AN ARM CLAMPED BRY'S WAIST AND hauled her backward into an unyielding embrace. Her heartbeat surged in her ears. The carved rosewood door gaped tauntingly ajar mere steps away. She twisted, her fingernails gouging flesh.
Her assailant rasped in a breath. "Fight if it helps your pride, Irish." Jeffrey Wainwright’s familiar voice snarled in her ear. He gripped her tighter. "We both know you want this."
Bry turned her head to give her employer's son the glare he deserved. "You flatter yourself."
He slid moist lips over her cheek, but she ducked her head before they reached her mouth. "Let me go." She struggled to free herself. "This minute!"
"Never mind trying to cozy up, now." He laughed at his own joke and turned her toward him, his hold loosening. With his blond head tilted and shadows carving hollows in his cheeks, he appeared older than his nineteen years. He stroked her back. "I've seen the way you look at me."
He must have noticed her keeping an eye on him, something she'd done since he'd started watching her. "What would your mother say?" She spoke without conviction. They both knew that Audra Wainwright exerted little control over her son.
"Who's going to tell her? Not you if you want your job." Jeffrey pulled her closer. "Slip away to my bed now and again. I promise you'll never find yourself cast upon the road."
"Like Deirdre?" Bry shoved against his chest. "Shame on you for what you did to her, Master Wainwright!"
He tugged her closer. "My, but you're a little shrew, aren't you?"
"And you're a bully."
"That's not what Deirdre said."
Bry drove her heel down Jeffrey's instep. He grunted, his arms slackening. She wrenched free but spun back. Her slap echoed through the bedchamber. She closed her stinging hand into a fist. Tremors ran down her spine. "Never touch me again." The sharp words matched her staccato footsteps as she put distance between them. She whirled to look back from the doorway.
"Harpy!" He rubbed his cheek. "That will cost you."
Bry tossed her head. "Deirdre Connery told me more than you'd care to have your mother know. Keep that in mind."
The smile that spread over his face made him look almost charming. "If you think she'd take your word over mine, you're a fool."
Bry slammed the door between them.
The bedchamber belonging to his mother stood blessedly empty. Bry sagged against the tall door and clasped her arms about herself. Tears trembled on her lashes, but she brushed them away with a sigh. Why cry over Jeffrey Wainwright’s misbehavior when she’d shed her share of tears over a man more worthless than him.
Bry caught sight of herself in the gilded mirror above the dressing table. A pale woman stared back, eyes sparking green fire. Fresh alarm jangled through her. She looked a fright. How would she ever conceal what had happened? And yet she must to keep her job. Jeffrey had spoken the truth. His mother would never take her word against his. She hastened to tuck her tumbled black hair into her cap and smooth her serviceable frock.
The door burst open. As if conjured by Bry's thought of her, Audra Wainwright swept into the room. Her gaze locked on Bry's. Mrs. Wainwright halted abruptly, and her silk faille day dress swung about an ample figure. "What are you doing? You should have finished the bedrooms by now. Instead, I find you admiring yourself in my mirror."
Bry gaped at her employer, too stunned by her hostile tone to answer.
"Stay, however. I want a word with you." Audra settled into a rose velvet chair in front of draperies in the same unfortunate shade, which clashed with the woman's determinedly red hair.
"Yes, Ma'am." Bry waited with as much patience as she could muster, but she yearned to shut herself into her little room in the attic.
Audra folded her hands in her lap and looked Bry up and down. "My son tells me you've made improper advances toward him."
Bry started. Jeffrey had lost no time in seeking his revenge. "I made advances?"
"Yes, well. . ." Audra smoothed her skirt. "Under the circumstances, I no longer require your services."
"But I'm innocent."
"That's not what Jeffrey tells me."
"Mrs. Wainwright, you are mistaken. Your son—“ Bry choked on her outrage. Your son—“
"Mind you, as another widow, I understand loneliness. And Jeffrey is handsome enough to tempt a saint. However that may be, I won't allow you to seduce my boy."
The urge to laugh burbled up within Bry. She fought to quell it.
Audra waved a plump hand. "That's all I have to say. Leave me."
"But--"
Audra's face turned as red as the handprint had on Jeffrey's cheek.
"You are dismissed!"
