to acknowledge it. “W-were there children?”

  He met her gaze, and the shadows in his eyes answered her question.

  Tears blurred her vision. “And the chickens?”

  “I decided I could either let the wolves and wildcats have them, or I could catch an easy dinner. There’s grain for the horses in the saddlebags. It will help them keep up their strength until we reach the fort. The mares aren’t used to this kind of life.”

  Her gaze shifted from the chickens to the saddlebags. “Are you sure it’s right to be takin’ from the dead?”

  His voice took a hard edge. “What’s the first rule of the wilderness, Bethie?”

  She whispered. “Survival.”

  His hands gripped her around the waist, and he lifted her easily into the saddle. “There’s a sheltered campsite up ahead. It’s not as secure as the place we camped last night, but it will do, provided no one has already claimed it.”

  Then it occurred to her. “The Indians—did you see where they went?”

  “They’ve headed southeast, and they’re moving fast.”

  She sighed with relief. If they were moving southeast, perhaps they wouldn’t be coming back this way.

  “I wouldn’t feel too safe just yet. That war party is headed straight for Fort Pitt.”

  Chapter 16

  For five more days they traveled southeast, keeping to the cover and coolness of the forest. They rode for the most part in silence, Nicholas in the lead, his gaze on the forest floor. It quickly became clear to Bethie how well he knew this country—every stream, every spring, every meadow and outcropping of rock. He knew the best fishing sites and where the deer would come down to drink at night with their spotted fawns. He knew which roots to eat, which plants would cure illness, and which would kill.

  He set what felt to Bethie like a punishing pace, stopped only when there were tracks he needed to examine more closely or when the baby needed to be changed. He had draped a soft lynx fur across the saddle to protect Bethie’s chafed skin, enabling her to ride harder and longer than before. Yet she knew he wished they could move faster.

  But caring for a baby in the wild wasn’t easy. Gathering moss, milkweed silk, and thistledown to line Belle’s diaper skins had become a constant task in the evenings. Changing her slowed them down. Carrying her in the sling and nursing while sitting on horseback made Bethie’s shoulders ache. Still, Belle was a good baby, more prone to contentment than crying. The rocking movement of the horse seemed to lull her, the dappled light of the forest to enthrall her.

  The hours of silence gave Bethie time to think, to worry. The ride to Fort Pitt was only the first part of their journey. If they made it to the fort alive, they would have but a brief respite before setting out for Paxton. Unless she refused to leave the fort or . . .

  What was she thinking? That Nicholas would give up his life in the wild, take her to wife, and become a farmer and the father of her child?

  She had only to put her unspoken wish into words to realize how foolish it was. She was a woman without a husband, without a home, and Nicholas had never promised her more than passing protection. Yet she knew he had at least some feelings for her.

  Hadn’t he called her beautiful? Hadn’t he showed her with his kisses and the heat of his hands that he desired her? When his touch had frightened her, hadn’t he kept his word and stopped? And didn’t he still hold her at night, keep her warm and safe, kiss her hair when he thought she was asleep?

  Nicholas. Nicholas. How he confused her! How could he be this kind to her and not care for her? How could he care for her and yet simply ride away and leave her? And why was she even thinking of him in that way? Had she not decided when Andrew died that she would prefer to live as a widow than any man’s wife?

  But Nicholas was not any man. Nicholas had opened the door to mysteries she hadn’t known existed when she’d lain in Andrew’s bed. He had taught her to write her name, was teaching her to read so that she could someday teach her daugh
ter. And most of all—more than any of the kindnesses he had shown her—he had not forced himself on her.

  She didn’t know much about him, yet she knew for certain she’d never meet another man like him.

  She watched him ride just ahead of her, his dark hair lifted by the breeze, his body so attuned to the animal beneath him, the forest around him. Regret, like the sharp edge of a blade, cut her heart. Why had she stopped him? Why had she become afraid? He hadn’t hurt her. He had done nothing but bring her pleasure. And yet when he had touched her there, she had been unable to control her reaction. Fear had surged through her, fear so strong it seemed to choke the light from the sun.

  Her shame. Her taint. Her terror. Would it follow her forever?

  * * *

  If someone had told Nicholas six months ago that he and Zeus would soon be traveling through the wilderness with a woman, a baby, and two pregnant mares, he’d have called that person a liar and a damned idiot. For six years he had wandered, seeking oblivion in the vastness of this continent. He’d kept to himself, refused to get caught up in other people’s lives. Their foolishness, their lack of planning, their ignorance were not his problem, and those who were unprepared for survival died. It was the way of the wild.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt a sense of purpose, a reason for being. But somehow Bethie had crept beneath his guard, gotten past the wall he’d built around himself, and now nothing was more important to him than getting her—and her baby—to safety.

  He glanced back over his shoulder, worried. She was all but asleep in the saddle. In his eagerness to reach the fort as quickly as possible, he had again pushed her too hard.

  He had just decided to scout for a place to make camp, when he heard the sound of something crashing through the forest. It was coming toward them.

  He leapt to the ground, grabbed the mare’s reins to stop her, lifted Bethie out of the saddle. “Get behind those rocks!”

  Bethie’s eyes were wide with terror, but she kept silent, did exactly as he asked.