Judith E. French (20 page)

Warm eddies of water washed against his thighs, and he sank back into the pool, letting the buoyancy lift him as he stared up into the blue-black sky. The stars marched like endless campfires across the heavens, hanging so near to the earth that an arrow shot from a mighty hunter’s bow must surely scatter the white-hot coals.

The water was warm and soothing, only slightly cooler than the muggy night air. His skin felt acutely sensitive, as though the space around him were charged with the same power that brought the fury of lightning bolts.

Fiona raised her arms above her head and shook the water from her hair. The motion drew her linen shift tight across her firm breasts. He could see the outline of her erect nipples beneath the thin cloth, and the sight sent a shudder of intense desire rippling through his body.

She smiled at him, a slow sensual smile that told him she felt the tension in the air as well.

“Come here, woman,” he called to her. She laughed provocatively, and he felt his groin tighten. He swallowed hard. “I said, I want you here.”

She thrust her breasts forward and cupped them with her hands. “I am a Shawnee woman,” she teased, “a free woman. No man tells me when to come and go.”

He stood up and waded toward her, but when he reached out to take her in his arms, Fiona spun and dove laughing into the deeper end of the pool. Instantly he plunged after her. He caught her ankle, but she twisted loose, turning and splashing water into his face. He dove on top of her, and they both went under in a tangle of intertwined arms and legs. She struggled against him, but it was no more than a pretense, and they both knew it. Still, the tussle thrilled him, heating his blood as he seized her and raised her high in the air over his head.

Still laughing, she slid down over his chest and wrapped her naked legs around his waist. Their lips met in a searing kiss of unleashed passion, and he crushed her against him so that her hot, wet opening pressed against his belly. The feel of her, the hot, sweet feel of her, made the blood pound like war drums in his ears.

“I don’t think I’m tired anymore,” she whispered. “I think I want more of those lessons you promised.” Her fingers twined in his hair, and she opened her mouth to receive his seeking tongue. The musky woman smell of her was intoxicating. Sweat broke out on his skin as he thrust deep into her throat, tasting her ... reveling in the exquisite sensation of her silken thighs writhing intimately against him. He held her against him, one hand cupped under a round buttock, the other roving down her thigh and up over her breasts.

Their kisses were like sparks on dry tinder. A fire leaped between them, caught the tinder, and flamed up. His stomach knotted with tension as he ran his fingers up the inside of her thigh to delve between her warm, wet folds.

“Make me hot tonight,” she begged him. “I want to love you like I’ve never loved you.”

His man-spear throbbed with engorged blood, and he longed to slide her lower and bury it beneath her russet triangle of damp curls ... bury it deep and fill her with his hot, potent seed. “Fiona,” he said, “Fiona.”

She leaned her head back, exposing her creamy throat in the moonlight, and he shuddered with yearning. He nuzzled her breasts through the damp linen shift. She moaned with pleasure and tried to pull the neckline of her garment lower.

“Kiss my breasts,” she urged. Her breathing was ragged. “Please. Suck them . . . suck them hard.”

“N’wingandammen, ”
he murmured hoarsely. “I like the taste of them. Like honey . . .” His nostrils flared as he took hold of the garment and ripped it down the center in one swift motion. She cried out with ecstasy as he buried his face between her warm breasts and sought her sweet, hard nipples with his lips.

His tongue flicked across her skin with tantalizing intimacy. His fingers stroked and caressed her secret places until the bittersweet anguish became a throbbing urgency. Never had she felt like this before. She squirmed against him, sinking her teeth into his heavily muscled arm and moaning deep in her throat.

She was consumed by the fire that raged between them. Her senses reeled. “Please ...”

“I love you,” he rasped. “I love you more than life.”

“Now . . . now,” she pleaded. “I can’t . . . I can’t . . .”

She inhaled sharply as she felt the swollen tip of his enormous, stiff shaft brush her quivering flesh.

“Is this what you want?” he whispered in her ear.

“Yes, yes,” she cried. And then he guided her hips lower, and she felt him thrust deep inside her, filling her with his power, plunging deeper and deeper until she thought she could take no more.

“Ohhh.” She gasped as he slipped back into the pool and she rode him into the warm, black water. He placed his strong hands on her hips and lifted her, then pulled her back until they were breast to breast and mouth to mouth. She laughed as she caught the rhythm, and she met him thrust for thrust.

Fiona felt her excitement building. She moved faster and faster, and just as she neared her climax—to her surprise—he pushed her away. “No,” she protested. “I haven’t—”

He raised her up in the waist-deep water and kissed away her doubts, then turned her so that she faced away from him and taught her a new game. He entered her with skillful ease while his hands cupped her breasts and teased her nipples to aching buds of desire.

