Judith E. French (13 page)

“Are you someone’s pet?” he asked.

The animal maintained eye contact.

“What are you saying?” Cailin asked.

With a start, he realized that he’d been speaking in Algonquian ... thinking in it as well. How long had it been, he wondered, since he’d ceased to reason in his native tongue?

He kept his gaze fixed on the yellow eyes. Finally, the wolf lowered its head. Then Sterling glanced toward the second fire on the far side of the clearing where the workmen were sleeping. Not a soul was stirring. When he looked back, the wolf had gotten to its feet and was strolling off into the trees.

“It’s going away,” Cailin whispered.

The animal stopped, stared back at them, then trotted off. In seconds, it vanished into the underbrush.

Sterling noticed that the wind, which had come up quickly, had calmed. The fire was burning steadily; the flames flickered low. He would need to add more wood to keep it going until dawn.

“Sterling.”

He looked down at Cailin. She was visibly shaken, and he wondered if he’d been selfish to bring her with him to the frontier. “I told you that it was all right,” he said. “Probably a pet.”

“A pet wolf?” She sounded unconvinced.

He laughed. “Well, it’s no stranger an explanation than having a wild one come sit by our fire.”

“Ye spoke Indian, didn’t ye?”

She still clung to his arm, and he liked the feeling. When he was near Cailin, it was hard to think of anything but her. He was nearly overwhelmed with a desire to protect her—to make up for all she had suffered.

“Ye did speak Indian.”

Her insistence pulled him from his reverie. “I suppose I did,” he agreed, hugging her.

Strange how he’d seen her image so many years ago when he’d gone out to seek his spirit guide. Having a white woman appear in his vision—when he’d hoped for a bear, a hawk, or a mountain lion—had been a great trial to him. But now that he’d found her again, she seemed as much a part of him as his right arm. It didn’t matter what nonsense she prattled about going back to Scotland. She was his. Call it coincidence, Indian magic, or fate, Cailin was his woman. He’d never let her go.

He kissed the crown of her head. Her hair was soft and sweet-smelling. “It’s not wolves or bears you need to watch out for here in the woods,” he said, “it’s two-legged beasts. Unless you frighten a sow with her cub or come across a sick animal, they will give you a wide berth.”

“It sounds a wee bit like Gaelic—your heathen talk—but I dinna ken a word of it.”

He kissed her on the forehead, then got up and put several logs on the coals. “I don’t know why I started speaking Shawnee. I’ve gotten out of practice. My father threatened to whip me for forgetting to use English. I wasn’t even sure I remembered much Algonquian.”

She moved closer to the fire and laid a hand on his arm. “What did ye call it?”

“Algonquian. It’s a language used by most of the tribes along the Atlantic and west to the Great English Lakes. The Iroquois speak their own tongue, and so do the Cherokee in the south. But most of us between the ocean and the Mississippi River speak Algonquian. Each nation has a slightly different accent, but we can usually understand each other well enough. I’ve a few words of Iroquoian—at least I used to—but their speech is nothing like ours.”

“So you are Shawnee, but you speak Algonquian.”

“My mother was Shawnee,” he corrected. “I told you, I’m a half-breed. I like to consider myself English now.”

She sniffed. “I’d prefer ye to be Shawnee, I think. I’ve known none of them, so I have no trouble with them.” She looked over her shoulder anxiously. “Will the wolf come back, do ye think?”

“I doubt it.”

“So ye say.”

He fancied the Highland lilt of her husky voice. Her
come
always sounded like
comb
and her
back
like
bock.
“Think of that wolf’s visit as an adventure. Something to tell our children on winter nights, when we’re safe inside thick walls.” He smiled as he thought of her holding his son to her breast.

“I doubt there will be any bairns.”

“Why not?” he demanded. He’d never thought of being a father before—never thought of himself as a man who could settle down. That had changed at Culloden Field. Now, he couldn’t imagine
not
having children. Why else was he carving a plantation from virgin forest, if not to leave it to his sons and daughters?

“I had none with my first husband. And ...” She blushed faintly. “I told ye that there were ...”

“Other men.” He pushed back a primitive wave of jealousy and waited for her to go on.

“Nay so many,” she said. “At least not willingly.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. The fault wasn’t yours.” His chest tightened as black rage surged up within him. Had he guessed what was in store for her, he’d have accompanied the soldiers to Edinburgh. And had he known later, he’d have tracked them down and given each one a slow, painful death. “What happened before we wed is your own concern. God knows I’ve been no saint.”

