Pat Tracy - Beloved Outcast

Almost miraculously, he’d been freed. But, evidently, fate still wasn’t done having a laugh at his expense, because his rescuer was the craziest female he’d ever had the misfortune to meet. And something about her well-bred, faintly censorious voice grated on his already savaged nerves.

His gaze narrowed. A shot of pain radiated from his right eye. “Where are you from, Miss Amory?”

“I hardly think that’s relevant.”

“Boston, right?”

“Not that it matters, but yes, that is my hometown.”

He flinched. He should have known. Few good things had happened to him in Boston, which was why he’d left. As far as he was concerned, it was the hypocrisy capital of America, a place where men and women cared too much about appearances and not enough about integrity. It was where trust and loyalty fell before expediency and selfish desire.

“From your dour expression, I gather Boston is not one of your favorite places,” Miss Amory observed.

Nothing like a bit of understatement. “You might say that.”

“But where I come from hasn’t really anything to do with our present situation.”

She was speaking slowly again, as if she thought he were having trouble understanding her. Which he was, of course. But his lack of understanding had nothing to do with how fast or slowly she spoke. It was her confusing habit of talking in circles that made his head throb with more than the pain of the beating he’d survived.

Logan’s glance flicked to the stockade. He felt nostalgic about his internment there. While inside its dark interior, he hadn’t been forced to deal with a flame-haired harpy.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Stop.”

She licked her damnably soft lips. “What is it, precisely, that you wish for me to stop doing?”

“Addressing me as if I were some kind of half-wit.”

Her already rosy cheeks flushed a brighter shade of pink.

Was that it? Did she really think he was dim-witted?

Indignation tore through Logan. That this capricious female considered herself superior to him was the last straw. Her words kept darting off in a dozen different directions. Trying to speak with her was like carrying on a conversation with a bundle of colorful butterflies.

“There’s no need to be sensitive about it.” Her Boston accent was crisp and officious. “Not everyone can boast a keen intellect.”

Astonishment popped the bubble of anger that had built within Logan. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so soundly offended. Not even Windham, with his ridiculous claim about Logan bedding his wife, had struck such a deep blow.

Logan found he disliked having his intelligence insulted more than he disliked having his honor impugned. A man could redeem his honor in a fair fight. There was no quick and final way, however, to convince this green-eyed witch that he was her intellectual equal. He told himself it didn’t matter what she thought.

“Now, about who’s in charge here,” she continued, as if she hadn’t just mortally insulted him. “As it’s my wagon, and my team, and you are now in my custody, I should be the one to decide who does what.”

“All right,” he managed to say through his clenched jaw, not wanting to waste time arguing.

She smiled. “Why don’t you go ahead and load the wagon, then, and I’ll.”

He said nothing, contenting himself with images of her being bound and gagged and tossed into the back of her wagon.

She gestured toward a row of privies. “Well, you know…”

He maintained his stoic silence.

Only after she left did Logan let out the breath he’d been holding. He stalked toward the team, each step making his ribs ache. Little Miss Boston Accent didn’t know it, but marauding Blackfeet were the least of her troubles. She would be damned lucky if she made it to Trinity Falls without him throttling her.

A short while later, with the climbing sun raising a bead of sweat on his skin after his exertions in harnessing the team, Logan looked into the back of Miss Amory’s covered wagon.

At first he didn’t believe what he saw.

When it finally dawned on him that he wasn’t imagining things, a heartfelt oath escaped his cracked lips.

“Well, hell, that’s why they left her.”

He lofted himself into the wagon, ignoring a stab of pain from his bruised ribs. He would demonstrate to Miss Amory that the West had its own code of survival. It was a lesson he’d learned, and he would see that she damn well learned it, too.

For both their sakes.

After performing her morning ablutions, Victoria felt revived as she walked back toward the wagon. She’d overcome her aversion to entering the abandoned domiciles and scrubbed her face and hands in a floral ceramic washbowl she’d found in one of the eerily silent bedchambers. She’d also borrowed a comb and refashioned her hair into a semblance of order.

Gazing into the mirror above the washstand, she’d studied her features. The freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose and cheeks were more prominent than ever. The Western sun was responsible for that, no doubt. There was one good thing about her profusion of freckles, Victoria had decided as she refastened her cuffs. Men did not find freckled women attractive, which meant that even a disreputable sort like Logan Youngblood wouldn’t direct any unseemly attentions to her.

As Victoria crossed the gravel yard, she said a hasty prayer on behalf of those who’d fled the fort. She included her own welfare on the list of those needing Divine assistance. When she added Logan Youngblood’s name to the silent litany, however, she felt that her prisoner needed a series of independently voiced prayers pronounced on behalf of his felonious soul, as well as his physical well-being.

He had already hitched the oxen and loaded up the campsite, and was hunched over, reaching into the back of the wagon. When he emerged, two things registered. The first was that he’d found a blue military shirt to replace the tattered white one that had been falling off his powerfully sculpted shoulders. Thank goodness for that.

Her sense of relief was short-lived, though, when she realized he held several of her treasured books in his broad hands.

She raced forward. “What are you doing?”

He looked up from the volumes, a narrow-lipped frown making his already pummeled features even more menacing. “I’m lightening the load so we can make better time.”

Victoria recoiled. He couldn’t have hurt her more if he’d shot her. “You will return those books to where they belong.”

“They belong in Boston.”

She shook her head. “They are my possessions and will come with me.”

“I think not, Miss Amory.”

She straightened and leveled her most chiding glare at the obtuse man. “We’ve already established that I’m the one who gives the orders, and I say my precious cargo goes with me to Trinity Falls.”

Not looking at all chastised, Youngblood’s good eye narrowed to pinpoint fury. “This is your precious cargo?”

“That’s right, and I’ve no intention of leaving it.”

“Lady, they’re not loved ones, they’re books,” he said flatly, tossing her beloved copy of The Last of the Mohicans into the dust. “And they’re certainly not worth dying for.”

At his callous gesture, outrage filled Victoria. She bent instinctively to gather Cooper’s epic to her bosom.

“How dare you!”

He startled her by kneeling across from her. “Lady, there’s lots more copies of this book around. When we get to Trinity Falls, you can order another one—of it and all the others.”

“This is a first edition!”

With an absent flick of his wrist, he discarded Louisa May Alcott’s new volume, Little Women. Victoria’s indignation grew. She hadn’t even had a chance to read it yet!