Still, he held his rush of hot seed. He plunged inside and withdrew while tremors of cold fire rocked her body and soul. She cried out with joy as she reached that elusive peak and was lost in the warm, bright rapture.

Picking her up, he rained hot kisses over her face and carried her to the bank. He laid her down on a bed of moss and slowly began to make love to her again.

I can’t, she thought. I can’t possibly . . . Not after ... But the heat of his hard body permeated her damp flesh, and his long, muscular fingers played over her until she felt the tingling sensations of desire rising again. This time, when they joined . . . when he filled her with his tumescent manhood, they reached a mutual climax. And that moment of supreme oneness was heightened for her by his whispered words of love and the hot gush of his seed within.

For a long time she lay in the circle of his arms, sated by their lovemaking, utterly content. To her surprise, Fiona felt no shame. Nothing as beautiful as what they had just shared could be anything but good, and right, and natural. In God’s eyes, this man was her husband. Never would she take another as mate. And if he died, she would be like the wolf and live alone all the days of her life.

“You have taught me more than the joy between a man and woman,” she murmured, unconsciously clasping her amulet between her fingers. “You’ve taught me—”

He placed his fingers over her lips. “No, my Irish Fiona, you have taught me. I was a moon dancer who knew the secrets of the spirits, but I did not know what happens in the hearts of men. You are the breath of my life, and without you, the sun would have no warmth and the moon no glory.”

She giggled and nestled against his smooth, warm chest. “You look like a Shawnee, but you talk like an Irishman.”

“I talk like a man who has lost his soul to a flame-haired witch.” He rubbed a lock of her hair between his fingers. “What I say to you, I have never said to another woman.”

“Or I to any man.”

“K’dahole,
keega. I love you.” He kissed her with such slow tenderness that it brought tears to her eyes. “Now you,” he instructed.

“K’dahole,
keega, ”
she repeated solemnly. Her lips were swollen from the force of his kisses, and it was difficult to make them say the words right.

He laughed. “No.
Keeqa
is wife. You must say,
K’dahole, tshituune wai see yah. ”

She giggled. “Mighty husband?”

He nodded. “I am mighty, am I not? Who else could wield such a mighty spear?”

“Who else indeed?” she teased.
“K’dahole, tshituune wai see yah.
”

“We’ll make a proper Shawnee squaw of you yet.”

She sighed. “We’d best go back and see to Anne. I’m worried that she may bleed from the incision.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “we should.” He kissed her again.

“What you did . . . the operation . . .”

“What
we
did,” he corrected her.

“No surgeon could have done better. In Europe, you could make your fortune,” she said.

“In Europe, I was a freak, a curiosity. The savage who walked on two feet and played cards like a gentleman.” He inhaled deeply. “You must realize, my Fiona, that although I speak as you do, my heart, my mind, are Shawnee. It will ever be so. I was born with the ability to learn a foreign tongue, but I will never be civilized. I will never again live in a wooden house with square corners, ride in a gilded coach, or worship in an English church. I am Wolf Shadow, servant of my people. If you want to stay with me ... if you want to be my wife forever—you must know these things. I will never change.”

A single tear spilled down her pale cheek. He leaned close and caught it on the tip of his tongue. “I must change then,” she whispered, “for if it means my immortal soul—if I am damned to hell for loving you—I must be damned. I will never leave you again—not for any man or church, or for all the gold my father possesses.”

“Then from this night on, our marriage truly begins.”

“Yes,” she agreed sleepily, “from this night on.”

He sat up and took both her hands in his. “There is a custom among the Shawnee—”

“No more honey.”

He laughed. “None tonight, anyway. Although, I do believe you need practice in the ceremony. No, this is different—serious.”

“What?” She was fully awake now.

“On a night such as this when a man and woman join and exchange vows, each may ask of the other one favor. By tradition, that desire must be granted if it is humanly possible.”

She looked up at him in complete trust. “Anything. What do you want of me, Wolf Shadow? Whatever you ask, I will do.” She had risked her immortal soul for him; anything else he asked would be less.

He gripped her fingers tighter. “You must forgive your father. Make peace with Cameron and lift the stone from your own heart.”

“Him!” Angrily, she jerked away and scrambled to her feet. “Why does it have to be him? You’d think he was your father, not mine.”

Wolf Shadow didn’t move. He waited patiently, infuriatingly, knowing that she had given her word.

