Winter's Touch (35 page)

Gussie smiled. “Can’t you hear them?”

He turned his head away from the wind and heard shrieks of laughter from the direction of the river. “They’re swimming?” He tugged on the brim of his hat. “Can they swim? That river’s pretty swift, and it’s ice cold. I’d better—”

“You’d better stay away from there, that’s what you’d better do.” She laughed at the way his brows climbed up. “Planting is dirty work. They’re bathing, and they don’t need an audience. Winter Fawn assures me she is a strong swimmer. She won’t let anything happen to Bess or Megan.”

He wished she hadn’t told him. He knew Winter Fawn would take care of the girls, but the thought of her doing so while wet and naked was enough to have sweat popping out across his face. “Oh. Uh, okay. Sure.” The sound of Winter Fawn’s laughter was something he had not heard in a long time. It started an ache deep in his chest.

“Well?” Gussie waved a hand out toward the new garden. “What do you think?”

Carson chuckled. “It looks like long rows of wet soil to me. Are you sure there are seeds in there?”

“Oh, go on with you.” She playfully swatted his arm. Then she smiled and looked back over the garden again. “Mr. MacDougall did a fine job with the plowing and the irrigation ditch and the dam.”

“Innes is just full of surprises these days. I’ll just…uh, go tell the men to stay away from the river.”

Winter Fawn enjoyed herself at the river so much that she hated to go back to the house. But they were all hungry, and the sun was sinking, and Megan was so tired, the poor little thing, even though she would not admit it. She had worked and played as hard as Winter Fawn and Bess. Winter Fawn suspected that the color in the child’s cheeks was as much from feverish exhaustion as from the sun.

“Come,” Winter Fawn said. “’Tis time to return.”

They traipsed back to the house through the tall lush grass. At the edge of the garden, they stopped to look. Winter Fawn slipped an arm around each girl. “We did something here today.”

Bess chuckled and braced a hand against her lower back. “Yes, we nearly killed ourselves.”

Winter Fawn shared in the laughter. “Aye, we’ll all be stiff and sore for the next few days. But just think. If something grows there—”

“If?” Bess protested. “Of course something will grow there. Everything will grow. You’ll see.”

I hope so.
Winter Fawn thought she would like to see something grow in the ground from a seed she planted.

With her arms still around the other two, they turned toward the house. Carson stepped away from the back wall.

Winter Fawn nearly stumbled at the sight of him. Her first instinct was to run to him and share the joy of this day, the thrill of working with the soil, the fun of playing in the river.

He wanted to marry her. The hot look in his eyes made her knees weak. He wanted her, and she yearned for his kisses, the feel of his hands on her body once more. But she wanted his heart, too, and he did not love her.

It was wiser, she knew, to keep him at a distance. If she gave in to him, he would grow to hate her. He would not long tolerate the prejudices of his neighbors.

But it hurt, turning away from him. Deep inside it hurt.

Carson watched the delight on her face fade away when she spotted him. Dammit, she wouldn’t even look him in the eye.

“Bess, Megan, why don’t you two run on into the house and help Aunt Gussie. I need to talk to Winter Fawn.”

He saw the refusal building in Winter Fawn’s face.

“Please,” he added.

When the girls were gone, Winter Fawn folded her arms across her chest and looked away toward the mountains in the west.

“You worked hard today,” he offered.

“We all did.”

“And you enjoyed it.”

“Perhaps.”

“I heard you laughing. I haven’t heard you laugh in a long time. It sounded good.”

When she said nothing, Carson was tempted to grab her and shake her.
Talk to me, dammit.
But he didn’t.

“Your father says you agreed to think about marrying me.”

“My father says too much.”

“Are you thinking about it?”

The quick flash of pain across her face hurt him, but it told him she cared. If she didn’t care, none of this would hurt her. Relieved that he hadn’t completely lost her yet, he scrambled for something to say.

Finally, slowly, he spoke. “You asked me the other night if I loved you.”

Her sharp intake of breath assured him he had her attention. “It is not important.”

“I don’t believe you. If it wasn’t important to you, you wouldn’t have asked. You wouldn’t have said you couldn’t marry a man who didn’t love you. I didn’t answer you that night because I didn’t know what to say.”

