Captive (39 page)

It was wonderful. The water was so beautifully clear and refreshing. Fed by underwater springs, James told her. She could see beneath it, shake out her hair beneath it, plummet down and rise up. At first she stayed near James, not venturing out where the water was deep. But she did remember, and it was wonderful to swim. She wanted to explore, to feel the coolness of the water, the heat of the sun. She didn’t think that she had ever felt such a sense of freedom.

And she was a captive. So she had been told.

James, surely far more accustomed to such sweet and natural freedom, tired of the water more quickly than she. “Come in!” he called her.

Treading water, she smiled and shook her head.

“Miss Warren!”

“No!”

She dived under again. She nearly shrieked, inhaling a lungful of water, when she felt something tug her foot. She kicked madly for the surface, and when she broke through it, she spun to see that it had been James.

She might have remembered how to swim, but he was an expert at it. “I called you to come out!” he snapped.

“And I wasn’t ready!”

“You forget that I am the captor here, and you my prisoner.”

“A pity, then, for prisoners must attempt escape at all costs,” she said, still treading water.

“And if there was danger in the water?”

She arched a brow. He was lying. “What, sir, you now resort to scare tactics?”

He smiled. “Look down.”

She looked. Good God, he wasn’t lying. There were two massive creatures swimming beneath him. She shrieked, throwing herself at him, though to what avail she didn’t know, for he was treading water as well. Indeed, her impetus sent them both hurtling downward, right toward the monstrous animals.

“Get out, get out!” she cried, but he was laughing, holding her close in his arms, treading the water for
them both. She hadn’t seen him laugh so easily in a long time. No, she hadn’t seen him really laugh so ever before. He was changed, entirely. He was a young man. A very handsome one. The curve of his smile was completely charming. Her heart slammed against her chest. So monsters were about to eat them. It was all right, because James was smiling, and no monster could come upon them that was a greater evil than the warfare that stretched before them.

“You’ve never seen them before?” he queried. “Sea monsters? No! Why aren’t you moving? Don’t you care in the least—”

“Tara never mentioned them to you? Why, she is crazy about the beasts.”

“I’m beginning to think that you’re all mad beasts!” He arched a brow but still smiled. “They’re sea cows, as gentle as can be, and just like ’gators, they inhabit many of our waters. They’re rather like … well, they’re mammals. They’re like dolphins.”

Teela shuddered. “Damned ugly dolphins!” she whispered vehemently.

“All right, my love, so perhaps they’re more like cows in appearance, big and squat and hardly graceful. Never fear them, though. They wouldn’t dream of feasting on any kind of meat, and certainly not human flesh.”

He had leaned back, a strong and accomplished swimmer, able to backstroke with her weight half atop his chest, her arms still clinging around his neck. As he moved, she tentatively ducked her head into the water, watching the sea cows swim on by. There was a mother and a baby, so it seemed. Swimming together, oddly graceful despite their funny faces and heavy bodies. The mother was a good eight to ten feet long, mottled gray. The baby was perhaps four feet and a slightly softer color.

Teela surfaced, lying her head against his chest, feeling the ripple and movement of his muscles as he swam toward the shore.

“How odd,” she said softly.

“What is odd?”

“That it can be so hard to tell sometimes by appearance what to fear—and what to trust.”

“Fear everything,” he warned her. “Trust no one.”

“You trust your brother.”

“That’s different. He’s my blood.”

“White blood.”

“Teela—”

“You’re lucky.”

“I’m lucky?”

She nodded earnestly. “You share that blood and something very special with your brother. I never had that with anyone. I loved my father, and he died so young. I loved my mother, and I lost her, too. Then I had Michael Warren.”

He had reached a point of the river where he was standing, she realized, but he still leaned back, holding her. He smoothed back a piece of her wet hair. “Perhaps you don’t realize, Miss Warren, how quickly you have made friends here.”

“Friends …?”

“Both my brother and Tara adore you. Robert Trent would defy the wind for you, and young Harrington is head over heels. Joshua Brandeis as well. Of course, the later three would certainly desire much more of you than friendship …” His voice trailed away, a slightly bitter note to it once again. He shrugged. “Unless, of course—”

“Don’t you dare accuse me—”

“Accuse you? I’ve told you to save us all grief and marry Harrington!”

