Shawnee Bride (10 page)

“One more thing,” he said, ignoring her sidelong glances. “And this is very important. The women dance holding scarves—White Moon will have one to give you. With the scarf, when a man takes your hands to dance, there are two ways you can dance with him.”

“Two ways?” Clarissa gazed up at him, intrigued.

“If you hold his hands through the scarf, he will know that it is just a dance, nothing more.”

“And the other way?” she asked, feeling the flutter in her body warm to a slow, licking flame.

A hint of color flared in his cheeks. “If you give him your bare hand, you are offering yourself for love.”

“Offering myself for love!” She was teasing him now, enjoying it. “And what if I confused my signals with some bold Shawnee warrior? Will you come to my rescue, Wolf Heart?”

He scowled at her in mock reproach. “If you’re foolish enough to think this is a joke, I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

Clarissa laughed and wriggled into his arms, pressing her face against his chest, savoring the aroma of his warm clean skin. “I like your way of dancing,” she murmured, dizzy with wanting him. “Teach me more!”

Veiled by wispy clouds, the moon, home of Kokomthena, lay above the stark filigree of the treetops. Its light deepened the woodland shadows and brushed the black expanse of the river with soft shimmers of gold. In the clearing where the great bonfire blazed, tiny orange sparks shot into the darkness, swirling upward with the smoke to lose themselves among the glittering stars.

From the ring of light around the fire came the sound of drums, chanting and laughter. The people had feasted on roast venison, stewed beans and fresh corn bread until they were sated. Now was the best time of all, the time for dancing.

Wolf Heart moved distractedly along the fringe of the men’s circle, his feet keeping a semblance of rhythm as his eyes followed the blaze of Clarissa’s hair. She was dancing with Cat Follower now, and even though the scarf covered her hands, the two of them seemed to be having far too much fun.

She had learned the simple dance steps well. Now she moved as easily as if she had been born to the rhythm. Dancing Fox. The name could not have suited her better. Her bouncing hair glowed like flame in the amber light
of the bonfire. She held her small proud head high, laughing as she gripped the crimson scarf and matched her partner’s steps, arching her back in a graceful curve that pressed the points of her small perfect breasts against the soft white buckskin. Even like this, watching her from a distance, Wolf Heart felt the surging swell of heat in his loins, and he knew he could not wait to have her again.

Dawn Star, Cat Follower’s erstwhile love, danced past him, her bare hands exposed behind her. Her fingers wriggled enticingly, but when he showed no interest, she moved on. Clearly she was looking for a way to make Cat Follower jealous. But she could look elsewhere, Wolf Heart resolved. He had lost all desire for such game playing. Tomorrow he would bring Swan Feather enough beaver skins, blankets, tanned hides and cured deer meat to make her a rich woman by Shawnee standards. Then, before the day was out, he would take Dancing Fox before the shaman and marry her in the old way, the proper way, which many young couples no longer followed. Before the sun, the earth and all the people, he would make her his.

She and Cat Follower had separated now, and Clarissa was dancing alone. Wolf Heart’s breath caught as she moved toward him, gazing into the bonfire, seemingly unaware of his presence. Her skin glowed like amber in the flickering light. Her eyes sparkled like the deep green stone he had seen long ago in a wealthy white woman’s ring. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever known, and he ached with love, ached to give her the whole world.

The whole world.

Concern darkened his spirits as she danced toward him, immersed in the rhythm of the drums, a dreamy little smile on her face. What she had done today, she had
done for him, he knew. But what could he offer her in return? How long would she be content with this life, sleeping on the ground, wearing crude buckskin garments and working her hands to raw blisters? And what of the future? What of his terrible vision. Could he, even in the spirit of love, ask this woman to share what lay ahead for the Shawnee?

She edged closer, her image blurred by smoke as the night wind shifted. For all her show of indifference, Wolf Heart knew she saw only him in the blaze of firelight, as he saw only her. Her slender hips swayed beneath the deerskin tunic as she brushed lightly against him, inviting him to dance.

He felt her bare hands m the darkness, felt them tremble as he took them in his own, and then they were moving together, their bodies burning with need, the sound of the drumbeats lost in the pulsing of their hearts.

