The Captive Heart (36 page)

She wrenched from his grasp. The sharp crack of her palm stung his cheek, jerking his face aside.

“Is that what you told Mariah as well?”

Blast it! He’d had enough. He snapped his gaze back to hers, ignoring the sting on his face and heart. “Never! I never loved Mariah. She was not a wife to me. She was my disgrace.”

He dodged her and strode to the sumacs, finished with her, finished with all women. And definitely finished with the foolish inkling that love was a noble and good thing.

“Samuel!” Red Bird’s teary voice shredded some of his resolve—but not all.

He charged ahead.

“Stop!”

Footsteps pounded the ground at his back. He shot forward.

Red Bird sobbed. “I am asking.”

He froze. So did his lungs. His heart. The world. Surely he hadn’t heard right. Wheeling about, he grabbed her wrist, for there’d be no turning back, not if he’d heard correctly.

Oh God, please. Let it be so.

He stood, still as a buck about to be slaughtered. “What did you say?”

Samuel’s gaze burned into hers, feverish. Searching. Wrought with trepidation and hope. Her entire future with this man depended upon what came out of her mouth next—and they stood toe to toe together on the edge of that cliff, waiting. Daring. Terrified by the enormity of the tension, sizzling like a lightning strike. It had been easy to ask the first time, to his back, as he strode away and broke her heart with each step.

But now? Facing this living, unpredictable creature? Breathing in his heat and desire?

His fingers wrapped tighter around her wrist, hot and shaking with need.

She inhaled until her stays cut tight into her ribs then held her breath. All of nature did. Samuel stilled as well. Time stretched like the last note of a violin crescendo.

Then she lifted her chin.

“I am ask—”

His mouth came down hard. Hungry. Like a starved man, long deprived of a meal. He cupped the back of her head and pulled her closer, his other hand wrapping around her waist and making her one with his body.

A warm ache started in her belly and spread like wildfire. She leaned into him, aghast by her own appetite. The need that he birthed frightened and delighted, a confusion of sensations. He tasted of starlight, smelled of the woods, cedar and oak, strong and warm. His lips wandered along her jaw, down her neck. She trembled, out of control, her own body a wanton stranger.

“Tatsu’hwa.” Samuel whispered the name against her skin, imprinting it into the curve of her collarbone—his name for her alone.

A thousand suns exploded. This was what it meant to be loved by a man? To burn and melt and quiver? She whimpered, so beautiful the act.

Samuel groaned—then pulled back, releasing her. No warning. No explanation.

Nothing.

Night air was a cold stranger between them. Her chest heaved. So did his. As if he’d run across the world to this clearing. To this moment.

She lifted her fingers to her lips. The skin burned, swollen—and wanting more. “Samuel?”

His eyes gleamed with a foreign shimmer, and she swallowed. She wasn’t sure she knew the man anymore. Why had he pulled away?

Lowering her hand, she grabbed her skirt. “Do I … do I not please you?”

A shudder rippled across his shoulders. One big hand reached out and brushed back her hair. His fingers skimmed along her cheek and down to her neck, light as a summer breeze.

“You please me very much. Too much. More than I think you’re ready for.”

His voice was throaty, deep, and so quiet she drifted toward him, wishing to make a home there in his arms.

He grabbed her hand, entwining his strong fingers with hers, then set off at a long-legged pace away from the bower. Their bower—as it would always be, whether they returned here again or not.

He cut her a glance as they sped along the trail back to the village. “We’ve an early morning and some hard days of riding ahead.”

Why the mad pace? Why the mad escape? That kiss had addled more than her body, for clearly she couldn’t think straight. “What do you mean? We just arrived today.”

“And we leave tomorrow,” he said, matter of fact, as if the journey here had been naught but a fool’s errand.

Why would a man given to leaving behind his daughter and undergoing a journey of no small effort suddenly want to turn back—or more like … flee?

