Authors: Andre Norton
Snow Shadow (17 page)
I forced myself to meet his eyes as stonily as I could.
“You already know.”
“I thought I might have—your dear Aunt Otilda's influence, I suppose. Did she succeed in making you believe that you shouldn't marry out of your own race—that to take up with me was a shame and disgrace?”
“Mark!” I was shocked out of my defense. If he believed
that
—which had never occurred to me! But no, that must have been
his
form of defense—if he needed any. We both knew the real truth.
“I know,” he continued dispassionately, “that your aunt made you afraid of every honest emotion a woman might experience, but I didn't think she could keep you prisoner in her web forever, not if you were the person you could be.
Was
it that I am an Indian, Erica? Or just that I am a man, and so the enemy as far as the Aunt Otildas of the world are concerned.”
“It was your wife. You can't deny I saw you both together—you looked straight at me—” I was lost to all pride at last.
His eagle face did not change. Instead he said very softly:
“So that was it. Without allowing me a chance at any explanation, you jumped to the worst conclusion. I think you wanted it that way from the first—a good excuse to run. Yes, I met Mrs. Rohmer that day. She'd been Mrs. Rohmer for about eight years, during about five of which she used that name as a courtesy title
only. You saw her on the eve of becoming Mrs. Mason Gates. Gates was so good a match that at long last she was willing to loosen the financial clutches she still had on me. She had ordered me to Washington at
her
convenience to discuss the matter.
“Now I believe she is Mrs. Rohmer-Gates-Hardwick or something of the sort.” Under the edge of the bandages, his mouth looked thin and cruel.
“The mistakes a man commits in his impressionable youth, Erica, can be painful—painful sometimes to the point that thereafter he avoids other emotional ties. But you were so different—” His voice changed then as he delivered a lightning attack.
“Why, Erica, are you so afraid of becoming a woman?”
He gave me no time to man my defenses. The truth burst painfully out of me—
"I am afraid of—of letting go.” “
Yes, you have always been afraid of that. So was I back then—a little—maybe that's what attracted me to you—no demands upon me while I was still licking my wounds and pulling my failure around me the way my ancestors clung to their blankets. When I saw Georgia in Washington—well, it made me suspicious of any tie again.
She
did have some reservations about my race. I saw you, yes, and at that moment I didn't want anything to do with any woman—she had thrown some of what she had thought to be home truths at me. So—later when I discovered you gone, and no message—I didn't try any further. Just after that I was posted overseas—the first time I was nosing along Newson's trail, really. So we ran—in opposite directions. But we can't
run this time, Erica—we've both got to face fears and facts.”
“All right.” I fought to keep my outward control. “I'll admit that I ran—want to run now—is that what you want me to confess? I don't want to be involved again.” But was that the truth? He was rushing me along. I could not be sure of anything—certainly not of myself.
“Don't you?”
I could no longer meet his eyes as I confessed what I never thought I would ever say aloud:
“I let myself—care for you. I never even told Aunt Otilda about you. When I saw you with—your wife—I knew I could not compete. She was everything I was not. I never could understand why you singled me out—I was nothing to interest a man like you.”
“You little fool!” Mark's voice was near savage. “You saw nothing about yourself except what self-pity and cowardice let you see.”
“Maybe,” I replied. His contempt, or so I read it, was bracing to me. “To have someone—to believe that someone is interested in you when he is not—it gives one a black morning after.”
Somehow I felt released, calm. As if I could stand up, walk away, forget I had made a fool of myself for the second time.
“Feel better?” he asked. “Haven't you heard
anything
I've been saying, Erica? You've been so busy scuttling away from shadowy lurkers in your life, you are blind. We're alike, I think, too apt to be self-critical when it comes to emotions. Now that's decided, let's have dinner—”
“What's decided?”
Again a sharp look, which I began to realize, held both impatience and embarrassment.
He reached in his pocket and brought out a small box. Snapping it open he took out a plain band ring, studied it critically for a moment. Then, before I could evade his reach, he caught my hand, spread it out palm up and dropped the ring into the hollow.
“I've been carrying that—perhaps as what you palefaces call a talisman. Look at it,
pakahi!"
I obeyed his order. A band of gold, and around it a series of letters very deeply etched, meant to last a long time—a lifetime.
“O-t-s-e-e-t-s-o-h-k-é-m-a-n,” I spelled. “What does it mean?”
Mark smiled slowly, with such warmth I had not seen for a long time.
“Something of my people,
pakahi.
In the good old days when we were the only so-called Americans, warriors of standing took more than one wife. But there was always the
’otseet-sohkéman.’”
He gave the strange words a rich rolling sound as if he relished speaking them. “Direct translation is ‘sits-beside-him-wife,’ she who did that on all formal occasions. I am enough of a traditionalist to have a fancy for an
otseet-sohkéman
of my own,
pakahi,
even if she reigns alone in my lodge.”
“And what is a
’pahaki'?”
I stumbled over the word, wary of his challenge.
“ ‘Little woman'—prosaically enough. Of course, we use it with a warmer meaning than it sounds.” His smile grew broader. “I'm flying to England on business
the first of February. But there is no reason why my wife cannot accompany me. Will your research be done by then?”
At last I understood. There would never be very many words between us. Words for us both were defenses to hide behind. I did not have an articulate lover—but what I wanted—yes, what I wanted!
I tried to match his tone, though I fear I wavered a little.
“I see no reason why it should not.”
Mark arose abruptly and came around the table. It was good there were no other early diners—though I do not believe he would have noticed had a banquet been in progress—nor would have I.
One certainly did
not
need words, I speedily discovered—as the lurker in my shadows came at last into the open, and, I discovered, need not be feared at all.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1979 by Andre Norton
ISBN: 978-1-4976-5672-7
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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