Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (45 page)

   
“Prob’ly nothin’. He’s been shamed in front o’ his own. Ain’t nobody goin’ ta listen if he starts talkin’ war now. Hit’ll be a ways afore he kin make up fer whut he done.” He studied her with shrewd eyes, then said softly, “Yew ain’t inter’sted in thet Injun. Whut’s got th’ burr up yore rear is smokin’ a pipe over yonder.”

   
“He’s accomplished his mission. Now he can go back to Washington for his next assignment from President Madison.”

   
Johnstone harrumphed in disgust. “ ‘N leave his wife behind? I purely doubt hit.”

   
She lifted her chin stubbornly. “It’s me who’ll be doing the leaving. He doesn’t want a wife and I won’t stay where I’m not wanted. Besides, I love my life at the cabin. I want to go back with you.”

   
He sighed. Durn fool young ‘uns. “Whut yew love is a tall, purty-faced soldier boy—’n he’s got feelin’s fer yew, too—jest too pig stubborn ta admit hit ta hisself. But he will ‘n then he’ll tell yew. Meanwhile, yore married afore man ‘n God. I ain’t comin’ betwixt yew.”

   
Now it was Micajah’s turn to look stubborn. Olivia sighed, knowing argument was as useless as it had been that day at the cabin when he found them together. He had some fool romantic notion that she and Samuel were destined to love one another.

   
If only it were true.

   
Samuel finished talking with the Osage, then stood up, moving his aching shoulders gingerly. Not an inch of his body was unbruised, most of it cut or at least sticky with blood, both Pardee’s and his own. His eyes swept the camp searching for Olivia.
His wife.
The words did not sound so alien now. Grinning, he decided perhaps he was getting used to the idea. She and Micajah were seated in the shadows, talking intently. When he drew near they stopped. Olivia rose and walked up to him as the old man studied him with those unnerving dark eyes of his, saying nothing.

   
“You’re hurt. I’ll need to clean off that dried blood before I can see how badly,” she said, touching the crusty dark smears on his arm.

   
He smiled at her. “I appreciate the wifely concern.”

   
Her cheeks felt warm under his scrutiny. “Come with me to the stream so I can wash you. Micajah, we’ll need something for bandages and some herbs to—”

   
“I got everthin’ yew need in my possibles sack,” he said. Picking up the buckskin pouch tossed on a nearby rock, he began to root through it, then handed her a jar of salve and a roll of clean white cloth. “Jest go git cleaned up. Moon’s full ‘nough ta see down by th’ river. After all thet’s happened, I ‘spect yew two cud use a minit or two alone ta talk.”

   
“Yes, I expect we could,” Samuel echoed, taking Olivia’s hand in his, pulling her into the trees, headed toward the soft hum of the rushing water.

Chapter Twenty

   
When they reached the river’s edge, Samuel finally broke the silence. “Back there in the beaver lodge, before Pardee and his renegades found us...you asked me a question. I never had the opportunity to answer it.”

   
Olivia wished desperately that she could see his face more clearly, not shadowed and dappled by moonlight as it was. “And now...? What will we do about this marriage? You were forced—”

   
“We both were forced,” he interrupted softly, “but that doesn’t mean that things haven’t changed since our wedding night.”

   
“You acted as if you blamed me because I was what I had always been—as if you wanted me to be no better than you expected.” The pain of his angry guilt still stung bitterly. “Then you left me alone.”

   
“So Pardee could abduct you when it was my place to be there, to protect you.” The guilt over that bit deeper than the guilt he felt for misjudging her innocence. “I was out getting drunk to drown my own filthy conscience.”

   
The words seemed dragged from him, as if he were revealing a piece of his innermost soul to her and it was incredibly painful. She leaned toward him and her palms pressed against his chest, feeling the harsh slamming of his heartbeat. He was tensed like a mountain lion in a cage—a cage she and Micajah had unwittingly wrought. “I don’t want your guilt or your sense of duty as an officer and a gentleman, Samuel. You know who I am now. If that’s not enough, then no vows spoken before a priest will ever make it good enough for me to stay with you.”

   
“And what would make it good enough, Livy?” he asked, reaching up to caress her cheek and cup her stubborn jaw, tilting her chin up so he could look into the dark fathomless depths of her eyes.

   
She did not answer in words but her lips parted slightly and her hand seemed to move of its own volition, small and pale over his larger, dark one, covering it, pressing it more firmly against her face, drawing nearer to him, begging to be kissed as he ached to kiss her.

   
Samuel, too, answered without words as his mouth brushed hers, softly rimming the sweet bow of her upper lip with the tip of his tongue, tracing the plush full outline of the lower, then gliding along the moistened seam between them to skim over her teeth, before he deepened the kiss. Slowly, savoringly, he plunged inside to ravish her with languid sweeps, drawing her total response as she opened to him, her own tongue twining with his, tasting of him and hungering for more, so very much more.

   
They held each other that way, their hands cradling each other’s faces, kissing slowly, deeply, communicating in the poignant caress what neither had been able to say aloud. Then, gradually he ended the kisses, pulling his mouth from hers like a man denying himself the gates of paradise.

   
Murmuring against her mouth, he said, “Oh, Livy, Livy, stay with me, be my wife. I need you—I love you.” He shook his head ruefully, then met her eyes. “I swore an oath I would never say that to another woman as long as I lived.”

   
“I love you, Samuel. I think I always knew from the first moment I saw you across that ballroom floor in Washington.”

   
He grinned down at her, unable to keep his hands from caressing her throat, brushing her tangled hair away from her face. “I guess that’s why we’ve always been so explosive together. I’ve never been able to control myself around you the way I could with other women.”

