Bride of the Shining Mountains (The St. Claire Men) (7 page)

Intensely glad for the distraction the stranger provided,

Reagan ignored Jackson’s comment, turning her attention to the
former instead of the latter. “And you are?”

“Gabriel Devereaux Strickland,” he said with a courtly bow, “late
of White Willows on the James River in Virginia.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Strickland,” Reagan said,
putting on her sweetest smile, her politest demeanor.

“Your servant,” he said, taking her hand and bringing it to his
lips. “And please, it’s G. D. Now, if you will be so kind as to excuse us both,
I’d like a word with Jackson.”

Jackson went with G. D. willingly enough. In fact, he was eager to
put a little distance between himself and Reagan Dawes, aware what a dangerous
turn their conversation had recently taken. He tried to put the talk behind him
as they walked toward the black ribbon of the Popo Agie River, yet he wasn’t
completely successfully. When they reached the river’s grassy bank, he turned
to face Strickland. “If this is about the money, then do not concern yourself
with it. I’ll take full responsibility for my actions and replace it from my
own account as soon as I reach Saint Louis.”

“You know it ain’t the money, Jackson,” G. D. said, exhaling on an
explosive sigh. “There ain’t no easy way to put this, but Bridger and I have
been thinkin’, and we can’t help bein’ concerned.”

“Concerned?” Jackson said, giving his friend a level look. “In
what way?”

“For the girl’s welfare, her future. It’s a long damn way to Saint
Louis.”

“And you and Tom do not trust me to get her there safely?” Jackson
surmised, his voice taking on an edge of annoyance.

“Now, don’t go getting your drawers in a twist,” G. D. said. “It
ain’t nothin’ personal, it’s just that... well, you’ve got something of a
reputation, and that girl’s got no one—no family, no kin—to speak on her
behalf.”

“And so you and Tom have decided to take the place of her family,”
Jackson said coolly. “To play at being her older, wiser brothers. How
altruistic of you both. How uncharacteristic.”

“We only want what’s best for her,” G. D. countered.

“The implication being that I do not,” Jackson replied, his temper
slowly flaring to life. He’d been questioned by the round-bellied charlatan
posing as a man of God, had aspersions cast upon his character by the girl’s
kin, and witnessed her fear when he but looked in her direction. He would not
be questioned by his friends, his compatriots, as if he were totally devoid of
honor. “So much for friendship, for loyalty!”

“Climb down off that soapbox, son. Who would speak plainly to you,
if not for me?” Strickland demanded. “Who else knows that you broke Kate’s
heart when you left her for Allegra? And that one you wounded, too.”

 “Kate was a whore,” Jackson said flatly, “who knew the stakes
when she welcomed me into her bed, and you are being damnably generous in
assuming that Allegra Santana has a heart! As for your bid for sainthood, I
seem to recall you joining me in a weeklong debauch the last time you were in
Saint Louis. I would say that puts some tarnish on that armor you’re wearing,
wouldn’t you? As for Reagan Dawes, she has nothing to do with either of them.”

“A whore and a faithless jade,” G. D. said with a snarl. “You make
my point for me without even trying! You’re a frequenter of bordellos, Jackson,
a rakehell and worse, and while you may be used to buying your women, that girl
is not used to being sold.”

“If you think for a moment that I purchased her freedom in order
to possess her body, then it would appear that you do not know me at all.”
Jackson’s voice lost some of its deadly quiet as he turned away. “Go back to
your whiskey! Drown in it, for all I care! Reagan Dawes does not require your
concern, and neither do I.” He’d had enough of quarreling with G. D., but it
was all too obvious that G. D. was not ready to let it go. He grabbed Jackson’s
arm, forcing him around to face him.

Jackson reacted immediately, instinctively, roughly planting a
broad hand in the center of Strickland’s chest, shoving him forcefully back and
away. “I have counted you among my friends these past eight years,” he warned
in a low voice. “If you wish it to remain that way, then do not attempt to lay
hands on me again. The next time you do, you’ll be picking yourself out of the
Popo Agie.”

