Capture the Sun (Cheyenne Series) (23 page)

      
Seeing him in the doorway, Bright Leaf beamed and began to speak rapidly in Cheyenne.

      
“What's she telling you?” Carrie was always amazed at how silently he could move. His presence took her by surprise, and she did not even think to say hello.

      
He replied to the child, then to her. “She asks how you captured a piece of the sun. Did it fall from the sky on the day of your birth?”

      
At Carrie's blank look, he strode effortlessly across the small room and picked up a lock of her hair for a brief second, then let it drop. “This. Fire like the sun in the morning sky.”

      
The intensity of his gaze was as blazing as the sun itself, she thought as a flush stole up her cheeks. Nervously, she turned her attention to Bright Leaf. “It's just hair, like yours, only a different color. No magic.” She took the curl Hawk had just released and proffered it to the girl, who touched it gingerly.

      
As he translated Carrie's words to Bright Leaf, Hawk thought to himself,
She expects to be burned; I already am
. Aloud he said, “She must be from a band that seldom goes south, where they'd encounter more whites. She's never seen red hair before.”

      
“How long do you think it will take to locate her people?”

      
He shrugged, glad to move his thoughts to practical considerations. “Hard to say. I talked to my grandfather. He's sending out messengers to comb the hills for small isolated groups that left the summer camp early. They may be far away by now, as far east as Dakota. If they can't locate her family in a week or so, I'll take her to Iron Heart's band to spend the winter. She'll be well cared for.”

      
Carrie sighed. “I suppose it's best, but...that is, I rather like having a child here.”

      
His face darkened. “Be realistic, Carrie. Noah will hardly let you adopt her! He expects his own children—white ones—to fill these rooms. No more Cheyenne.” At her look of surprised hurt and even embarrassment, he relented. “Anyway, she's better off being all Cheyenne, growing up knowing only one way.” Oddly, thoughts of Wind Song flashed into his mind, her clear green eyes so untroubled and calm. Her white blood was not the curse his was, causing .him to want things he could never have.

      
“She needs to sleep. We can't take her back until she's stronger,” Carrie replied, tucking the child in and planting a kiss on her forehead.

      
“We?” Hawk questioned, gently mocking.

      
Carrie flushed scarlet as she fled past him into the hall. “I can't just desert her. I want to know she's going to another woman who'll take good care of her.”

      
“I know a woman in my grandfather's village who'll be willing to help. She has a twelve-year-old sister, and they'd be happy to care for her. They're both under Iron Heart's protection, and Bright Leaf would be, too.”

      
Carrie felt a swift stab of some indefinable emotion. Who was this young woman under his grandfather's protection? “I would like to meet them,” she said, daring him to explain more.

      
“Would you, really?” He said no more but smiled archly. Just then they were interrupted by the slamming of the front door and Noah's furious voice.

      
“Carrie!”

      
Despite herself, she flinched. “He's home and someone's already told him about Bright Leaf.”

      
“If Mathilda Thorndyke didn't break a leg running down the front steps with the news, I miss my guess.” Grimly, Hawk started to walk toward the stairs.

      
Squaring her shoulders, Carrie quickly caught up with him.

      
They descended together. Seeing them, Noah snorted in disgust. “I might have known you'd be in on this, Hawk. I'm not running an orphanage for stray Cheyennes. Send her back to her people. You know she'd be happier with them.”

      
Before he could reply, Carrie burst out, “I don't care if she's Crow! She's an injured child, and until she's well enough to travel, you can't move her!”

      
Noah blanched at her mention of Crow. However, he had grown used to her defiance, and felt he could deal with it quickly enough.

      
Hawk was another matter. “She's right, Noah. A six-year-old girl isn't exactly a threat, and she doesn't eat much. I'll take her to Iron Heart the first of the week.” With that, he walked past his father and into the parlor to pour himself a whiskey before retiring for the night. He waited to see what the old man would do, but no further confrontation ensued. Judging by his bleak, defeated stance, Noah's mission to Chicago must have been a failure, too. Hawk took a long pull on the whiskey and smiled in satisfaction. Then he heard a muffled exchange between Carrie and Noah before her footsteps retraced the stairs.
 

