Defiant Love Read online

  Star Blanket kicked the filthy garment away. "I do not need your skins! I need nothing of you! Let me go!" She turned her face toward the war chief. "You break the peace. You kill. You make war. If your God tells you to do this, he is as evil as you are."

  "Silence, woman!" he thundered. "You can be forgiven much for your ignorance, but not for blasphemy. Cover your body from the eyes of my men, or I will not be responsible for their sins. You are white. You'll be taken back to the settlements, and someone will try to find out if you have any family left. Do you know your name?"

  Her green eyes grew smoky with anger. "I am Alagwa Aquewa, Star Blanket, and I am Shawnee of the Wolf Clan. I am not white. And I will not go anywhere with you. Set me free or kill me."

  The big man spat in the dust. "God help us, she is mad," he uttered quietly. "Tie her well and gag her again if she will not be still. Be she mad or not, we will do our duty." His fierce stare took in the watching men. "And I'll shoot any man who lays a lustful hand on her, so help me God."

  * * *

  Annapolis, Maryland August 1703

  Sheffield Plantation

  Thomas Bradford dropped into a chair and reread the thin, creased parchment for the third time. He swallowed hard and motioned to the serving girl. "Brandy!" he ordered.

  She poured it and handed the goblet to him. Trembling, he took the glass and downed the amber liquid in a single gulp.

  "Are you all right, sir?" the girl asked hesitantly. "Is it bad news? Should I fetch Master Adam?" The old master looked pale. With his bad heart, anything could happen. Suppose he keeled over right in front of her? Saints preserve us! Molly bit her lower lip nervously. "Do you want me to find Master Adam?" she repeated. "He's in the office. I seen him there just a few minutes ago."

  "Yes... yes. Get Adam."

  Molly ducked a hasty curtsy and dashed from the room. Master Adam would know what to do.

  Thomas was just helping himself to a second glass of brandy when the younger man burst into the room.

  "Sir! Are you all right? Molly said..." Adam put an arm around his stepfather and helped him back into his chair, noting the tears in the faded green eyes and the crumpled letter in his hand.

  "I'm all right," Thomas said hoarsely. "They've found my Rebecca. After all these years." His voice cracked, and he wiped his eyes with the back of a gnarled hand. "Listen to me, sniveling like a kitchen wench! Damn it, boy, they've found her. Alive and well... my little Rebecca." He pushed the parchment into Adam's hands. "Read it yourself. This just came by rider from Annapolis."

  As Adam read, suspicion drained from his square face and was replaced by unaffected joy. "It sounds like your granddaughter," he agreed, running a hand carelessly through his hair. Contrary to the custom of the time, when even servants wore wigs, Adam was content with his own plain brown locks pulled back into a club at the back of his neck and secured with a leather thong. The simple style of dark hair framing his face was as unpretentious as his high, wide forehead and sympathetic brown eyes, which missed nothing.

  He was a big man, tall and broad of shoulder, with massive arms and hands. His clothes were as plain as his face, well made but of simple lines, without frills or artifice. Yet he moved easily, with none of the awkwardness of many large men. And the plain face softened with compassion as he turned toward the old man.

  "She's the right age," Adam said, "and the scar would seem to indicate—"

  "The Bradford eyes!" Thomas said triumphantly. "My son had them and both of the children. Green as the ocean off the cliffs of Dover. Bradford eyes! It's my Rebecca, I tell you. I knew she wasn't dead! Damn it to hell! I told them. I told them all. She's alive, Adam." He slammed his fist against the desk, sending a candlestick spinning.

  "It says here she's in Pennsylvania, about a day's ride west of Lancaster. A place called Logan's Crossing." Adam walked to the window to catch the light. "Not a very good speller, is he, this Colonel Steiner?"

  Thomas's thin lips pursed as memories of those he had lost swept over him. "October seventh, sixteen ninety-two," he murmured. "Mary's brother took up land three days west of here. I told him it was foolhardy. Indian country. No place for a white man. And then nothing would do but that Robert take Mary and the children to visit her family. I begged them to leave the little ones here." He sighed deeply. "Rebecca was only eight years old, little Tom not quite five."

