Runaway (40 page)

“She does,” Jarrett assured him with a scowl.

James winked at Tara. It was hard to associate him with the “savage” who had scared her half out of her wits the day before, but she was well aware that both brothers thought that she had needed to learn a lesson about wandering out into the wilderness.

“I hope you’ll forgive me my part in this charade, yet you must realize, some of it was very real. Osceola wanted to take you.”

“Osceola—take me where?” she demanded.

James shrugged. “To his camp. Out of harm’s way. There’s a war on, Tara. You shouldn’t have been where
you were. The situation is growing ever more precarious, and there may be renegades who, when they see a golden white woman where she should not be, will decide that she is fair game after all.”

“You might have told me who you were.”

He looked uncomfortable for a moment, then his eyes touched on his brother’s.

“I had to negotiate with Osceola, and he is, perhaps, our greatest chief. Then …”

“Then there was the matter of your brother!” she said.

“Indeed, there was that matter!” Jarrett said firmly, and she felt the force of his arm where it lay around her waist. “You weren’t harmed; you needed to learn a little bit about the danger to be found when you wander where you aren’t supposed to be.”

He was so casual!

“Perhaps—” she began.

“Perhaps we should discuss this later!” Jarrett said firmly.

She would have argued. But James spoke again quickly. “Come to my home; Mary is eager to meet Tara,” he said. “You’ll like Mary,” James promised her. “Even if she is—an Indian.”

Tara almost leapt up, then remembered that she was barely clad.

“I’m not angry with you for being an Indian!” she cried to James, and as she did, a curious feeling poured through her. Yes, she had been afraid because they were Seminoles. She had been certain that they were monsters because they were Indians.

She’d had some right, of course. As James had said, they were at war. But it was strange to realize that she liked him. She liked his quick smile, the blue sizzle in his eyes. Even the way he kept tremendous dignity and deferred to his brother.

“I’m not pleased with the way you deceived me,” she added as the men waited, “and I’d be displeased if you were white, red, black—or zebra striped!”

James nodded his head slightly. “Then I add another apology to my earlier words!” he said softly.

When he was gone, Tara, gripping a bear fur to her breasts, held her head very high, and looked at Jarrett with an arched brow. “Mary?”

“My stepmother.”

“Oh,” she said simply.

“However angry you are with me,” he told her, “you had best be courteous to Mary.”

She gritted her teeth hard, trying to ease away from the brace of his arm at her back. “She raised you?” Tara inquired.

“For many years.”

“Then, McKenzie, if I have any argument with the woman at all, it is with the fact that your manners are gravely lacking!”

His fìnger fell upon her nose. He was so close again with his musky, masculine scent and intimate nudity. “I’m warning you, my love.”

“Warning me! Did you ever think about
asking
me?”

“I asked you not to leave Cimarron.”

She lowered her eyes from his. “If you hadn’t been so secretive …”

“Excuse me. I’m the one who is secretive?”

She had no reply for that.

He leapt up, and in the daylight Tara was startled at how shy she could suddenly feel around his nakedness when they had been so intimate the night before. It didn’t seem to bother Jarrett in the least. He stopped by last night’s bath to scoop up water with which to douse his face, then swore out something unintelligible. “Cold!” he told her, and she nodded. The fire had
burned out completely, and the winter’s morning did seem chilly.

“I wouldn’t mind a hot bath now,” she murmured a little mournfully, staring at the tub.

“Later, or maybe I’ll have something actually better a bit later, depending on the sun,” he told her. He found his breeches and pulled them on. She stood, carrying her bear fur with her, but she had to drop it to start collecting her clothing, and when she tried to don her corset by herself, she found him at her back, well versed at pulling in the ties. “You will like Mary,” he told her, and she suddenly realized that it was important to him that she did, and that as strange as this world was to her, it was one he knew very well.

And loved.

Her back was still to him when he picked up her gown and brought its volume of material over her head and shoulders.

Clearly, he had forgotten the method by which it had been removed, for it fell around her, ripped from bodice to hem. She spun around, staring at him. “Shall I really meet Mary dressed like this?” she inquired sweetly.

