A Wild Yearning (13 page)

"Oh... An' did ye scalp a Yengi woman then?" she persisted.

He gave her a see-what-I-mean look and for a long moment he didn't answer. He watched her from beneath carefully lowered lids. He saw no disgust or horror or even titillation on her face, but rather confusion, as if she had already accepted what he had confessed and was merely trying now to reconcile this murderous savage to the gentleman physician she had thought him to be. He was suddenly possessed with an overwhelming desire to have her like him—
both
parts of him, Abenaki and Yengi.

Ty scowled, looking away. Why the hell should he care what this little tavern wench thought of him? Had she cared what her customers at the Frisky Lyon thought of her when she'd let them sample her charms for two shillings a time?

But the truth was, he did care... He reached down and lightly stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. "Delia... I've never killed a woman."

"But ye've killed men. Ye've lifted their scalps."

"Yes. Not Yengi though, but only because by the time I was old enough to be a
sannup,
an Abenaki warrior, and go on a raiding party, my tribe wasn't doing much raiding of the English settlements. Instead, we had a big war going on with the Erie tribes, mainly the Mohawks. It was a war, Delia, same as any other war, and in war men kill their enemy—" He realized he was justifying his Abenaki self and so he cut off the words. He had promised himself long ago that he would never again feel shame for those ten years spent as an Abenaki. "It wasn't long after that I came to live with my grandfather."

"But what was it like—"

"Sssh..." He pressed his finger against her lips. "No more talk, brat. Go to bed now. You need your sleep." Her lips felt warm and moist and so incredibly soft beneath his finger, silken as a dewy rosebud. Her mouth parted open, inviting his kiss. But the warm pressure against the front of his breeches warned him he would never be able to stop with just a kiss.

His instincts told him he could take her by the hand, lead her into the forest, and she would go with him willingly. But after what had happened the last time he'd tried making love to her, he no longer trusted his instincts. The last thing he wanted was to get into another wrestling match while the Hookers witnessed the whole thing from the other side of the fire.

Ty leaned back on the hind legs of the chair and drew deeply on his short pipe. "You got yourselves a nice spread here," he said around the bit in his mouth. It was two days later and they were another fifty miles closer to Merrymeeting.

"You know, I think I can almost smell salt water," Caleb said from the chair beside him.

Their host, a farmer by the name of Silas Potter, beamed and nodded. "Ocean's just right beyond that rise over yonder." The rise was covered by a stand of firs that blocked out the last rays of the sun and cut off all view of the nearby Atlantic. But if he strained his ears, Ty thought he could just pick out the low boom of the surf.

The farmer sat beside Ty on the front stoop of his hewn-log cabin. He had just started clearing the land and the spring corn had been planted in a field of girdled trees. Already the branches of the trees were dying, letting in the sunlight. That fall, after the corn was harvested, he would burn down the dead trees and haul out the stumps.

The cabin at their backs only had one room, but the farmer had built himself a fine barn with the help of some neighbors and he had offered to let Tyler Savitch and his party bed down there for the night.

"What about you?" he said now to Ty, raising his voice a bit over the sudden chir of the crickets. "You got some land up there on the... what was the place? The Merrymeeting Bay?"

"Some." Ty gestured with his pipe at Caleb, who sat with his chin on his chest looking sleepy-eyed. "The reverend here is going to be our parson. We're going to be an honest-to-God township now, thanks to him."

Caleb grinned. "I thought we still lacked a schoolmaster."

"Oh, we'll get around that some way."

From behind the men came the sound of feminine chatter and the clatter of crockery. A rush lamp spilling from the open door cast a wavering light onto the stoop. Silas and his wife,

Betsy, had just fed them well on a hearty meal of hard cider, sausage, and cornbread, and now the women were clearing up the dishes while the men were outside for an after-supper pipe.

Silas had taken down a pair of ladder-back chairs—they were kept hanging from pegs on the wall when they weren't being used—and set them out on the stoop. Then he poured off three tankards of spruce beer from the brew-kettle in the corner. He had offered the chairs to Ty and Caleb and settled himself on the overturned barrel. The farmer appeared glad for their company; they didn't get many travelers along the post road this far east.

