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She hung her head. “Oh, dear Lord,” she said in a much lower tone. “Oh, surely he found the bags and supplies beneath the bed. He kne
w from that what I had planned, and beat me to it. He took Megan away before I could leave, myself, with her. He was never even planning to go to the fort to trade!”
A sudden hot rage filled her very being.
She stepped away from Blue Thunder so that his hands were no longer on her shoulders. She had been keenly aware of the warmth of his hands, which had penetrated the doeskin fabric of her dress right into her flesh.
She had loved that tingling warmth, reveling in the gentleness of his hands. But now she had something very different on her mind. She had to find a way to rescue her daughter from a father whose heart was cold toward Shirleen, and who might have taken revenge for what she had been planning to do by stealing her precious child!
She doubled her hands into tight fists at her sides. “The fiend,” she said, her voice catching. “He doesn’t love Megan enough to care for her as she should be cared for! How dare he! No . . . child . . . should be without her mother!”
Speckled Fawn rose to her feet and went to Shirleen. She placed a gentle hand on her arm and turned Shirleen to face her. “No matter why he did this, Shirleen, we must waste no more time talking about it,” she said, her eyes filled with hatred for a man who could be so cruel to a sweet woman like Shirleen.
Beating a defenseless woman was a crime that God would never forgive!
And then there was the child.
Oh, surely she was scared to death being away from her mother, especially after having witnessed her papa beat her mother so often. Megan surely expected to be beaten, herself, whenever the man had a mind to do it.
Speckled Fawn looked more intently into Shirleen’s eyes. “Dear, you know that your daughter is with a demon,” she said. “Show Blue Thunder what he did to you. Your back, Shirleen. Turn and show him . . . your back.”
Her emotions were so raw that tears stung her eyes as Shirleen gazed at Speckled Fawn. Then she turned slowly to Blue Thunder, whose eyes were filled with questions about what Speckled Fawn had just asked Shirleen to do.
Remembering how gentle Blue Thunder had been to her from the very moment of her rescue, Shirleen turned her back to him and slowly lowered the bodice of her doeskin dress, so that the scars on her back were revealed to him.
She did not even feel awkward at exposing so much of her body to this man, for soon she hoped to be with him fully unclothed. She longed to discover what true lovemaking was all about.
Always when Earl had gone to bed with her, she had clenched her teeth and trembled until he was done with her. She had grown to hate those nightly duties.
But now she looked forward to the time when she would discover the wonders of joining her body with a man.
With Blue Thunder.
Shirleen heard Blue Thunder gasp and knew that he was horrified by what he saw, as horrified as she always was to know that she was scarred like that for life.
Blue Thunder could hardly hold his rage when he saw what that heartless man had done to this woman, a woman who was so tiny, so fragile and defenseless. She could never have fought back, or she would have died trying.
His heart ached for Shirleen. Now he knew something else he must do besides finding her daughter. He would punish the white man who had dared to raise a hand to her. Blue Thunder reached out for Shirleen, gently pulled her dress back up on her shoulders, then turned her to face him.
He framed her beautiful face between his hands as he gazed into eyes the color of grass. “My woman, my woman,” he said thickly. “I will go for your daughter. I will bring her home to you.”
Then with overflowing emotion, he brought Shirleen into his gentle, loving embrace.
Shirleen felt a warmth, a passion, rush through her that she had never before felt. She was elated to hear him call her his woman, and to know that he was going to bring Megan “home.” Already he saw Megan and Shirleen as a part of his life.
And then there was the way he was lovingly holding her in his arms.
She leaned her cheek against his powerful, bare chest, inhaling the smell of him that was now so familiar to her.
It was a mixture of clean, sweet, river water and the outdoors, the kind of wondrous aroma that she had scented on a beautiful spring morning in Boston.
For a moment, she was lost in his embrace. She was not even thinking of the cruelties of life, but only how happy she was that this wonderful man cared about her, and in turn, her daughter!
If he did succeed in bringing Megan back to her, oh, what a wonderful father he would be to her daughter. She knew that she was going to marry this man, even though by law she was still married to a demon.
She knew that God was a good, understanding God, and he would understand that she must break the vows she had spoken with Earl, a man she’d truly never known.
After that first beating, she had learned the truth, that he was the sort of man who saw women as nothing more than punching bags.