“You tricked me,” she accused. ’

“You promised.”

“I promised what was humanly possible. That isn’t. He abandoned my mother.” How harsh that sounded, even to her own ears. What if Cameron Stewart
had
tried to find them, as he claimed? What if he had told the truth and her grandfather had lied all those years ago? James Patrick O’Neal had despised with a pure, white hate the man who had ruined his only daughter. Grandfather could have lied to her . . . lied to cover his own shame. “I ... I don’t know if I can,” she finished.

“I didn’t ask that you love Cameron, only that you cease to hate him. And that you don’t let that old hurt keep you and your sisters apart.”

It was bitter medicine. Fiona grimaced as she wrapped a large towel around her waist and covered her bare breasts with what was left of Anne’s shift. “Do I get to ask a favor?”

He grinned. “You do.”

Fiona thought for a moment. “All right. You mean to kill Matiassu, don’t you?”

“Don’t ask me not to,” he warned. “Matiassu is a dead man already. I cannot spare him, not even for you.”

“No, I won’t ask that. But I do ask that you not . . . not cut off his scalp.” She shuddered. “No mutilation. If you must kill him, do it cleanly. You said you owed him a favor for warning us.”

Wolf Shadow rose and walked into the darkness. For a long time he was silent, then he spoke. “It shall be as you say, Fiona. I will not take his scalp. For you, and for what is between us this night. I give it to you as a gift.”

“Thank you. I know what it means to you.”

“No,” he answered. “You don’t. You will never know what it cost me.” He reached out his hand. “Come, it is time we—”

A man’s agonized cry rent the still night. Wolf Shadow grabbed her up in his arms and began to run toward the house. Before they had gone two strides, a Seneca brave shrieked a war whoop close behind them.

A
s Wolf Shadow whirled with Fiona in his arms to face their attacker, a pistol shot shattered the air. The painted Seneca staggered into the clearing and fell, facedown, on the ground.

“Fiona?” Cameron appeared at the edge of the trees with a Seneca arrow protruding from his upper thigh, a smoking pistol gripped tightly in his right hand.

“Here,” she replied. “We’re here.”

“Back to the house,” her father ordered. “A French and Indian war party landed near Fort Campbell, and they’re headed this way. One of your Shawnee just brought word.”

Wolf Shadow lowered Fiona to the ground and approached the prone warrior. He rolled him onto his back and felt for a pulse at the side of his throat. “Thanks to you, this Seneca will give us no more trouble,” he said as he stripped the dead man of his weapons.

Cameron leaned against a tree for support. Blood was seeping through his breeches and running down his leg in a dark stream. Despite his obvious pain, he began to reload his pistol with powder and shot.

“You’re wounded.” Forgetting her disheveled state of undress, Fiona knelt to examine his injury.

Cameron shook his head. He was breathing heavily, and his face was white in the moonlight. “Leave it be,” he said harshly.

“Can you make it back to the house?” Wolf Shadow asked.

“Yes, but there’s not much time.” He grimaced. “I killed another Seneca back by the wall. I think he was scouting for the main force. He’s the one who gave me this.” Cameron motioned to the shaft in his leg. “Fort Campbell’s under attack. The French lugged a swivel gun downriver, but Alex Mackenzie blew it up with one ball from a light cannon mounted on the fort catwalk.”

“Can Ross Campbell defend the house?”

“For a while. The fort’s safer, but with the women to protect, we’d never break through the lines to get inside. It’s the manor house or nothing. Ross’s father built the fortified stone tower at the back to hold off a small army.”

“We can’t move Anne back to the fort,” Fiona said. “It’s too far. She’d bleed to death.”

An owl hooted across the clearing. Wolf Shadow cupped his hands around his mouth and hooted back. Yellow Elk slipped from the woods as silently as a shadow.

“I’ve found the one you seek,” he called in Algonquian. “Matiassu is here with his followers.”

“Wait for me,” Wolf Shadow ordered. “His last morning is about to dawn.” He took Fiona’s hand again. “Go with your father,” he said calmly. “Tend to his wound, and see that Anne is kept still and quiet.”

Fiona’s heart was beating wildly. “You’re not coming, are you? You’re not coming with us.” Her soft tone belied her wide-eyed terror.

“Take her,” Wolf Shadow said to Cameron. “We’ll cover your retreat until you’re safely behind the walls.”

“No,” Fiona protested. “You can’t stay out here. You have to—”

“Do as I say, woman.”

Cameron handed Wolf Shadow his pistol and shot bag. “Here, you may need this more than I do.”

