Ride the Fire (Blakewell/Kenleigh Family Trilogy, #3), Page 2

It hurt far beyond anything he had imagined.

  He heard screams. Were they his screams?

  No. It was Josiah and Eben.

  A hiss of breath was all that escaped him. His gaze met the young woman’s and held it.

  They will not break me.

  The women worked efficiently. Swiftly they cut him again and again, carved deep gashes in his belly, chest, and back, tucked live embers inside each.

  Pain consumed him—blistering, searing pain. His entire body seemed to burn. Sweat poured down his face, stung his eyes. He fought to control his breathing, to keep his thoughts focused, but felt himself growing dizzy, disoriented, almost delirious, as if his mind were seeking escape from the unbearable torment that had become his body.

  They will not break me.

  Several feet away, Josiah jerked and writhed like a tortured puppet on a string, screaming in agony. Eben had fainted and hung limply in his bonds. Women worked to revive him, splashed water on his face and chest. It was not compassion, Nicholas knew, but a desire to prolong the boy’s suffering.

  Rage. It cut through Nicholas’s pain, through his muddled thoughts, burned like a brand in his gut. He searched the crowd for Atsan, found the old man watching him, met his gaze. Drawing on his knowledge of Tuscarora and doing his best to imitate Wyandot inflection, Nicholas spoke, his voice rough with pain and hatred.

  “E-hye-ha-honz, o-negh-e-ke-wishe-noo.”

  I am dying, but I will conquer my enemy.

  Whether Atsan understood him, Nicholas could not tell. The old man did not react. And Nicholas wondered for a moment whether, in his pain, he had imagined speaking or whether his words had been meaningless babble.

  Another cut, another ember.

  Breath rushed from his lungs. Every muscle in his body screamed in protest. He closed his eyes, bit his tongue, fought desperately not to cry out. Dear God, how much more of this could he take?

  * * *

  Lyda stepped back from the prisoner, her hands slick with his blood, and tried not to show her surprise at his words. Though the man spoke with difficulty—in what sounded more like the speech of their enemies, the Tuscarora, than their own language—his meaning was clear.

  He would die, but he would not give in to pain.

  Something fluttered in her belly.

  Here was a warrior.

  He was a beautiful man—taller than most men in her village with hair almost as black as a raven’s wing. His face was proud and strong, its male strength softened by long, dark lashes. And his body . . . She let her gaze travel the length of him, seeing beneath the blood and burns, from his powerful shoulders to his broad chest, slim hips, and muscular thighs. His breast was sprinkled with an intriguing mat of crisp, dark hair that tapered in a line between the ridges of his belly to his sex. She let her eyes rest there for a moment and felt renewed outrage at his rejection of her. Had he not turned her away, she would now know what it was like to have such a man pleasure her.

  She had noticed him the moment the warriors had brought him and the other Big Knife prisoners into the village. The men claimed he had slain at least nine Wyandot warriors before one of them managed to strike him on the head with his club, leaving a gash on his left temple. Still, it had taken four men to subdue him and bind his wrists.

  Lyda had known from the moment she saw him that she wanted him. When he looked her up and down and then turned her away as if she were worthless, the humiliation had been almost unbearable. She was considered a great beauty by the people of her nation. More than that, she was a woman of power, a holy woman, granddaughter to holy women dating back to the beginning of her people and a daughter of Atsan, the great war chief. No man had ever turned her away. Until yesterday.

  She had rejoiced then to know he would be sacrificed in flames and had vowed to play a role in his torment. But now?

  Her grandmother slipped another ember beneath his skin. His body jerked, every muscle taut as he strained against the cords that held him. Breath hissed from between his clenched teeth. His brows grew furrowed with obvious agony. Sweat drenched his black hair, ran in rivulets down his face.

  But he did not cry out.