She tried to kick away from him; his hold around her tightened, his arms enveloping her. Then suddenly he was whispering fiercely, words tumbling out with passion and fever. “Listen to me, and listen to me well. Don’t ever think that I don’t desire you more than anything in all the world, or that I do not dream of holding you in my arms, feeling, breathing the sweetness of your flesh when you are away. Don’t think I don’t long to kill any
man when I watch you dance with him, laugh with him. The jealousy in my heart and blood is like something alive and dark and terrible, ready to riot, tear me apart. Yet I say to you with all truth that yes, I wish you to wed Harrington, because I wish life, peace, and happiness for you. And God, yes, sometimes I’m bitter, so sorry, so damned sorry that I can’t say, yes, my father was a white man, a rich white man. I can’t buy my place in the white world and turn my back on these people. They are mine. It is their plight, my plight. My world is starvation, and yours is a night dining on fine china to the sweet sounds of violins. Mine is running, yours is dancing. Mine is the rough earth, while yours is a feather bed. You cannot survive without your world. I
must
survive without it.” She pulled back from him, amazed at his words. Amazed at his fever. He had almost said that he cared for her. That he wanted her. For more than just the passing of a frantic night, a fleeting, heated passion. She stared at him, at the emotion in his eyes, the harsh, rugged beauty of his features, and she wanted to cry out with an agony greater than death. “And what if I cannot survive without
you
?” she asked.

He pulled her close again, shuddering fiercely, holding her. He held her for the longest time, and she was grateful for the river, glad of the water that drenched them both, for it would hide the silent, damp tears that streamed down her face.

“You can and must survive without me.”

“What is survival if the soul perishes?”

“I had thought my soul had perished long ago,” he informed her very softly.

“James—”

“Have you ever made love in the water?” he whispered to her suddenly.

His words angered her, shattering the closeness of the past moments. She felt as if she was choking. She tried to free herself from his hold. “My God, James, you would know!” she cried. “You would know!”

“Shh! Shh!” he whispered, and he was laughing again,
she realized, and when she met his gaze, there was a tenderness in his eyes unlike any he had offered her before.

“Damn you!” she hissed, but with no conviction.

“Since we’ve not shared the pleasure …” he murmured. He kissed her. Long and deeply. The water felt chill. Her body seemed ablaze.

He began to make love to her in the water.

They drank the strong, hickory coffee. He clothed her in one of his large cotton shirts.

He caught fish for their dinner. She learned to skin and debone it, and cook it over the open fire. He talked about being a boy and visiting Charleston, where Jarrett’s mother’s family had hailed from. She told him how the city had changed.

Night began to fall. They sat on the riverbank and watched the sunset. Watched the colors in silence, felt the breeze touch them while the golden orb of sun flattened and stretched out, spreading tenacles in bright red, orange, yellow … then a softer crimson, a mauve.

Darkness blanketed the landscape. Coolness seeped in along the river. He built up the fire, and they sat before it. He taught her a few words in Muskogee and then Hitichi, explaining how the languages differed, how white men had labeled the Creeks for the bodies of water they lived along. She told him how she had come to love medicine, what a thrill it was to treat a man and see him heal. She caught him watching her intently over the campfire, and she flushed and told him, “Any man, James. I love to see any man heal, be he white, red, or black.”

He nodded, reached across the campfire, and kissed her. Then he rose, sweeping her up, carrying her to their makeshift bed within the crude hootie. He made love to her again, his desire never sated, just newly awakened as he learned each new smile she could offer him.

There was a war on. Hundreds had died, she had nearly perished. She hadn’t even the clothes that had
been on her back. She lay in the wilderness, without even solid walls around her.

She had never been happier in all her life.