      
His smile vanished.

* * * *

      
That week was a misery of antagonism in the big house. Hawk seemed most impervious to it, as he was used to Noah's outbursts and Mrs. Thorndyke's hateful silence, but Carrie literally tiptoed through the days, not wanting Bright Leaf to know how upset she was. God forbid Hawk and Noah might come to blows while the child was in the house.

      
If Noah was unwilling to face down his son over the brief stay of one six-year-old Cheyenne, he was more than willing to subject Carrie to his sarcasm and cruelty for her part in the affair.

      
The very night of his return he questioned her about possible pregnancy, and she confessed that her courses had come once again. After his disappointment in Chicago and finding an Indian child in his house, this was the last straw.
      
“I'll just have to make good my promise to you about bedding you more often. I'm afraid I've neglected my wife. Since I have to go away next week for a stockmen's association meeting in Helena, I'll make it up to you tonight.”

      
However, after nearly two weeks on the road, with no comfortable sleep during the grueling train and coach travel home, Noah was exhausted. He began his usual swift taking of her, shedding his robe and climbing naked into her bed. He could feel her cool, stiff form lying still, willing herself to let him touch her. By now even her freshness and striking beauty had worn stale for Noah. What he wanted, needed, was an experienced woman to stimulate his tired flesh. Of course, a good girl like Carrie did not and should not ever know how to do that.
 

      
Nevertheless, he was angry with her lack of response. God, how he detested her passivity! Duty. She was doing her duty, damn her! But he found himself unequal to the task of doing his.

      
As he ran his hands over her delicate breasts and down her sleek legs, he could feel himself softening. A few times in whorehouses after he'd been drinking all night it had happened, even when he was younger, but that was different. Tonight he had only one drink after dinner and came to bed early.
 

      
A sick fear began to gnaw at the pit of his stomach as he fumbled to stroke himself back to an erection. He knew Carrie must wonder what was wrong with him, and that galvanized his fright into fury. This was her fault, damn her! Cold, barren, willful bitch! She was as bad as Lola, only in different ways. With Lola, too, it had happened toward the end, but then he had been drinking heavily and blamed it on that—that and her spiteful comparisons between his performance and her first husband's. Despite knowing Carrie had no one else to compare him with, he was not reassured.

      
Finally, after he had lain still for several minutes, she worked up her courage and said, “Is—is something wrong? Are you all right?”

      
“Yes, something is wrong,”, he hissed at her, rolling over and grabbing her by the shoulders. “I'm all right, but you certainly leave much to be desired! Barren and cold to boot! I gave a penniless orphan a home, wealth, position. All I asked in return is that she give me a son. All you want to do is adopt filthy savages and lay woodenly in this bed!”

      
His snarling attack left her stunned and terrified, especially when he accompanied the verbal torrent by harshly clutching her arms and shaking her violently. Then he kissed her brutally, running his hands all over her body in rough, painful strokes, pulling, pinching, and rubbing. The abuse seemed to renew his sexual tension and he felt himself growing hard once more. Swiftly he clawed her thighs apart and thrust into her, spilling his seed in a few painful grunts. Immediately, he rolled off her and out of the bed, grabbing his robe and stalking from the room.

      
In all their previous degrading and painful copulations, Carrie had at least been passively cooperative and he had seemed to enjoy her flesh, even if she could not respond in turn. He was her husband and she understood he had the right to her body. But tonight, this was truly rape. There was no other name for it. The earlier unintentional, even negligent brutality which he had inflicted on her paled in comparison to this. Her head ached from the way he had snapped her neck when he had shaken her. Wincing, she touched her abraded skin where he had scratched her with his nails and had rubbed so hard he actually had burned her, much as a rawhide rope might.

