Warrior's Embrace (48 page)

Filled with spirituous liquors, the medicine
man listened, and listening, he dreamed. He dreamed of great waters
filled with terrible evil, and of the anguish of women that rose up
like birds scared from their nests.

In the midst of his dreams another woman
entered the clinic, breathless in her haste,

“Hal has run away . . .” she said, not even
noticing the Great One. “He left this awful note.” With her short,
terrible hair quivering like porcupine quills, the distraught young
woman began to read. “‘Everybody in Witch Dance can go straight to
hell. When I come back you’ll all be sorry.’” Tears streamed down
her face. “What am I going to do? I knew something was wrong ...how
can I ever tell Father?”

“Everything is going to be all right,
Deborah,” Kate said.

“Come. I’ll help you.” Eagle took her arm and
guided her into one of the back rooms, but not before the Great One
had another vision.

Blood. So much blood, running red over the
snow.

“Can I count on your cooperation?” Kate was
asking.

“Practice your medicine with my
blessing.”

He left with the visions still swirling
through his head. There would be no further need for him to fight
Kate Malone. Not even his blessings could save her from the dark
course of fate.

Charleston, South Carolina

Martha had left the invitation open on the
hall table, where she knew Mick was bound to see it. She sat in the
rocker on the sun porch with her hands folded in her lap and tried
not to twitch as he walked in.

“Did you have a good day, dear?”

He loosened his tie and reached for the glass
of lemonade she had waiting for him on the wicker table.

“That’s a foolish question, Martha. It’s
hotter than hell out there. How could anybody have a good time in
hell?”

I could
, she wanted to reply.
If
only you loved me
.

She didn’t say that, of course. What good
would it do? It would only stir up Mick’s temper, and she was about
to stir it up anyway, so why spoil the next few minutes?

“Glen Ellison called you about that new power
plant—”

“Solid rocket booster plant, Martha. If
you’re going to tell something, get it right.” Mick set his glass
down so hard, the ice rattled. “Now I guess I’ll have to spend all
evening jawing with him on the damned telephone.”

Martha’s heart came up in her throat. Kate
used to laugh when she’d say that.

“My heart’s in my throat,” she’d say.

“That’s physically impossible, Mother,” Katie
would reply, laughing.

Oh, dear merciful Father. Her Katie.

Martha swallowed so her heart went back down
to its rightful place. She had to be brave just this once for her
Katie.

“Did you see the invitation on the hall
table?” She sounded like a timid gray mouse. No wonder Mick no
longer loved her.

“What invitation?”

She could tell by the way his face mottled
that he was lying. He’d read Kate’s invitation, just as he read all
her letters when he thought nobody was looking.

Deep down, her Michael Malone was a wonderful
man. Long ago, right after the boys died, and later after Katie
left for medical school, Martha would plan how she would leave him.
She wouldn’t take a thing except the clothes on her back and enough
money to get as far as her folks in Virginia.

She wouldn’t even take the car, but would go
on the bus, being frugal. She even planned what she’d say to him in
her good-bye letter.

Dear Mick, I love you fiercely. Always
have and always will. But I can’t stand to live in this lonely
prison you’ve shut me up in.

She never wrote the letter, of course,
partially because she didn’t want to leave behind as her last
testament a sentence ending with a dangling preposition. But mostly
because she knew that deep, deep down Mick was a wonderful man.

“It’s an invitation to the open house of her
clinic in Witch Dance.” She spoke all in a rush before she could
lose her courage. “I’ve planned how we can go. Matilda can water
the plants when she comes to clean, and Jim can take care of your
insurance clients” —Mick looked like a peach pit with his face all
bunched up and turning red— “that is, if you have any scheduled
...not that I would try to run your business . . .” Her voice
trailed off, and she twisted her hands together.

Fidgeting. Knowing how Mick hated it.

“Hellfire and damnation.” He leapt up so
fast, his chair fell back against the polished Mexican tiles. “As
if I didn’t have enough to do without running off to some
godforsaken land to sip tea with savages.”

