Pat Tracy - Beloved Outcast

Logan knew his mouth was hanging open. He felt as if he’d stepped from the orderly, rational world of his daily existence into a bizarre nightmare. What interest could this pompous, Indian-hating cavalry officer have in his love life?

“Athena is one of them.”

A sense of doom gripped Logan. “Athena?”

“My wife,” Windham responded softly. “My beautiful, faithless wife. You remember her. After all, it’s hardly been a week since you bedded her.”

The accusation brought sudden clarity to the strange episode. Unfortunately, it also brought the unsettling memory of the woman.groping him when her husband’s back was turned.

“That’s what this is all about,” Logan said warily. “You think I’ve been with your wife.”

“Don’t deny it. Your guilty expression says it all. I saw how you looked at her. Every man looks at her that way. Every man wants her, but until you came along, she was loyal to me.”

“You’ve lost your senses. I haven’t touched your wife. Damnation, I’ve only seen her three times. You were with her on every occasion.”

That much was true. Except for the minor detail of Mrs. Windham damn near giving him a heart attack when she bumped against him and her fingertips rested momentarily against the front closure of his trousers. Logan had been so stunned by the unexpected contact he almost yelped.

Another memory knifed through Logan. He shifted against the ropes binding him. Six years ago, the protestations of the older brother he loved and admired had rung in Logan’s ears. Burke had denied seducing Logan’s fiancee. The difference between then and now was that Burke had lied, and Logan spoke the truth.

The officer laughed bitterly. “Am I supposed to believe the denials of ‘Passion’s Pirate’?”

“I can’t be held accountable for the gossip frustrated women spin.”

“Athena isn’t frustrated!”

“I don’t give a tinker’s damn about the details of your married life, Colonel. I came to the fort to warn you that an Indian attack is imminent. Night Wolf’s band has been beaten down to a few old men and some women and children. They are not a threat to you, but you’d better start making plans about how you’re going to fight off the Shoshones and the Blackfeet tribes who are on the warpath.”

Windham’s head snapped back as if he’d been struck. “Don’t presume to give me orders, Youngblood.”

“Think of them as suggestions,” Logan answered grimly. “Are you ready to untie me?”

“Untie you?” The man’s mouth curved mockingly. “You must be insane to think I’d do that now.”

Logan knew one of them was insane. Unfortunately for him, it was the man with the Remington.

Victoria Amory wrapped her fingers around the wide leather reins and tugged with all her might. The oxen pulling her covered wagon came to a belligerent stop. She craned her head, looking in all directions, but saw no evidence of human habitation in the lush wilderness known as the Idaho Territory. Nor was there any sign of the fort she’d been told was nearby. After four days alone on the trail, she calculated that she was still sixty miles or so from the town of Trinity Falls, where her new employer and her new life awaited her.

Victoria rose to better survey her primitive surroundings.

There was no way she could have been more alone—if she didn’t count the birds trilling to each other and periodically bursting skyward in clusters of raucous mayhem. The entire forest was in a state of continuous animation as squirrels and other small animals scurried through the fertile underbrush.

“Can anybody hear me?” she called.

In response, there was only the endless shifting of pungent pine boughs and fluttering of the coin-size green leaves that graced the narrow, white-trunked aspen trees dotting meadows of mountain grass. It was foolish to expect a reply, yet she was still disappointed. She’d had such high hopes when she accepted Martin Pritchert’s letter offering her employment as a live-in tutor for his employer’s ward.

A new beginning had sounded so appealing. Her purpose in leaving Boston outweighed the little pricks of doubt that occasionally pierced her resolve. With her reputation in shreds, her continued presence at home had become an embarrassment she refused to inflict upon her family.

Not wishing to dwell on that sad truth, Victoria consoled herself with the hope that, since she was now out of the picture, her sister, Annalee, would be free to accept one of the numerous marriage proposals she’d received. No amount of arguing from Victoria had managed to convince her parents that their younger daughter should be allowed to wed before their elder one.

Victoria sighed. She was twenty-four years old and she had yet to meet a man she wanted to call husband. Still, because of her parents’ old-fashioned beliefs, the second item of business she needed to accomplish in Trinity Falls was to find herself a spouse. It seemed the least she could do for Annalee, who was the kindest, most loving sister anyone could wish for.

The wheels of Victoria’s mind turned with the same steady rhythm as those of the lumbering wagon. Perhaps she really didn’t need to marry before Annalee. Maybe it would satisfy her parents’ archaic code of propriety if she was engaged to be wed. Now that she was almost a thousand miles from home, she would be free to do a little…creative letter-writing. Naturally, an outright falsehood was beyond her, but she could exaggerate—

The right front wheel struck a deep rut, and the wagon lurched violently as Victoria was bucked upward, then slammed against the wooden seat. Just that quickly, her thoughts jerked back to her immediate circumstances.

Her great Western adventure was falling far short of her expectations. Who would have supposed that the wagon train would continue without her because she was unable to keep up? It had shocked her that the wagon master couldn’t comprehend that, even if she was slowing down the group, she simply couldn’t abandon her precious cargo along the trail.

Victoria harbored no ill feelings toward the man. He and the others didn’t understand that her treasured volumes, some of them first editions of Jane Austen and James Fenimore Cooper, were impossible for her to part with.

Initially, she hadn’t been all that alarmed at being left behind. The overland trail was wide, and clearly marked by the hundreds of wagons that had preceded her west. She had plenty of food, and the obliging nearness of the Ruby River provided all the fresh drinking water she and her team needed. Also, the wagon master had assured her that a fort was nearby. Once she reached the fort she’d arrange for a party of soldiers to escort her to Trinity Falls.

But the loneliness had begun to wear upon her nerves, and there was the matter of the fearsome Indian warriors she’d heard so much about. It would have been somewhat reassuring to have a firearm for protection. Unfortunately, she’d had a slight mishap with her rifle the fifth day on the trail, and the wagon master had confiscated the weapon from her on the grounds that she was a menace to both herself and the rest of them with a loaded gun in her possession.

Victoria frowned. Goodness, she could hardly be faulted for shooting Mr. Hyrum Dodson in the foot. The man had been prowling around her wagon in the wee hours of the morning. And he very well could have been the bear she’d mistaken him for. As far as she was concerned, it was an understandable error on her part.

Neither the wagon master nor Mr. Dodson, however, had been inclined to be understanding.

Which brought Victoria to her third reason for going west. It seemed that people in general were disinclined to be tolerant of life’s little mishaps. For instance, take the innocent incident when one of her sister’s suitors had been caught with his pants at half-mast in Victoria’s bedchamber. Had anyone been interested in hearing that the hapless man had scaled the outside trellis and was delivering a rose to Annalee?