Judith E French (19 page)

“What does it matter now?” Anne asked quietly. “I love him. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Aye, this one has love for him also—infuriating though he may be. Nay, do not bristle with jealousy.” Leah chuckled in the shadows. “I dinna love your willful giant as ye do—I love him like a brother.” Leah moved into the firelight again, and her expression grew stern. “Ye are to blame for his wrongs as well, Anne. Ye must not give in to him. Ye must make him respect you—make him see that ye canna be ruled by a man. Ye can walk beside him as an equal, but never behind him as a slave walks.”

Anne buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know what I want. I thought I wanted to go back to England, but I don’t. I can’t bear the idea of never seeing Ross again. I realize he married me for my money but—”

“Nay! That be fool’s talk. Selfish he may be. Hardheaded as Lin-imuus the elk. But he would never take a wife for gold. Ross is a man of honor.”

“You’re wrong. He told me so himself.”

“I dinna believe it. If he said the words, then he doesna ken his own heart and mind.”

“You may have been his friend for a long time, Leah, but I think I know him better than you do.”

The Indian girl shook her head. “A breme man is Ross Campbell—one who needs taming by a strong woman. But ye hold his heart in your hands, my sister. Nothing he could do would change what I read in his eyes when he looks at ye. And nothing ye can say will make me change my mind.”

Anne fingered her golden amulet. “If I’d known before that the magic was real, I’d have asked for Ross to love me for myself, not my fortune.” She shook her head. “But that’s foolish talk, for if I’d used up my wish, I couldn’t have used it to save his life.” Her voice grew thin. “He was dead—wasn’t he, Leah?”

Her sister shrugged and spread her hands palms up. “Who can say?”

Anne stood and stretched her stiff back. “The thing is—I don’t care anymore why Ross married me, I only want to keep him. He can have all my money. I want to stay with him and give him children. I want us to grow old together.” She exhaled slowly and exposed her deepest fear. “But I’m still afraid I won’t be able to hold him.”

“Aye,” Leah replied. “There be a danger that ye willna keep him—not if ye let him run over you. Ye must demand the respect of a man. It is not you, sister, but Ross who should worry. He has wronged you. Let him lie awake at night and wonder if ye will stay by him and bear his children.”

“I don’t know . . . I don’t know if I can be as strong as you want me to be. When he was washed over the falls, I didn’t want to go on living.” Gooseflesh raised on her neck and arms as she remembered the terrible moment when she’d realized she couldn’t reach Ross in time. She sighed. “I’m so confused. I don’t know what to think or do.”

“It might help if ye went to our father in Annapolis.” Leah’s voice was soothing. “He is a wise man. It could be that he will help ye find a path ye can walk that will let ye keep Ross by your side without being dominated by him.”

“What is this about being dominated?” Ross pushed aside the entrance covering and bent to enter the wigwam. “Leah.” His gaze passed over her to fix on Anne. “God, woman, ye are a sight for sore eyes. Have the Shawnee treated ye well?”

“She is my sister,” Leah flung back. “Would they do less for the sister of a peace woman?” She glanced toward Anne. “I go now, but this much I remind ye of. Ye be a child no longer. Those who hurt ye in the past have only as much power now as ye give them.” She smiled. “Walk proud, and bow your head for no man.” With a parting nod to Ross, she left the wigwam.

“Who put a thorn under her saddle?” Ross asked as he dropped onto the bearskin rug beside Anne. “Ah, I’m so tired I could sleep for a week.” He reached for a cold corncake left in the bottom of a bowl. “I’ve been smoking the pipe with the sachem, but I don’t know what good it’s done.” He devoured the bread. “I’m proud of ye, Anne,” he said. “Back there, on the river, you—” His voice broke and he inhaled deeply. “Ye saved my life.” He caught her hand and pulled her down to him. “I came near to drowning. When I opened my eyes and saw you, I thought you were an angel.”

“You had a head injury,” she reminded him stiffly. Leah’s words lingered in her mind. She had let Ross have his way too long. He’d come to expect it.

“Lucky for me I’ve a skull of stone,” he said, rubbing at his head wound gingerly. “It hurts like hell, but I’ll never die of it.”

“A few inches deeper . . .”

He laughed. “A few hours sooner and that war party would never have caught us.” He kissed the top of her head and yawned. “Roquette isn’t here yet. We both need sleep, sweeting. Tomorrow’s going to be a long, long day.”