  Lyda knew what she wanted. She’d had lots of men in her twenty-three years, had taken a few into her mother’s lodge as husbands. Though she had grown tired of them all rather quickly and set them aside, she had rejoiced in the pain of birth and rush of waters that had brought her three daughters into the world. But with a man such as this—a man who looked at her with hatred in his strange blue eyes, who was bold enough to reject her, and who endured suffering with the strength of the bravest Wyandot warrior—think of the children she might bear! They would be proud, handsome, and strong, and their courage would bring her honor.

  She would have his seed.

  Of course, it wouldn’t be easy. Her father had already committed him to fire and death. And after witnessing his courage, the warriors would be eager to eat his flesh, particularly his heart, so that they might take in his strength. They would not wish to spare him.

  But, of course, her father had never been able to deny her anything.

  Chapter 1

  March 3, 1763

  Fort Detroit, Northwestern Wilderness

  Nicholas leaned back in the wooden tub, closed his eyes, let the hot water soak the chill from his bones. It had been months since he’d had a hot bath. It was a luxury he availed himself of only when he came into one of the forts to trade—three or four times a year at most. The rest of the time he bathed in icy rivers and lakes when he could. Survival took precedence over cleanliness in the wild.

  The lingering scent of the woman’s perfume—a cheap imitation of roses—mingled with the smell of lye soap as Nicholas allowed his mind to drift. From beyond the door came the rumble of men’s voices, the thud of horse’s hooves, and the tread of boots on wooden walkways. Fort Detroit was crowded these days—too crowded for Nicholas’s tastes—and abuzz with rumors that some of the northwestern tribes were banding together for an organized attack against settlers and the English forts that protected them.

  The rumors were true, of course. Nicholas had run into a small band of Shawnee not a month ago and had been warned by one of their warriors, a man Nicholas had traded with in the past, that Englishmen were no longer welcome west of the mountains—with very few exceptions.

  The war with France had just ended, and already the frontier was about to collapse into new violence and redoubled bloodshed. Whether they were Indian or white, it seemed to be the nature of men to kill. Nicholas ought to know. He had more blood on his hands than most.

  Footsteps approached the door.

  He reached for his pistol, which sat primed and ready on the wooden floor beside the tub, wrapped his fingers around its polished handle. It was a reflex born of six years in the wilderness. He was no more aware of this action than he was of breathing.

  The footsteps passed.

  His grip relaxed, and he began to doze in the steamy water.

  Doze only. He never slept, not deeply. He didn’t want to dream.

  The water was still warm when the sound of quick, light footfalls roused him.

  She was back.

  The door to the tiny room opened, bringing a rush of cold air and the rustle of skirts.

  Nicholas opened his eyes, watched as she approached him. She was young, not yet twenty, he guessed, and pretty. Her dark hair and skin revealed her mixed ancestry—probably the daughter of a French trapper and his temporary Indian wife.

  “Is monsieur finished with his bath?”

  “Aye.” Now it was time for pleasure of another sort.

  Without ceremony, he stood, dried himself with the linen towel, walked over to the small bed. She had removed her gown and lay passively on her back in her chemise, a tattered bit of cloth that might once have been white. She parted her thighs, bared her small breasts, drew one rosy-brown nipple to a taut peak, smiled. It was a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Then her gaze came to rest
on his scars. Her smile faded.

  She had, of course, seen his scars when she’d helped him bathe. Then she had averted her gaze. Now she simply stared, clearly repulsed. “Was it terrible, monsieur?”

  Nicholas ignored her question, allowed himself to feel only the pulsing need of his erection. How long had it been since he’d been inside a woman? Six months?

  He stood at the foot of the bed, grasped her hips, pulled her toward him. Then he lifted her legs, rested her slender calves on his shoulders, filled her with one slow thrust.

  It felt good, so good. And he found himself rushing headlong toward completion.

  It was over in a few minutes, his seed spilled in a pool of pearly white on her belly. Nicholas lay staring at the timbered ceiling while she washed all trace of him away in the cooling bathwater. Neither of them spoke.

  A vague dissatisfied feeling gnawed at his gut. When had he become the sort of man who would take pleasure with a pretty woman, even a whore, without so much as knowing her name?