S
low down, child’ You’re not making any sense!” Clarissa’s uncle, Colonel Benjamin Hancock, scowled at her over the rims of his spectacles. “You say you’ve been with the Shawnee, you have a husband, and he’s out there on the woods? Good Lord, girl, are you saying he’s an Indian?”

“Leave her alone, Benjamin!” Aunt Margaret’s arm tightened protectively around Clarissa’s shoulders. “Can’t you imagine what she’s been through with those savages? The things they do to women?”

“Please!” Clarissa tore herself away from her aunt’s embrace and flung herself toward her uncle. “My husband is a white man! His name is Seth Johnson! But he was with the Shawnee for so long he’s afraid of being mistaken for one of them! Send someone out to protect him! That’s all I ask!”

The colonel sighed. “All in good time, my dear. But first we have to get some food down you and get you to bed. You don’t look well.”

“Please!” Clarissa was beside herself, and the smell of roasting pig from the kitchen was making her nauseous. “He’s not far, but someone has to go now!”

“Oh, very well.” The colonel removed his spectacles and rubbed his prominent hooked nose. “I’ll order a detail out. But you may as well know the men won’t like it. There’ve been some nasty rumors of Indian trouble lately—soldiers being led into ambush and such. If they suspect a trap—”

“For heaven’s sake, Benjamin, just do as the poor girl asks!” Aunt Margaret snapped. “I’ll take care of her. She looks as if she’s about to—”

The rest of her words were lost in the sickening black swirl that flooded Clarissa’s senses. The floor opened up into a yawning hole and Clarissa pitched into it, spiraling down, down until there was nothing left for her to see, hear or feel.

Clarissa awakened in her aunt’s bed, surrounded by the scent and crackle of fresh linen sheets. A frantically exploring hand revealed that she was wearing a flannel nightdress, buttoned up to the top of her throat. The dimly lit room was stifling.

“You’re awake! Thank goodness!” Aunt Margaret bustled in carrying a tray with a small china teapot and matching cup and saucer. “How do you feel, dear?”

“I—I don’t know!” Clarissa muttered, still dazed. “My dress—”

“That dirty buckskin rag? I told Molly to bury it in the yard. The clothes you brought with you for your visit are still here in your trunk. But something tells me you won’t be wearing them for long.” She sat down on the side of the bed. “Clarissa, why didn’t you tell us you were with child?”

“There wasn’t exactly time.” Her eyes closed wearily, then shot open. She sat bolt upright, her gaze darting
frantically around the small bedroom. “My husband! Where is he?”

“Shh!” Her aunt pressed a firm hand to Clarissa’s chest. “Lie back. Too much excitement isn’t good for a woman in your condition.”

“Where is he? I want to see him!”

A long shadow, cast by the light from the doorway, fell across the bed. For an instant Clarissa’s heart leaped, but when she looked up it was her uncle she saw.

“My men combed the woods where you said your husband was waiting,” he said. “They never found a soul. He’s gone—if he was ever there to begin with.” His eyes narrowed skeptically as Clarissa stared at him openmouthed, too dumbfounded to speak.

“They did find one thing,” he continued, ignoring her obvious distress. “Does this look at all familiar?” He drew an object from behind his back and held it out for her to examine. Clarissa felt her heart drop.

It was a slim gray eagle feather—the same feather she had asked Wolf Heart to take from his hair that very afternoon.

“Give it to me!” She snatched the feather from her uncle’s hand and clutched it to her body, quivering with anguish. It all made sense now—Wolf Heart’s willingness to come back to the fort with her; his withdrawn silence on the way; his insistence, finally, that she go in ahead of him. How could she not have seen it? How could she have talked herself into believing that he would ever forsake his people, even for her?

He had been planning this all along, Clarissa reasoned, her fury mounting. He had betrayed her, abandoned her without so much as a civil goodbye!

As she stared at the feather in her hands, her chest began to jerk uncontrollably. Sobs erupted from her
throat, mingled with the senseless laughter of the bereft. Her shoulders heaved as scalding tears streamed down her face. She had forced Wolf Heart to choose, and she had lost him. She had lost everything.

