Winter's Touch (33 page)

The question didn’t matter, as it had nothing to do with her.

It wasn’t until they all sat down to supper at sundown that Winter Fawn noticed Carson’s hands. The sight of his knuckles, bruised and swollen and covered with deep scratches, roused her sharply from her introspection. “What have you done?” she cried, dismayed.

Beneath the table, a foot knocked hard against her chin. Startled, she looked across at her brother. He frowned at her and shook his head slightly.

“I declare, Carson,” Gussie exclaimed. “You should have said something.”

The fight,
Winter Fawn realized. Carson had injured his hands fighting over her, and she wasn’t supposed to know about it.

“Did you hurt your hands, Daddy?” Megan asked, her little brow furrowed with distress.

“Just a little accident,” Carson said. “I’ve had worse.”

“Indeed, I’m sure you have.” Gussie turned to Winter Fawn. “As soon as you’re through eating, dear, would you be so kind as to heat some water for him to soak his hands in? Just hot enough to soothe, mind, not scalding. Cold water first, though, for twenty minutes. Then the hot.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Winter Fawn said automatically. Her hands ached to touch, to ease Carson’s pain. Pain suffered on her behalf.

“And I’ll get the iodine for you to dab on those scratches,” Gussie added.

“Ooh, Daddy, that ol’ iodine’ll sting. You oughta just have Winter Fawn kiss it and make it better.”

Winter Fawn’s hands trembled at the thought of kissing his knuckles. As if drawn by force, her gaze rose until she was looking directly into his deep blue eyes.

“I should, huh?” he asked Megan. His voice was low and intimate and sent a shiver down Winter Fawn’s arms.

“Uh huh,” Megan said cheerfully. “She can kiss it real good so it don’t hurt.”

“So it
doesn’t
hurt, dear.” Gussie’s voice sounded slightly strangled.

“How about it?” Carson asked Winter Fawn softly, never taking his gaze from hers, holding her, trapping her, making her heart pound hard and fast. “Will you kiss it and make it better, so it won’t hurt?”

Innes cleared his throat loudly.

Winter Fawn jerked as if shot. She jumped up from her chair. “I’ll go heat some water.”

Blindly she placed the large soup kettle beneath the spigot and pumped the handle for all she was worth.

He was out of his mind, looking at her that way, talking to her that way. In front of everyone! Making her breath catch and her hands shake. Making her want to touch him.

Ach, but the man is a menace.

She pumped so hard and fast that the water nearly overflowed the kettle. She had to dip part of it out into a bucket to avoid sloshing it all over the counter. When she finished, she wrapped a dish towel around the wire handle of the kettle to keep it from cutting into her hands.

“That’s too heavy for you.” A long arm—Carson’s—snaked over her shoulder. “I’ll get it.” He grabbed the kettle and carried it to the table.

Winter Fawn turned, her mouth gaping. “I am not so weak that I canna lift a pot,” she protested.

“I never thought you were.” Carson plunked the kettle down on the table, then sat and placed his hands in the water.

Gussie and Bess were looking at each other. They appeared to be trying to keep from laughing. They were not having much success.

Hunter was making a serious study of the fork on his empty plate, while Innes beamed at Carson as though he were a treasured child who had just taken his first step.

Winter Fawn wanted to scream at them all. Instead, she turned back to the counter. “I will heat water to follow the cold.”

“Use the warm water in the reservoir on the stove, dear,” Gussie suggested.

“Nae.” She checked and found a number of hot coals still glowing in the stove. She added one piece of wood for a small fire, then started pumping water into another pot. “Then you’ll have to heat more to wash the dishes. This will do.”

Aye, she thought. This would do. To pour over Carson’s head.

But when she carried the warm water to the table a short time later and lifted his hands from the cold water to inspect them, she forgot her irritation. As her fingers brushed across his bruised and battered knuckles she could feel the pain there. Her hands were drawn to it as the sun is drawn to the western mountains each evening.

She felt the heat grow in her hands, felt the aches and pains in her own knuckles, took them out of his flesh and into her own. Healing him. Healing—

“Lass,” her father called.

By the sharp tone he used, he must have been calling her repeatedly. She had not heard. She had been lost in—

Oh no!
Quickly she released Carson’s hands.
What have I done?