Anne lay down beside him and fitted her body next to his. In minutes, Ross’s even breathing told her that he was asleep, but her mind was still racing. She tried to sort out all that had happened and to come to some decision. She was still mulling it over in her mind when the first coral rays of dawn spilled over the eastern treetops.

R
oss slept as Anne left the wigwam in midmorning. She had snatched a few short periods of sleep before the stir of the village beckoned.

Everywhere, families were rising and going about their daily routine. Anne saw no sign that the Shawnee feared attack, or that they were alarmed by the death of one of the peace party delegates. Children ran back and forth, women knelt by the river dipping water into copper vessels, and men strode forth in twos and threes into the surrounding forest.

In front of one of the huts, Anne saw the woman, Amookas, sitting with Leah’s Cami on her lap. Anne approached them cautiously. The baby saw her and threw up her arms. Her bright blue eyes twinkled merrily, and a dimple appeared in the center of her left cheek as she ran to Anne as fast as her chubby legs would carry her.

Anne stooped to be near the little girl’s height. “Hello, Cami,” she said. The toddler giggled, and Anne lifted her up, anxiously inspecting her to see if she had recovered from her injury without serious harm. Someone had bandaged the arrow wound with clean linen. Her hair and skin were sweet-smelling and still faintly damp, telling Anne that Cami’d been bathed only minutes ago. Anne hugged her gently and kissed her silky dark hair.

“The child is well,” Amookas said in heavily accented English.

Cami wiggled to be free. Anne stood her on her feet, and the baby trotted after a brown puppy. Amookas signaled Anne to join her.

“Dinna have afraid.”

Amookas’s eyes were red-rimmed from weeping, and Anne was reminded that Leah had said the older woman had lost a son in the river battle. Anne wanted to offer her sympathy, but she wasn’t certain what she could say that wouldn’t break some Indian custom. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, “for your loss.”

Amookas nodded. For an instant Anne could read the deep sorrow etched in the squaw’s gaze. She opened her clenched hands, and Anne flinched as she saw that two joints were missing from the woman’s littlest finger on her left hand. The raw end of the open wound was covered with pitch, but it was clear to Anne that the loss was fresh. “Oh,” Anne gasped.

Amookas looked down at her mutilated hand. “My husband cradles the body of his dead son. I cradle a live child. My heart weeps, but the child’s warm flesh gives me hope.” She sighed. “Niipan say that you fight beside him like a forest demon. A mother thanks you. If you had not courage, it might be that both of my hands would bleed with sorrow.”

Shaken by the thought that Amookas might have cut off part of her own finger, Anne mumbled something inane and turned and fled back to the wigwam.

Ross opened his eyes and sat up as she came in.

“That woman—Amookas. I think she cut off her own finger!” she cried. “I don’t understand these people! I don’t belong here—I never will.” She felt sick to her stomach. Her head ached, and her palms were sweating. For some unexplainable reason, Amookas’s mutilated finger seemed more horrifying than the deaths on the river. “It’s senseless and savage.”

Ross rose to his feet and enfolded her in his arms. He didn’t try to make excuses or explain away her fears. “Ye’ve had a bad time, hinney,” he said. “Ye need food and rest.”

“Leave me alone. I won’t be calmed like a tired horse.” Her eyes burned, and she was afraid she would start to cry.

“Shhh,” he murmured. “It will be all right, Anne. I promise. We’ll have this council, and there won’t be any war, and we’ll go home and make babies.”

“I don’t want to make babies,” she protested. “I don’t want to go back to Fort Campbell. I want to see my father. I have to see him, can’t you understand? It’s all so . . .” Against her will, she began to weep. “I don’t know who I am anymore. I’ve got to go to Annapolis and talk to Cameron.”

“Don’t cry, hinney.” He rocked her against him. “If it will make ye happy, I’ll take ye to him. I promise ye. When this matter with Roquette and Matiassu is settled, we’ll go and visit your father in Annapolis.”

The tears flowed down her cheeks, and he held her against him until exhaustion overcame her and she slept in his arms. Sometime in late afternoon, she woke just long enough to drink water and eat a little meat. Then she slept again until the following morning.

 

It was midafternoon when Ross led Anne through the deep forest to a pool beside a waterfall. “Ye can bathe here in perfect privacy,” he assured her.

“You are here,” she reminded him.