  Adam patted his stepfather's shoulder. He'd heard it all a hundred times before. "Don't trouble yourself with it, sir."

  Adam and his mother had been bondservants on Sheffield at the time of the massacre, but he remembered little Rebecca Bradford well. He'd taught her brother how to swim in the creek. The deaths had been a blow to servant and master alike.

  "They never had a chance... murdered in cold blood, the women and children along with the men. No reason to it. Bloodthirsty savages." Thomas blinked back tears. "They found Mary's body beside Robert's and little Tom's. But no girl child. Without a body, how could they be sure she was dead? I knew she wasn't. I knew it all along." He chuckled. "People thought I was just a crazy old man. This should show them, eh, Adam?"

  "Crazy like a fox, maybe," the younger man conceded. If this girl was Rebecca, it was nothing short of a miracle. There were frequently tales of white children who'd been captured and raised by the Indians, but after eleven years, he'd believed the girl long dead and in some lonely grave. And if this girl was Rebecca Bradford, she was the rightful heiress to Sheffield. Adam swallowed hard at the sudden realization.

  From the time Thomas Bradford had married Adam's mother, Martha Rourke, six years earlier, he'd treated Adam like a son. They'd worked the plantation together, and Adam had come to respect and love his stepfather in a way he'd never been able to care for his own father. During the long years of hard work, in the sharing of responsibility and danger, Adam had begun to think of Sheffield as his own. Thomas had even written a will naming Adam his sole heir. Now all that was changed by the arrival of this letter from the Pennsylvania frontier.

  Adam shrugged. All that he had, Thomas Bradford had given him. Thomas had taught him to run a plantation and given him a sense of self-respect. If fate had returned to Thomas the granddaughter everyone thought dead, he could only share in the old man's joy. "Do you want me to ride up to Pennsylvania and bring her home, sir?" he asked. "It might be better if someone from the family went. After what she's been through, there's no telling what kind of mental state she might be in. Likely she's terrified."

  "I was thinking just that," Thomas agreed. "I'd go myself, but I know I couldn't ride two hours on a horse." He chuckled again. "Besides, there's the matter of the reward, two hundred pounds in gold. I think it would be safer with you than with an old man. I don't think there's anyone in Pennsylvania big enough to take it away from you."

  "When do you want me to leave?"

  "At daybreak tomorrow. Take three of the best riding horses. You'll make better time if you travel alone. Servants talk. You'll be safer with that much gold if you don't have to worry about a loose tongue."

  Adam nodded. "You're right. If she's well enough to travel, we should be back in a few weeks. I hope she can ride; I wouldn't want to travel by wagon. The roads are almost nonexistent up there." He paused thoughtfully. "I suppose I should take dresses and such, but I'm at a loss as to where to start. If my mother was alive, she'd know."

  "There are things of Mary's packed away in the attic. They'll do until Rebecca is safely home." The seamed fingers tightened around Adam's arm. "Be gentle with her, boy. She's been through so much. And tell her how much I love her."

  "Don't worry, sir, we'll get on. When she was a child, Rebecca used to trail me about like a puppy. She'll be so happy at the thought of coming home, I doubt there will be any real problems. You can count on me."

  Thomas released his grip. "I know I can. You're your mother's son, Adam." Faded green eyes locked with brown. "I know I promised you Sheffield if Rebecca was never found, but you'll not lose by this, I swear it
."

  Chapter 2

  Logan's Crossing, Pennsylvania

  August 22, 1703

  Day after day, Star Blanket had paced the shadowy confines of the log blockhouse, wearing a path in the bare dirt floor. Now she crouched in a corner, her arms folded across her chest, waiting. Her breathing was shallow, her green eyes patient in the darkness, the gloom hiding the fierce intelligence submerged in the depths of those catlike orbs.

  Though her body was motionless, her mind was not. By her reckoning, it was nearly time for one of her captors to come with food and water. They were afraid of her, and their fear made them dangerous. Her cheek bore a bruise from a blow that had not faded in more than seven suns.

