Runaway (47 page)

“We aren’t talking about me at the moment.”

“I’m talking about you. And the fact that you’re leaving again.”

“Damn you, Tara, I have to go.”

“Yes, you have to go! Always you! You can’t fight for them, and you can’t fight against them. You’ll just have to go and convince that murdering bastard Osceola that he must stop his war!”

“Yes, I have to try, Tara. For the Seminoles and the whites—I have to try!”

“And you think that you will have the power to tell Osceola he must cease his violence and make an entire people surrender and go west to live on barren lands?”

“Tara …” he warned, his voice becoming a growl, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

“Well, McKenzie, if you can’t stop Osceola, then you have to quit befriending him!” she said heatedly. She spun around at last. “You have to stop trying to negotiate with him! Let others go. You can’t take up arms against your brother, but Osceola has no problem making war on the whites. The insane thing is to send you
in. Someone else should go—let someone get close enough to kill him.”

“If someone were to kill Osceola like that,” Jarrett spat out angrily, “we’d have a martyr on our hands!”

“You can stay out of it! You can refuse to see him, to talk to him! Jarrett, all those plantations burned, so many people killed!”

“Indian villages have been razed as well.”

“You’re white! You’re white!” She wasn’t even sure why she was feeling so hysterical. Perhaps it was Sergeant Culpeper’s death. Perhaps it was all the fear and anger bottled up in her heart.

“I will not go to war against my brother!” he thundered out.

“But you are very quick to doubt your brother-in-law! And me!”

“I have never really doubted Robert.”

“Then it was only me you were doubting on the porch when your manners were so lacking!”

“My manners?” His brow suddenly arched up very high. “You’re forgetting where I found you.”

“I don’t forget. You don’t let me.”

“And I can’t change who and what I am!” he roared. “And if I do appear disturbed, it may only be because you are running to him at every available opportunity!”

“He’s far more pleasant to be around!”

Jarrett was dead still for a moment. She could see the pulse ticking furiously at his throat.

“Well, he just may be accompanying me out tomorrow,” he said very softly. “So alas! You will be minus his company as well.”

“You’re still going? No matter what I say?”

“You’re my wife. You will please see my point of view in this and honor it!”

She inhaled, drawing herself up stiffly. “I’m not allowed a point of view?”

“Damn it, Tara, you’ve seen—”

“Then perhaps you’ve no longer got a wife!”

What was the matter with her? She was just so sick at heart, and most of all she didn’t want him leaving again. He’d wanted to stay at peace with his family. But the war was escalating; it was horrible. He wasn’t going to be allowed to remain at peace, and he didn’t see it. The military had come to him; he would go. If Osceola had sent for him, he would have gone. And when he left, her heart would go with him, and she would pray that one of his own people, angered by his stand, didn’t kill him, and pray that some renegade Indian, hating all whites, didn’t decide to chop him up into little pieces.

“I don’t have a wife?” he demanded. The words were deep, husky, and each shook with anger and emotion. From head to toe he seemed composed of sinew, muscle—and tension. Silence followed his words. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.

“Maybe not!” she cried, wishing with all her heart that she hadn’t started this argument, yet very much aware now that she had taken it too far and frightened, suddenly, by the intensity of his anger.
Courage!
she warned herself. She couldn’t back down, not now, not when she had come so far. “Maybe not!” she repeated, and she squared her shoulders, striding back across the room, determined to walk by him and escape downstairs until he had cooled off.

She brushed past, yet got no farther. His hands clamped down on her arm, pulling her back.

“No wife, eh?”

She’d never seen his eyes so black, yet so touched by glittering fire. She could feel the biting pressure of his
hands upon her, the searing anger that seemed to create an inferno within him, between them.

“You don’t care to treat me as one!” she cried, head thrown back, eyes blazing as well. Dear God, she was losing her mind, pressing him so! “A real
wife
is allowed an opinion. If Lisa were here to tell you not to go—”

“Lisa would never dictate to me!” he snapped in interruption. “Lisa knew the situation, she was familiar with it, we shared—” He broke off suddenly, throwing a hand into the air. “Lisa knew the situation!” he repeated angrily.

