Miracle Jones (13 page)

She returned to the camp by the lake, sober-faced.
Harrison eyed her watchfully as he stretched out his legs, grimacing at the pain movement caused him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Miracle brought him the dried jerky and a tin cup of water.
“Nothing.”

He took the cup and meat, his intense green gaze never leaving her troubled face.
“Something must have happened to put that sorrow in your eyes.”

His intuitiveness surprised her.
“The night I was kidnapped my Uncle Horace was beaten unconscious.
He’s missing now, and I’m worried about him.”

“He was with you?”

“We were traveling together.”

“By wagon?” he asked, looking down at the venison.
She had to have gotten the supplies from somewhere.

She nodded.
“We were going to Rock Springs.”

He chewed on the venison thoughtfully.
When Miracle tried to move away, he reached out and lightly grabbed her arm.
“Don’t go.
I want to talk to you.”

His touch made her nervous.
“I have things to take care of.”

“Why were you going to Rock Springs?
You and – Uncle Horace?”

“We just planned to travel through.” She tried to gently ease from his grip, but he tightened his hold.
Sliding him a frowning glance, she met the full impact of his knowing eyes, and color washed up her cheeks in spite of herself.
Damn the man.
She had to get away from him before she embarrassed herself by doing God knew what.

“Are you looking for work?” he asked.

“No.
I’m a healer,” she told him proudly.
“Uncle Horace and I –”

She was cut off by his short bark of laughter.
“You’re a healer, you’re not a shaman.
Oh, that’s right, I remember now.
You told me you help people.
This is your job?”

His green eyes danced with amusement, instantly igniting Miracle’s temper.
“I have cured many an ailing child,” she said with asperity.
“I have helped where doctors have failed.”

She didn’t realize she’d slipped into her “healer” voice until Harrison whooped with disbelief and laughter.
“You’re a faith healer!”

“I’m an herbalist,” she contradicted sharply.
“It’s thanks to my skill that you’re still alive!”

Her hot retort rang through the quiet force, echoing back at her.
The foolishness of her remark was heard in those ringing echoes.
He arched a sardonic brow and drawled, “Since I’m still suffering the effects of your attempted murder, I hope you won’t think me ungrateful if I don’t acknowledge your – er – remarkable healing talents.”

Miracle was momentarily silent.

“Tell me, is this how you scare up business for yourself?
My brother is a doctor, but I don’t think wounding and maiming patients first is one of his methods.
Maybe I should –”

“Your brother’s a doctor?” Miracle cut him off on a gasp.
Oh, God!
The full extent of her folly flashed before her eyes.
Her crime would be laid bare.
Harrison would return home, and his brother would examine his wound.
The sheriff would be called.
She would be thrown in jail.
Accused of attempted murder.
Hadn’t he said as much?

The color washed from Miracle’s cheeks, leaving her pale and sick.
Her eyes grew round with desperation as she envisioned the horror of a lifetime spent behind bars.

“Hey.” Harrison frowned.
“What did I say?”

She turned to him beseechingly.
“I didn’t mean to stab you.
Truly.
It was a mistake.”

The silence surrounding them was only broken by his deep breathing and her wildly beating heart.

“I know you didn’t mean to,” he said slowly.

“You do?” Miracle lifted her gaze to his, her relief almost palpable.
The joy that swept across her beautiful features made Harrison catch his breath.

“You were only trying to protect yourself,” he went on, wondering why she would think he might believe otherwise.
“If I were a woman, trussed up and left to the fate of whatever lustful bastard should lay down the most money, I would have reacted the same way.”

Miracle wanted to throw her arms around him and hug him.
Instead, she glanced away, her face heating, pounding like a pulse.
He hadn’t had to lay down a penny to buy her virginity.
She’d given it to him!
Lord, please don’t let him remember.
I promise from here on I will be pure of spirit and immune to the forces of temptation.

“Thank you,” she said simply, glancing back, her eyes brilliant with emotion.

Harrison couldn’t take his eyes from the aquamarine magnificence of hers.
He was sobered enough to realize she actually believed he would throw her to the wolves, so to speak.
Up until this moment he hadn’t seen her smile, but now the tentative curving of her lips, the innocence and guilelessness in that trembling motion, sent a shot of profound desire heating through his system which was totally inappropriate.
He gazed at her rose-pink mouth, stunned by his physical response.
He could scarcely move a muscle without biting back a cry of pain.
Why –
how
– could he actually be feeling lust?

His unwelcome reaction made him terse.
“You’re welcome,” he bit out, dropping her arm, then tearing off a piece of dried venison with his teeth.
“It’s just common sense.”

“But no one believes a half-breed,” Miracle said quickly.
“You could have said I’d stabbed you on purpose, and it wouldn’t have mattered what my reasons were.
I would have been locked up.”