He arched a brow at her, arms crossed over his chest, a slight smile playing at the corner of his lips. “Perhaps not.” He turned from her, surveying the small cabin and starting toward one of the rolled bundles toward the rear wall. He’d be offering her Lisa’s clothing again, she thought. She bit her lip and said quickly, “I can fix this easily if you’ve got a needle and thread.”

He stopped, studying the extent of the tear. “You can fix it—easily?”

“Please, if you don’t mind.”

With a shrug he turned elsewhere, finding needle and thread in a leather household kit. Tara didn’t glance at him as she shimmied from the dress and sat down to
mend it, feeling his eyes upon her as her fingers deftly moved.

“You are adept.”

“Most women are.”

“Not quite so adept as you,” he said lightly. “It makes me wonder. But then again, everything about you makes me wonder.”

Tara broke the thread and knotted it, looking at him at last. “Please remember, we are sitting in the woods in an Indian cabin belonging to your family.”

He came to her, taking the mended dress from her hands, kissing her lightly on the tip of the nose, and spinning her around to set the dress in place once again. “My cabin, my brother’s village,” he said lightly. “Is it really so wretched a place, then?”

She spun around, staring into his eyes. She hesitated a minute, then softly admitted, “No.”

He smiled. She was glad for a moment because she was certain she saw admiration in his eyes, rather than the disappointment she sometimes thought she found there.

But then she caught her breath again, for his smile faded and he demanded, “If you weren’t running away, just where were you going, Tara?”

“I was trying to find out about—Lisa,” she admitted.

His face seemed to darken instantly.

“And you were going to talk to the trees in the forest?” he asked sarcastically.

A flush rose to her cheeks. “No, I—”

“You were trying to find Robert’s.”

“Yes.”

“You little fool! You did deserve exactly what you got!”

“Really!” she charged back. “Then you cannot begin to imagine just exactly what it is you deserve!”

He was about to answer her when there was a knocking at the cabin door once again. Jarrett kept his eyes on Tara and called out in the Indian language. He must have bade the caller to enter for the door swung open and light entered the cabin in a golden shaft. It was the Indian girl, and she greeted them both in English. “Good morning. Mary has sent me, in case you have forgotten the way.” She looked at Tara. “She apologizes for being so eager, but she is anxious to meet you.”

Tara smiled, staring straight at Jarrett. “Oh, dear! And just think! I could have met her anytime yesterday!”

“Just think!” Jarrett agreed, and spun her around by the shoulders. “Tara, my sister-in-law, Naomi.”

“None of yesterday was my idea!” Naomi assured her.

“But Naomi is a gentle and loving wife and listens to her husband,” Jarrett said smoothly. “Shall we?”

It wasn’t a question; he was already propelling Tara forward. Without another word Naomi turned and started out herself, leading the way.

The encampment was already bustling with activity. There were fields surrounding the enclosure of neat cabins, and it seemed that the men had already been out hunting, for there were numerous shafts about with rabbits tied to them, and near the center of the cabins by the large communal fire was a large pole suspended over support posts that held a fair-sized buck.

People greeted Jarrett, and he responded to them. This morning they all smiled at Tara, and though it seemed the entire tribe were sharing a joke at her expense, they seemed to welcome her. Were she not inclined to forgive them simply because she was so intrigued by them, she would have done so in any case out of sheer common sense—white men were at war with the Indians.

They returned to the large cabin, James McKenzie’s
cabin. When Tara was prodded forward by her husband, she instantly became aware of the very handsome woman who stood in the center of the cabin awaiting her. She was tall and slim, dressed in a patterned skirt, red blouse, and a fall of exquisite silver jewelry. Her hair was peat black, her features barely showed a sign of age, and Tara thought that she couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen years older than James himself.

She had dark copper skin, almond dark eyes, high cheekbones, and a strikingly handsome and yet gentle face. She arched a brow at Jarrett, greeted him in a low voice, and reached out her hands to Tara.

She would have gone forward even if she hadn’t felt Jarrett’s thrust upon her back.