He left the room so fast that the soles of
his shoes left scuff marks on the tiles. Martha stared at the black
marks for a while.

Finally she got up to fetch a scrub brush and
some good floor cleaner. Bent on her knees, she felt like a scrub
woman ...or a suppliant at early Mass.

She’d never wanted Mexican tiles in the first
place.

Ada, Oklahoma

The invitation lay open on Winston’s
desk.

Not wanting to think about all the
ramifications of that simple piece of paper, he surveyed his
office. Some governors in the past had opted for fine furnishings
and rich appointments, but Winston had surrounded himself with
simple things—a plain oak desk, neither fancy nor expensive, and
the most basic, functional chairs.

Why should he sit in the lap of luxury while
most of his people contented themselves with the basics? Basics
were good enough for any man.

He picked up the invitation. It was a simple
printed card, not engraved, not ostentatious, nothing that would
call attention to the fact that Kate Malone was Virginia blueblood
on her mother’s side and the daughter of a fighting Irish
senator.

The invitation was visible evidence that she
was a smart woman. But then, Winston already knew that.

How else could she have held his eldest son
enthralled for the better part of the summer?

“The Honorable Governor and Mrs. Winston
Mingo,” the card said.

Dovie wouldn’t go, of course. He’d take the
card home and show it to her, but she would ignore it as she’d
chosen to ignore Eagle’s involvement with the medicine woman all
summer.

Once Winston had tried to talk to her about
it, at the beginning of the summer, when the whole thing happened,
when it was evident that Eagle had more on his mind than sleeping
under the stars.

“Do you remember that summer I worked on a
rig off the shore of Louisiana, Dovie?”

“I remember everything you ever did, Winston
Mingo, including that business with the girl.”

“Charlsie was her name, a lively,
honeyed-talking, confection of a girl. She almost made me forget
who I was. I never knew why except that there was a slow, sweet
wildness in her. Do you suppose that’s what has Eagle enthralled,
that Kate Malone is wild at heart?”

“I suppose that you should feed the dog. And
on your way out, water the petunias by the back door. If we don’t
get some rain soon, they’re all going to die.”

Remembering, Winston drummed his fingers on
the invitation. No, Dovie would not go.

Would he?

He stuffed the invitation in the top drawer
of his desk and walked toward the window. Halfway there, he reeled.
Steadying himself on the edge of the bookshelves, he held on until
his equilibrium returned.

A little dizzy spell. Probably inner-ear
trouble. Dovie kept telling him that he was going to have to see a
doctor.

There was no putting anything past Dovie. She
knew everything ...except what had happened the night before. As he
lay beside her in their cherry wood double bed, he heard the owl
call his name.

o0o

Boston

“If you go back to Witch Dance, you need not
bother coming home. Ever again.”

Melissa Sayers Colbert quivered with rage.
Clayton stood at the window with his back to her, rigid. Between
them, the invitation lay on the table like an accusation.

“I won’t have it,” she continued. “Do you
hear me, Clayton?”

“I hear you, Melissa.” He didn’t even turn
around.

With her fists clenched, she wanted to
scream. And then she realized she was already screaming, yelling
like some common wife off the back streets of Boston. She forced
herself to unclench her fists and take a moderate tone.

“Kate Malone used you to get what she wants,
and now that she has it, do you think she’s going to look twice at
you?” Melissa hated the way he bowed his head, like a broken man.
Where was the man she used to love, the sexy, spirited man who
could do anything? The man she
still
loved?

“Please, Clayton ...look at me.” He turned
slowly, still hunched over in his defeat. “Am I not enough for
you?”

“Melissa ...don’t.”

“You used to say you couldn’t get enough of
me ...of this.” She ripped aside her blouse. Buttons rolled onto
the Oriental rug and the sound of tearing silk rent the silence.
Her fingernails scored her tender skin as she grabbed her bra. It
was nothing more than a delicate bit of lace, and it tore
easily.

“For God’s sake, Melissa . . .” Clayton
jerked up her torn blouse and moved to cover her.