G. D. stood his ground, his jaw thrust forward, yet he wisely
refrained from touching Jackson again. “Damn it, Broussard!” he said. “Don’t
you bring her to grief. She’s suffered enough. Hurt her, and I swear to God
you’ll answer to me.”

Without a word, Jackson turned his back on his friend and his
recriminations. As he stalked through the buffalo grass, a million stars
shining brightly overhead, his anger slowly waned, yet the tension that had
gripped him through the entirety of the evening remained an unsettling
constant.

For years he’d kept his feelings bottled up inside him, buried so
deep that at times even he could not find them. The trying little wretch who
had located them so easily and dragged them forth to nag at him had fallen
asleep in his absence, and was curled on her side, her face to the firelight.
Her expression was soft in repose, the last trace of absurdity lent by her
rough talk and ill-fitting garb having miraculously tumbled away. In its place
was a slightly grubby fallen angel, ejected from heavenly grace for unseemly
conduct and landed squarely in the dust and the buffalo dung at Jackson’s
moccasined feet.

In that moment Jackson’s dilemma loomed incredibly large, and he
began to wonder if perhaps G. D. was right about one thing: she was certainly
different from any woman of his doubtful acquaintance, perhaps any woman that
he had ever known.

When Reagan woke, the dawn was breaking. Scarlet ribbons curled
across a field of robin’s egg blue, bathing the red sandstone bluffs in the
near distance in a deep blood red hue.

For a brief interval she lay still, a rough trade blanket tucked
closely beneath her chin, certain that she’d fallen asleep in the meadow near
the banks of Allison’s Creek not far from Bloodroot. Then the first rays of the
rising sun turned the snowcapped peaks of the Teton Range a brilliant gold, and
her reluctant benefactor let go a soft snore, mumbling low in his sleep,
drawing Reagan’s gaze and annihilating the sense of false security with which
she had awakened.

Jackson Parrish Broussard was sprawled on his back in the buffalo
grass, his shirt hanging open so he was half-naked to the waist, his elbows
cocked and his hands pillowing his raven head. The posture enhanced his impressive
breadth of shoulder, displayed to advantage his deep chest and taut pectorals,
attributes that Reagan could not help but admire.

He was beautifully made, long, lean, and muscular, without the
bullishness that rendered other men of his height graceless and hulking. Unsure
why this realization so surprised her, Reagan let her gaze roam over him, from
head to toe and back again, touching him with her eyes in places no virtuous
maid would acknowledge even existed.

“Are you merely assuaging your feminine curiosity?” he asked,
opening one green eye a crack, causing Reagan to start, “or is it possible that
you like what you see?”

Caught, Reagan blushed to the roots of her hair. “Don’t flatter
yourself, Frenchman,” she drawled carefully. “I seen half-naked men b’fore, and
as far as I can tell, you ain’t nothin’ special.”

A wicked half smile tugged at one corner of his sensual mouth.
“It’s obvious you haven’t seen everything I have to offer... not yet, in any
case.” Leaning close, he stretched his hand toward her and, with a flick of one
lean brown finger, deftly knocked the hat from her head. “Keep looking at me
the way you’ve been, however, with an invitation in those big gray eyes, and
trail grit or no, it’s a circumstance I may decide to remedy.”

“Blackguard,” Reagan said, snatching up the trade blanket,
flinging it at his handsome head. “Your threats don’t worry me none!”