   
“And you hate not being in control.” She knew him so well, this mysterious stranger, this soldier-spy who owned her heart.

   
“Ever since I met you my world’s been turned upside down. When I found you with Lisa’s men I couldn’t believe it. God, I hated myself for wanting you so badly then,” he confessed raggedly.

   
“Was that why you were such a beast to me?” she asked sweetly.

   
“That and the fact you nearly poisoned me, drowned me, and got my brains beaten in by a dozen trappers,” he replied with a lopsided smile. When he raised his arms and drew her against him, the slash along his collarbone twinged and he winced at the unexpected pain.

   
“I’d better see to your wounds before Micajah sends half the Osage Little Old Men out searching for us.” She knelt down at the water’s edge and began to soak a clean piece of cloth, then instructed him to kneel so she could cleanse away the dried blood.

   
“It might be better if I just stripped and swam into the deep. I’m pretty gory from head to foot.”

   
Olivia shuddered, remembering how terrifying the grisly fight with Pardee had been. “You could’ve been the one dead, not him.” Suddenly she needed the assurance of his warm male vitality, the solid protective wall of his flesh pressed to her own. “Hold me, Samuel,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his back and lying her head against his chest, heedless of the caked and seeping blood on it.

   
He obliged, enveloping her in his embrace, squeezing his eyes closed, feeling a sense of peace steal over him that he had never before in his life felt.

   
Livy was his wife, for always.

   
After a few moments she stepped back. “You need to get cleaned up so I can tend your wounds.” She watched him as he slipped off his pants and waded into the current, swimming out far enough to let the cool rushing water cleanse away the blood. Olivia knelt on the shore with Micajah’s salves.

   
“Why not join me?” he invited.

   
“Samuel, it’s getting late in the season for a moonlight swim. I can see your goose bumps even in this light.”

   
Samuel laughed. “The water’s only cold until you get in deep. Come in and join me and I’ll let you feel my bump!”

   
She longed to bathe away the contamination of Pardee’s touch even if the only clothes she had with her belonged to the dead man. Quickly she unfastened the rope at her slim waist and tugged off the baggy britches and shirt. Her feet were still bare but healing nicely since Samuel had tended them. She let out a squeak of shock at the chill when she stepped into the current, then quickly submerged herself and swam out to meet him where he lounged against a dead log wedged into a mud bank jutting ten feet or so out in the river.

   
He opened his arms and she glided up against him, at once feeling the hardness of his phallus pressing against her belly, scorching hot even in the chilly water. She undulated against him and he took her arms, lifting her against him. “Come on to me, Livy,” he whispered hoarsely. She obeyed, wrapping her legs around him as he impaled her smoothly in one long swift thrust.

   
She threw back her head, arching into the sweet heat, clutching his shoulders, digging in with her nails as she tightened her thighs at his waist, falling in sync with the rocking tempo of his thrusting hips. Her breasts bobbed at the surface of the water, the nipples puckered into tight aching nubs. The warmth of his mouth covering one, then the other, released a swift shock of pleasure that radiated through her body, intensifying the incredible pressure building deep inside her belly until it burst upon her in long lovely waves that seemed in sinc with the steady lapping of the current eddying around them.

   
Olivia waited in that little death, soaring yet experienced enough by now to know that he would join her. Then she felt it, the tumescent swelling and pulsing of his staff deep inside her, his body convulsively stiffening as he gasped out her name and spilled his seed into her womb. She threw her head across his shoulder and clung to him in joy. And the river gave its benediction as its life-giving water flowed serenely around them.

* * * *

   
Micajah was ready to travel at dawn the next day. Most of the Osage had already vanished into the gray morning fog, leaving him and the two men who would escort him back to their village to collect Dirt Devil. He watched in satisfaction as Samuel slept with Olivia cocooned protectively in the curve of his body. They had returned from the river last night touching and smiling in subtle ways that spoke clearly to the shrewd old man. Still, he felt constrained to speak his piece to Shelby before he entrusted his beloved Sparky to the colonel’s care.

   
He sat hunkered beside the fire with a tin mug almost concealed by his big hands, drinking the steaming inky brew black and bitter, wishing for a bit of his honey to sweeten it, while he let the young lovers sleep. Neither had gotten much rest in past days. Of course, some of that was their own doing, he thought with a smile, remembering how it was to be young and in love.

   
Shelby stirred, gently disentangled himself from Olivia, then climbed from beneath the blanket Chief No Ears had given them. He shivered in the foggy stillness. The winter that had been so long in coming would soon be upon them.

   
Micajah threw him a buckskin shirt which was a bit tight across his broad chest but provided welcome warmth nonetheless. He accepted a cup of coffee from the old man and sat down across from him expectantly. “You have something to say, Johnstone, spit it out.”

   
Micajah chuckled quietly. “Fer a feller without th’ sense ta see truth when hit slapped him upside th’ haid, yew kin be plenty sharp from time ta time.”

   
“I was wrong about Olivia. I misjudged her...in many ways, I underestimated her.”

   
“ ‘N now yew know who she really is?”

   
Samuel smiled. “She’s my wife. All right, Johnstone, you were right to drag us to that priest. I admit it.”

   
“Jest so’s yew treat her like she deserves else yew’d have me ta answer ta—’n yew would purely never want thet. I cud think o’ thangs even th’ Osage ‘n the Sioux never imagined...if yew take my meanin’.” He smiled benevolently with his eyes twinkling.

   
Shelby returned the grin. “Yes, Micajah, I take your meaning. We have to go downriver to St. Louis as fast as we can get there. I have to report Pardee’s death and arrange for my brother-in-law to bring a representative from the War Department to talk with the Osage.”