The colonel backed away in mute horror, shaking his head. “Send for the doctor!” he muttered to his wife. “It’s quite obvious the girl is hysterical!”

Clarissa sat quietly in her rocker, watching the bright golden sycamore leaves flutter past her upstairs window. How she would like to be a leaf, she mused, to blow free wherever the wind might take her. To fly over the land, then settle, perhaps, on the sparkling surface of a stream, to be carried along in its current all the way downstream to the mighty Ohio. To float from there all the way back to the land of the Shawnee.

But such freedom was an idle wish, she reminded herself. She might as well be a prisoner in her brother’s house, shut away in this small upstairs room. Poor Clarissa, who, according to neighborhood gossip, had been captured by the Shawnee and forced to endure the most unspeakable violations of her body. Poor Clarissa who, it was whispered, would never again be fully right in her head.

As she shifted in her chair, she felt the familiar kicking and stirring inside her. Tenderly she cupped her hands over her bulging belly, protecting and caressing-the tiny life that grew there. Time was growing short. Three months at most, she calculated, and her baby would be born. She would hold Wolf Heart’s child in her arms and cherish all that remained of the love between them.

Junius was a decent man—that much, at least, she had discovered on her return to Baltimore. He had agreed to
support her and the child until such time as she might choose to remarry. But he had exacted his own terms in exchange. To avoid embarrassment to the family, Clarissa was not to leave the house for the duration of her pregnancy. To pay for the extra expense of her care, she was to give up the fifty pounds of gold that had been part of her dowry and, after her confinement, take over most of the housekeeping duties from the aging Mrs. Pimm. The safe, secure life she had longed for in the Shawnee village was hers.

Oh, Wolf Heart! Wolf Heart!

Straining forward, she stared into the autumn sky as if she could will herself away from this place and fly to his side. In the early weeks of their separation she had been furious with him. But she had long since forgiven his deception. She had pushed him too far, and Wolf Heart had made what he judged to be the only right decision.

She had no one to blame but herself.

From the street below, the sound of children playing tag filtered through the closed window. Clarissa pressed her face to the cool glass pane, trying to imagine Wolf Heart’s child growing up in this so-called civilized world. It would not be such a bad life, she reasoned. There would be ample provisions for food, shelter and clothing. There would be books to read, plays and concerts to attend. If her child was a boy, Junius might even be kind enough to pay for his education and, later, take him into the business. If a girl, she would learn the arts of managing a home and, heaven willing, grow up to marry a good man.

But Wolf Heart’s son would never creep through a thicket on moccasined feet to bring down a deer with a single arrow. He would never dive into an icy river to earn his
pa-waw-ka
or seek out a spiritual vision to guide
his life. Wolf Heart’s daughter would never walk through Swan Feather’s beloved meadow gathering herbs to heal the people who revered and trusted her. She would never dive naked and free into the deep, cold water of the rocky pool or prance joyously to the rhythm of dancing drums.

And as for herself—Clarissa touched her cheek where a solitary tear had left its cold wet track—she would never again awaken to the scent of hickory smoke and the sight of sunbeams trickling through chinks in the roof of a bark lodge. She would never again know White Moon’s gracious smile or Cat Follower’s teasing laughter. She would never again lie on a bed of soft skins, cradled by Wolf Heart’s arms, both of them warm and damp from the sweet fire of their lovemaking.

What a stubborn, pathetic fool she had been! During her early weeks here, when she might have been able to return to the Shawnee, pride had held her back. Now that same pride had crumbled away to longing. But her change of heart had come too late. With winter almost here and her pregnancy advancing into its last trimester, it would be difficult to make the strenuous journey to Fort Pitt and, from there, down the Ohio.

Difficult, yes. And dangerous.

She closed her eyes, and it was as if she could see Wolf Heart standing on the bluff, watching the river. She could feel the loneliness in him, feel him reaching out to her and to their child, and suddenly she knew that, whatever the odds, she had to go to him. It was that or live with bitter regret for the rest of her life.

Impatient now, she bolted out of the chair, flew to the door of her room and flung it open. As she descended the steep staircase, one hand gripping the banister for balance, she realized she was already breaking one of Junius’s rules—that she remain on the second floor except
when she had his express permission to come downstairs. To keep peace in the house she had complied with his demands. Today she no longer cared.