The shaman slung the bag over his shoulder and stuck the pistol in his belt. For a moment, Fiona thought he might kiss her, but then he turned and followed Yellow Elk into the trees. Fiona hesitated for only a fraction of a second before she took Cameron’s arm and supported part of his weight as they moved back toward the safety of the house. Her lips were moving in an unspoken prayer.

 

Minutes later, Wolf Shadow crouched beneath the sheltering boughs of a hemlock and watched as Matiassu moved cautiously through a small clearing. Dawn would break in another hour, and with the coming of the sun, Wolf Shadow was certain that Matiassu’s combined Seneca and Shawnee forces would attack Ross Campbell’s house.

Yellow Elk had reported that a battle was still waging at the fort while the renegade Shawnee, Matiassu, had brought his followers to surround the manor. Since the members of the Iroquois Nation rarely fought in darkness for fear of ghosts, Wolf Shadow wondered how the Frenchmen were controlling their Seneca allies.

Matiassu’s warriors were not gathered together in rows like European soldiers; he had scattered them through the forest. Thus, although two score of hardened braves followed his eagle standard, Matiassu was alone here in the silent woods before sunrise.

This would not be the bright morning that the enemy hoped for; already heavy clouds shrouded the sky and a thick mist was settling over the forest floor. Wolf Shadow stared through the clinging fog at Matiassu’s movement. He could no longer make out the man, but he could see his outline, dark against the trees, and he could hear the crunch of twigs under Matiassu’s moccasins.

Taking a deep breath, the shaman cupped his hands around his mouth and uttered the hunting call of the gray wolf. The eerie cry echoed through the trees, and when the last note had died out, it was answered from the rise beyond Matiassu. But when that howl sounded, even Wolf Shadow himself could not. say if the howl was a real wolf, a Shawnee, or a ghost.

Matiassu stiffened and quickened his pace.

Wolf Shadow smiled. His eyes narrowed, and he rose and took up the chase.

 

Cameron Stewart, Earl of Dunnkell, lay close to death. His skin was ashen, his breathing shallow. He was no longer conscious . . . no longer able to feel pain when Ross Campbell cut the Seneca arrow shaft in two and pushed the steel head through his thigh and out the back.

“We’re losing him,” Fiona said as she attempted to stanch the bleeding. “His heartbeat is becoming more erratic.” She felt a raw pain deep inside her own body. This was more than the familiar physician’s ache at losing a patient. Despite her attempt not to, she cared about Cameron Stewart, and she desperately wanted to save his life.

Wolf Shadow was right. Until she came to some sort of peace with her father, she’d never stop hurting, never be able to love and trust as a woman should. And if he died before they could come to an understanding, she would never be whole.

Cameron’s strength had faded quicker than she could have imagined. He’d managed to walk the distance back to the house. He’d even made it partway up the inner stairs of the twenty-four-foot-square stone tower at the rear of Heatherfield before he’d collapsed and fallen into a coma.

Ross and a manservant had carried him to the second floor; the bottom floor of the battlemented tower had only a single iron door leading from the interior of the house and no windows. Triangular arrow slits in the thick stone walls let in a minimum of daylight on the second floor, and an iron grate could be secured across the narrow, winding stair. Furnishings were sparse, but this was the safest place for the women and children. The top floor was fitted out for defense, and it was there that the armed household men waited for the Indian attack to begin.

Moonfeather leaned over her father’s head and kissed his cheek. Tears sparkled in her dark eyes, and her lovely features were contorted with sorrow. “He will die,” she said. “Look at the arrowhead. No! Don’t touch it, Fiona, it’s poison.”

“Poison? Are you certain?” Fiona asked. She tried to think clearly as her grandfather had taught her. Poison would account for Cameron’s rapidly failing condition, but what kind of poison could act so quickly?

“Father’s poisoned?” Anne lifted her head from her pillow and struggled to sit up. She and the infant were lying on a pallet on the far side of the single square room. A small sleeping boy of about three was curled up beside her, his thumb in his mouth. Fiona hadn’t seen the older boy, Royal, since she’d returned. Moonfeather’s daughter Cami, the housekeeper, and several female servants were also gathered in the room.

“You must lie still,” Fiona warned Anne. “Your condition is still serious.”

“My . . . father,” Anne rasped.

“He’s alive,” Fiona said, putting pressure on Cameron’s wound. “He’s been hit by an arrow. We’re doing all we can for him. You must not excite yourself.”

“He will die,” Moonfeather repeated. “There is no antidote for the Seneca poison. He will die before the sun is fully up.”