Delia poked her head out the door. "Mrs. Potter wants to know if you fellas want some more pone with jam," she said to them all, although her eyes lingered on Ty.

And it was Ty who grinned at her and said, "Not me. I'm full as a stuffed goose."

Delia gazed at him for a moment longer, a slight smile on her face, her hands clutching nervously at her petticoat. Then she realized both Caleb and the fanner were staring at her, so she went back inside.

Silas Potter nodded to the now empty doorway. "That li'l gal of yours, mister, she reminds me sorely of our daughter Jenny. They's both about the same size—long and slim as trout. She died last winter, our Jenny. She was sixteen."

"I think Delia's a bit older," Ty said, frowning.

The farmer sighed. "It was a bad winter."

Caleb cleared his throat. "Our Lord's ways are often hard to—" he began, but Ty cut him off.

"Do you still have any of your daughter's clothes?"

The farmer nodded. "My Betsy couldn't bear to throw them out."

"I'd like to buy a few from you if I might."

Caleb's head jerked up in surprise, but Ty carefully avoided meeting the young reverend's eyes.

The farmer stroked his chin and shook his head reluctantly, but his eyes had grown shrewd. "Well, I don't know... What can you pay with?"

"Hard money," Ty said and knew he had himself a sale. He might not have been able to barter with anything less than his horse, and he probably couldn't have given away the Massachusetts shillings he had in his purse. But good hard English silver bought just about anything in the wilderness.

Early the next morning, Delia was kneeling stark naked in the middle of the horse stall where she had spent the night, trying to wash herself from a big bucket of well water, when the stall door burst open and Ty stepped through.

He froze in mid-stride and his eyebrows soared upward. His shoulders jerked slightly as if he would turn away, but in the end he was as incapable of moving as she was.

Delia had bolted upright. She stared at him, while his eyes went from her face to her breasts to the triangle of black hair between her thighs and back to her breasts again. His eyes darkened from dusky blue to stormy gray. She saw hunger in his face, hot and raw, and it brought her heart slamming up into her throat.

He took a step forward and that snapped her back to her senses.

She flung her arms across her breasts. "What the hell d' ye think ye're doing?" Her eyes searched the stall frantically for her clothes, but she'd tossed them into a corner out of reach. She glowered at him. "How dare ye come saunterin' in here, bold as brass, and then proceed to... to..."

Ty flashed an unrepentant grin. "Morning, Delia," he said, although his voice was more of a hoarse growl. He had one hand behind his back and now he brought it around in front of him. From his fingers dangled a bundle of clothing tied up with twine. "I bought you a present."

Delia didn't look at his present. In fact she barely heard what he said. All she could think of was that she was kneeling naked at Ty Savitch's feet and she didn't want him to leave. She wanted to stand up and press her naked body flush against the hard length of him and let him do to her what his eyes were promising.

"I see you're having a bath," he said, laughter now in his voice. "We must have entered another new month."

"Get out," she said through clenched teeth.

He tossed the bundle of clothing down beside her. "Aren't you going to thank me for the present? Why not put them on for me now. Let me see how they fit."

"Get out."

"You know, brat, for such a scrawny little thing, you sure do have an almighty fine pair of—"

"Get out!" Snatching up the bundle of clothes, she reared up, swinging for his head.

Laughing, Ty threw his hands in front of his face and ducked quickly out the stall. Delia stood still, her flesh tingling where his eyes had caressed her. She felt disappointed, relieved, and frightened—all at the same time.

If he had touched her just then she would have died.

Never in her life had she more wanted a man to touch her.

Slowly she looked down at the bundle in her hand. She untied the string that held the clothes together. She found a heavy linsey-woolsey petticoat and a blue-striped calico short gown. There was a calico bonnet with a wide brim to match the short gown, along with a pair of brown worsted stockings and a shift made of soft, light linen. And lastly—and the sight of them brought tears to Delia's eyes—a pair of calfskin shoes with pewter buckles and fancy red heels.

She ran her fingers over the smooth, supple leather, sighing with awe. Never had she owned anything so fine. They were a real lady's shoes, she was sure of it, for they were not laced but fashionably buckled, and the red leather heels were over an inch high. With careful reverence, she slipped one on over her bare foot to see if it would fit, terrified it wouldn't. It was only a little big.