Bry straightened her spine. She would leave all right, but not before she spoke the truth. "Your son made improper advances to me, Mrs. Wainwright, and I'm not the first to draw his eye. He's the one who ruined Deirdre and made Mary run away."
"Liar!" The veins stood out in Audra's temples and her face turned red.
"Mrs. Wainwright!" Bry feared she would suffer a stroke.
Her employer waved a hand. "Go this minute, or I'll have Grayson put you out. And don't think you'll receive a reference from me."
"I'll pack my things." Bry flung open the door and stumbled down the corridor to the back stairs. She climbed the two steep flights to the bedchamber she'd shared with Mary, the quiet blonde scullery maid from County Kerry who had run away to escape Jeffrey's advances. Bry had always found the view from the dormer window fascinating, but today she didn't linger to watch tall ships ply the sparkling waters of Boston Harbor. Holding back tears, she placed a clean shift, a change of clothes, and a few oddments in her satchel. She glanced around the small room she'd called home for more than two years, then slipped down the stairs and let herself out by the servant's door.
The harbor wind scoured her face in an icy blast. Bry turned her back on the manor that had seemed a haven when she'd first come to it in the days after Ian's death. The disastrous marriage she'd made to escape a life of squalor had left her battered and destitute. But she'd survived to stand over Ian's grave, delivered by his death from the violence of his life. She would endure now, even if it meant returning to the slums of Manhattan.
CHAPTER TWO
A FRECKLED YOUNG BOY WITH CLEAR blue eyes challenged Nick with his hands fisted. "You gonna scalp us in our sleep, Injun?"
"Whoa, there!" Nick smiled and held up his own hands in mock surrender, although the question made his gut ache.
Caroline Keller looked back from the group walking ahead of her son on the trail. "George, come here at once!"
The boy ran to his mother with such speed Nick might have smiled in other circumstances. Caroline collared the boy while sending Nick an uneasy glance over the top of her son’s head. No need to wonder where the boy had come up with his question. Nick’s gut ached. How could he have thought things would be different this time?
The Kellers stopped at a wide place in the trail where Ty Davis waited, his Stetson clutched against his chest. Behind the wagon master, sagebrush and grass covered the ground all the way to the distant mountains painted shades of blue.
Beside the shallow grave in the middle of the trail, Ty bowed his head. "Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. May the Lord God Almighty have mercy on their souls. Amen."
A chorus of voices echoed the wagon master's last word. Clods of dirt, cast by many hands, clattered over a row of crude coffins. Nick had helped build them from wagon boxes no longer needed by those who had died. Nick looked away from the smaller coffins, but that didn't stop the memories. He saw again the young victims, scalped and mutilated, sprawled among the carnage of the wagon massacre he'd stumbled upon while scouting.
Meadowlarks trilled and a few early wildflowers nodded among the grasses. However, when Nick took up the spade an icy wind numbed his fingers. The others looked on with solemn faces until he and Ty finished shoveling the mounded soil over the coffins, then one by one turned away.
Ty drove his spade into the ground and dusted off his hands. "We'll ride over the grave in the morning to pack down the dirt against Indians and wolves."
Nick laid his shovel down and picked up his slouch hat without comment. Indians didn't care to steal from the dead and nothing would keep out the wolves, but some things were better left unspoken.
"Nick—" Ty cleared his throat. "Stay a moment."
Nick tensed but waited.
Ty's lazy eye squinted, and he pulled the brim of his Stetson lower. "There ain't no good way to tell you this, so I'll just say it. No offense now, but I got to let you go."
"Why?"
Ty frowned. "Nothing agin you, like I said, but the wagon captains voted you out."
"Do they expect to reach Oregon without a scout?"
"Well now." Ty's ears turned red. "Jed Mills volunteered to take over, at least until Fort Hall, where I can look for someone else."
The notion of Jedidiah Mills, an apothecary's son, guiding a wagon train made Nick want to laugh.
"Mind you, I got nothing against you." Ty added hastily. "But folks on the trail are plumb nervous these days, and rightly so. It's natural to ask whether you came across that massacre or were part of it."
"Those were Sioux arrows. My mother's people are Cheyenne, and I don't even have a bow."
"Doesn't matter to men looking to protect their families. I know and like you on account of your father, but they don't share my feelings. They're bent on your leaving, and there'd be trouble if you stayed."
"Then I guess there's nothing more to say."