He grinned wickedly. “Aye, lass, I am.”

“I don’t like this place. I never want to see another waterfall again.” She glanced around nervously. “Isn’t there a war party out there somewhere? What makes you think they won’t come and scalp us while we’re bathing?”

Ross laughed. “Nay, hinney, not here. This is an enchanted pool. The Shawnee call it the place of the Maiden’s Kiss. No harm can come to us here. Only those wi’ loving hearts can find this place. To the evil, it’s invisible.”

Anne’s eyes narrowed in disbelief. “A magic pool,” she said sarcastically. “Invisible. I vow, Ross, you are as superstitious as the Indians are.”

He waved a hand, encompassing the pristine glade, the blue-green sparkling water of the pool, and the breathtaking wall of white water tumbling thirty feet to feed it. Sunshine filtered through the thick trees overhead, causing drops of water to form a thousand rainbows in the air. The moss around the brink of the pool was thick and cushiony, as soft as a Turkish carpet, and the air resounded with the musical sounds of bird calls. “How can ye see all this and deny the magic?”

Her resolve softened, and she sank to the grass. “It is beautiful here,” she admitted, “but I hardly think we’re invisible.”

Ross picked a handful of violets and dropped them into her lap. “It was a war party that spun the sorcery,” he said. “As the story goes, enemy braves chased a Shawnee girl to the brink of the falls. Rather than be captured, she leaped to her death. Her body was found the following day by the man who was to be her husband. He carried her from the water and kissed her.” Ross knelt in front of Anne and brushed her lips with his. “Like this,” he whispered.

Anne’s heart skipped a beat, but she turned her face away from him. “No, I don’t want to . . .”

He drew back, his features immobile. “It’s only a story. The Great Spirit, who is a grandmother, Inu-msi-ila-fe-wanu, saw the lovers and took pity on the man. She couldn’t bring the dead girl back to life as a woman, but she did have the power to change them both into hawks. Together they flew high above the trees and off into the heavens. This pool was formed by Inu-msi-ila-fe-wanu in memory of their love.”

Anne raised her eyes to his. I do love him, she thought as her heartbeat quickened, but what’s wrong between us won’t be mended by the act of making love. She looked down at her lap and began to pick up the violets, one by one. “It’s a good story,” she said stiffly.

“What’s wrong, Anne?”

She wound the flowers into a lover’s knot and tied them to the neckline of her laced deerskin gown. “Everything . . . and nothing.”

“Are ye with child?”

“No.” She shook her head. If she had been pregnant with his babe, it might have made her mind easier. If she carried Ross’s child, he would stand by her—she was certain of that. Leah had said that Ross loved her for herself, not her fortune, but it was hard to believe.

“The Shawnee play on an eagle-bone flute for the women they love. I could play the bagpipes for ye, but it would frighten the crows for miles around.” He unwrapped a bundle he’d brought with him and offered her a handful of blackberries, a leg of rabbit, and a corncake. “There’s only water to drink.” He produced a gourd with a corncob stopper in the top. “No cups—we’ll have to share.”

“I don’t mind.” Anne nibbled at the broiled meat and found it tender and well-seasoned. To her surprise, she was hungry, even though they’d eaten with Leah at noon,

Ross finished off the rest of the rabbit, four corncakes, and the berries. Then he stretched out on the grass. Anne noticed that although he’d insisted they were in no danger, he’d brought a musket, a flintlock pistol, and an axe, and kept them close by. “Moonfeather doesn’t believe Roquette will show up,” he said. “Two other Shawnee chiefs and one Delaware have sent council members to the circle, but they won’t meet until Liiuan’s been given a proper sendoff and buried.”

Ross pulled his hat off his head and dropped it onto the grass. “The scouting party that brought back Liiuan’s body found my bonnet, but they didn’t find any other bodies. Whoever attacked us carried off their dead.”

Anne sipped from the gourd bottle and handed it back to Ross. He drank deeply and recorked it.

“This must seem like a lot of confusion to ye,” he said, “but if I can help prevent a war between the Indians and the British, I must. Fort Campbell—Wanishish-eyun—stands because the tribes let it stand. If they turned on us, we’d not last the turning of the moon. Daddy’s spent a lifetime on that land, and I mean to spend ours there. I no more want to see the Indians drive us out than I’d want some highborn English lord to do the same. It’s my land, Anne, and I’ll fight for it with the last drop of my blood.”