  A smile softened her full lips as she remembered the day she had come close to regaining her freedom. The young buck who had come to bring the disagreeable corn mush had been careless. Tripping him and slipping out the door had been child's play. If the big man they called the Colonel hadn't ridden her down, she'd have reached the safety of the forest.

  The pale-faced women were terrified of her. They hid behind their men, too cowardly to face her, content to whisper insults they thought she was too stupid to understand.

  Phahh! They were contemptible; it filled her with shame to think that she had once been one of them. She could not imagine living in fear like these s'squaw-o-wah, who hid even their bone-white faces from the sun and cringed at the sounds of animals in the forest.

  How they clutched their whining children to their breasts, as though she, Star Blanket, would wrench them away and eat them raw! They eyed her with hard, suspicious stares, their pale blue eyes dull and without intelligence. What kind of women were these, who loved their own children but sent their braves to cut the throats of Shawnee babies? They must be demons without a shred of compassion or sympathy in their bone-white hearts.

  Iroquois, she knew, killed children. Perhaps these English-manake were kin to the eaters-of-men, the Iroquois. The Shawnee did not kill children, precious gifts of Him-on-high. The women and children of the whiteskins might be taken as captives, but they were always adopted into the tribe. Had they not so accepted her?

  The English-manake who held her prisoner now believed she did not remember her white family or her white name. She did remember. The morning of blood was branded on her brain; dreams still threatened her sleep. Star Blanket, she who had been Beck-ka'bad'ford, remembered.

  She had been playing with her small brother Thorn, feeding a pet raccoon, when her mother had called her back from the edge of the woods. The little boy had turned obediently, but she had chased the soft animal into the trees. She wasn't sure now how long she had followed it before it allowed itself to be captured. She was holding it in her arms when she heard the first blood-curdling yell—the Iroquois war cry. She had not recognized it then, but now she would never forget.

  Her child's instincts had told her to run to her mother, but an older instinct had bade her lie still in the tall grass beneath the trees, as still as death. The scene of blood and terror that had unfolded before her remained frozen in her mind—the silver flashes of steel, the puffs of smoke from the muskets, and the sweet, cloying smell of blood. Blood was everywhere; it soaked the ground and turned the rich brown of the log barn to crimson.

  Her father took two Iroquois warriors with him into death. He died bravely, as bravely as the woman who stepped between her small son and a gory hatchet. But in the end, they all died... cows and dogs, sheep and people. In the end there was silence, broken only by the chant of blood-crazed Iroquois braves and the crackle of flames that ate at the house and barns, filling the air with thick, black smoke.

  And she lay in the shadows of the boughs, alone. Until then, she could not remember ever feeling afraid. What had there been to fear? Until then, when suddenly everything was gone, everyone. Even the warm, soft raccoon had fled into the woods at the first scent of blood.

  She lay there through the heat of the day, her tongue dry, her head aching from lack of water. Even after she realized that the Indians were gone, she could not move. Her body and mind seemed turned to stone.

  Slowly, she had become aware that she was not alone. A face, bronzed and unmarked by paint, loomed only feet from where she lay. She had seen no movement, and he was so still it was hard to believe the man was real. His eyes were brown and full of pity. It was impossible to be afraid of those eyes, even when brown fingers motioned her to silence.

  It was comforting to have the man nearby. She dozed, sleeping for minutes or hours, until a featherlight touch on her shoulder woke her. The man still crouched by her side in the fast-fading light. He motioned her to rise and follow him. Without question, she obeyed. She could not have done otherwise. He was all she had.

  Later, she learned that the man, Chaquiweshi, was a Shawnee scout. He had been following the enemy Iroquois war party, and he had seen all that had happened. Because he could not leave a child, even a white one, to die in the forest, and because he was afraid to return her to the nearest white settlement, he took her home to his sister at the Shawnee camp.

  Chaquiweshi's sister, Co-o-nah Equiwa, had taken her without question. She had lost a girl child at birth and had always believed she was owed another. Despite her husband's warnings, she had made Beck-ka'bad'ford—renamed Star Blanket—her daughter, as dear and as greatly loved as though she had been born to her own lodge. And in time Cut-ta-ho-tha, her husband, had come to accept Star Blanket as his own.

