Tallchief for Keeps (4 page)

He could not claim the child, but he wasn’t ready to leave Elspeth alone—not just yet. Not until he’d untangled the twists and examined them, and sorted through his emotions, laying them to rest. He knew he would not rest until his feelings were resolved, like digging out ends and pieces and shaping them into a
composite story…making sense of the whole and how he felt.

He wondered if he could ever rest…Elspeth had tormented him since that night in Scotland.

The stick he’d been holding snapped in his fist. Unsettled after his wife’s death, he’d taken Elspeth’s virginity and placed his child within her womb.

He’d hurt her that night, walking away from her. But he wanted no more emotions then, to haunt his mind, his heart.

Elspeth had faced pregnancy alone—she should have found him…it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know.

Still, he wasn’t without sympathy for her—for any woman stranded by a man who gave her a child and walked away. Young and alone, Elspeth had suffered the brutal loss alone. Alek fought the guilt riding him. He’d never thought of himself as one of those irresponsible men, denying their actions.

Elspeth sighed and shifted restlessly on her pallet and Alek held his breath, waiting for her to settle.
Then his mind began to move into the puzzle, trying to stabilize the whys and the hows and make sense of them to his satisfaction. He needed a measure of peace and Elspeth’s torment had left him none.

He’d changed her life. According to the townspeople and to Talia, Elspeth had changed dramatically after her visit to Scotland.

After her loss of a child.
…

After her loss of innocence
….

Alek shifted restlessly, uneasy with his thoughts. He’d run on the steam of revenge for weeks, months, and now he felt empty and guilty and aching.

His story with Elspeth was unfinished and he wanted it resolved, needing the last line and the last period in place. This time he couldn’t walk away too soon.

Alek remembered Elspeth that night, all fire and excitement and glowing with happiness.

He saw the woman upon the pallet, sleeping, drained by tears, a shadow of Elspeth-the-girl. She intrigued him still; he knew and disliked the
thought. There was fire in her, temper and rage, all locked inside her until he’d arrived. Alek doubted that few people had seen what he’d just experienced, those locked thoughts of Elspeth, now freed. He wondered what else lurked beneath her cool surface.

For the moment, he had her and he’d keep her close until he unraveled whatever ran between them…until he solved the mystery of whatever nagged his heart and mind about Elspeth Tallchief. She wouldn’t dislodge him easily—not until he was ready….

What was that she’d said that night? The Marrying Moon? What did it mean to her?

After one last glance at Elspeth, Alek settled down to sleep and prayed that he didn’t dream.

Elspeth awoke when Alek moved to toss wood into the fire. He crouched by the flames, looking like a Gypsy with his wild black ringlets and the
earring pushed into his earlobe catching the light. The barbaric act surprised Elspeth again, at odds with the expert way he poured tea from her china pot into a cup. He refilled her teakettle and placed its handle on the iron bar over the fire. Taking care, his hands too large for the task, Alek placed the china cup and saucer nearby, and the scent of mint tea swirled up to her. “Drink your tea.”

She sat up quickly and wrapped the tartan around her. She ached, drained by crying, and wondered if she had aged a hundred years. She stared unseeing at the fire, pitch shooting sparks, and resented Alek, a marauding invader in her quiet sanctuary.

The line of his jaw was unforgiving, and his eyes shadowed as he studied her. “What’s to eat?”

The intimate tone of his voice shocked her. Elspeth scrambled to her feet and found that he’d removed her moccasins. She sat quickly and jerked them on, binding the leggings with leather thongs to her knees. When she pushed
back her long hair, Alek looked amused.

“It isn’t as if it was the first time I removed your clothing.”

She fought a sharp retort and smoothed her shift. She realized that Alek’s scent clung to her, just as it had that night.

The sounds beyond the tepee told her that it would be foolish for Alek to leave. He knew it, too. “I’m staying the night, and we’ve got to eat. You can either tell me what you have in your pantry, or I’ll dig it out,” he murmured, watching her as she wrapped her tartan around her and prepared to leave. Alek’s hand caught her wrist. “Where are you going?”

Away from him…to the silence she needed to restore her balance. He’d seen into the wounded heart of her; she’d give him no more. “There are fish in the weir. The baked potatoes under the coals should be done now. There’s butter in a tin near my loom.”