“And mine?”

His face clouded, and he rose to his feet. “We came here for pleasure, not to argue.” He offered her his hand. “Will ye swim with me, bonny Anne?”

“Only swim?”

“Aye. If ye wish it.” He hesitated, then withdrew his hand when she didn’t take it. This time, she glimpsed the hurt in his eyes. He stripped off his vest and let it fall carelessly to the ground. “When have I ever forced ye?”

Ashamed, she shook her head. “Never.”

He turned away and left her aching as he pulled away his kilt and kicked off his moccasins. His muscles rippled under the bronzed skin on his back and thighs as he walked naked to the edge of the pool and dove in. Trembling, she untied the laces at the front of her gown and slid the dress up over her head. The air on her bare skin did nothing to cool the heat in her loins. Desire rose to tempt her, and she forced it back. Only swim, she had insisted.

Anne’s cheeks burned as she watched Ross break the surface of the water just short of the falls. His hair had come loose from its leather thong, and it lay over his broad shoulders like wet silk. His eyes were on her, devouring, caressing, daring her . . .

A scarlet bird flew over the pool, its red wings bright against the blue water. She realized that she had never seen such vivid colors as here in this hidden spot. Even the tree leaves seemed greener, so many shades of green that it hurt her eyes to look at them.

“Are ye afraid?” he challenged. “To swim with me?” Water ran down the contours of Ross’s superbly muscled chest.

Anne’s breathing quickened. She raised her hands over her head and dove into the clear, cool water, letting herself glide down and down until she touched the clean sand bottom. When she surfaced to breathe, she found herself in the circle of his arms.

For a long time, they gazed into each other’s eyes, and then she forgot her pride and raised her mouth to his. His arms tightened around her as their lips brushed with teasing ardor. Ross caught her lower lip and nibbled gently, sending tremors of excitement through her.

She closed her eyes and sighed as he slid his hands down to cradle her buttocks, all the while outlining her lips with the tip of his warm, wet tongue. Her fingers twined in his thick, dark hair as he kissed her closed eyelids and the corners of her mouth with exquisite sensitivity.

Trembling, Anne ran her hand down his cheek, tracing the bones of his face with her fingertips and wrapping her legs around his waist. The heat of him seared her, and she moved against him, reveling in the sweet sensations that made her bones and muscles feel as though they had turned to water.

Ross suckled the tip of her finger and lowered his head to kiss the pulse at her wrist. His hands were moving possessively over her hips and buttocks, his fingers fondling her in places that no other man had ever dared touch. Anne moaned with delight as desire stabbed through her. She arched backward, letting her hair touch the water, raising her breasts for his kiss. Instead, he nibbled her neck and the top of her shoulder.

“Kiss my breasts,” she whispered huskily. “Please.” The cool water had made her nipples hard, and they ached for his touch.

He nuzzled the hollow of her throat and cupped her left breast with his hand. His dark eyes were luminous and filled with love as his gaze met hers. “Sweet Anne,” he murmured as his hot fingertips teased her nipple to a swollen nub of yearning.

She drew in a shuddering breath and moaned with pleasure as his lips closed over her nipple. With tantalizing slowness he circled it with his tongue, then drew it gently into his mouth. His right hand caressed her spine and moved to warm her neck with the heat of his callused palm.

She stroked his heavily muscled arm and let her hand rest on his corded neck. “I love you, Ross Campbell,” she whispered.

“And I you,” he replied.

They kissed again, blending mouth against mouth as the intensity of her passion flamed higher and higher and the sweet aching in her loins had become a pulsating demand. The heat of his body permeated hers until she no longer felt the cool water. She pressed against him, wanting him as she had never wanted him before, and moved her hand to clasp his swollen member.

“I don’t want to swim,” she murmured huskily. “I want to love you.”

“And I want you,” he answered, grasping her by the hips. “I want—”

The rolling echo of a musket shot shattered their moment of passion. Anne’s gray eyes dilated with fear as she realized what she’d heard.

Ross’s shoulders stiffened.

Two more shots sounded.

“That came from the village,” Ross said. “Come.” He turned and swam to the edge of the pool. “Hurry,” he urged. It took him only seconds to wrap the kilt around his waist and snatch up his weapons. Anne scrambled to pull the deerskin dress over her wet body. “There’s a cave behind the waterfall,” he told her. “Hide there. Don’t come out for anyone until I call you.”