“Welcome, daughter,” she said. Then she lapsed back into her own language, looking over Tara’s head and apparently admonishing Jarrett in some way. He shrugged and responded politely, but firmly. He turned and left and Naomi came forward, tapping Tara’s shoulder. “Please, sit and have bread with us here.”

Mary said something and Naomi flashed Tara a quick smile. “She says that you’re very beautiful, so bright you dazzle and nearly blind.”

“Tell her thank you, please.”

“She understands you,” Naomi said. “She learned English for her husband’s sake, yet has not spoken it much since his death.”

Tara looked at Mary. “Thank you,” she said, and Mary smiled and spoke softly as she laid out pieces of bread and meat and offered up a dish to Tara. Naomi told her that they were eating
koonti
bread, seasoned with pumpkin, and that the meat was dried venison. They kept cattle as well, but had been selling many off lately. “They say that we will be running again soon,” Naomi said.

“Running? But this is your land,” Tara said.

Naomi smiled and shrugged. “By the Treaty of Moultrie Creek it became our land. There are years left to that treaty, but those years have suddenly faded, so it seems.”

“Perhaps this war will end.”

“No. It will not end. You see, warriors like Osceola will not surrender. We will not move west.”

Mary said something, urging Tara to eat at the same time. Naomi translated. “She says that young whites sometimes cannot understand. Since the whites have come, we have been forced again and again from our homes. We have been driven into marsh and swampland, and perhaps they will drive us farther. But she promises that she will not go west. She is home.”

Tara frowned. “I don’t understand. If James is Jarrett’s brother, then—”

“Oh, well, there is that!” Naomi said with a smile. “And it’s true, Jarrett will not make war on his own people, but neither will he forget his brother. Or Mary, me, or the children. We have land that Jarrett has given to us, insisting it is part of our inheritance as James is a son of Sean McKenzie. But it is not an easy road to walk between two warring people. James has cast his fate with his red family, and if the fight forces us to run, then he will run with us, protect us, and in the end fight the whites when he no longer has a choice.”

“Perhaps it will not come to that!” Tara whispered miserably.

Mary said something, and Naomi smiled and once again translated.

“She says that you seem to have a great heart, and she is happy you have married Jarrett.”

“Tell her—” Tara began, then she looked at Mary and smiled. “Thank you, Mary.”

Mary spoke again.

“She prays you will give him many sons,” Naomi said.

“Oh,” Tara murmured. She felt a hammering in her heart. She looked at Mary. “What—happened to my husband’s first wife—to Lisa?”

There was silence for a moment. Mary looked to Naomi, but Tara was certain that Mary had understood her.

Mary nodded, and Naomi turned to Tara again. “She died here, in our camp.”

Tara almost cried out as she gasped for breath. Her heart hammered. “But what—”

“Why do the whites say that we killed her,” Naomi asked, and she sounded bitter, “seeing that she died among us?”

Tara’s mouth was dry.

“Yes. Please, why?”

“She died in childbirth,” Naomi said very softly. “Jarrett was gone with James. They were still trying to work things out then without bloodshed. There was a large meeting outside Fort King. Lisa wasn’t due for nearly two months, but she woke up one morning and decided that she wanted to wait for Jarrett here, with Mary and me. We hadn’t known that she was coming. Jeeves came at night, worried because she had not sent word back to him.”

“My God. What—”

“We found her in the forest. She had been thrown from her horse. My mother-in-law is a healer; she knows every root and herb to be found here. She did everything that she could, but Lisa and the baby died. The baby never drew breath. Lisa bled to death.”

“Oh, God!” Tara whispered. Her eyes were burning. Such a terrible accident. She could imagine poor Lisa
here, perhaps knowing that her child had perished, that her own life was fleeing from her body.

“She was—broken inside,” Naomi said very softly. “No white doctor could have saved her, but she did die here, and you can imagine how those who hate us to begin with could twist such a story.”

Tara sat in silence, feeling numb and cold. She wondered what it had been like for Jarrett to come back, to find his precious Lisa dead.

And his unborn child.

Mary said something. She spoke long and passionately. Tara couldn’t understand her words, but they were earnest and pleading in their tone.

Tara looked at Naomi.