“Good.” He grinned, that charming, careless, boyish grin that had won her heart. She steeled herself against a man who could cry for a lost
child and who could sweep away a girl’s heart with eyes that promised laughter.

Elspeth stepped away from him and into the welcome bite of the freezing night air. She took her time retrieving two trout from the weir, listening to the coyotes and the night, to the sounds of branches snapping under the weight of snow…to the sound of her heart She’d known for months that her life would change; the restlessness within her would not deny it. She’d known that Alek would come to see his sister, Talia, newly married to Elspeth’s brother.

Beyond a smooth, moonlit span of snow, Alek loomed in the trees, a huge bear of a man, watching her as though he thought she would escape him. Elspeth refused to give him any pleasure and ignored him as she returned to the tepee—until he stepped into her path. “What was that you said, about the Marrying Moon on that night?”

“I can’t remember, Alek. Please step aside.”

How could she forget? When she was growing up, she’d plucked the legend’s words from various
references in Una’s journals. Before Scotland, Elspeth had believed and clung to their hope, dreamed about them, certain that the shawl and the legend would bring her true love. Though she didn’t know the entire legend, those words had brought her peace in hard times.

“Uh-huh. Sure, you can’t remember.” He took the fish from her, hefted them appreciatively, then looked down at her. “I’ll find out. Facts, Elspeth. I’m good at digging them out.”

She let that challenge pass and entered the tepee. Alek stepped inside moments later with the cleaned fish, invading her privacy and taking far too much room. Accustomed to fending with soldiers in the wild, he took the sticks by the fire, skewered the fish and propped the ends of the sticks against the cooking rocks. “Handy, aren’t I?” he asked as the fish began to sizzle and cook, fat dripping into the fire.

Elspeth decided to ignore whatever Alek threw at her. She folded her tartan neatly, arranged the pallet and tried to dismiss the alien scent of a man amid her familiar ones.
A contrast of vivid passions, Alek was an uncertain commodity, one she couldn’t afford in her neatly structured life.

“Everything neat and in its place, right? Elspeth the elegant, isn’t that what they call you? There’s Duncan the defender, Calum the cool—although my sister seems to have him heating nicely—Birk the rogue and Fiona the fiery. Then there’s Elspeth the elegant, the secret keeper.” Alek reached across a mound of her clothing and the bag of uncarded wool. He picked up Una’s wool cards and rubbed them together, testing them and Elspeth. “Tallchief Cattle is managed by Duncan, who holds most of the shares, and the land is in all your names. Calum manages family investments.”

She braided her hair into two sections, tying off the ends with leather thongs, aware that Alek watched her. She wouldn’t give him a drop of insight into her. Elspeth resented his digging at her life—and his touch upon her possessions, upon her. No doubt he’d interrogated Talia quite thoroughly. Elspeth ignored Alek’s probes, scraped aside the coals, found the baked potatoes and placed them
on a cooking stone to keep warm.

Alek pushed on, nudging the silence Elspeth had drawn around her. “Talia told me about a Tallchief custom, that of the Bridal Tepee…where newly marrieds share their first days.” He studied her tepee and settled upon the empty branch waiting for her work. “Mmm. Let’s see. You’ve never been married, or at least none of the Tallchiefs know of it, and you don’t date. You go to weavers’ fairs, take custom orders at a good price and, so far as I can tell, your role now is that of a maiden aunt, a mentor for the family—but then, you can’t be a maiden, can you? You’ve raised them and now you’re happy living on the fringes of their lives—rather like an old maid…the friendly aunt…your niece Megan’s baby-sitter and the reliable mentor for a new Tallchief bride. Talia speaks highly of you.”

She resented the dark flash of temper he drew from her, slashing like a sword across the fire at him. Alek’s eyes narrowed, meeting her challenge. “The Marrying Moon, Elspeth. What is it?”

She ignored him
and lifted the teakettle aside; Alek’s hand shot out to cover hers. She fought to remain impassive; his fingers were dark and long and blunt and covered with scars. The scars had been fresh when he’d first touched her.

He leaned close to her, and there was nothing gentle in his expression. “I’ll find out. Your great-great-grandmother Una Fearghus was quite the historian. Talia thinks reclaiming the dowry is romantic. I know of Duncan’s and Calum’s legends, but not yours…could it have to do with a Marrying Moon, whatever that is?”

