Say You Love Me

by Patricia Hagan

  "And you're sure you do." He said it as a fact, not a question.

  Jacie did not respond. That was something she had been thinking about lately, a lot, because she was not sure exactly what being in love meant. Michael was the only man who had ever kissed her, and she felt all warm and wonderful inside when he did, but was that love? She wondered. And the only person she had ever been able to talk to about it was Mehlonga. She could discuss anything with him, and when the subject was love, he always said she'd know when it came, because a spirit inside would speak to her heart, and then she would have no doubt. But Jacie had not heard a spirit, and she had felt nothing but the tingling feelings Michael so easily evoked with his touch, feelings that were nowhere near her heart.

  "You ain't sayin' nothin'."

  "There's nothing to say." She turned toward the door. "I'm going home now."

  "You do that," he called after her. "And you mind what I say and quit upsettin' the folks at the big house, or you'll find yourself livin' in a shack the rest of your life. Hear me now, girl."

  Jacie heard him, all right, but longed instead to hear the voice inside her that Mehlonga spoke of so she could be confident she truly loved Michael.

  Till then, she could not speak the words Michael longed to hear.

  Chapter 2

  Jacie took a sip of the concoction Mehlonga gave her and made a face.

  "Drink more," he urged. "It will stop the pain in your head."

  "What is this?" She shivered with revulsion.

  "Boiled turnip roots."

  They were sitting in their secret meeting place, a grotto formed in the rocks by a stream running down through the mountains. Jacie thought it was uncanny the way Mehlonga always seemed to know when she'd come there looking for him, like today. She had wanted the company of a good friend, and before long he had come out of the woods.

  She forced herself to finish drinking, then said, "I want you to show me how to make it, because I want to learn all I can."

  He reached into the deerskin pouch tied about his waist and brought out a pinch of something green. Patting it on her forehead, he told her, "These are the crushed leaves of the tulip tree. They also soothe a headache."

  He was a stern-looking man, his face etched with wrinkles from many years in the sun. He had a hawkish nose, a short, spiky gray beard, and eyes that seemed to bore right into a person. He had a turned-down mouth that never formed any hint of a smile. He took life quite seriously, and life had been hard. "The remedies are closely guarded secrets," he said, "passed down from one family and healer to another."

  He described taboos surrounding the ritualistic gathering of herbs and plants. "If a poisonous snake crosses your path, it is a bad omen. You should return home and not work with your medicine for the rest of the day. Remember not to pick the first plant when you start out. It has to be left as a symbol to all plants that you know what their blessings are.

  "But enough teaching for today," he said sternly. "I feel something bothers you besides the soreness from your fall. Is it because the spirit has still not spoken to your heart, and the time is near for you to marry Michael?"

  She sent him a wry and mirthless smile. "It's your fault, you know. If you hadn't told me to listen, I wouldn't be worried about it." She leaned back against the rocks, and taking the crushed leaves from where he had stuck them on her forehead, she tossed them into the water below, staring as the current carried them away and out of sight.

  Mehlonga watched her intently but did not speak. He knew when to keep silent.

  After a few moments, she said, "Daddy says I should marry Michael, that he's a good man and he'll take care of me."

  "Is that what you want?"

  "I don't know. I only know that he is good to me, and he adores me."

  "As your mother has adored your father?"

  Jacie glanced up sharply.

  "Remember how we met?" he prodded. "You were only a child, and you were lost. I found you crying, and I took you back within sight of your home, but while we were together, you told me you wanted to run away because you were so unhappy there."

  Jacie remembered. It was the only time she had actually left, but there had been many days since when she wished she lived anywhere but with her parents. For they were without a doubt the two most miserable people she had ever encountered. Her mother seemed to cry all the time, and her face was a cross patch of wrinkles; her father practically lived at the blacksmith shop, working when he didn't have to, to keep from going home.

  They had fights, especially when Jacie's mother drank too much cider. She would whimper that Jacie's father didn't love her, and when he got mad, so would she, and they would curse each other. Jacie had confided everything through the years to Mehlonga but assured him she had no fears her marriage to Michael would be like that.

  "It might be if you do not love him as he loves you," Mehlonga countered. "He might turn to drink, as your mother did, which would make you angry, and then the trouble would come."

  "That won't happen. I won't let it."

  "Listen for the spirit to talk to your heart," he warned again, "as it spoke to mine to tell me I loved my Little Crow."