  Normally, he tried to forget the past. But now he wondered when he’d last made love to a woman, when he’d last devoted himself to giving a woman pleasure heedless of his own? His mind stretched back through the emptiness of the past six years, back through the nightmare that was Lyda to Penelope.

  Sweet Penelope. Fickle Penelope.

  He tried to conjure up an image of her face, failed. They’d been engaged to marry when he’d ridden away to war with Washington, but when she’d learned he had been taken by the Wyandot and was believed dead, she’d waited all of two months before marrying someone else. When he had finally escaped and made the long journey home to Virginia, he had arrived to find her quickening with her husband’s child.

  “What was I supposed to do, Nicholas? Was I to wait for you? For how long? We all believed you dead!”

  And, indeed, he was dead.

  He had tried to go on as if nothing had changed, to return to his old life. His parents, overjoyed at his unforeseen return, had done all in their power to help him. But nothing had been able to silence the screams that haunted his nightmares or restore the spirit that Lyda had so expertly wrenched from his body. Hatred for the Wyandot had consumed him, but no more than hatred for himself.

  And when he’d awoken from one of his nightmares to find his hands fast around his little sister Elizabeth’s throat—poor Elizabeth, only sixteen, had heard him cry out and come to comfort him—he’d known he was no longer fit to live among those he loved. He had packed a few belongings—a bedroll, his pistols, his rifle, a hunting knife, a change of clothes, powder and shot—and had saddled his horse and prepared to ride away, hoping the wilderness would finish what the Wyandot had not.

  But his mother had awakened, and standing outside the stables in her nightgown, she had begged him to stay, tears streaming down her face. “Please, Nicholas, don’t go! You’ve just returned! Give us a chance to help you, son!”

  Her words, the desperate tone of her voice, had almost been enough to stop him. He did not wish to cause her further pain. But then he had remembered Elizabeth’s frightened face, his hands wrapped tightly around her throat. He might have killed her.

  He had climbed into the saddle, steeled himself against his mother’s tears. “I regret to inform you, madam, that your son is dead.”

  Then he had urged his horse to canter and ridden west, away from home, away from war, away from memories. He’d ridden over mountains, across rivers, through forest and grassland to the great mountains in the far west that no other Englishman had seen—but never fast enough or far enough to escape himself.

  He had not yet found death, but in the vastness of the wilderness and the rhythm of the seasons, he’d found some measure of . . . if not peace, then forgetfulness.

  “Excusez-moi, monsieur.”

  The young prostitute. She wanted her fee.

  “Pardonnez-moi, mademoiselle. Il est temps de régler notre compte, n’est-ce pas?” It’s time for us to settle up, is it not?

  He rose from the bed, still naked, and strode to the corner where his peltries lay in a bundle. Quickly he worked the knots and unrolled the bundle, his hands moving deftly over the soft furs, searching.

  “Vous parlez très bien français.” You speak French well.

  He glanced up at the surprised tone in her voice, on the brink of saying that he had studied French at Oxford and had traveled extensively in France. But he was struck again by her youth and her beauty, felt a momentary stab of guilt at his thoughtless use of her young body. The words died on his lips.

  He released the marten pelt he had been about to give her, pulled free the white wolf instead. Much larger, much more rare, its value far surpassed that of the marten pelt. He stood, handed it to her.

  She gaped at it, then at him, her brown eyes wide. “M-merci, monsieur!”

  Nicholas felt an absurd momentary impulse to apologize or explain himself. There’d been a time in his life when he would have asked her what had happened to make her sell her body, when he might even have tried to help her find a better life. But those days had long since passed. The truth was he no longer cared. “De rien.” It was nothing.

  And as she hurried out of the room, wolf pelt clutched to her breast, that’s what Nicholas felt.

  Nothing.

  * * *

  Elspeth Stewart woke with a start, heart racing.

  The geese!

  She rose as quickly as she could, grabbed the rifle, which sat next to the bed, primed and ready.

  If it was the same vixen that had harried them yesterday, she would shoot, and this time she wouldn’t miss.

  And if it were Indians or renegade soldiers?

  Her mouth went dry.