“I only wanted to say that I dinna think I’m a fecund mare to quicken with babe easily.”

“I’ll get you with child, Cailin. I swear I will.” He took her in his arms again and looked into her face. “I’ve no babes that I know of either, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make a baker’s dozen between us.” He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Come to bed,” he coaxed. “Dawn will come soon enough.”

She followed him willingly to their bedroll and lay down in the circle of his arm. He pulled the wool blanket around them and rubbed the small of her back.

“I like sleeping next to you,” she admitted. “You’re big and warm, and you’re a good back scratcher.”

“Flatterer,” he said. “There’s something I have for you.” He’d picked up the necklace she’d thrown away in the bedroom weeks ago and taken it to a silversmith to have a new chain made. “I was planning to save it until the house was finished, but—”

“A present? What it is?” she demanded.

A wolf’s howl echoed through the clearing, and she began to tremble again. “Shhh,” he said. “I won’t let anything harm you, Cailin. I promise.” He reached for his leather shot bag and dug inside. “Here.” He pulled out a small bundle of velvet cloth and gave it to her.

She unrolled the velvet, and the necklace gleamed in the firelight. “My amulet,” she said with surprise. “’Tis called the Eye of Mist.”

“It has a name?”

“Aye, it does.”

“When the pendant struck the bricks on the hearth, some of the paint chipped away. I took it into Annapolis and had it cleaned and strung for you.”

“I thought it was gone for good,” she said.

“The pendant is solid gold, but I suppose you knew that. The merchant said it’s older than anything he’s ever worked with. He thought the markings on it might be Saracen.” He’d wanted to buy her gold earrings to go with the necklace, but they’d been too dear. What money he had left had to be stretched to cover draft animals, seed, and glass for the windows of the house. “Are you sorry I—”

“Nay.” Her voice choked with emotion. “’Tis not Saracen. ’Tis Pictish, my mother said. Handed down from mother to daughter for thousands of years.”

“It’s a family heirloom, then?”

“Aye, ye might say that. It’s all I ever had from the man who sired me.” She unfastened the clasp and put it around her throat. “I said I didn’t want it anymore, but ...”

“Why was it covered in that awful blue paint—a fine piece of gold jewelry?”

“To keep the English from stealing it.”

“Ouch. I asked for that.”

“So ye did, Sassenach.”

She snuggled against him, and he went all soft inside. “Someday I’ll buy you pearls,” he promised.

“I’m glad to have it back. I forgot it the next morning, and when I did remember to look, I couldn’t find it,” she admitted. “I thought one of the maids might have taken it, and I was too ashamed to say anything.”

“I took it while you slept. I didn’t know it was valuable, but I knew you always wore it.”

“Thank ye. It’s the nicest gift you’ve ever given me.”

“The only gift,” he corrected. “But there will be more, Cailin. Trust me. I’ll look after you. You have my word on it.”

She slipped her hand under his hunting shirt. The warmth of her palm against his skin made his groin tighten. “ ’Tis not your word I want now,” she teased.

“No? And what do you want?” He lowered his head and kissed her mouth. She tasted sweeter than wild honey.

She laughed and brushed his nipple with her fingertips. He groaned as his cock hardened and began to throb.

“I’m cold,” she whispered.

“Not for long.” He cupped a rounded breast. Her skin was like satin. Already, he could imagine himself driving into her soft, wet sheath, burying himself deep inside her, and pumping until she cried out with joy.

He loved her screams of satisfaction when he futtered her. Each sound she made increased his own pleasure twofold. He freed her breast and took her nipple into his mouth.

“Yes ... yes,” she murmured as he sucked harder. He kissed her lips, and she opened her mouth to take in his deep caress. Their tongues met and parted, then entwined again as she wound her bare legs around his. “God, but I can’t get enough of you,” he groaned. “I love you.”

“Sterling ...”

He caught her hand and brought it to his tumescent cock. “Like this,” he whispered. “Stroke it.” Her soft hand slid along the length of him, lingering on the throbbing head and slipping down to explore his heavy sacks. “Cailin,” he murmured.

“Shall I stop?”

“No ...” He writhed under her touch, thinking how lucky he was. Cailin was a sensuous woman and an adventurous bedmate. She never failed to set his blood to boil when she teased him like this.

“What is this I’ve found?”

“I’m not sure,” he answered, playing her game. She was stroking him faster now. His prick felt as if it were going to explode. He ran his palm down over her flat belly and spanned a bare hip.