“It was a simple question. Yes or no would have served.”

“But for me it’s not a simple question,” he said. “I don’t trust love, Winter Fawn. Not the kind of love you meant. I mean, love for a child, a parent, that kind of love I understand. I accept that. But what passes for love between a man and a woman…I’ve just never seen it work right. Mainly I just trust what I can see and touch.”

“What about Megan’s mother?” Winter Fawn asked quietly. “Did you not love her?”

“Yes. I thought so. But it didn’t make either of us happy. It just got in the way.”

“It got you a beautiful daughter.”

“No. Love didn’t get us Megan. That was sex. Sex, I trust. I understand it. We could have that, you and I. It would be good between us, Winter Fawn. Better than good. I can make you happy if you’ll give me the chance.”

Finally, finally she met his gaze. “You ask me to give you, and sex, a chance. Yet you give love no chance at all. What happened with your wife that makes you so distrustful of love?”

It was human nature to protect oneself against pain, and Carson was not immune to such instinct. He had humbled himself before her more than with any other person. Yet still she pushed for more. He could not give her what she wanted.

With a shake of his head, he said, “That was a long time ago, and it’s not something I care to talk about.”

Winter Fawn had not thought her heart could ache worse, but she’d been wrong.

“This isn’t about Julia and me,” he said. “It’s about me and you, the two of us. It’s about the future, not the past. I’m asking you to give us a chance, Winter Fawn.”

“A chance for what?” she cried softly. “Do you not see the future you speak of, Carson? Have you already forgotten how you scraped your knuckles in town? How long will you want a wife who is scorned by all your neighbors? How long before you come to hate me for it?”

“I don’t believe you said that. Do you think I give a damn what those small-minded people think?” he demanded.

“Do you want their hate for me to fall on Megan? On Bess?”

“It won’t happen,” he protested. “Not if you give us a chance. Give those people in town a chance to know you.”

“Me?” she cried. “Why do they not give me a chance? They have judged me and condemned me because of the color of my skin. Now I know you cannot love me if you can suggest that the burden be mine. And you are not thinking of your family, of the hurt that could be done to them. And what if we had children? Do you want children with Arapaho blood? You ask if I have thought of marrying you. I have thought of little else for days, and I see no way for either of us to be happy. If you search your heart, you will know I speak the truth. You canna deny it.”

“Deny it?” Lord, had a woman ever made him so furious? “Why should I bother denying it, when you’ve got everything all figured out? You have all the answers, and they’re all bad ones. But you forgot one thing, and it’s something
you
can’t deny.”

She stood before him, half defiant, half wary. “What?”

“This.” Before she could protest, before she could slip away, he pulled her to his chest and took her mouth with his. No soft, exploring kiss this time, no gentle giving. He took. Hard and fast and deep, he ravaged her mouth with his, claiming her. She was his, by damn,
his
.

And he was bruising her. Appalled at his own harshness, he gentled the kiss and slid his arms around her, feeling her heart pound in rhythm with his. When her hands moved to his shoulders, he nearly sagged in relief. She still wanted him. This magic that happened between them was still there, still real. She felt it, too.

Slowly he eased his lips from hers and looked down at her face. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted.

When her eyes fluttered open he saw the hunger in them.

“Deny that,” he whispered. “If you can.”

Trembling, she stepped back and pressed a hand to her lips.

“I must go in now. I must…help set the table.”

Carson fought the urge to grab her again and never let her go. In his arms was the one place where she did not argue.

Instead, he let her walk away and tried to calm the fury, the pain rising inside him like a sickness. If she could walk away from him this way, he could not hide from the truth.

He was losing her.

During the next few days Winter Fawn tried to act as if nothing was wrong.

Gussie insisted on making a dress for her from some of the fabric she’d bought in town. At first Winter Fawn had been wary, until Gussie assured her that she would not strap her up in one of those awful things Gussie wore beneath her dresses. A corset, she called it.

Once that fear was dispensed with, Winter Fawn eagerly agreed to the new dress, but insisted on helping. She was good with a needle and thread. Her own steel needles had been given to her by her father many years ago. But along with everything but the clothes she had been wearing for so long now, the needles had been left behind. She hoped her grandmother, who had her own needles, would find someone to put them to good use.