He didn’t answer.
There was too much truth to her words.
He’d met his share of half-breeds and full-blooded Indians, but only as passing acquaintances.
Yet he knew if it came down to his word against any red man’s – or woman’s – he would be listened to first.

He felt the weight of her gaze on him and frowned.
It wouldn’t matter how beautiful, intelligent, or innocent she was, either.
White men ruled the country.
She was absolutely correct.

“Aren’t you going to eat anything?” he demanded.

She glanced over at her own soup cooling in its cup.
Sensing his rebuff, she moved away.
Harrison felt cruel.
She probably thought he’d rejected her because she was a half-breed.
Oh, hell.
What did it matter anyway?
Soon he would be back in Rock Springs, and this interlude with Miracle Jones would be over.

The tiny digging sticks of the marshmallow root scratched against his skin.
Harrison turned over Miracle’s claim to be an herbalist in his mind.
She had known what to do to make certain his blood stayed pure; he had to credit her with that.
But he distrusted the wily peddlers who drove through rural towns, hocking their expertise alongside their tinware, squeezing pennies and nickels from those who could ill afford to lose them, making a living at other people’s expense.

He sighed.
His mother had taken to listening to Belinda, a would-be healer, after the accident that had nearly cost her her life, completely forgetting that it was Tremaine who had saved her, Tremaine who had brought her back to health, Tremaine who had stitched Harrison’s arm back on as well.

But Eliza hadn’t been quite the same after the fall.
Bent on revenge, her first husband, Ramsey Gainsborough, had fought with her on the widow’s walk, causing them both to fall two stories to the ground below.
Gainsborough had died almost instantly, and Eliza had been left critically injured.

Eliza had recovered slowly, and finally she was completely healed – at least physically.
However, even though her body mended, a lifetime of values seemed to have been lost.
The kind of mysticism and superstition she’d sniffed at all her life suddenly appealed to her.
It didn’t matter that her husband had once been a physician, or that her stepson was an excellent surgeon, or that one of her sons and her only daughter were horse doctors.
She wanted a miracle cure.
She wanted something to believe in.

The faith healer had offered strange tisanes and tinctures, potions and spells and incantations.
Subsequently, Eliza’s recovery had been fraught with peaks and valleys such as Harrison had never seen before.
Tremaine, in his own inimitable way, had told her point-blank to ignore Belinda’s advice.
Harrison had said much the same.
Eliza had refused to listen to them, and to this day she believed Belinda had been as important to her return to health as her own stepson, Tremaine.

Harrison’s thoughts restlessly turned to his mother.
She’d been unwell the day before his scheduled wedding.
A cold, she’d assured them all, but the shuttered look on Tremaine’s face had struck fear in Harrison’s heart.

He hoped his mother had been right: a cold, nothing more.
He had to get back to Rock Springs and find out.
Chafing at his own incapacitation, Harrison’s expression grew darker and stormier.
It was bad enough that Kelsey had been humiliated.
What about his mother?
Had his disappearance created a setback?
He would never forgive himself if that were the case.

It was time for action.

He pulled his heels beneath him against the bole of a tree, then pushed with all his strength to bring himself upright once again.
Sweat broke out on his forehead and upper lip.
The muscles of his thighs burned.
The poultice scraped across his skin as he slid his back upward against the bark of the tree.
Gritting his teeth and panting from the exertion, Harrison finally managed to stand on maddeningly shaky knees.

Miracle had been studiously ignoring him, but now she glanced his way.
With a gasp she dropped her cup to the ground and came running toward him, skirts flying.
“You’ll give yourself a setback for certain!”

“I’m leaving,” he said flatly, hiding the effort those few words cost him with what he felt was remarkable fortitude.

“Your face has gone completely white,” Miracle observed.

“I have duties and people to see in Rock Springs.”

“You’ll never make it.”

He eyed her impatiently.
“Didn’t you say you have a wagon?
You can drive me.”

“The wheel’s broken.”

Harrison closed his eyes, his mouth forming a single, distinct swearword.
He was well and truly trapped until this damned knife wound decided to give up its grip on his weakened system.

“Rest,” Miracle suggested, reaching forward to help him back down.
Intending to catch his arms, she was distracted by the feel of his hard bicep and the muscular strength of his chest.
Too many memories of his kisses and potent masculinity crowded into her mind.
Biting her lip, she forced them away while she aided him unwillingly back to the ground.

The look on his face was one of impotent fury.
He hated being so helpless.

“All right,” he said in a tight, tense voice.
“But tomorrow I’m leaving, even if you have to carry me out in a coffin!”

“You’d better hope your wish doesn’t come true.”

He glared at her.
Lord, but she possessed a sharp tongue.
“Just make sure you’re not the one to put me in it,” he growled.

