Finally she looked down at her tummy. If she bathed in the river with the rest of the women, surely they would be able to tell that she was pregnant.
She thought of not going to the river, of returning to High Hawk’s tepee instead, but knowing how vile she smelled, she knew she had no choice but to bathe.
“Come with me,” Blanket Woman said as she returned to Joylynn, grabbing her arm. “You will bathe. You will not stink up my son’s lodge.”
Joylynn sighed and walked with her until they reached an isolated place in the river where the women were undressed and already in the water.
She stepped back from Blanket Woman, who was removing her own clothes, but Joylynn still made no move to unfasten her dress.
“You . . . will . . . bathe!” Blanket Woman snapped as she glared at Joylynn. The older woman stood there before her unashamed, totally nude. She grabbed the hem of Joylynn’s dress and started to raise it up over her head, but Joylynn yanked it away from her.
“I refuse to go nude in the water with you women,” Joylynn said, then ran into the water fully clothed.
She saw the incredulous looks the women gave her, but she ignored them and splashed herself with the wonderfully refreshing cool water. She dipped her hair down into it and rubbed her fingers through the wet strands.
She was the last one out of the water, for she was truly enjoying the coolness and refreshing wonder of it.
When she finally left the river, she went back to High Hawk’s tepee, glad that he hadn’t returned yet.
She hurried out of her wet clothes and dug inside her travel bag, taking from it a clean dress. She removed her hairbrush from her bag and brushed her hair until it lay neatly over her shoulders, then shoved the brush back inside the bag.
Feeling so tired and sleepy, she spread out a roll of blankets at the back of the tepee, away from the fire, and lay down. Gratefully she breathed in the fresh air coming from where the lower part of the buckskin hide had been rolled up.
Then she noticed another change. While she had been gone, High Hawk had removed all of his weapons from the lodge. He had probably taken them to his parents’ tepee for safekeeping. She supposed he had thought better of leaving them so handy for Joylynn’s use.
She had yet to see her own rifle since she’d arrived at High Hawk’s tepee. Surely he had put it, with the rest of his firearms, out of her reach.
Too tired to think any more about these things, she slept for a while, only to be awakened again by Blanket Woman, who’d brought a maize cake and shudock berries for her to eat.
After her meal, Joylynn stretched out again on the blankets and found comfort and solace once more in sleep.
She wasn’t aware of High Hawk coming into the tepee and resting on his haunches beside where she lay. She didn’t know that he reached a hand to her hair and ran his fingers through it.
“I have never seen anyone so beautiful,” he whispered to himself. He smiled. “Or so feisty.”
He liked both things about this woman. For now, she was his captive. But soon he hoped to change her status among his people!
CHAPTER EIGHT
Light spiraling down through the smoke hole above her awakened Joylynn. She realized that she had slept the entire night, and this time without nightmares.
She would have thought that her nightmares would have doubled as her mind replayed not only images of the highwayman and the rape, but also her abduction by the Pawnee. But in any case, she was glad that she had had a good night’s sleep.
She turned slightly to the right, finding a blanket hanging on a rope strung from one side of the tepee to the other. High Hawk must have placed it there last night while Joylynn slept.
She was surprised that he had recognized her need for privacy. She was touched by his thoughtfulness.
Her pulse raced and she tried not to make a sound as she slowly lifted the blanket so she could look beneath it.
Her eyes went instantly to High Hawk, who sat before a newly built fire, his back to her.
He had no idea that she was awake as she slyly watched him while he prepared his hair for the day ahead of him. He was already dressed in a shirt and leggings of fringed buckskin that set off his splendid physique to advantage.
To Joylynn’s eyes, he was uniquely handsome, and she had to fight the feelings that were growing within her.
She felt something for him that she had thought she would never feel for a man, especially since the horrible rape.
But she had never met anyone like him before . . . noble, gentle, and thus far, a gentleman as far as she was concerned. The blanket he had hung between their sleeping quarters proved just how gentlemanly he was toward her, making her almost forget that she was his captive.