  Quickly, quietly she crossed the wooden floor of the cabin that was her home, lifted the heavy bar from the door and slowly opened it, dread like ice in her veins. Outside it was still dark, the first light of dawn only a hint in the eastern sky. She peered past the door toward the poultry pens and saw a small honey-colored fox dart into the underbrush.

  In a warm rush of relief, Elspeth stepped quickly onto the porch, raised the rifle, cocked it, fired. A yelp, followed by silence, told her she had hit her mark.

  She stepped back inside long enough to put down the rifle, put on her cloak, and slip into her boots—she had taken to sleeping fully clothed since Andrew’s death, but that didn’t include boots—before going outside to see what damage had been done.

  The vixen lay dead in the bushes. Its teats were swollen with milk, and Elspeth felt an unexpected pang of empathy for the dead animal. It had only been trying to eat so that it could feed its new litter of kits.

  She pressed a hand protectively to her rounded belly. In a few weeks, a month at most, she would be doing the same. Which is why she needed to protect the geese and chickens, she thought, brushing aside her sentimental response.

  She squatted down, picked the vixen up by its tail, and carried it away. She didn’t want the smell to attract bears or wolves.

  When she returned, the geese were still honking and flapping angrily about, but there were no bloody wings, no broken feathers that she could see. Andrew’s fence had held.

  “Quit your flaffin’!” she scolded. She wasn’t truly angry with them. Geese were better than dogs when it came to alerting their masters to danger. Her life—and that of her unborn baby—might well depend on them one day.

  As it was so close to dawn and she’d be getting up soon anyway, Elspeth decided to start her morning chores. She fed the geese and chickens, gathered the few eggs that had been laid, and set off to the cowshed for the morning milking. By the time the animals had been fed and Rona and Rosa, her two mares, had been led out into the paddock, the sun had risen behind a heavy blanket of clouds.

  She drew water from the well and carried it inside to heat for washing and for her morning porridge. She had just stepped through the door, when she saw the fire had died down to embers and needed wood. But there was no firewood stacked in
the corner. And then she remembered.

  She hadn’t had time to split more wood for the fire yesterday and had been so tired after supper that she had fallen asleep at the table, leaving the chore undone.

  Her stomach growled.

  “Well, Bethie, you cannae be expectin’ the wood to chop itself.” She lifted the heavy water bucket onto the table, took the ax from its resting place beside the fire, went back out into the chilly morning.

  The woodpile stood on the west side of the house, and it was dwindling. She hadn’t worked out how she was going to fell trees by herself; that was a problem for another day. She awkwardly lifted a large piece of wood onto an old stump, hoisted the ax, and swung. The ax cut halfway through the wood, stuck. She pried it loose, swung again. The wood flew into two pieces.

  In the two months since Andrew’s passing, she had gotten better at chopping firewood. She no longer missed and sometimes even managed to split the wood with one blow as Andrew had done. Still, it was an exhausting chore, one she did not enjoy.

  How long could she last out here alone? The question leapt, unbidden and unwelcome, to her mind. It was followed by another.

  Where could she go?

  She lifted another piece of wood onto the stump, stepped back, swung, and soon found herself in a rhythm.

  Perhaps after the baby was born she could go to Fort Pitt or one of the other forts and find work there. At least she and the baby would be safe from Indians and wild animals. But would there be other women? Would they be safe from the soldiers?

  Perhaps she could journey to Harrisburg or even to Philadelphia. But that meant traveling for weeks alone through wild country, across the mountains, over rivers, and through farmsteads. The very idea of swimming across rivers with her baby or sleeping in a bedroll in the open without the protection of four sturdy walls terrified her.

  One thing was certain: she could not go home.

  Nor could she stay here forever. She’d managed well enough so far, but what would she do when it came time to plant crops? Could she manage the plow? And what of the harvest? Could she care for her baby, harvest the crops, slaughter the hogs, make cider, and salt the meat all at the same time? Her days had been full and long when Andrew had yet lived. How could she manage to do both his chores and hers with a newborn?