She upped her pace, double time to his, wanting—craving—to read his face. “Is it because of Miss Browndell or Running Doe?”

He kept his gaze fixed forward.

“What is it?”

The trail opened onto the edge of the village clearing. A few torches yet bobbed here and there. Samuel said nothing, just made a straight shot toward his grandmother’s lodge.

His hand gripped hers in a way altogether familiar, yet foreign. She’d discovered much about this man tonight, but not all. Apparently he still held on to some secrets, and she wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

But would he be the same man if he didn’t? Was that mystique not a part of him she’d come to admire—an assurance that once she shared her inner self with him, he’d not reveal it to anyone else? Ever. What belonged to him, belonged to him alone. Exclusively. And God help her, that’s exactly what she wanted.

His grandmother sat outside her lodge door on a log. Odd. Why had the old woman not gone to bed?

Samuel must have wondered the same, for his voice lifted in a question. Whatever she said did not sit well with him, for his fingers let go of Eleanor’s. Some kind of debate followed, with a few gestures.

Then the old lady rose and moved toward Eleanor. She lifted her hands and rested both palms against Eleanor’s cheeks. The last bit of torchlight and a leftover glow from the moon highlighted the lines spidering out from the old woman’s eyes. How many years had she known? How many loves? How much wisdom? For surely those were some kind of sage words she bestowed on Eleanor like a blessing.

Eleanor swallowed, unsure what to say or do, and merely watched as the woman retrieved her torch and shuffled off to the next lodge over. “Where is she going?”

Samuel swept open the door flap, saying nothing.

But when Eleanor crossed the threshold, she knew exactly what grandmother and grandson had argued about. Low lights burned at intervals. The sweet scent of rosemary and sage perfumed the air. A thick bed of furs spread soft in invitation.

Eleanor’s heart beat hard. A rushing noise whooshed in her ears. Yes, she’d asked for a kiss … but was she ready for this? She pressed her hands to her stomach, a vain attempt to still the strange twinge inside.

Warm breath feathered against the nape of her neck, and she whirled. One look into the bright gleam in Samuel’s eyes, and she didn’t know if she should run from here—or nestle her face against his chest.

He bent, his lips resting light as a faerie’s wings against her brow. A tremble shivered down her back and settled into her knees, leaving behind a wobbly and warm sensation.

Then he bypassed her and snatched the top fur off the pile. Without a word, he stalked to the door. The more distance increased between them, the more panic chilled her to the bone. She didn’t want him to leave—but did she really want him to stay, knowing what would happen?

“Samuel?”

He paused at the opening, looking over his shoulder. “Goodnight, Tatsu’hwa. Sleep well. We leave before first light.”

Loss tasted sour, chasing away the memory of his sweet kiss. “But where are you going?”

A slow smile, full of danger and seduction, slid across his face. “Far, for your own safety.”

Safety? Her brow tightened. “But you have told me I am safe here.”

His smile grew. “Not from me. Not tonight.”

S
amuel’s head drooped, and when chin met chest, he snapped his face back up and urged Wohali on with a heel to the belly. Stifling a yawn, he worked his jaw. He hadn’t felt this woozy since recovering from that jug of bad grog back in ’65. Better half-asleep, though, than fully awake and aware of Red Bird’s softness pressed against his back. He’d driven them both to such distraction the past four days that she dozed behind him.

Four days. Good time. Amazing time, actually, thanks to the drought—and his own need to run far and fast from the kiss he’d shared with Red Bird at Keowee. After tasting of his wife’s lips, it was a flat-out miracle he’d held back from doing it again … or more. He’d learned long ago that he couldn’t stop at one sip of rum. He’d not be able to stop at a simple kiss next time, either.

So they rode hard, pausing only when necessary or darkness covered the trail. The first night had been the most difficult. He’d lain awake, listening to Red Bird breathe. Counting each murmur in her sleep. Counting his own ragged heartbeats and the reasons why he should not take her in his arms and do as Grandmother suggested.