Mrs. Pimm flashed her a startled glance as she strode past the kitchen, but Clarissa did not stop to apologize or explain as she crossed the dining room and headed straight down the hall for Junius’s private office. She had done enough apologizing to last her for the rest of her life.

She found her brother at his desk, going over the accounts in his huge ledger book. He scowled at her as she burst into the room, thin eyebrows meeting above the pewter rims of his spectacles. “What is it now?” he asked irritably, as if this were the tenth time she had bothered him that day.

Clarissa resolved not to mince words. “I’m going home, Junius,” she said.

“But you are home.” His spidery fingers, ink stained where they gripped the quill, paused above a long column of figures. Junius Rogers might have been a handsome man except for the pinched, perpetually sour expression on his face. “You were born in this house, and whether you like it or not—”

“That’s not what I meant.” She faced him across the desk, as defiant as the figurehead on a man-of-war. “I said I was going
home.
Back down the Ohio, to my husband. I want my child to be born Shawnee.”

Junius sucked in his breath, staring at her in disbelief. “You’re insane!” he hissed. “I’ve defended you over these past months, but now I’m beginning to believe everything people say about you is true!”

Clarissa allowed herself a bitter smile. “If that’s the case, I don’t belong here in Baltimore, living off your money and causing you no end of embarrassment, do I?”

Junius rocketed to his feet. “But that’s preposterous! What will people say?”

“I don’t care a fig what they’ll say.”

“I won’t allow it, Clarissa.”

“And why not?” She stepped closer to the desk, stretching on tiptoe to bring her eyes even with his own. “You’ve already taken my dowry money, but I still have my land—land that’s growing in value every day. You can buy that land from me, Junius, for the price of my passage, and be rid of me in the bargain!”

She heard the small catch of his breath. It was an incredible offer—the land was easily worth ten times what she was asking. Still he hesitated, the left corner of his mouth twitching in a small nervous spasm.

“So?” she prodded him, anxious for an answer.

“You may not believe this, but I do have a conscience,” he said. “You are my sister, and I want to do right by you.”

“Then let your conscience rule for my happiness!” She seized his thin hands and gripped them tightly, something she had not done since childhood. “Take my offer, Junius. Take it and let me go!”

“Clarissa—”

She saw the welling of emotion in his eyes, the strain of his self-imposed isolation. “You deserve some happiness of your own,” she said softly. “Find a good woman who’ll care for you. Have a family. Fill this gloomy house with laughter and music and love.”

She saw his throat move as he swallowed. “I’ll have the papers drawn up for the transfer of the land,” he said. “And I’ll arrange safe escort for you to Fort Pitt and down the Ohio. You’ll want for nothing on the way.”

Impulsively she leaned across the desk and kissed her brother’s taut, dry cheek. “Let me know when everything’s
ready,” she whispered. “I’ll be upstairs packing my things.”

By the time the flatboat had reached the confluence of the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers, snow had begun to fall. Clarissa huddled in the lee of the deck house, watching the white flakes melt into the icy green-brown water. The damp cold air crept through her woolen cloak, chilling her to the bone. She had not been warm, it seemed, for weeks. But the cold was nothing compared to the fears that haunted her days and the images that stalked her dreams. What if she did not find Wolf Heart at the end of her journey? What if he had succumbed to fever, perished in battle or been killed by a bear or puma?

What if he had taken another woman—a woman born Shawnee—and no longer wanted her?

“Ma’am?” The boatman’s gruff voice broke into her thoughts. “We’ll be putting you ashore sometime this afternoon. You’re sure you know the place?”

“I know the place.”

“And you’re right certain you want to do this?” The man’s grizzled face was furrowed with concern. Junius, true to his word, had hired an experienced and reputable crew to take his sister down the river. They were good men and had treated her with the kindness and respect due a woman in her condition.

But even they could not be persuaded to venture beyond the open bank of the Ohio. Clarissa would have to walk the last three miles, up the tributary that fronted the Shawnee village, by herself.

“Ma’am?” The boatman waited for an answer to his question.