“And she wasn’t a coward, and she understood!” Tara said, enunciating the words as crisply and evenly as she could manage.

“And she’s dead!”

“But you would have treated her as a
wife
. You would have listened—”

He never heard the last because he was already interrupting her. “You are sadly mistaken! My greatest pleasure in life is treating you as my wife!”

“Memories of a ghost are your greatest pleasure!”

She shouldn’t have spoken. His eyes narrowed. His teeth clenched. “You needn’t fear. There are no ghosts here tonight.”

“She is always in your thoughts.”

“She is always in yours! Leave it be, Tara! I am telling you, leave it be!”

“I—”

“Stop!”

She gasped, the breath knocked from her, for she was suddenly up in his arms and all but flying through the room, for his strides were fast and furious as he carried her to their bed, all but throwing her upon it.

“You cannot plan to leave me and have me in the one breath! You—”

“I could not bear to leave you without having you!”

“Damn you, Jarrett! If you think you’re going to ride out, don’t you dare think that you’re going to—”

He was down beside her, his fingers entwined with hers, his lips a fire upon her own, the force of his body upon hers overwhelming. Oh! She longed to fight him into eternity, defy him, beat him with a response that was pure ice.

But God help her, it seemed that the very flames of his being took flight within her. Sweet simmering honey poured through her veins. She throbbed; she ached. She longed for the weight of him, the feel of him, the heat of him, and she even understood completely his words to her, for she really couldn’t bear his going away if he didn’t touch her, if she didn’t try to hold on to him one last time, cherish and remember the scent of him, the feel of his flesh, the ripple of muscle and sinew, the thunderous rise and fall of his breath, the feel of his kiss.

His lips raised a breath from her. She twisted away. “I hate you!” she sobbed out. “I hate you for leaving, I hate you for it!”

“Damn you!” he whispered hoarsely. “Damn you!” But he swept her into his arms again. His lips found hers. Blue flames seemed to burn around her. She tried to slam her fists against him again.

But then her arms wound around him. Her hunger and passion soared to frightening, dizzying heights, a tempest that raged both wild and sweet.

She had barely exploded with the cataclysm of it when it began again. His hands, his kiss, upon the length of her. Touching her, lightly, slowly. Stroking. Brushing, teasing. Her throat, her belly. Thighs, the small of her back. Her breasts, her lips, the very heart of her desire. And again she burned, more deeply, more hungrily, and
yet, when the sweet explosion seized her, she drifted down in misery.

None of it meant anything. He was leaving. And he was furious with her.

“Tara!” he demanded, his hand upon her shoulder as she lay with her back to him.

“I hate you!” she whispered again.

He was silent. “Indeed, Tara! Perhaps you are not the wife I needed here!” he murmured after a moment. His tone was flat. Laced with disappointment.

She would have turned then—should have turned to him. But his warmth was suddenly gone, for he had turned away from her.

This wasn’t what she had wanted, to part in bitterness. She’d wanted him to understand that she was afraid. Not for herself. For him. And she didn’t want to be away from him. The words never came out right. She was afraid to speak the truth.

She suddenly thought of what he had said to her.
She
was the one who always brought up Lisa. Perhaps she was. Well, he had loved her. But maybe he was the one living in the present while she was the one dwelling with fears of the past.

She tried to moisten her lips. Tried to speak. She couldn’t find the words she wanted to say. She lay there, awake, miserable.

Finally, she turned to him. His back was to her. “Jarrett?” she whispered softly. She tried to practice the words she would say to him in her mind.
I simply don’t want you to leave. I am afraid that you will not be able to be neutral forever, that white soldiers will turn against you, that a renegade Indian will pierce your heart with shot or arrow. I’m afraid that you won’t come back, and now
I’m
afraid that you won’t even want to come back
.

“Jarrett?” she whispered again softly. He didn’t respond.

She bit her lip. She lay again in misery. He had turned his back on her—washed his hands of her. He had been disappointed in her once, and he was doubly so now. She had said that she hated him. She wanted to take the words back.