In the middle of the night she awoke slowly. So slowly. He had been arousing her, awaking her, his finger stroking down her spine. His lips, tongue, following it its wake. He rolled her swiftly, his kiss suddenly searingly intimate. She caught her breath, crying out a soft plea, shuddering with the hot sweetness that soared through her as he entered her. Moving. Oh, Lord. Moving slowly, more swiftly …

Dimly, she heard the cry of a bird, and realized that dawn was nearly upon them.

Again, the bird.

“What’s that?” she whispered, suddenly pressing against him.

“Nothing!” he muttered, but he paused. He hesitated, then stood. The moon had risen. Naked, slick, shimmering in its glow, he walked down to the water. He stood there for a moment, as striking as some pagan god in the mystical light of moon with the sun just beginning to touch the horizon. Then he turned, disappearing into the brush.

Teela shivered, pulling the furs around her. Birds cried again. She listened intently, frightened that she would hear some rustling in the brush. She heard nothing.

She gasped as she felt a hand upon her shoulder, spinning with alarm. It was James. She hadn’t begun to hear him return from behind her.

“What is it?” she demanded anxiously.

“Nothing,” he told her.

“But what—”

“Nothing!” he repeated firmly, pressing her down. Covering her with his body and warmth and strength. Sexuality and seduction.

When he moved again within her, something was different. He made love with an even greater passion. Reckless, almost ruthless. He held her with a greater fervor. A greater urgency.

It seemed that he would never let her go.

*  *  *

Major General Joseph M. Hernandez stood quietly by his tent. A hundred and seventy men had set up bivouac in the ruins of Dunlawton Plantation. Night was falling. Peaceful time, pretty time. He loved dusk, the soft coating of shadow that added a muted beauty to his surroundings.

He was a Floridian, and did not mind his duty here in the territory. Of Hispanic descent, he had a fine, subtle sense of humor and a liking for humanity in general. He had befriended many of the Indians, and was often torn with pity for them. He knew the enemy he fought, and often wondered if the war could possibly ever end.

“General!”

John, a young aide-de-camp, approached him quickly across the overgrown lawn of the once beautiful plantation. He saluted quickly, and Hernandez saluted in return.

“We’ve gone with the Negro, sir, and spotted the Indian camp. It appears easily assailable now that it is discovered.”

“Ah!” Hernandez nodded. Well, if the Seminoles did not suffer enough from the whites, they had their own numbers and rebellious Negroes to deal with as well. They were here tonight because a servant to the Mikasukee chief, King Philip, had grown weary of life in the scrub. Actually, it was the man’s wife who had grown weary. Life was increasingly burdensome among the Indians. They were constantly on the run. Seeking poorer and poorer shelter. Seeking more and more desperately for any food to still their hunger, that of their children, their servants.

King Philip’s man had promised to lead the whites to the chief’s camp. And now he had done so.

“Sir?” John said.

Hernandez sighed deeply. “Ready the men. We will surround the camp, watch our enemy, attack by first light.”

“Sir!” John acknowledged.

The order to march was sounded.

The dusk was too quickly gone. They marched by darkness, finding their positions around the Indian camp by midnight. He split his troops, ordering groups of volunteers to encircle the encampment on three sides. His regulars remained mounted, ready to ride in at first light.

No dog barked, no guard called out. Deep in the hammocks, too often the Indians slept with no guard. It had long been their way. The battle tactics of the whites were not easily accepted or realized, even when it brought terrible destruction upon the Indians.

By the first faint light of dawn, Hernandez gave the order for the troops to attack.

No alarm ever sounded. The soldiers ran over the encampment.

There was no battle. None of the Indians was slain, only one escaped, the rest were captured. There had been no chance to fight under the circumstances, and the Indians had known it. They were scarcely dressed; they’d scant time to pick up weapons.

“Royalty!” a soldier called, guffawing loudly. Shouts went up. Hostile cries from the Indians, jeers from some of the men.

Hernandez came forward, brushing past an army surgeon, Dr. Motte, who seemed ready as well to snicker at the sight of the man before him.

The Indian was not large in stature; indeed, he was covered in dirt, for he had run, probably for his weapons, and been dragged down. He was naked as a jaybird, except for the small breech clout covering his loins.

“A dirty king at that, eh, General?”