She turned to face him, putting her arms around his neck and lifting her head for his caress.

“Cailin.” His heartbeat quickened, and the urgency in his groin grew more intense as a light film of perspiration broke out on his skin. He was panting now; the hot woman scent of her was driving him wild.

Her fingers played up and down his rod.

He exhaled softly. “You know what you’re doing to me?” He pushed her back and knelt between her legs. “Are you ready?” He knelt over her, rubbing the swollen tip of his erect phallus against her wet, silken cleft.

“Yes! Yes! I want it,” she replied.

His first thrust was hard and deep. He caught her arching hips and lifted her. She was tight and hot, and her eager pleas gave him strength to plunge still deeper. Far off, a wolf howled, but the sounds of the forest were lost in the heated frenzy of their mutual rapture.

 

D
uncan MacKinnon stepped into the shelter of the overhanging porch and shook the rain off his ragged cloak. He was dressed in worn woolen breeks and a homespun shirt of indiscriminate color. He wore no kilt, no plaid of any sort. The tartan had been banned on pain of death.

Naught but death and destruction reigned in the Highlands today, Duncan mused. By the devil’s bowels, he’d smelled his share of slaughtered cattle and burning men. He’d get not a wink of honest sleep until he’d put the shores of Scotland behind him.

“Jeanne,” he called softly. “’Tis me.”

“Duncan?”

“Aye, I said it, didn’t I?”

His young wife rose to meet him, and he was shamed at how threadbare her gown was. The skirt was burned in two places and torn along the hem; her bodice had seen better days.

“Did ye get it?” she asked anxiously. “The bread?”

“Aye, and a bit of cheese to go with it. As luck would have it, MacCrimmon needed help to geld I two colts. There’s enough here to last us today and tomorrow. We’ll be on the ship the following day. Donald promised that we’ll get daily rations.”

She reached for the bread and eagerly crammed a little in her mouth. “We’ll. save the cheese for Jamie,” she said. Pushing aside the blanket, she showed him his son’s sleeping face. “I think his cheeks look fuller today, don’t ye?”

Duncan gritted his teeth and turned away, as hot blood flushed his fair skin. The world was upside down when a MacKinnon had to beg day work to feed his wife and child. “I brought you milk for the bairn last night. I’ll do it again tonight.”

“Stolen,” she accused softly. “Taken from MacCrimmon’s cow in the dark of the moon.”

“Silence,” he warned her. “I do what I must, Jeanne.” He’d done worse than steal a noggin of milk to get them safely here from Johnnie MacLeod’s farmstead. He’d murdered two men to escape after he’d been captured by the Hanoverian troops, and he’d killed again before he reached the place where his wife and infant son were hiding. He’d kept himself from starving by eating raw horseflesh, and he’d stripped dead Scots of their shoes and clothing. And now—as a last resort—he’d sold both himself and his wife into servitude for three years to buy passage to Canada.

“I don’t mean to blame ye. It’s just that I keep thinkin’ about my grandfather and Cailin. Cailin would fault us for leaving Grandfather behind.”

“Your sister didn’t have to listen to a hungry baby cry, did she? She didn’t sleep in caves without a fire or go days without a crust of bread.” He took hold of Jeanne’s shoulders and pulled her against him. “I do what I must, woman, to save the three of us.”

“But Cailin—”

“I want to hear nothin’ more about your sister. She’s gone, God rest her soul. Hanged at Edinburgh Castle.”

Jeanne began to weep quietly.

“Dinna ...” Duncan begged her. “Do ye think I want to hurt ye more than you’ve been hurt already? But ye must face the truth. What we’re doin’ is for wee Jamie. He’ll have a new start in Canada. No one there will know or care what side I fought on at Culloden Moor.”

“Cailin may be dead but Grandfather ... ’Twas nay right to just leave him standing by the road last summer. And there’s still Corey, waitin’ somewhere for us to come and fetch him. He’s just a wee boy.”

“Your grandfather was old and blind. His time was past. He knew it. He urged us to go on without him—didn’t he? If we’d brought him with us to Skye, do ye think any man would take his indenture? We’ve no money to pay our own passage, let alone his.”

“Cailin promised Corey she’d come for him. We should have tried to find him.”

“I’m as sorry as sorry can be for Johnnie MacLeod’s boy, but your sister made the promise—not you. Corey MacLeod’s not our responsibility. He should go to the MacLeods for charity. He’s their blood. Johnnie was naught to you but a stepfather.”

