Renegade Bride (26 page)

His eyes were filled with the same regret she felt, but she couldn't think about that. "Please," she said in a thick voice, "just put me down."

He didn't move for several long seconds. A cool gust of wind sighed through the nearby pines, tossing her hair, fanning her warm face. The saddle creaked as he shifted, releasing her. She slid off the horse and dropped to the ground. Her shaky knees nearly buckled, but she caught her balance and stumbled to Petunia.

After several missed attempts, she gathered up the mare's reins and grabbed hold of the saddle horn. But she couldn't force herself to lift her foot as far as the stirrup. Instead, she sagged against the leather and pressed her damp face against her arm. Her chest rose and fell shakily, giving her away. Creed appeared behind her, bracketing her shoulders between his hands.

"Don't—" she gasped, but he didn't let her go. Slowly, he turned her to face him, but she focused her eyes on his tooled leather belt buckle.

"Mariah, I'm sorry. So damned sorry."

She nodded miserably, swiping at the moisture on her cheeks with the edge of her too-long shirt sleeve. Blast it all, she hadn't meant to cry. "I think..." she said, sniffing, "we'd better hurry and get to Virginia City, before we end up hating each other."
And ourselves.

Creed swallowed hard and dropped his arms. "I think you're right." He bent down and cradled his hands for her foot. She stared downward for a long moment before allowing him to help her up onto Petunia.

Without another word, Creed swung up onto Buck and kicked him into a lope. Behind him, he heard Mariah's horse follow, but he only stared straight ahead.
Hell and damnation!

Night after night, day after day, he had coached himself in restraint. We're almost there, he would tell himself. A few days and no one would have been the wiser. Especially not Mariah.

Why then had he done it?
Why?
To prove a point? At whose expense? Seth's? Mariah's? His own? No, it wasn't to prove a point.

It
was
the point.

That kiss wasn't about Seth or anything else in the world they were headed toward. It was only about them, about the power that leapt between them like an electric charge whenever they touched—whenever their eyes met.

You're a damn fool, Devereaux, falling in love with a woman you can never have.

A fool?
Peut-être.
But she was right about one thing: he had never let a woman close enough to feel what he felt for her right now. He'd spent his life avoiding the kind of pain his father had gone through after losing Creed's mother. Now, he understood it in a way he never had before. And he knew that after Mariah, he'd never risk it again.

* * *

By late afternoon, the mild temperature had plunged and a strong, glacial wind from the north scoured the hillsides and laid the carpet of sweetgrass and wild-flowers nearly flat. The sun sank behind a massing wall of gunmetal-gray clouds to the northwest, beyond the snowcapped Bitterroots. The clouds were eighteen miles off, Creed guessed, and moving with incredible speed. That kind meant only one thing: snow. Possibly, God forbid, a Norther.

Sacre bleu!
Was
nothing
going right on this trip?

He pulled his horse to a stop to get his bearings. Buck pranced nervously and blew out a steamy breath. It meant certain death to be caught in the open during one of these storms. A cave, even a small one, might be enough to shelter them, but he didn't remember ever seeing one in this area.

"There's a storm coming," Mariah announced, pulling up beside him. Her cheeks were red and her eyes were watering in the wind. Only her hands and face were visible outside the buffalo robe.

"We'll catch our deaths if we get wet in this cold weather," she said, watching the fast-moving front.

"It's not rain you smell, Mariah. It's snow."

Her amber eyes blinked in disbelief. "In
June?
Snow in June? Good God."

"We'll have to find some shelter. Quickly."

"I suppose it's too much to hope for a town nearby?" she asked hopefully, glancing gloomily at the thick forested land around them.

"There's a cabin. But it's still four, maybe five miles south of here on the Boulder River."

Shivering, Mariah pulled her robe more tightly around her. "Are you sure? You don't sound sure."

"I'm sure that's where it is. I'm not sure it's still standing," he answered over the roar of the wind.

"How long since you've seen it?"

"Three years or so."

She rolled her eyes. "What makes you so sure there's a cabin there at all?"

"Because it's mine." He gathered up his reins. "Try to stay right with me, Mariah. Don't lag." He kicked Buck with his heels, sending him into a lope.

"Lag?
I don't lag!" Mariah called after him indignantly, nudging Petunia in the ribs. The mare gave a nervous little buck before starting off after Creed, but Mariah grabbed the saddle horn and hung on. "I may not ride well," she muttered, "but I don't lag."
Damn you.

* * *

The weather bore down out of the north on the countryside like a white stampede. The bitter temperature had dropped even further by the time they reached the Boulder River. It had started with driving, freezing sleet and turned into a blizzard. Petunia and Buck struggled on with heads bowed against the driving snow.

The tanned hide of the buffalo robe Jesse had given Mariah was encrusted with icy snow, but the thick fur kept her relatively warm and dry. Only her fingers were numb with cold.

Creed, on the other hand, had donned a thick blanket-capote and wrapped a woolen shawl around his shoulders and head. Both were soggy and wet. He'd freeze to death before he asked her for help, Mariah decided. And it was getting worse.

"Creed!" The wind nearly swallowed her shout. "Stop!"

"We're nearly there," he called back stiffly, hunkering down closer to the gelding's neck.