  Jacie made no comment, knowing he was slipping into painful memories of how he had lost his wife. He had told her about it, how when the soldiers came to take the first Cherokees forcefully to a reservation west of the Mississippi, he had been away, gathering herbs high in the mountains. When he returned, Little Crow was gone. He tried to follow after her, only to learn she had been among the first to die on the arduous journey when hunger, cold, and disease took the lives of one of every four Indians. Mehlonga had gone home and avoided the soldiers ever since, not wanting to leave the place where he and Little Crow had been so happy together.

  Finally he spoke. "Sometimes I think I would like to go there, to the west to join my people. I am getting old, and I would like to live my last years among them."

  "Would you really travel so far, not knowing whether you would be happy after you got there?"

  "I have not been happy since I lost Little Crow, so it makes no difference. It's just something I want to do."

  Jacie knew Mehlonga had loved Little Crow with a love too deep for her to comprehend and wondered if her parents had ever loved each other at all. Once, during one of her mother's drunken tirades at her father, she had screamed at him that he probably wished she had also died in the Comanche massacre that had killed her sister, Iris. He had stormed out of the cabin without answering. Her mother had become hysterical then, and Jacie remembered being horrified by it all.

  "Mehlonga," Jacie said quietly, "I've listened to all you've told me about love and spirits talking to the heart, but the fact is, Michael is going to ask me to marry him at my birthday party, and I'm still not sure I love him. He expects me to say yes. So do my parents. I don't know what to do."

  "And I cannot tell you what to do. Just keep listening, child. Just keep listening."

  Jacie was more confused than ever but told herself she had to forget about whether or not she loved Michael and just accept his proposal and endeavor to make him a good wife.

  After all, what else was there for her?

  * * *

  Michael took the white velvet box from the wail safe and went to sit down at his desk before opening it. Lifting the necklace from its satin cradle, he held it up to the light streaming through the window. It was exquisite, the diamonds glittering to compete with the stunning purple of the amethysts. The jeweler in Atlanta had followed his design but had to rush to complete the piece in time for the party. The amethysts had to be ordered all the way from South America and were a long time arriving.

  Michael was proud and pleased over the creation. He had wanted to give Jacie not only a special gift for her eighteenth birthday, but also something as a memento of the night he asked her to be his wife.

  It was hard to remember a time when he had not loved Jacie. They had grown up together, and by the time he was twelve and she wa
s ten, Michael knew he'd never meet anyone prettier. She had hair the color of a crow's wing, but it was her strange and beautiful lavender eyes that took his breath away. That was why he had chosen amethysts for the necklace, knowing the splendor of Jacie's eyes would surpass even the beauty of those precious stones.

  Michael never had any doubts that he would make Jacie Calhoun his wife, but his parents were not pleased when they began to notice that he was thinking of her romantically. She was not of his class, they said, and he was expected to marry well, but he was stubborn and swore that when the time came, he would not court anyone else.

  The year he turned sixteen they sent him to England to study at Oxford. He argued that a planter did not need such an education, but they insisted he follow family tradition; all the Blake men studied at Oxford. And so off he went.

  Through his father's acquaintances, Michael was introduced to young ladies from London's finest families. Groomed to marry among their own class, they all had charm and grace, but Michael knew there could be no one for him but Jacie. And not merely because he found her so pretty. He loved her for her zest, her spirit, and when others raised eyebrows over her daring and sometimes unorthodox antics, Michael was merely amused.

  He made friends among his classmates, who took him to the streets of London to learn another side of life—the pleasures of the flesh. But those women were merely a harmless diversion that meant nothing beyond the moment, because he never stopped thinking of Jacie. As a child she had learned to read and write along with him, sharing his tutor at his insistence, against his parents' wishes, so they were able to keep in touch through their letters.

  His time abroad seemed to pass slowly, and Michael began to count months, weeks, finally days, until at last he was on his way home with but one thing on his mind—to make Jacie his wife as soon as possible, his parents' objections be damned.

  But fate had cruelly stepped in to decree otherwise, for Michael arrived home to learn that his father had died suddenly while he was in transit. The responsibility of running the vast plantation had fallen upon his young shoulders, and along with it, the obligation of the ritual of mourning, which could last from six months to two years. His mother declared the longest period. Marriage during that time was out of the question.

  Jacie was around, of course, and Michael treasured what time he could be with her. She loved horses and could usually be found at the stables, but she avoided the blacksmith shop. Michael knew she was not close to her father, who was a cantankerous sort. Actually, no one liked to be around Judd Calhoun, but he did his work well, which was all that mattered to Michael.

  As for Jacie's mother, Violet, Michael yearned for the day he could get Jacie away from her. She was cold and distant to everyone except Judd, doting on him to the point of obsession, though Michael heard she drank too much sometimes and there were terrible fights. But Jacie never divulged family secrets.