Hurriedly, she finished bathing. She had borrowed a small dab of Elizabeth Hooker's soft soap last night and she used it to scrub her skin until it tingled. The soap, scented with sassafras, left her smelling sweetly of laurel. She drew more water to wash her hair, rinsing it until it squeaked. She wanted to be really clean when she put on her new clothes.

They fit almost perfectly, as if they'd been made for her, except for the bodice that clung a bit too snugly to her full breasts. She ran her hands over the front of the short gown, down over the petticoat. Lastly, she put on the new shoes. She tried them out, gliding back and forth across the stall, feeling tall and graceful, like a princess.

Suddenly she laughed aloud and twirled around, hugging herself. She felt so pretty. She wished she had a looking glass so she could see how smart she looked.

She stopped dancing and squeezed her eyes shut, thinking she might just cry for pure happiness. No one had ever bought her clothes before. And the shoes! It had to mean Ty felt more for her than mere lust, in spite of what he had said. A man didn't up and give a girl such a personal thing as a pair of shoes if he was only lusting after her.

Buying a girl things—surely a man didn't do that unless he cared for her.

A light drizzle fell the next afternoon as Ty leaned against a paddock fence and cast a dubious eye at the small sturdy bay mare grazing on a scattering of hay. A fly bit her on the rump and she kicked up her heels.

"I don't know," he said. "She looks a bit too frisky to me. I was hoping for something with a sweet disposition." To balance out the disposition of the wench who'll be riding her, Ty thought with a smile.

The man who owned the horse was desperate for a sale. "Sweet as maple sap in March," he said.

Ty grunted. "I'll need some tack."

"She comes outfitted with a saddle and bridle. I'll give you the whole kit and caboodle for two pounds."

Ty pushed himself off the fence. "I'll think about it." He turned and headed off toward the docks.

"One pound ten!" the man called after him, but Ty kept going. The mare would still be there later.

The town of Portsmouth was a bustling hive of water-powered sawmills and shipyards sprawling on the mouth of the Piscataqua River. It was a prosperous town, as evidenced by the activity on its crowded docks. Just to get to the ferry landing, Ty had to walk around piles of weathered hoops and oak staves, which would be shipped and then assembled somewhere into barrels and hogsheads. There were stacks of other lumber as well: clapboard for houses, shingles for roofs, and the tall white pine masts meant for the King's ships—masts that were all over a hundred feet long.

Dozens of pinnaces and shallops rode at anchor in the harbor, and small rowboats and canoes dotted the river's gravelly
beaches. It was a busy town of little high-posted houses with sharply pitched gables, narrow brick chimneys, and tiny leaded casement windows, all crowded together on dirt streets. It was a noisy town, too, with clanging hammers, the grate of saws, the squeal of the hogs running wild on the wharves.

On the Maine side of the wide mouth of the river, across from the Portsmouth docks, was the settlement of Kittery— smaller and more spread out. The place had a more rugged look to it, with its two-story garrison houses built of sturdy, hewn logs. In Kittery, a man walking down the street felt he could flap his elbows without knocking someone else to the ground. It was here that Tyler Savitch had spent the first six years of his life.

He couldn't remember much of those years. Later events had crowded out those scraps of memories. But he always felt a poignant loss, a sad sense of what might have been, whenever he first looked across the Piscataqua after a long absence and saw the piers, the garrison houses, the sawmills and shipyards of Kittery.

"Ty..."

He whirled around, irritation darkening his face. "Christ, what do you want now?"

Delia took a step back, her hand drifting up to her breast. "I'm sorry. I was only... I'm sorry..."

She started to run off, but he grabbed her arm. She whipped back around and that damn proud chin jerked right up into the air—but he couldn't miss the hurt in her eyes.

"I didn't mean it, Delia... Don't go." He realized it was the truth. He had thought he wanted to be alone, and he had deliberately left the others back at the inn. But now, seeing her, he suddenly felt this strange need to have her with him.

"Don't go," he said again.

"I only came t' see if ye were hungry."

"I'm not. But I still don't want you to go."

He released her arm and let out a relieved breath when she didn't run off. Her head was turned away from him, and she clutched the folds of her ragged old cloak, pulling it together across her breasts. As usual, Ty's eyes were drawn to those breasts, prominent beneath the threadbare material. Dammit, why hadn't he thought about buying a cloak from that farmer when he'd picked out the other things?