Chapter Six

Miracle awoke to a gray and cloud-shrouded dawn.
Almost overnight, it seemed, summer had disappeared and fall had settled in.
The air that filled her lungs had a bite of winter.

She calculated the time to be around five thirty.
Wrapped in several blankets –
away
from Harrison – she felt a bit cold in her limbs.
Rubbing her legs briskly, she longingly glanced his way.

He wasn’t there.

Miracle threw off her blanket and scrambled to her feet, shaking in the cool morning air even though she was fully dressed.
Her heart thumped.
Where was he?
He hadn’t succumbed to the wound’s poisons again and wandered off in a fever, had he?

Her boots lay beside her, and she hurriedly yanked them on, her gaze anxiously raking the camp on all sides.
She should have lain beside him, she realized with sinking despair.
But no, that wouldn’t have helped, now, would it?
It hadn’t the other night!

Muttering invectives directed solely at herself, Miracle ran down the trampled grass pathway toward the wagon.

“Whoa.” A drawling masculine voice greeted her as she charged pell-mell into the clearing.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” Miracle demanded in a rage.
“You shouldn’t be up.
For all I knew you could have wandered off sick and helpless.”

“Would you have cared?”

“Of course I would have cared!” Was that a grin stealing across his face?
Curse and rot him, he was laughing at her!
“I want to make sure you arrive home healthy.
I don’t fancy a jail cell, Mr.
Danner.”

He was leaning against the side of the wagon, one hand resting on the spokeless wheel.
He was still bare-chested, rays of weak sunlight striping across the hard muscles in the dark gold strands of his mussed hair.
The poultice had been discarded, tossed onto the ground beside him like so much garbage, and the slit of the knife wound now looked like an innocuous scratch.

He arched a brow.
“I thought I’d see what I could do to get us going.” Inclining his head toward the north, he added, “I met your horses.
I figured if we could get this wheel put together, we could hitch them up and you could give me that ride to Rock Springs.”

“How can we fix the wheel?” Miracle’s gaze slid from his.
She hadn’t realized he was so tall, nor so lean.
She had never met a man who could affect her this powerfully, least of all a white man.
With disgust, she understood for the first time what her mother must have felt upon encountering her father.
She winced, stricken to think she was following the same path.

“Have you got an axe?” Harrison asked.
“Or a heavy knife?” His mouth quirked.
“Heavier than the one I was already introduced to, that is.”

“I’ve got a deer-gutting knife inside the wagon.”

“Maybe I could whittle a few spokes from these for branches.
The wheel rim’s in fair shape.
I could put something together that might just last until we get to Rock Springs.”

Miracle absorbed this with mixed feelings.
She, too, wanted to get to Rock Springs and find out about Uncle Horace, but part of her wanted to stay.
As soon as they reached the town she and Harrison would part ways.

And he would never know what they’d shared.

“Miracle?”

“I’ll – I’ll take the knife and cut off the branches and bring them to you.” It was better that he never knew.
It was the only way, in fact.
She was a fool even to wish things might be different.

As soon as Miracle was gone Harrison sank down on the back step of the wagon, cursing his weakness.
A sense of urgency drove him.
Though he’d only been missing a matter of days, he felt tense and anxious, as if events were happening beyond his control.

He thought back to the night before his planned wedding and realized with increasing soberness that he was lucky to be alive.
The men who’d kidnapped Miracle were more than likely of the same group who’d been hunting that stretch of road between Malone and Rock Springs, abducting young women for their own pleasures or for money, or both, then later disposing of them.
Harrison now knew why someone had slipped something into his drink; it wasn’t only for the pile of money he and Jace had been gambling with, it was also to make certain the highwaymen weren’t remembered by either Harrison or Jace, who were both well-known faces themselves and of considerable influence in Rock Springs.

Thinking of Jace, he grimaced.
He hoped Garrett had managed to stay alive, although if he were, then why hadn’t someone come hunting for him?
Jace could tell them where they’d both been.
Did he think Harrison had perished in the fire?
Did they all think that?

Miracle returned, her arms laden with fir boughs already stripped bare of needles.
The scent of freshly cut fir filled his head.
Coupled with the sharp, damp scent of the air, it made Harrison realize anew that time was passing, the seasons were changing.

“Thanks,” he said gruffly as he climbed to his feet.
It was an effort to disguise how difficult it was to move, but he’d be damned if he’d show any further weakness in front of this lady.

“I’ve trimmed the needles and some of the smaller limbs.
These branches looked to be about the right size.”

He had to admire her choice.
He couldn’t have done better himself.
The fir branches were about an inch in diameter, straight and tough and near enough to the right length that he knew Miracle had cut them with care.
He thought of Isabella: soft, full breasted, with the airs of a society lady and the morals of an alley cat.
She would not have known how to survive out here.
He still couldn’t believe how much he’d let her hurt him.