Holding her breath, she watched Carson flex his fingers.

Not gone. The marks of his fight were not gone. She hadna gone so far as that, to remove all sign of his injury. It would be all right. No one would know.

“Thank you,” Carson said, slipping his hands into the warm water. “They already feel better.”

With a low cough, Innes left the table, left the house in such a hurry that the front door slammed shut behind him.

Nae!
Winter Fawn thought frantically. He couldna do it. Her father couldna leave her again, the way he did over the rabbit.

With panic squeezing her chest, she bolted after him.

Those around the table stared in surprise.

“Is something wrong?” Bess asked.

It wasn’t lost on Carson that it was Hunter his sister questioned. But Hunter merely frowned and shrugged. Carson started to rise.

“Sit, dear,” Gussie told him in that kind voice that had pure steel running through it. “Finish soaking your hands. Whatever is going on, I’m sure Winter Fawn and her father do not need our help.”

Outside deep twilight had settled in. Winter Fawn finally spotted her father in the gathering darkness beside the barn, his flask tipped up to his lips. “Da!”

With a curse, he lowered the flask and turned as if to stalk away, but Winter Fawn ran and caught him by the sleeve.

“Nae,” she cried, holding on when he tried to jerk free. “Nae, ye willna do this again, not without so much as a word. Ye might as well put a knife to my heart as leave me again that way.”

Innes stared at her, dumbfounded. “Ach, what stuff and nonsense is this? I dinna ken what yer talkin’ aboot.”

Winter Fawn let out a long cry, one that had been held deep in her soul since the spring of her twelfth year. “Dinna tell me it is so unimportant to ye that ye canna recall riding out of our lives without a word, without a thought. Do yer own bairns mean so little to ye, then?”

“Lass,” he cried. “What are ye sayin’?”

“Ye canna deny ye saw what I did just now, with Carson’s hands.”

He looked away quickly. “Nae.” His voice lowered. “I canna deny what I saw, what ye did.”

“The last time…” Her voice broke over the words, the pain of saying them aloud. “With the rabbit. You said, never do it again. Then ye left. Ye left and ye didna come back, Da. Ye didna come back. Dinna leave again, Da.” A sob broke free of her will. “Dinna leave me again.”

“Lass.” Innes had not seen his daughter cry since the day her mother was killed. It shook him. “Ah, lassie, I swear, I didna leave because ye healed the rabbit. Ach, but I know ye couldna help that, any more than ye could help what ye did just now in yonder wi’ Carson’s hands. I wish ye
could
help it, for I fear it will be the ruin of ye, but it has naught to do with my leaving.”

“Ye were so angry.” She sniffed. “That time over the rabbit. Ye were appalled at what I’d done. The next day ye were gone.”

“Aye, I left ye. I’m no proud of it, but I canna deny it, lass. But it had naught to do with the rabbit, I swear to ye. Naught at all.”

Winter Fawn stared at him, stunned. If he spoke the truth…“Then
why,
Da? Why did ye leave us?”

“Ach, lassie, I couldna stay. Dinna ask me why. It was nothing that ye could help, but ye’ll only blame yerself anyway.”

“Oh.” Winter Fawn felt as if the earth had just tilted beneath her feet. “Then I was right. Ye left because of me.”

“Nae, not like ye mean.” Innes cursed. He’d gone about this all wrong. All he could do now was bare his soul and tell the truth. “I left because I’m I weak man and a coward.”

“Nae!” To Winter Fawn, her father was the strongest, bravest, smartest man alive.

Well, maybe next to Carson.

“Ye’ve never been weak, Da, nor a coward.”

“That’s a daughter’s love for her da speaking, and I thank ye for it. But the simple truth is, I couldna face another day with all the reminders of yer mother. Her loss was eating me alive. I wasna strong enough, am still not, to live without her. Ach, lass, ye look so much like her it fair takes me breath away.”

His words came as a shock to her. Everyone who had known her mother missed her. But they all went on, lived their lives, as was expected.

“Nae, Da, I canna help what I look like.”

“I know that, lass. It’s not yer fault I left. I canna get over that I shouldna hae sent her out into that storm,” he said with anguish. “I should hae gone myself.”