The blue-striped calico bonnet he had bought hid her face and hair from him. he didn't like the thing. He tugged at the strings beneath her chin. "Take this off. It doesn't suit you."

"But, Ty, it's raining."

She tried to still his hands, but he persisted. She had found some pins to bind up her hair, and he pulled those out as well. Clean raven tresses fell over his hands and a sudden beam of sunlight broke through the clouds, glinting off ruby highlights and making it shimmer like dark wine in a silver goblet. He had to fight a compulsion to bury his face in it. It was so silken, so soft. It was also slightly damp, and he realized she must have just washed it again this afternoon. He suspected this sudden fascination with cleanliness was because of him, and the thought made him scowl. He didn't want her changing to please him. In his experience when a woman did that, she next started making demands, expecting
him
to change to please her.

He let her hair trickle through his fingers. "That's better," he said. "It's stopped raining anyway."

He had dropped the bonnet to the ground, but now she bent and snatched it up. "Oh, damn ye, Ty, here I've been tryin' so hard t' be a proper lady and proper ladies don't run around with their bloody hair flying about their face and—oh, hell!"

To his amusement she clapped her hand over her mouth and her eyes squinted up in laughter. "I don't suppose proper ladies run around a-cussin' up a blue streak neither, do they?"

"Never mind. I like you with your hair flying about your face. And I'm getting used to that foul tongue of yours."

Her mouth quirked up into a big grin. "Hunh! An' you with yer
re-fined
tastes."

Laughing, he held out his hand to her. "Come on, brat."

She regarded his hand so suspiciously that he wanted to laugh again. But it made him sad as well, that she didn't trust him not to hurt her.

Then she smiled and slipped her fingers around his.

He walked at a fast pace back along the wharf and down to the riverbank, keeping her hand in a tight grip. The feel of her hand, so small and slender enveloped in his own, made him feel strong and protective. He had to chuckle at himself. Tough, gutsy little Delia McQuaid would certainly have laughed if she could have read his thoughts.

She had to run to keep up, but he didn't slow down. "Where are we going?" she said, panting slightly.

"Across the river."

"Why didn't we just take the ferry?"

Ty didn't answer. When they got to the river's edge he flipped over a birchbark canoe and slid it into the water. Seizing her by the waist, he lifted her into it.

She looked around nervously. "Ty? We're not stealin' this thing, are we? I don't want to wind up in the Portsmouth gaol."

"We're only borrowing it for an hour or so." He got into the canoe with her. Leaning over, he cupped her face in his hands. "Delia, I'm going across the river and I want you with me, that's all. No other reason. I just want you with me."

He surprised himself with what he had said, for until the words came out he hadn't known his need was so desperate. Perhaps it was a simple matter of wanting her company—he was feeling lonely and restless, and she could always make him laugh.

His words had surprised her as well. Her eyes widened until they filled her face. She half stood up, and for a moment he thought she was going to scramble out of the canoe, then she sat down again. She dipped her head, refusing to look at him.

He paddled the canoe as he had been taught, the Abenaki way, holding his lower arms straight and using his whole upper body, rocking forward in a pushing, sculling motion. The paddle made a soft sucking sound as it left the water at the end of each stroke. He enjoyed the physical exertion of his muscles.

Inside, he felt like the string of a lute tuned so tightly it was about to break.

A light breeze brought with it the sharp fragrance of balsam and cedar. The clouds were breaking up, and late afternoon sun tinted the water a tawny gold. The tall, deep green trees that crowded in at the river's edge were reflected on the rippling surface. Green-streaked gold... the color of her eyes.

Even as he thought of her, she turned her head to look at him and smiled.

He didn't go directly across to Kittery but upriver instead. They rounded a bend and surprised a doe drinking at the bank. Her head jerked up and she stared at them, her eyes wide and unblinking, then she disappeared into the trees with a flip of her white tail.

Ty sent the canoe toward the bank where the doe had been. There was only a tiny strip of beach and stands of spruce and balsam fir encroached right down to the water line. The rainwet branches dripped onto their heads as they came ashore.