Thank God for Kelsey, he thought, his gaze turning to Miracle.
And even this little savage was more of a woman than Isabella could ever hope to be.

He settled back on the step and began hewing off the rough bark with her hunting knife.

“I know you’re a horse doctor,” she said, watching him work.

“How do you know that?”

“I found a card in your pocket.
It’s back at the camp, with your money and pocketknife.”

He slid a glance her way.
“You went through my pockets?”

“I didn’t know who you were.
You just told me your name, and I was afraid that if you…”

“Died?” he inserted, his lips twisting.

“Yes, died.
I wouldn’t know who to tell.
I figured someone would be waiting for you.”

Harrison set down the first “spoke” and picked up another fir branch.
He didn’t answer.
Thinking about Kelsey made him feel guilty and angry.
His expression changed accordingly, and Miracle, watching, felt her heart wrench at the look of cold cordiality that swept across his face.

She crossed her arms.
“Who’s Lexington?” she asked, seeking to change the subject and bring it back to neutral ground.

“My sister.”

“Sister!” Miracle was astounded.
“But isn’t she your business partner?
Your card said –”

“Lexie’s an unusual woman,” he interrupted.
“She’s always known what she wanted and gone after it, come hell or high water.
Quite often it turned out to be hell.”

She could hardly credit the kind of man who would be in a partnership with his sister.
It was unheard of.
Unfathomable.
Her lips parted in amazement.
“She’s a horse doctor!” Miracle exclaimed.
“Impossible!”

“Why?” He stopped what he was doing to frown at her.

Throughout his and Lexie’s business career he’d grown tired of defending her to thick-skulled males who couldn’t see her finesse and tender care.
The last thing he expected was to have a woman as clearly independent and savage as Miracle criticize her.

“The farmers would never trust her,” Miracle pointed out quite accurately.
“And a man would never have a woman as a business partner.”

“You and your uncle seem to be in business together,” he pointed out dryly.

“But not in a trade profession.
A
man’s
trade profession.”

Harrison stared at her.
She really was quite intelligent.
Behind those incredible eyes lay an intellect he would have never guessed at, considering her own “profession.”

“Well, Lexie and I are partners,” Harrison stated, settling to his task.

Miracle turned her attention to the dusky gray-blue sky above their heads.
“Is she married?” she asked, intrigued by the idea of a man who could accept his sister as a horse doctor.

“Uh-huh.
To my half-brother, Tremaine.” At Miracle’s look of utter confusion, he added helpfully, “The doctor.”

“Your sister is married to your half-brother?” she repeated slowly.

“My half-sister is married to my half-brother,” he corrected.
“They are not related to each other except by marriage.
I’m related to both of them, however, since Tremaine’s father is my father, and Lexie’s mother is my mother.”

Miracle frowned in confusion.
“I don’t understand.”

He laughed shortly.
“I’d be surprised if you did.
My father, Joseph Danner, was first married to a woman in Boston.
She died, and he was devastated.
He started drifting from town to town, taking Tremaine, who was about eight then, along with him.
Then he met Eliza and married her.
Only Eliza was already pregnant from her first marriage.
She had a daughter about seven months after she married my father.”

“Lexie,” Miracle put in.

Harrison nodded.
“So Tremaine and Lexie aren’t related, except by marriage.
Then my mother and father had three more children – me and my two brothers – so we’re related to both Lexie and Tremaine.”

Miracle absorbed this in silence.
“What happened to Eliza’s first husband?”

“Ramsey Gainsborough.” Harrison spoke the name as if it tasted bad.
“Dead.”

“How?” she asked, sensing there was far more of the story to be told.

“Gainsborough was a powerful man with powerful friends.
He came for his daughter, Lexie, to use as a pawn to torture Eliza, my mother who had struck him down in self-defense years before and left him for dead.
She was afraid no one would believe her, so she ran away and married my father.”

“Joseph…”

Harrison nodded.
“Then Gainsborough showed up in Rock Springs.
He threatened my mother and my family and he lured my mother onto the widow’s walk.
They argued and fought, and Gainsborough fell to his death.
My mother was injured, but she survived.” His lips twisted at Miracle’s look of horror and disbelief, and he added dryly, “Ask anyone in Rock Springs all about it.
It’s one of the town’s two most infamous stories.”

“What’s the other infamous story?”

His expression changed quite abruptly.
He hesitated so long Miracle wasn’t certain he would answer.
But then he muttered, “My brother Jesse,” and bent to his task with a purposefulness that effectively shut Miracle out and stopped further questions.

Miracle’s brows lifted.
And she’d thought
she
had an unusual family history.
Sensing his desire to close the subject, she climbed into the back of the wagon and began sorting through the remaining intact bottles and jars, making a mental inventory of what she would need to replace.