Ty tossed him a leather pouch that clinked when he caught it, although it didn't weigh much in his hand. "Here's your pay so far." His smile looked more like a grimace. "Maybe next year things will settle down, and I can hire you on again."
Nick shrugged as he backed away. "Sure. Next year."
"Hold up, now. You don't have to go until morning."
"Thanks all the same but I make it a point not to stay where I'm not welcome." Nick turned away.
"Suit yourself," Ty called after him. "Take enough food to see you home, why don’t you?"
"Thank you kindly." Nick accepted Ty's guilt offering, more for the wagon master's sake than his own. He always kept his saddlebags packed and ready but added a little jerked buffalo and hardtack from the camp's supplies. Slinging his father's Henry repeating rifle over his shoulder, he carried his saddle and bridle into the wagon circle which formed a makeshift corral. Nick whistled for his horse. Mo'kôhtavo'ha, ‘black horse’ in the Cheyenne tongue, lifted his dark head and trotted to him. Nick bridled and saddled Tavo, the nickname he’d given his horse. The awareness of someone watching settled between his shoulder blades. He peered behind him, but nothing stirred in the quiet camp. He bent and tightened the girth with the back of his neck prickling, certain that the sooner he lit out of here, the better.
At the chink of metal, he slowly turned his head and looked into the muzzle of a rifle.
"Lay down your weapon nice and easy." Jonathon Keller growled.
Nick sucked in a breath. "This is my rifle, Jon. I need it to hunt, same as you need yours."
"I don't think you understand, Injun. If you lay down your weapon, I might let you live."
Nick didn't miss the tension rising in Jonathon's voice. He'd be a fool to try anything. If he killed a white man, he'd be as good as dead himself. No one would care that he'd done it in self-defense. The fact that he was half white wouldn't keep him from being lynched any more than it had saved his job. He eased the Henry away from his shoulder and dropped it to the sod.
"Smart man."
Nick stepped backward, his gaze trained on Jonathon's trigger finger.
"I did say, 'might’."
Nick snapped his attention to Jonathon's smirking face.
Footsteps thudded behind Nick.
Tavo neighed and reared. Jonathon whipped around to stare with startled eyes at the horse.
Nick spun about and caught sight of Jonathon’s brother an instant before Amos’ fist slammed into his stomach. Amos’ momentum carried them down. Nick curled around the agony in his belly and clenched his teeth against the urge to vomit. Amos pushed to his knees and pulled back a fist.
Nick raised his arms in time to deflect the blow.
Amos lunged for his throat.
Nick rolled sideways and locked his hands around Amos's wrists. He staggered to his feet, pulling him upright. His stomach throbbed, and his knees shook, but by a miracle he stayed upright. "If you plan on shooting me, you'd better make good and sure of your aim." He ground out. "You wouldn't want to hit your brother by mistake."
"Don't do it." Amos pleaded in a thin voice.
Jonathon's rifle wavered, then lowered. "Your Injun brothers teach you to fight like that?"
Nick refused to be drawn. "Let's call it even."
Ty walked around the end of a wagon, his Winchester leveled at Jonathon's chest. "Lay down your weapon, Keller."
Jonathon cursed. "What's this, Ty? You ready to shoot me on account of a savage?"
"He's a man, Jon, not a savage. He's leaving same as you wanted. Now put down your Winchester, move off, and let him go."
"Have it your way." Jonathon laid his rifle on the ground.
Nick released his hold on Amos, who lurched toward the wagons behind his brother.
Ty picked up the Henry and raised a brow at Nick. "Best get out of here while you can."
Nick whistled for Tavo. "I don't envy you, traveling with those two."
"I'll get by."
Nick pulled himself into the saddle, gasping with pain. Ty handed him his rifle, and Nick shouldered the Henry. "Thanks for looking after me."
"I did it for your Pa. He saved my life once. Reckon now we're even."
His father had told him how he'd rescued Ty from the Cheyenne. He'd have been glad to know his good deed had helped his son. Nick pointed Tavo eastward along the north side of the Snake. The loneliness of the less-traveled trail suited him just fine. He kept Tavo to a walk to spare his throbbing belly although he'd rather ride like the wind across the plain. He needed to hire on with another wagon train. That is, if he found one that wasn't dead set against a half-Cheyenne.