Tears slid down her cheeks. “I ... I don’t want to ... go ... over the ocean ... to a strange land full of savages,” she sobbed.

Duncan swore under his breath. “We’ve gone over and over this. Would ye rather see me hanged for treason and our son with his brains dashed out on some rock?”

“No! No!” she cried. “I just—”

“You’ll just pray for the old man’s soul, and for the lad, and you’ll take ship with me for the Colonies. ’Tis Jamie’s future we must think of now. And the only chance for us is Canada.”

 

A week later and thousands of miles west across the Atlantic in the Maryland Colony, Jeanne’s sister, Cailin, stood thigh-deep in the river watching the laborers shingle the roof of a new log house. Nathan cut each cedar shake by hand, and Joe bundled them up and carried them to the ladder, so that Sterling and the free Negro, Isaac Walker, could nail them in place. They would have been finished by now, Sterling had told her, if the other two workers hadn’t gotten scared and sneaked away in the night.

“Injuns is bad out this way,” Isaac had said when it was discovered that the hired hands had fled. Isaac had rubbed his bald head and looked pointedly at Joe. “’Course I don’t got to worry like some about being scalped.” Joe’s hair was long and corn-silk white in color. “I hear tell yellow scalps bring top money in Canada.”

Sterling had quickly put an end to the teasing. “Enough of that talk,” he said sternly. “We’ve not seen a single Indian, peaceful or hostile. I hired the lot of you to finish the job. By running off, those two have forfeited their wages.”

Cailin bent over and let the clean river water wash the suds from her hair. The temperature was cool, but not uncomfortably so, and Sterling had brought her a plant he called soapwort and showed her how to pound the roots to make shampoo.

She had been familiar with herbs and flowers that grew in the Highlands, and had often used them for medicinal purposes. Sterling knew of dozens here in the Colonies that she’d never heard of. “My mother knew of hundreds of useful wild plants,” he’d said. “Many are women’s medicine, and others I never bothered to learn. There are no apothecaries in the woods. I’d match a Shawnee shaman against a European trained physician any day. The Shawnee, and especially their cousins, the Delaware, can cure more wounds with roots and herbs than most English surgeons can with scapels and bone saws.”

Cailin looked back at the cabin with pride. It was small, only one room and a hall downstairs, and one long room on the second floor, but there were real steps and bull’s-eye glass in the windows. A stone chimney covered most of the north end. There was a huge fireplace downstairs and a smaller one upstairs. The peak was steep, the walls log, and the roof neat cedar shakes.

The floors were made of wide pine boards, sawed in Annapolis and hauled there at great expense along with a walnut table, four straight-back chairs, a six-board chest, and a bedstead. A few basic cooking pots, an iron spit for the kitchen hearth, and pewter dishes had been brought in by oxcart. As Sterling had told her more than once, they were starting out close to the bone. But he’d assured her that when he had time to trade with the tribes for furs and bring in a crop, they’d start to accumulate financial security.

“It’s not as though the land isn’t mine,” he’d explained. “I hold directly through the Crown, not by leave of any royal governor. My father took pains to ensure that my mother’s gift would be safe from greedy hands. The king owed my father a favor. By giving us the land outright, His Majesty satisfied an old debt without spending a shilling of his own money.”

Land ... Cailin turned her head and stared east along the river. Their property ran that way farther than she could see; it ran in every direction farther than she could imagine. Thousands of acres of forest, stream, hills, and meadows belonged to Sterling ... and to her too, she supposed. Enough land to put many a Highland laird or English lord to shame. Enough land to feel free of rules and quarrelsome neighbors.

She sighed with regret. It wasn’t really hers because she didn’t intend to stay with Sterling. He belonged here; she didn’t. Where were the open fields of heather? The stone crofter’s huts and herds of shaggy Highland cattle? The castles and enchanted hollows? Maryland was too big, too green—and yes, even too wild for a Scotswoman.

What I’d give to hear Jeanne’s babe cry now, she thought ... or even to hear her sister complain about something. She missed her family terribly.

Absently, she fingered the amulet at her throat. “You’ve brought me far and far,” she murmured.

“’Tis true that I’ve been cursed ... but where is your blessing?”

A loud hurrah sounded from the house site. When she turned back, Sterling was waving at her. “We’re finished!” he shouted. “Come light the first fire!”

The first fire ... Another ritual to ensure luck for the house. They’d already buried a shiny new shilling under the front doorsill and hung horseshoes over each entrance. Sterling had thought that the horseshoes were silly superstition, but Isaac had agreed with Cailin. “A new house needs protection from witches and other evil spirits,” she’d said. “My grandfather was an educated man, but he believed it. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.”