      
Why? Oh, why this? She did not begin to understand. Was she so clumsy and cold as he said? So undesirable? Then why did Hawk look at her the way he did? Put his hands on her and kiss her so feverishly? No! She could not allow herself to think of that. Least of all now.
If Noah is a rapist, then I am an adulteress, at least in my heart!
In pain and humiliation she sank down into the covers and sobbed brokenly for what she had just confessed to herself.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

      
Mercifully, Noah had to leave for Helena that Friday. The annual Montana Stock Growers Association meeting was too important to miss. For Carrie, his trip was a reprieve. If he had been inconsiderate and cold before, he had been truly brutal and sadistic the past four nights.

      
Hawk left for Iron Heart's village hoping to hear that Bright Leaf’s parents had been found. He was not expected back until Noah was due to leave. In truth, rather than stay at the house and endure the crackling tension between Noah and Carrie, Hawk had wanted to escape. He hadn't felt this helpless since his mother had died. He knew Noah would not dare touch the child. He only wished that Noah
could
not touch the woman.

      
Saturday morning Carrie awoke after an undisturbed sleep. It was her first night in five that had been so, and she was grateful. Stretching, she sat up in bed and looked around. Judging by the angle of the light streaming in her window, it must be quite late. Swishing aside the covers, she leaped from the bed and grabbed a silk wrapper. In a minute she was in Bright Leaf's room.

      
The girl walked haltingly from the window to the door, then stopped in midstride when she saw Carrie. Bright Leaf stretched her arms toward the flame-haired goddess who had befriended her. She limped quickly into Carrie's embrace and chattered joyously, obviously proud of her rapid recovery. Carrie, too, was happy for Bright Leafs healing, but would be sorry to let her go.

      
As if echoing her thoughts, Hawk spoke from the doorway, “Looks as if she'll be ready to travel Monday.”

      
Carrie gasped as she released the squirming child who ran into his welcoming embrace. Self-consciously, she stood up and tightened the meager protection of the thin silk across her breasts. Damn, if she had known he would return this early, she would never have left her room in such a state of undress!

      
Sensing her discomfort, Hawk looked over the shoulder of the chattering child and scorched Carrie with his hot black gaze. He smiled at her pink cheeks and nervous gesture as she folded her arms across her breasts.

      
“Must you always sneak up on a person like a—” She stopped short.

      
He supplied, “Like a savage?” His voice was level, but his expression turned hard as she blushed in guilty admission of her reflex response.

      
Carrie raised her downcast countenance, looking straight into the midnight depths of his hypnotic eyes. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean it as a slur. It's just that you always seem to appear where I least expect you.” And your presence disturbs me in ways I do not want to admit.

      
He relaxed and smiled, then said, “You mean places like the lake?” He was almost chuckling now, and she blushed again. The softening of his harshly chiseled features made a magical transformation, and Carrie was struck anew by how startlingly handsome he was.

      
Just then Feliz padded up the stairs with Bright Leaf's tray. It was time for the midday meal. Excusing herself, Carrie rushed off to dress.

      
Beneath the baleful glare of Mathilda Thorndyke, Bright Leaf came downstairs for the first time that afternoon. Her leg had healed wonderfully under Feliz's careful ministrations, and she was able to walk with only a slight limp. Carrie took her through the spacious, beautiful parlor and dining room, allowing the child's natural curiosity free rein.

      
After a few minutes of awe-filled staring, her six-year-old energy reasserted itself and she began to rub the satiny shine of the glossy oak table in the dining room, giggling at seeing her own reflection in its polished depths. Carrie picked up a precious cut-glass flower vase and let the child examine its glittering prisms. Bright Leaf ran her fingers over the diamondlike surfaces in amazement and smelled the spicy essence of the huge fall mums it held. She would have many wonders to tell her friends about when she returned home.