She nudged her horse up beside his. "You'll freeze before we get there, you big idiot. We can
share
the robe. It's roomy enough for two."

He looked up, considering it. A violent shiver raced through him. "Good idea." But his hands were almost too cold to put the plan into action. Mariah dismounted and fitted her foot into his stirrup. Awkwardly, Creed pulled the sodden blanket from his shoulders and laid it across Buck's neck. He reached an icy hand down and helped her up behind him and she wrapped the fur around them both.

He let out a sigh of relief as she wound her arms around his waist and pressed herself against his back. "Thanks," he muttered, covering her hand with his icy one. "Feels better."

"Don't get any ideas," she shouted close to his ear. "I'm only doing this so you don't freeze to death and leave me here to find my way to Virginia City alone."

"How considerate of you."

"How much farther is it?"

He reached for Petunia's reins and found his fingers too numb to hold them. He passed them back to her.

She pulled them inside the robe. "I said how—"

"Not much farther."

The dampness from his capote seeped through her shirt and she shivered. "Can't you be a little more specific?"

"Sorry. This area's grown up some since I was here last. It can't be more than a half-mile or so."

Thirty minutes later, Creed pulled up his horse. The storm was worsening. Everything was white. The land, the trees, the air... his face. The howling wind erased even the familiar sound of the river, though he could just make it out ahead.

The cold air tore at his lungs with each breath. He remembered his father telling him the story about finding his old trapper friend, Abe Walker, frozen stiff in the Bear Paws, curled up in his buffalo robe, still clutching his old Hawkins rifle. He'd looked like he'd just gone to sleep. Creed's heart pumped harder, pushing the thought from his mind, denying that would be his fate.

"We're lost, aren't we?" Mariah's breath came warm against his ear.

He swallowed heavily. Damn. He was too turned around even to be certain of that. The snow blotted out every familiar landmark. He nudged Buck forward a few more steps. Visibility was ten feet and closing. They would have to find shelter soon... or die.

Chapter 14

Creed closed his eyes, willing himself to concentrate on something besides the painful numbness of his fingers and the slick of frost forming on his face. He was trying to picture a place which, out of long habit, he shunned the way a wise man did a house riddled with pestilence. To call it up intentionally, to own it, he thought, was the height of desperation. But desperate was precisely what they were.

He visualized the cabin, detail for detail, saw himself approaching it in the snow.
There was the huge ponderosa pine sheltering one corner of the roomy log cabin. The small shed for stock thirty feet away.

The image flickered like a shadow, fading.

Focus, Devereaux. Concentrate!

Mariah shook him from behind. "Creed! What are you doing? Don't go to sleep for God's sake!"

"Quiet," he snapped. "I'm thinking."
There above the door in a place of honor, the pair of deer antlers—his first kill-now whitened with age.

"The snow's drifting around Buck's knees! We need to keep moving!" The pitch of her voice told him she was on the edge of panic.

There—the path that led to the feeder-creek and the odd rock formation: an old man bent with the weight of a heavy pack—along the north shore.

"We're lost. You can tell me the truth, Creed."

And the ancient broken tree lying at right angles to the earth pointing directly at the cabin.

Her arms tightened around his middle and she dropped her forehead against his back.

He opened his eyes, leaving that magical place in his mind behind. "No, we're not lost. Unless the curse has failed me at last."

He turned Buck sharply right and headed through an unlikely thicket of trees that opened up onto a creek where the banks were tufted with snow. They had only followed it for five minutes before spotting the rocks, the fallen ponderosa, then the cabin tucked safely beneath a sprawling pine and a ring of younger trees.

Le bon Dieu.
He felt Mariah's sigh of relief more than he heard it. Pulling to a stop at the door, he helped her down; then, with deliberate, stiff movements, he dismounted. Brushing the snow off the rough-hewn handle, he pushed open the unlocked door. It creaked in protest and he ushered Mariah inside the dark cabin.

Their steamy breath mingled in the dark room. He rubbed his hands together and blew on them until he could grip a match.

Clumsily, he touched the flame to the wick of the glass-domed coal oil lamp on the small table near the door. The glass rattled against the metal in his shaking hand as a soft yellow glow filled the room.

Her lips were tinged blue with cold and she was shivering despite the heavy robe that still enshrouded her. His face was covered with rime of white. He could feel the glacial cold heavy on his lashes and eyebrows and still numbing his cheeks. He wiped his face against his shoulder but found no relief in the stiffened fabric.

"H-how did you do that?" Mariah asked, clutching her hands to her sides.

He stared, confused. "Do what?"

She shook her head. "How did you find this place? How did you... know which way to come in all that whiteness?" She took a step closer to him, staring as if he were some creature in a side show. "How did you know?"

He dropped his gaze to the neatly stacked wood by the fireplace and started piling it on the fire grate. "It's my home, remember?"

"It didn't matter out there. You could have been ten feet away and not seen it. You would have needed divine guidance to find it."

He shrugged, rubbing his hands together.

"What curse?" she pressed.

His throat tightened. "What?"

"What
curse
were you talking about? You said, 'unless the curse has failed me at last'."

He ground his back teeth together. "Did I say that? I only meant my faultless sense of direction,
ma petite.
Now,"—a shiver poured through him—"why don't you let me get this fire going? Then I'll have to take care of the horses and you can get out of those wet things."