She’d made a joke of it, but horseshoes over the doorway were customary among the people she knew. She would have felt strange if they didn’t hang them. It went along with the old saying that guests should always leave the house by the same entrance they’d come in, and the one that insisted the first visitor on New Year’s Day should be a man rather than a woman. If a woman came in the door first, people at home thought that meant the wife and not the husband would rule the household until the following year.

Isaac had climbed the ladder to nail the horseshoes, open side up, to keep the luck from falling out, before the doors were even hung. “It don’t pay to fool around with witches,” he said. “Out here in the big woods—who knows what haunts there might be?”

Cailin wasn’t sure about ghosts, but she had seen a witch with her own eyes. Old Granny MacGreggor could take off warts and heal burns overnight. And she had the sight as well. People for miles around used to bring their newborn bairns for her to bless. Granny was a Christian, she was sure of that. Granny never failed to pray before each laying on of hands. But her religion was the old kind, and Granny had powers that few people were born with. Ghosts—maybe so or maybe not, but Cailin knew about witches. Besides, she told herself, the horseshoes would do no harm, and they might do good.

“Cailin!” Sterling shouted. “Are you coming?” She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sun. Truth was, she hated to leave the river. The sound of the rushing water was soothing to her ears. The sunshine was warm, and the music of birdsong came from every direction. Here, for the first time in weeks, she’d been able to step back from all the hard work and lose herself in her thoughts.

“I’m torn,” she said with a sigh. “I’m torn by wanting ‘him and knowing it canna last.” But part of her wished it could last ... wished her life could start over here in this clean, cool river.

Straightening her shoulders, she opened her eyes, took hold of a thick section of her hair, and squeezed the water from it. “I’m coming,” she called.

The sandy bottom felt good under her bare feet as she turned toward shore. She’d have to change into another skirt and bodice; this one was soaked through, but—

“Holy Mother of God!”

Coming directly at her—not twenty yards away—was a boat full of feathered savages.

“Sterling!” she screamed.

The birch-bark canoe shot forward, cutting between Cailin and the riverbank. Kneeling in the bow was a copper-skinned man wearing little more than a scrap of deerskin around his loins. His head was shaved except for a rooster crest, from which several eagle feathers dangled in the back. He held a paddle in his hands, but a long rifle lay propped against the side of the boat.

Behind him, in the center, Cailin saw an Indian woman of indeterminate age, with a face as beautiful as a rose-marble madonna, dressed all in red with a white beaded headband decorated with black and white feathery plumage. She was armed with a rifle as well.

The paddler in the stern of the boat was the fiercest-looking one of all. His face was painted with yellow slashes, and he wore his black hair long and streaming around his tattooed shoulders. Around his neck hung a string of bear claws, and his fringed leather vest bore bits of hair that Cailin feared might be human scalps. In his ears gleamed ornaments of bone, and a silver pin was thrust through the soft underpart of his nose.

He drove his paddle deep into the water, and the canoe glided to a halt. He said something in Indian to his companions, and the man in the bow traded his paddle for the rifle.

Cailin froze. “Sterling!” she cried again.

The Indian woman smiled at her and lifted a hand, palm out. “Do not be afraid,” she said in perfect English. “We mean you no harm.”

Cailin was so startled that she couldn’t speak. Her heart was pounding so hard that she was certain the Indians could hear it. “Who ...” she began. Her voice cracked, and she tried again. “Who are ye?”

The Indian woman’s smile widened, and her dark eyes twinkled. “I had heard that Ko-nah had taken a Highland wife.”

Cailin’s eyes widened in astonishment. Had she heard a trace of Scottish burr? “I am Cailin MacGreggor,” she said. Then she corrected herself. “Cailin Gray. I dinna ken this Connor.”

The lady in the canoe laughed. “Ko-nah Ain-jeleh. In Shawnee, it means Snow Ghost. It is what we call your husband, Sterling Gray. Moonfeather greets you, Cailin Gray.”

Cailin swallowed. “Moonfeather? Be that your name?” It fit her. A beautiful name for a beautiful woman. She was not as young as Cailin had first thought. When she looked close, she could see a sprinkling of gray frost in her ink-black hair, and there were tiny laugh lines around her eyes. But her face ... Cailin had never seen such oval perfection. True, her nose was strong and her eyes faintly slanted like those of some Oriental queen, but her skin was russet silk and her features in exquisite balance.