Ana Seymour - Frontier Bride

“I beg your pardon?” Hannah was finding it hard to breathe normally with his face just inches from hers.

Abruptly he sat back and pulled a paper packet from inside his buckskin coat. “Horehound drops,” he said. He pulled something out of the paper and reached over to her. His fingers pushed the candy into her mouth, then lingered ever so briefly on her warm lips.

The slick, minty candy felt good against her tongue. After a moment of surprise, she smiled.

“The Creeks say that if you fall asleep with something sweet on your lips, you’ll have sweet dreams the whole night through,” Ethan said, popping one of the drops into his own mouth.

“I thought we were only supposed to bring essentials along on this trip, Captain Reed,” Hannah said with mock disapproval.

“Horehound’s an essential as far as I’m concerned. It’s the main reason I head back east every now and then. There’s not much else in so-called civilization that interests me.”

“You have a sweet tooth?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But surely there are some other things you miss from the city?” she asked, talking around the piece of candy still in her mouth.

As she waited for his answer, a log cracked, sending sparks up into the velvety blackness of the sky. Her gaze followed them upward, then scanned the clearing Ethan had chosen for their campsite. The woods seemed to enclose them in their own little world, smelling of smoke and moist, spring-scented earth.

“No, I can’t say that I miss much,” he was saying, his eyes on the fire. “Sometimes I miss reading. Books are hard to come by out West, and newspapers are already history by the time we get them.”

“Don’t you have family, friends that you miss?”

Ethan’s head came up. “I have friends at Fort Pitt. They’re all I need.”

His tone had grown colder, as if closing off discussion about anything personal. Hannah sat uncertainly for a moment, then said. “I should try to sleep now.”

Ethan stood with her and offered the paper of candy. “Would you like another one?”

Hannah took one of the drops. “Thank you. So now we’re guaranteed to have sweet dreams tonight. Is that the idea?”

Ethan’s dark eyes held hers. “I already have mine planned.”

Ethan had driven his inexperienced party from Philadelphia as hard as he thought possible over the past two days. He knew that tempers were growing short. Both the people and the animals needed a rest. But this particular section of the trail was Seneca territory, and he wanted to get through it as soon as possible.

The Seneca had been peaceful of late, but just before he’d left Philadelphia, he’d had word from an old Rogers’s Rangers comrade that Pontiac was urging the Seneca to join with his Ottawa and the Potawatomi in an alliance against the increasing numbers of British settlers moving into the Ohio River valley. He hoped the report was just another alarmist account like the ones they constantly used to hear at Fort Pitt. He certainly was not going to frighten his charges with vague possibilities. But he wasn’t willing to completely ignore the report when the lives of women and children could be at stake. Once they were out of range of the Susquehanna River and closer to Fort Pitt, he’d slow down the pace.

In the meantime, he made it a point to be in the lead during the day with his musket close at hand and to sleep as little as possible each night. He had hopes that Hannah Forrester would have a another attack of insomnia and join him at the camp fire late at night, but he had seen no sign of her for the past four evenings. It was just as well. His mind was sharper when it wasn’t fixed on an attractive woman. And Hannah was definitely attractive. Even after more than a week on the trail, her hair shone as bright as a field of spring buttercups. And each morning she awakened fresh and blooming, her eyes sparkling like the waters of the river they followed. He had not heard a single complaining word from her. When the others became sullen as he urged them on for an additional mile at the end of a long day, she did her best to put heart back into the group.

As if his thoughts had conjured her up, Hannah suddenly appeared at the edge of the circle of fire-light. Her thick blond hair was out of its customary braid, falling loose around her shoulders. Ethan had an almost uncontrollable urge to touch it.

“Do you ever sleep?” she asked.

Ethan smiled. “Fits and starts. You get used to it out on the trail. A full night’s sleep is rare.”

Her hands were at her waist, pulling on her shawl, unconsciously stretching it tightly across her full breasts. Ethan felt his body stir. “Would you sit with me a spell?” he asked.

She nodded and stepped around the fire to sink down next to him on a large log. “I see you here every night, long after everyone else has gone to sleep. Yet you’re always the first one up in the morning, though I myself have awakened before dawn.”

He shrugged. “We’ve an eternity to sleep, I reckon. No sense trying to get it all in at once.”

“I thought perhaps there was some reason you were keeping watch. Some danger?”

He could tell her the truth. She didn’t seem to be one of the hysterical-type females he’d known so well in Boston. But she might feel it her duty to tell her employer, and before long he’d have a whole train of overly skittish charges ready to shoot off their rifles at the belching of a squirrel.

He grinned at her. “Mayhap it’s those sweet dreams of mine that are keeping me awake.”

“Captain Reed…” she began in an admonishing tone.

Ethan held up his hand. His face became serious and he said, “Actually, I do have a problem.”

Hannah was instantly attentive.

“I’ve finished my horehound drops,” he said. His eyes fixed on her mouth. “I’ve nothing sweet to put on my lips before I sleep.”

Hannah had seen Captain Reed sitting by the fire each evening since their first late-night encounter, but she had deliberately kept to her bed to avoid another meeting. She was afraid of him. Or rather, she was afraid of the odd feelings he engendered in her head and in her body. Her mother had warned her off all men, and since her mother’s death her status as a servant had precluded any kind of relationship. She was twenty-one years old. By that age most of the girls back on the East End had half a dozen babies to raise.

The captain closed the distance between them on the log and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “There,” he said, now smiling. “That should be enough to sweeten my dreams this night.”

The press of his lips lingered on her face. It had been her first kiss from a man, and it hadn’t been the least bit evil, as her mother had always warned. It had been gentle and tender and made her feel pleasantly quivery inside.

Unconsciously she lifted two fingers to touch the spot he had kissed.

“Your skin is softer than a babe’s,” he said, his hand lifting to cover hers.

She jumped back. She hadn’t come out to the camp fire for more of Captain Reed’s audacious flirting. She had wanted to talk with him seriously. But around this man her normally intelligent conver-sation turned to mush.

“Please, Captain Reed. I must ask you once again to behave more decorously. I’m not used to…this kind of teasing.”

“You’ve had too serious a life, Mistress Hannah. I could see that from the first day I met you there in the tavern. You’d the look of a beautiful lass who was living away her life doing for other folks without ever knowing—without ever exploring—what it would be like to live for herself for a change.”

“I find a great deal of satisfaction in ‘living for others,’ as you put it. And even if I didn’t, I’m bound by contract to do so for a good long time yet.”