“No,” Anne protested weakly. “Do . . . something. You must . . . must save him.”

“Keep her still,” Fiona ordered. “If she tears the stitches, she’ll bleed to death.” Ross went to his wife’s side and took her in his arms.

“Father,” she whispered. Her voice was strained; she sounded like an old woman. “We’re in the tower. Where’s Royal? Where’s my son?”

Ross pushed her back on the pallet and leaned over to whisper in her ear. The newborn woke and began to wail. He picked up the babe and rocked it against him with a tenderness Fiona had rarely seen in so large a man.

“No,” Anne whimpered. “No. You couldn’t . . . He’s only a child.”

“He’s a Campbell,” Ross answered. “Tusca’s too fast for anyone to catch him. The laddie will be safe, never fear.”

Anne began to weep softly.

Fiona looked at Moonfeather. “What is it? Where is their son?”

Moonfeather’s features grew taut. “When word came that Fort Campbell had been attacked, Ross put Royal up on his great black stallion Tusca and sent him to the Delaware village for help. Ross’s mother was a Delaware. They will come.”

“He sent that little boy out in the woods alone?”

“Our children are nay like your children, sister. Royal knows the forest, and he knows the way to his grandmother’s village. If he got away before the first scouts reached us, he’ll be fine.”

Fiona shook her head in disbelief. “But to send a child—his own son . . . Why didn’t Ross Campbell go himself?” Wolf Shadow was out there in the darkness too. Her fear for him made her light-headed. If only he’d come back to the house with her and Cameron instead of—

Moonfeather’s answer cut through her musing with cold reality. “If they attack, Ross will be needed here. Royal is too young to fight, but he can ride like a centaur.”

Fiona glanced at her sister in amazement. Where had a Shawnee woman learned about centaurs? she wondered. Then she felt a rush of blood to her face as Moonfeather’s eyes revealed that she knew what. Fiona was thinking.

“Alex Mackenzie educated me as though I were an earl’s son,” Moonfeather said. “I learned Greek philosophy and the war games of Alexander before I was Cami’s age. Ye ha’ much to learn of me, sister.”

“It seems I do.”

Moonfeather laid a delicate, copper-hued hand on Fiona’s arm. “But we were not speaking of me-we were speaking of the war party that threatens us,” she reminded in her soft Scottish accent. “The Shawnee and the Delaware dinna make war on women, but the Seneca . . .” She paused and pursed her lips as if she wondered how much to say. “Seneca means ‘eaters of men.’ Before the white men came, even the Iroquois honored women. They never raped or tortured them. But now . . .” She withdrew her hand and stared into Fiona’s eyes. “Now even my Cami would not be safe from their . lust.”

Cameron moaned, and Fiona felt his forehead. His skin was clammy. The wound continued to leak dark blood despite her efforts to stanch the flow. “There must be something we can do for your father,” she said. “Some Indian remedy . . .”

“For my father, Fiona? Our father,” Moonfeather corrected.

Fiona threw open her surgeon’s case and began to search through it. She could not remember what to do for poisoning. If only Wolf Shadow were here. He’d think of some antidote—she knew he would. She willed her hands not to tremble as she examined one container of medicine after another.

“Nay, not there,” Moonfeather said.

Fiona looked up in confusion.

“Here.” Moonfeather reached up and touched her amulet. “Your necklace, Fiona. The Eye of Mist.”

Fiona clasped her necklace in her hand. Once again, the amulet was throbbing with that strange heat—so hot it almost scorched her fingers. She took a deep breath, wondering if she were dreaming or if this was really happening. “How? I don’t . . .” She shook her head. “What are you talking about? Surely you don’t believe that—”

Moonfeather grabbed Fiona’s arms and shook her. “Aye. I do believe,” she said fiercely. “The amulet has great power—the power to save him. Ye be the only one who can do it. My amulet has been used up—and so has Anne’s. Only once can ye have a wish. If ye ha’ never called upon the spirit of the Eye, ye can do it now.”

A chill ran down Fiona’s spine. “The legend,” she whispered, and suddenly she heard her mother’s voice.
One wish, my darlin’ Fiona. Whatever ye desire . . . even unto the power of life and death ...

“Be ye a healer or be ye not?” Moonfeather demanded. “Forget your hate. He is your father. Can ye let him die without trying?”

Tears rolled down Fiona’s cheeks, and she dashed them away with the back of her hand. “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted. “What do I do?”

“Ye maun say the words,” Moonfeather urged.

“And . . . you . . . must believe,” Anne gasped. “You must . . . believe . . .”