“Not this time, Clayton.” She shoved his
hands aside. “I won’t let Kate Malone come between us this
time.”

Quickly, she knelt in front of him and opened
his zipper. He was flaccid, but that didn’t deter Melissa. She knew
exactly what to do, exactly what he liked.

“Stop, Melissa ...please. You’re only
humiliating us both.”

She raked the tips of her long red
fingernails over his sensitive flesh. Power surged through her as
he began to pulse in her hand.

Clayton tried to regain control, but his body
betrayed him. Defeated, he stood in his richly appointed study in
his fancy house and looked down at the top of his wife’s head. Her
mouth was warm and wet, and she made soft, catlike sounds of
satisfaction.

A half-breed at stud. Bought and paid for
with Melissa’s money. Rage and semen spewed from him.

With the easy grace of a tigress she rose to
face him. Even with her lipstick smeared she was very much in
control.

“Did you think I’d let her win, Clayton?”

She didn’t even pick up her torn clothes when
she left the room. Rigid, Clayton stood in the wreckage, afraid to
move lest he shatter.

There were no sounds in the house except the
ticking of a clock that had belonged to the first Sayers to set
foot in New England, and even that sound was discreet, as befitted
anything connected to the Sayers name.

Without bothering to zip his pants, Clayton
picked up the invitation and went to the Louis XIV desk. Sun poured
through the French doors and warmed his cold skin.

He ran his hands across the invitation. The
words blurred. Witch Dance Clinic. Dr. Kate Malone.

He closed his eyes, envisioning her bright
hair and the intoxicating smell of her skin. Dr. Kate Malone,
his
Kate, with her future still before her.

Still clutching the invitation, he reached
into the top right hand drawer of his desk. His fingers closed
around the cold steel.

With slow deliberation he laid the gun on top
of the desk.

o0o

Witch Dance

“Nobody’s coming.”

“I’m here, Kate.”

She was standing in the doorway of the
clinic, looking at the empty road. Not a speck of dust marred the
horizon. With Deborah’s help she’d mailed a hundred invitations,
and not a soul had come to the open house except Eagle.

She felt his hands on her shoulders. Gently
but firmly he turned her around.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“A flower garden, thanks to you.”

He had brought dozens of flowers, roses of
every color and even white ginger, shipped from Hawaii. It was the
closest thing to jasmine he could find, he’d said, knowing her love
for the waxy, fragrant flower of the Deep South. Her mother had
sent flowers too—purple violets with yellow throats—and had signed
both their names, Mick and Martha. Dr. Colbert sent orchids, and
Deborah had come early, while her father was still asleep, and
brought a bouquet of Indian paintbrush she’d picked on the
hillside. It was in a prominent place in the reception room.

A reception room without a receptionist. A
clinic without patients. If she let herself, Kate could go into a
blue funk.

“What else do you see?”

“Ice cream melting in paper cups I went all
the way to Ada for, and cookies I burned with my own two hands in
the oven from hell.”

“Kate ...Kate ...what am I going to do with
you?” Laughing, he hugged her hard. “You have a building you never
thought would be finished, the most up-to- date equipment money can
buy, a fine medical degree, and more grit than a grizzly bear.
Eventually people will come to you for healing, Kate. Trust
me.”

“Oh, God, Eagle.” She wrapped her arms around
his chest and was suddenly bawling like a newborn baby. “You’re the
best friend I’ve ever had ...the
only
friend I have
besides Deborah.”

He held her close, rocking her in the cradle
of his arms. His beautiful, passionate Kate. The woman his people
shunned.

Didn’t they know? Couldn’t they see? Kate’s
clinic was the kind of progress needed in Witch Dance. Eagle
believed in preserving the culture of his people, believed
passionately, but he also understood that the little village would
eventually die if it refused to move forward at all.

He smoothed her hair from her forehead and
dried her tears with the tips of his fingers. His skin absorbed her
tears, and he felt them in his own heart.

“They will come to accept you in time,
Kate.”

“How can you say that? After all they’ve
done?”