Gussie and Bess had both brought needles with them, and they were smoother and finer than hers.

The blue gingham dress she and Gussie designed was made in a simple, wrap-around fashion with long sleeves and a decorative collar.

“Oh, it’s lovely,” Bess claimed. “And the color is perfect on you.”

Winter Fawn ran her hands down the skirt, loving the crisp feel of the new fabric. “I’ll be afraid to wear it,” she said with a smile. “I’ll get it soiled.” She was also afraid the new dress would draw Carson’s attention.

“That,” Gussie proclaimed, “is why you need another dress, of the dark green this time, I think. And an apron. That will help protect them.”

So, even as Winter Fawn strengthened her resolve to return to Our People in the fall, she took another step into the white world. She lived in a log house on a ranch, took heated baths in a tin tub, cooked on an iron stove. She sewed by the light of a glass-globed lantern. She wore a white woman’s dress. And like any white farmer, she studied the furrows in the turned earth every day for a sign of something green.

“Something other than grass,” she muttered, yanking out yet another interloper in the garden. The grass, it seemed, did not wish to remain plowed under. It knew where it wanted to grow and did not care that Winter Fawn had other plans for that particular patch of soil.

Every morning as soon as it was light Winter Fawn walked the garden, careful to step only between the rows where the precious seeds were planted. She pulled grass, checked the moisture level, carried water in a bucket if one area seemed too dry while the rest of the garden was still damp from the last irrigation.

Hunter stood by one afternoon watching her bend and stoop and inspect. “Da says you must have patience.”

She laughed. “Does he say where this patience is supposed to come from?”

Her brother smiled. “Nae.”

Winter Fawn strolled to the end of the row and stood beside him. “You are content here.” She made it a statement rather than a question, because she could see the truth of it in his face each day. He and their father were nearly inseparable, and Winter Fawn was glad for them.

“Aye,” he said. “That surprises you?”

“Nae.” She shrugged and watched a hawk glide high above the river.

“You would be content, too, if you could settle your differences with Carson.”

Winter Fawn shook her head. “It’s not that simple. Doesn’t it bother you the way they treated us in town?”

“Nae, why should it? Do you remember when we were children we talked about how we wanted one day to see the world our father described to us, the world beyond the one we knew?”

“Aye.” Across the river now, the hawk dove for its prey. “I remember.”

“Then after he left, we dreamed of going with him, of him coming for us one day to take us with him.”

“Aye, but we never thought about how the whites would treat us.”

“I don’t understand why you care about that.”

She shrugged again. “Maybe for myself I don’t, although I find it hurtful to be despised for nothing more than the color of my skin.”

“Do not Our People think of whites in the same way? Have we not raided the white man’s settlements and ranches and farms, stolen his cattle, sometimes even his children? Killed him and carried his scalp on our lances with pride? Simply because he is white?”

“No,” she told him. “Not simply because he is white. At least not at first. It was because the whites keep pushing us away from our hunting grounds, telling us we have no right to go where we will. Killing off all the game so we go hungry.”

Hunter nodded as though giving her the point. “Still, can you not see beyond your hurt and ignore those people in town?”

“Perhaps,” she admitted. “But how long can I ignore the fights Carson will get into because of me? How long before those people turn on Megan and Bess and Gussie for befriending us? Nae, I canna accept that. I canna be responsible for that.”

Hunter frowned at her. “You are not responsible. They are,” he said with a wave in the general direction of town. “And I will tell you this, sister, it is not your place to make decisions for Bess and the others, including Carson. They can make up their own minds if they want to deal with those other people or not.”

Deep into the night Winter Fawn thought about Hunter’s words. In the end they only served to confuse her more.

More than a week had passed since the seeds were buried in the soil behind the house. Winter Fawn was about to decide that the entire effort was a miserable failure, yet she could not stop herself from making her daily trek outdoors as soon as they had cleaned up after breakfast. The sun was usually just breaking the horizon by that time. It was not, perhaps, the best light by which to discover tiny green sprouts, but she would stand and wait for the sun to rise, for the light to come.