Elspeth inhaled slowly. Alek’s keen mind could forage for details somewhere else. “Let go.”

“When I’m damn ready.” Alek released her hand and sat back.

They ate quietly, tension humming between them. At last he lay back with the ease of a man used to discomfort in wars, drew his coat around him and slept deeply.

Her earring caught the firelight and gleamed in his ear, taunting her. The earring had been her mother’s, the mate to it safely tucked away.
How dare Alek Petrovna intrude into her life again?

Elspeth shivered slightly. She’d known from the first moment she saw him laughing at her in Scotland, catching her in his arms to dance around the bonfire and dropping a teasing kiss upon her lips, that Alek Petrovna would change her life. She’d known when he first touched her that he would become a part of her life. Back then she’d believed Una’s journals, that there was a Marrying Moon, that hearts bonded magically and forever beneath it.

She’d never been touched or kissed in the way that Alek had that night on that ancient Scottish stone. She’d known forever that she couldn’t, wouldn’t, be touched lightly and that, in her lifetime, only one man would hold her heart.

Alek didn’t qualify. Not a man who used Elspeth as comfort for his dead wife, a woman he’d loved.

For years later, she was disgusted by what she’d done, making love with a married man. Months ago Talia had dropped the tidbit that Alek had
been mourning his late wife on his visit to Scotland.

The past lay cold and hard behind her. Elspeth cleaned away the meal and sat to do her evening carding. Pushing the cards against each other and taking the neat roll of wool away gentled the stirred emotions in her. She’d never forgotten or forgiven him. The legend’s words taunted
her…Marrying Moon, scarred warrior, shawl, mists…she
tossed a soft roll of wool from her cards into the smoldering fire, wishing she could rid her mind of those haunting words as easily.

Suddenly Alek propped himself on his elbow and stared across the fire at her. “I’m not done with you, Elspeth, not by a long shot. I had a right to know about my baby and I was easy enough to contact.” He gave her a hard, promising look, then lay down again.

She managed to doze, only to be awakened by Alek’s cry. “These kids need food, shelter, medical attention! He’ll lose that leg…. Oh, God, look at the little girl…come here, baby…. Oh, no…she’s dead…. Honey…do you know where you live? Her parents were killed—”

Elspeth ached for what
he’d seen, for the children. She wrapped the tartan closely around her and steeled herself against Alek’s tossing and muttering. His life was no part of hers, and she would be glad when he was on his way….

“Alek Petrovna…” Elspeth muttered as she passed the shuttle through the taut wool on Una’s loom. She banged the beater down, pressing the sage green into the pattern. His name grated in the large, sunlit room, filled with a weaver’s clutter—a basket of shuttles and foot-long spindles filled with wool from Tallchief sheep, dried bundles of flowers, leaves and stalks hanging from the wall and a shelf lined with jars filled with berries for color. Skeins of every color hung across one long wall, filling it from top to bottom. Her collection of Navajo drop spindles—notched at the top, with a disk near the bottom of the shank—hung on a peg.

Neatly folded throws
rested in a stack, ready for shipping. Each was of natural color and had taken a solid week to lay on the warp and to weave. Clearing her work calendar to allow time for the new Denver gallery contract hadn’t been easy. Perhaps that was why she’d needed her retreat more this year. Or was it because the seer and the shaman blood in her sensed that Alek would be rising out of her past?

Elspeth regretted that moment when she’d broken for the first time in her life. The one person she did not want to see her wounds was Alek Petrovna.

She gathered her dark red shawl around her, the natural color from her favorite ewe at the ranch. She stared at the sett on a smaller loom—the repeated pattern of mauve-and-cream lines passing regularly through the dark brown background. The shawl was a gift for Talia, and its gentler colors would suit her fair coloring.

Alek’s statement, rich with pride and arrogance, seemed to echo in the quiet, airy room—
You can
7
stay up here by yourself. It’s too dangerous. You’re coming back with me.

Elspeth inhaled and straightened as she remembered him challenging her.
Of course
we
can stay up here. If you won’t let me stay in your tepee\ I’ve built shelters before. We can be neighbors.