Oh, but he’d wavered, at one point slipping over to where his wife curled up on a blanket. The silver brush of moonlight on her cheek was nearly his undoing. The throb in the hollow of her throat, his temptation. A thin blanket rode the peaks and valleys of her body, an enticement of the most exquisite pain. It had taken every bit of strength he owned to turn from her and walk it off that night—and he had a ripped sleeve and ugly bruise on his shin to prove it.

Thankfully, she hadn’t asked him about it, and the following evenings he’d been too tired to think straight. The day would come when such measures would not be needed, but not yet. Even with Grandmother’s blessing, it wasn’t right, not when he’d be gone for the better part of the next few months. But when he returned from Chota, sweet mercy, what a homecoming that would be!

“Samuel?”

He stiffened. If Red Bird knew the path his thoughts wandered on, she’d be mortified. The urge to tell her welled, to watch the blush spread up her neck and fan over her cheeks like a summer sunrise. He cleared his throat. Wicked. He was wicked. “Aye?”

“How did your grandmother get to be your grandmother?” She shifted against his back, her cheek warm between his shoulder blades.

“I thought you were sleeping.”

“Mm-hmm. I am.” A yawn punctuated her words. “But I still want to know.”

Wohali descended a sharp cut on the trail, one that curved at the same time, and it took a bit of concentration to keep them upright. It was also a fine excuse not to answer. Dredging up the past always stung, even now, years later. He clucked his tongue, steering the horse away from the edge of a ravine drop-off.

“Samuel?”

Her sleep-thickened voice melted through his shirt. She would not be put off, and he was hard pressed to decide if her persistence annoyed him or made him proud of her. But if he did give in and tell her the story, at least it would take his mind off the way she fit so perfectly against him.

When the trail evened out, he began. “After my father died, there was no money. No food. My mother gave all she had for me … even her life. She died of a fever. I lived on the streets then, alone.”

“How sad, living on your own.” Genuine sympathy, not scornful pity, warmed her voice—then faded. “But you said you lived in Keowee.”

“And so I did, after fending for myself for nearly a year.” He tugged at his collar, ugly memories as choking as the late August air. The starvation he’d endured, the swollen belly and cramps sharp as a long knife. Sleeping in alleys. Meeting time and again with the jagged end of a drunk’s bottle. He rubbed a thumb absently at the scar near his eye. No young lad should have to suffer such indignities. “I nearly didn’t make it. Were it not for Inoli’s father, come to Charles Towne with Attakullakulla to meet with an agent, I’d surely have perished.”

Red Bird pulled away from him, clearly awake now. “How did he find you?”

He snorted. “He didn’t. I found him. I tried to steal a blanket off his horse when I thought he wasn’t looking.”

“Oh,” she gasped. “Were you captured?”

“I suppose you could call it that. I went willingly, though. I figured perishing in an Indian village couldn’t be any worse than dying in a Charles Towne alley. Besides, they had something I wanted.”

“What?”

“Food.”

She swatted his shoulder, and though she couldn’t see it, he grinned. He could get used to this banter, to this woman. His grin morphed into a smirk. Who was he kidding? He already had. She’d grown to become part of him—the softer part, as Inoli might say, and no doubt would say when he asked his friend to watch over her and Grace while he rode to Chota.

She nestled her head against him once more. “You still have not answered me.”

“About what?”

“Your grandmother.”

The woman was as dogged a tracker as himself. He eased Wohali over a log, remembering the first time he’d traveled this same trail on the back of an Indian horse. If he closed his eyes, would the same apprehension and excitement rush through his veins? “When I arrived at Keowee, I had two surprising encounters. First, Inoli knocked me flat, angry with his father for bringing me into their home.”

“But you are friends,” she murmured against his shirt.

“Not so at the beginning. Not until I saved his sorry backside from a bear.”

“Oh? No wonder you learned to manage those beasts.” Her grip tightened around his waist. Was she perhaps remembering her own scrapes?