Peeling the wool blanket from his face, Jackson watched her stomp
off in the direction of the Popo Agie River. Once she was out of sight, he
released the breath he’d been unconsciously holding. “My dear Miss Dawes, I
assure you it was no idle threat. I fear that I am not the sort of man a woman
toys with.” Josephine chose that moment to put in an appearance, sidling around
the comer of the lean-to. Slinking to his side, the young mountain cat pushed
her nose under his hand, begging for attention. Jackson stroked her broad head,
scratching her ears and watching as she closed her eyes in a perfect show of
feline ecstasy.
“Bon jour,
ma petite.
You’ve had a good prowl, and now
you come home to Papa, eh?” He laughed low as Josephine tried to insinuate
herself onto his lap, then pushed her off good-naturedly. “Alas,
cher,
things have changed since
you went off to have your sport. There is another woman in camp. An irascible
young woman, quite impossible to ignore.”

Impossible to ignore, Jackson thought. Reagan Dawes was definitely
that, and he already regretted taunting her, probably due to the fact that he
wasn’t altogether certain just how much of what he had said was jest, and how
much was truth. He knew only that when he had awakened to find her smoky gray
gaze locked on him, he had reacted instantly, instinctively. His body, already
in a state of arousal, had hardened to the consistency of granite, and he had
wanted nothing more in that moment than to strip the mannish clothes from her
fine white body, to lay her down in the grass and....

Unconsciously, his fingers tightened in Josephine’s fur. The cat
gave a soft yowl of protest, and with a sigh Jackson released her. Those
ill-fitting rags the girl wore, her disheveled state, should have been
deterrent enough to keep her safe from his rampaging lust. Yet he seemed to
have no trouble gazing through the dust and baggy linen, the old felt hat, and
the perpetual scowl to the beauty beneath.

Sighing once more, Jackson sat up, closing his fringed shirt,
belting it at the waist. Though he hated to admit it, G. D. had been right
about one thing: he had no business setting himself up as the girl’s protector.
It was rather like appointing a marauding wolf as shepherd to a flock of tender
newborn lambs.

“Of all the high-handed, arrogant, low-minded
...”
Reagan searched the dark
recesses of her mind, but she couldn’t find a fitting epithet to describe his
ungentlemanly behavior. Pausing on the banks of the Popo Agie River, the dark
waters of which reflected the ever-changing sky, she tried to analyze which
made her more angry: his bold hints at seduction, or the fact that his
scandalous talk thrilled some secret part of her, the part that had been caught
ogling a strange man in a most improper manner while he slept.

“I wasn’t ogling,” she insisted softly. “Not really. I was
curious, was all.”

But the argument sounded lame even to her own ears, and a furious
blush leaped to her cheeks, bringing with it uncomfortable heat.

To combat it, Reagan knelt by the river’s edge, and cupping her
hands, plunged them into the icy flow. Then, catching sight of her reflection,
she froze, her dripping hands poised in midair.

The creature staring back at her from the placid surface of the
river bore little resemblance to the prideful young woman who’d pranced and
sashayed through Bloodroot, dashing the hopes of potential suitors to bits with
her scathing glance. The strain of the past few months had put hollows in her
cheeks and smudged the fragile skin beneath her eyes with pale blue shadows,
barely glimpsed beneath the thin layer of grit clinging to her face, hands, and
throat. Here and there strands of dark hair stuck through with bits of dried
grass and twigs straggled near her face, eliciting an anguished groan dragged
from the depths of her feminine soul.

Oh, that he had seen her thus rendered his taunts all the more cruel!

Liquid hurt welling up in her eyes, Reagan glanced back along the
trail that led to the campsite... a trail that was blessedly deserted. Perhaps
he’d gone back to sleep, or had decided to leave her to her morning toilet, or
better yet, maybe he’d gone in search of Luther to demand his money back.

It didn’t really matter which applied. All that mattered in that
moment was that she was alone and there was adequate water handy. If she were
exceedingly lucky, and did not waste a minute, she might just have time for a
bath.

Abe paused in the deep shade of a cottonwood tree on the north
shore of the Popo Agie and, resting the butt of his rifle on the ground,
watched with a kindling interest as the girl disrobed. All night long he had
lain awake, ruminating on the manner in which she’d been stolen from him,
scheming about just how he’d get her away from the man they called Jack Seek-Um.