She wanted to say …

“Jarrett! I love you!” she whispered aloud.

But she was still speaking to his bronzed back. She bit into her lower lip, catching her breath, listening for his. It came, deeply, evenly.

He hadn’t heard her. She had found the right words to say, but had said them too late.

Or perhaps he had heard her. Perhaps he was feigning sleep now because he had heard her and just didn’t care.

She caught a sob in her throat and turned her back to him again. A weight of agony lay with her in the night.

Yet finally she slept. For when she opened her eyes again, the room was filled with bright yellow daylight. Candles and fire had burned out. The sun lit upon tiny dust motes in the air, making them dazzle.

Her bed was cold.

She turned swiftly. It was empty as well.

Once again Jarrett was gone.

And she realized that she, like the bed, was empty.

And cold.

Dear God. So very, very cold.

T
ara did little but move about Cimarron in a mechanical way the first few days after Jarrett left, but on the fourth morning, as she sat at the dressing table brushing her hair, she suddenly remembered what Robert had come to tell them.

James, Naomi, Mary, the children, and all those within their village would be leaving very soon, and she didn’t know how far away they would go, or how often she would be able to see them once they had gone. Without Jarrett at Cimarron she not only felt laden down by the wretched way that they had parted, but she was lonely and anxious as well, and she longed to be with people.

Well aware now that the trails she might travel could grow dangerous, Tara went to Rutger first, hoping that now an excursion to the village would not be something Jarrett’s men would deny her. She tried to tell him casually that she wanted to spend some time with her sister-in-law, yet she could barely breathe with nervousness while awaiting his answer.

She might have asked him to escort her on nothing more difficult than a stroll in the garden, he was so quick to try to help her.

“I don’t know exactly where the camp is, Mrs. McKenzie,
but I’ll send young Peter ahead, and he’ll find one of the village sentries. Leo and I will take you in the hammock, and an escort will find us there. But if you don’t mind, ma’am, I’d ask you for a day or two here for me to catch up.”

She agreed that would be fine.

Rutger and Leo acted as her escort two days later. They left Cimarron early in the morning and arrived near the village just in the afternoon. Long before they could actually see the encampment, painted warriors stepped from the cypress trees, crying out a greeting. They were guarding the camp, Tara realized, and she was pained to see the danger they considered themselves to be in.

“White soldiers ride the land now,” one of the men, the warrior Oklawaha, or Twisted River, told her. His English was stilted; he was not comfortable with it, but he made himself clear. “Not so close as yet … but …?” He lifted his arms in a shrug. “I will see that the White Tiger’s woman reaches her family,” he assured Rutger solemnly.

“Thank you,” Tara said.

“I’ll come back in two days’ time,” Rutger told her. She thanked him as well and smiled and waved to Leo, then watched with her Indian guide as the men turned to head back to Cimarron.

“Come, I’ll take you in,” Oklawaha told her. Running ahead of Tara he let out a cry that warned the others in the camp that he was coming with a rider, but a friend, not a soldier.

Tara was instantly dismayed to see the camp—it was so painfully evident that its inhabitants were planning on leaving. All manner of household goods were packed up, pots and pans, guns, powder bags, kegs. A huge travois lay in front of the large cabin where Naomi and
James lived with their daughters, and it was piled high with their belongings and covered with skins.

She leapt down from her horse as they entered the clearing. Naomi, having heard the warrior’s cry, came out of the cabin. She smiled broadly and ran to hug Tara. Tara hugged her fervently in return. “I’d hoped you’d come! I thought you might after Jarrett came through.”

“Jarrett came here?”

Naomi nodded. “James went with him to find Osceola.”

“Oh!”

“I knew then that you’d be at Cimarron alone, and I didn’t want to press you, but I was so anxious for you to come! I’ve never had a sister, and now that I’ve found a sister-in-law again, I’m to lose her almost instantly!”

Tara shook her head. “You won’t lose me.”

Naomi smiled sadly. “Well, it will be difficult. We have to go south and east—into swampland. Where we can live, but where the soldiers will have difficulty following.”