  Co-o-nah Equiwa and Cut-ta-ho-tha had replaced the parents who had died on that bright morning of blood. Shawnee had replaced English, and she had changed bit by bit until she knew that the white child Beck-ka'bad'ford had died that day along with the others. She no longer mourned her white family or the child she had been. She had been born again into a new life; she was Star Blanket of the Shawnee. And nothing these English-manake could say or do would change that.

  The sound of footsteps outside the blockhouse drew her back to the present. Several people were coming. She let her eyelids sink lower until only a sliver of light passed through. With the patience of a hunter, Star Blanket waited. Her captors could not hold her forever, and if they relaxed their guard for an instant, she would be gone.

  * * *

  Adam Rourke tried to conceal the dislike he felt for these frontier Pennsylvanians. They were a rude, unlettered lot, and he had no doubt that Rebecca Bradford had been misused because of their ignorance. Colonel Steiner demanded the two-hundred-pound reward before Adam even laid eyes on the girl.

  "She's touched in the head," Steiner warned. "Most are like that after the savages get through with them. Don't look for any gratefulness. The girl's stark, raving mad."

  If so, you haven't helped, Adam thought. The gold was still safe in the saddlebag slung over his shoulder. He wouldn't part with a coin of it until he was certain this poor girl was Rebecca Bradford.

  The dour German led the way across the enclosed compound to a log blockhouse. "Don't turn your back on her. She'll knife you in a minute." He paused with his hand on the wooden bar that secured the massive door. "'Twas my Christian duty to spare her life and see her returned to her own people. But, God help her, she might have been better off dead with the rest of the vermin."

  Adam's muscles tensed; his hand crept to the pistol at his waist. He didn't trust this Colonel Steiner. If this was all a hoax, an attempt to swindle him out of the reward... Adam's brown eyes darkened to ebony. He had never considered himself a violent man, but he'd go to any lengths to keep from betraying his stepfather's trust.

  The leather hinges squeaked as the door swung open. The German motioned him inside. Adam shook his head. "You first, Colonel."

  The big Pennsylvanian stepped in, and Adam paused, letting his eyes become accustomed to the dim interior.

  The dirt floor gave off a musty smell; there were no windows, only an opening in the ceiling that Adam supposed must be reached by a ladder. The blockhouse was built for defense, not for comfort; the rough log
walls would give no solace to a young and frightened woman. A flood of anger surged through him. Mad or not, the girl did not deserve to be treated like a wild animal!

  Adam glanced around the cell, noticing the bucket half full of water and the empty wooden bowl. Had she been fed like a beast without a table or chair, without even eating utensils? His eyes found the girl huddled in the darkest corner.

  He breathed deeply of the damp air, deliberately controlling his tone of voice, hiding his anger. "Rebecca," he called softly. "Rebecca Bradford? I'm your uncle. I've come to take you home."

  There was no answer, no sign that she had heard or understood.

  "You, girl!" the Colonel snapped. "Come here." He took a step toward her. "She hears well enough. I told you she was mad." He reached out to grab her arm, but Adam stepped in front of him.

  "Don't touch her." Rourke motioned toward the door. "Wait outside. I want to talk to her alone." The softness in Adam's voice nearly covered the steel. "Leave us. Now." Blood pounded in his temple as he saw the bruise that ran down the side of the girl's cheek.

  Steiner shrugged. "It's your throat. Remember, I warned you."

  When they were alone, Adam squatted on the dirt floor and spoke to her. "They say you are Rebecca Bradford. If you are, you should remember me. I'm Adam Rourke. I worked for your grandfather at Sheffield. I used to take Rebecca and her little brother swimming in the creek. And I gave you pony rides..." He made no effort to move closer. "Do you remember the pony, Rebecca? It was a black pony."

  "No." Her voice came clear in the darkness, heavily accented but strong and unwavering. "Gray. Pony was gray."

  "Yes." Adam tried to keep the excitement from his voice. "He was gray. Do you remember his name?" Nothing in Thomas Bradford's notices had ever mentioned the pony Rebecca and her brother had played with as a child. If she knew the answer to that question, there could be no doubt who she was.