Ty paced the length of the small beach. He kicked at a rotting log that had been tossed up by the tide, his abrupt movement scaring a nearby sandpiper that had been picking among the pebbles.

Delia watched him, a small frown at the corners of her mouth. "This is a pretty spot, Ty," she said tentatively when the silence had drawn on too long.

"My father was killed here."

"Oh, Ty... I'm so sorry."

He had turned his back on her to look across the river. She came up beside him. He had been feeling cold, but then to his surprise she slipped her hand into his, intertwining their fingers, and it made him feel warm inside. Less lonely.

"By the Indians?" she asked softly.

"They were Pequawkets. Led by Frenchmen." Queen Anne's War it had been called, France against England, and the New World had merely been one of many battlegrounds. The existence of the war, the reasons for it, had meant nothing to a six-year-old boy living in a small clapboard house in The Maine on the edge of the wilderness. He still wasn't sure what it had been about.

"There had been talk all that fall about the Indian threat," he said. "About how the French had them stirred up by offering bounties for English scalps. Lots of folk left the settlements and went back to Boston. But my father had a business—he owned a shipworks and it was just starting to turn a profit. I can remember him and my mother talking about it, about how the business would fail if he had to abandon it, even for a year."

Ty paused, surprised at the vividness of the memory. Perhaps he remembered the scene so clearly because his mother had shouted at his father and she so rarely raised her voice. It had been his mother who was so dead set against leaving Kittery and the shipworks.

"Once winter came we all breathed easier," Ty went on. "But then one night we woke up to see a red glow in the sky from the other settlements burning upriver. It was a night in February and it had snowed again only that morning. We never expected to be attacked in the middle of winter with so much snow on the ground."

Ice had crusted the snow, and it crunched under their feet as they ran. The moon was out. Everything glittered silver, and little ice crystals danced on the wind. He kept falling down, and his father grabbed him by the arm, lifting him so high off the ground that his feet pumped in the air. He laughed aloud with excitement, too young to know he should have been afraid.

"There was a garrison house over in Portsmouth and the river was frozen solid. All we had to do was run across the ice and take shelter there." His eyes, dark with pain, scanned the narrow bank. "This was as far as we got."

They had seemed to come flying right out of the trunks of the trees, whooping their war cries. His mother screamed and his father fired off his musket once and then his mother screamed again. A hard arm wrapped around Ty's throat and he saw the flash of the tomahawk. Although he kicked and struggled, even his child's mind at last understood that he was about to die. Then his mother flung herself against the man who held him, and although others came and dragged his mother off, the moment was over and Ty knew he wouldn't die after all.

But it was too late for his father. They had stood right at this spot, he and his mother, while the Pequawkets danced around them, chanting their triumphant battle songs. A pool of bright scarlet darkened the white, white snow beneath his father's head, and icy crystals swirled around the bloody, gaping flesh where the dark brown hair had been.

Later, when Ty was fourteen and an Abenaki in every way but blood, he had gone on his first war party against the Mohawks to the west, and he had taken three scalps of his own. He had felt so proud and brave and lusty that day, and he had danced in triumph over his victims' deaths just as the Pequawkets had danced around his father.

Suddenly, Ty's legs began to tremble. Heedless of the wet ground, he sat among the rocks, settling Delia between his thighs. She leaned against his chest and wrapped her arms around her drawn-up legs. Ty thought that he liked having her there, just the feel of her within the circle his body made on the bank. A sense of calm and peace stole over him, perhaps the first he had felt in years... since that day he had been torn from his Abenaki family and brought back into the Yengi world.

They sat in silence for a long time. Then she stirred and rubbed her palm across his bent knee, and when she spoke he knew she had been thinking about him, about what he had told her, and he wished now that he hadn't done it. He felt suddenly embarrassed to have revealed himself in that way.

"They took you and your ma captive," she said. "What a terrible thing t' happen t' a boy of six."

He wanted to tell her it hadn't been so terrible. But then it probably had and he'd only made himself forget. "They loaded us down like beasts with packs," he said. "Stuff looted from the houses they had burned. And they marched us four hundred miles, all the way to Quebec. The French were paying ten pounds apiece for English prisoners, ten pounds for scalps, too, so if you couldn't keep up you got beat first—"