“But if anyone is to blame for her death,” Winter Fawn cried, “‘tis me. I knew a storm was coming. I should have returned to the lodge sooner on my own.”

“Ye were but a child, lass. Ye couldna know the consequences.”

His words could not wipe out Winter Fawn’s many years of self-blame, nor could she believe that her healing of the rabbit had not sent him away. He’d been so angry, so very angry with her.

He placed his hard, rough hand on her cheek. “Ah, lass.”

She could not recall the last time her father had touched her face. She turned in to the touch, rubbing her cheek against his palm.

“I know ye canna help the way ye look so much like her. I do not blame ye for it. Please dinna be blaming me for hurting when I’m reminded of her. She was my life.”

“Oh, Da.” A tear slipped down her cheek. It was past time, years past time for him to let her mother go. But looking at the pain in his eyes, she could not bring herself to say the words. When he turned away and walked toward the river, she let him go.

The wind picked up, stinging cold against the tears on her cheeks. She walked away from the barn and stopped halfway to the house, facing the wind, letting it dry her face. Hoping it would blow the confusion from her mind as well.

Every time her father looked at her and saw her mother in her face, the pain must surely be crippling. No wonder he stayed only a few days with Our People each spring. The miracle was that he came to visit at all.

All these years, she had thought it was something she had done that had driven him away. Now she understood. It was not a deed, not the healing of the rabbit, it was her mere existence.

It was said that Hunter, too, strongly resembled their mother. Was that a double burden for her father, or did he not think on it because Hunter was male?

Man-Above, what was she to do? For so long she had dreamed of living with her father. The three of them, her, Hunter, and Innes Red Beard MacDougall. A family. Together.

Now that could not be. As she stood there in the dark and stared blindly at the light glowing through the front window of the house, she mentally let go of her dream and allowed the wind to carry it away. Then she wiped another tear from her cheek.

No more tears. She must think. She must plan. She could not remain with her father. She could not stay with Carson. The only place left for her was with Our People.

A coldness settled in the pit of her stomach at the thought that her uncle and grandfather might force her to accept Crooked Oak. She would not do it. She would run away before allowing herself to be tied to him for the rest of her life.

But to where would she run?

Was there some other man among Our People she might find acceptable? Or perhaps among the Cheyenne. Yet the thought of any man but Carson touching her brought a cry to her throat that she barely stifled.

Yet she could not stay with him now. Even if she were willing to accept him without love, her staying would only bring him the scorn of his neighbors. She could never do that to him. He would grow, in time, to hate her.

And if her own father could not tolerate her gift of healing, how would Carson ever be able to accept it when he learned of it? He would learn, eventually. She would not be able to hide it from him forever.

Why not?
whispered a small voice in her head.

Indeed. She paused. No one else knew, and all these years she had been unable to keep from using the gift when confronted with someone else’s physical pain. Her grandmother thought she knew, but there was no proof.

No. She could not keep such a secret from Carson.

Her only choice, it seemed, was to return to Our People. Yet she did not know where they might be. She did not fool herself into thinking she could find them on her own while they roamed the plains in search of buffalo as they did this time every year.

In the fall, then. She would stay here through the summer. In the fall she would be able to find the place where they established their village for the winter to come.

The decision settled over her shoulders like a mountain of weight, but she could think of nothing else to do.

By the time Winter Fawn returned to the house, Carson had sent everyone off to bed. Maybe without such an avid audience Winter Fawn would talk to him, tell him what the hell had just happened. One minute she’d been caring for his hands, the next, running out the door after her father.

Gussie had helped him shoo Bess and Megan upstairs, but his aunt had not wanted to go to her own room. “It seemed a private matter to me,” she told him. “Between her and her father. Perhaps you shouldn’t interfere, dear.”

“You mean maybe it’s none of my business?”

She smiled slightly. “You always did speak more bluntly than I did. Yes, maybe it is none of your business.”

“If I can change her mind, Gussie, I plan to marry her. Everything about her is my business.”

Gussie raised her brow. “I have no doubt you’ll succeed with the former. As to the latter, Winter Fawn just might have something to say about that.”