  She also never complained that her mother mistreated her, but Michael had his suspicions about that, too, and felt her constant cheerfulness was actually a facade to hide the misery she endured at home.

  It had always seemed to him that Violet only tolerated her daughter, that she felt that Jacie was actually in the way of her adoration for her husband.

  But Michael could not dwell on his love for Jacie or his concern over her unhappy parents, because he was determined to show everyone he was capable of running the plantation at least as well as his father had done. By working tirelessly, he had succeeded in doubling cotton and corn production and at the end of two years was richer than his father had ever been.

  He was proud of his accomplishment but happier still that the time had finally come when he could remove the crepe band from his arm and officially come out of mourning. His mother would probably, as some widows chose to do, wear black for the rest of her life.

  He was still gazing at the necklace and dreaming of the happiness ahead when his mother tapped on the study door as she opened it. "Michael, I want you to—" she began, then stopped short. Too late, Michael put the necklace back in the box.

  "What do you have there?" she asked, hurrying to the desk. "Let me see. Is it Jacie's present? You told me you were having something made in Atlanta."

  Michael braced himself. He had hesitated to show it to her, dreading her reaction. Reluctantly, he opened the box.

  Olivia gasped and sank into the nearest chair. The piece was decidedly finer and more expensive than any of her own jewelry.

  "I designed it myself," Michael told her.

  "I think this is far too extravagant for a birthday gift," she commented archly.

  "It's more than that," he said evenly.

  Their gazes locked, each challenging. Finally Olivia said, "I think it's too soon, Michael."

  "Father has been dead two years, Mother." He got up and went to put the necklace back in the safe. "I've waited long enough. I'm going to ask Jacie to marry me at the party. She can set the wedding date any time she wants. The sooner the better, as far as I'm concerned.

  "I know you don't approve of her," he added coolly, "but I love her. I always have and always will."

  "I just worry about what people will say, Michael. I'm afraid she won't settle down after you're married. The Blake name is highly respected, and—"

  "And what?" he flared. "What are you trying to say, Mother? There has never been a breath of scandal about Jacie. True, she's mischievous now and then, but always she is a lady."

  "She was not behaving like a lady when she rode that horse, using a man's saddle no less, and tried to jump that hurdle. Not only did she nearly get herself killed, but she brought back terrible memories." Olivia blinked and dabbed at her eyes with the lace handkerchief she plucked from her sleeve.

  "She meant no harm."

  "I expect you to honor your father's decree that jumping is forbidden at Red Oakes. And another thing, people are already talking about her and that old fool Indian. That's why I came in here to see you. I want you to forbid her to see him. Why doesn't the law do something about him, anyway?

  "I mean it," she said waspishly as she stood to leave. "You put a stop to it. You tell her if she is going to be a Blake, she can start behaving like one by not associating with savages."

  Michael could only stare after her as she headed for the door. He was not about to reveal that Jacie was quite stubborn about her friendship with Mehlonga.

  Olivia turned. "One more thing. You will need to send a carriage to Atlanta to meet the morning train from Charleston."

  "And who is coming from Charleston, Mother?" As if he didn't know.

  "Why, Cousin Verena and Cousin Elyse, of course. You didn't think they would miss a party at Red Oakes, did you?"

  "I didn't want them here. I intentionally left their names off the list."

  "And I intentionally included them. They always look forward to visiting."

  "They don't know when to leave. We have a wedding to plan, and I don't need Verena interfering. She always puts her nose in family business."

  "Verena adores you. She'll want to share all the excitement."

  Michael was about to protest but his mother breezed out the door, effectively ending the conversation. He slumped in his chair, miserable.

  He did not mind being around Elyse. She was nearly his age and sweet and charming. If not for his losing his heart to Jacie all those years ago, maybe he would have given serious consideration to marrying Elyse. They got on well together, and he hoped she and Jacie would be good friends.

  It was Elyse's mother, Verena, first cousin to his father, that Michael did not particularly enjoy being around. She always sided with his mother in any dispute, especially one concerning him, and he knew once she heard about Jacie's friendship with an Indian, she would be openly critical.

  But there was no more time to brood over unwelcome house guests. Glancing at the wall clock at the sound of a knock on the door, he saw that Zach Newton was right on time. Michael had postponed talking to the overseer ab
out the jumping incident until his temper had cooled. "Come in," he called.

  Zach entered and drew a deep breath, savoring the delicious smell of the fine leather furniture. He liked this room but didn't get to see it often. He could just imagine sitting himself down in the big sofa in front of a roaring fire on a cold winter day, a snifter of good brandy in his hand. But he was never called in for social reasons, and by the way Michael was glaring at him through steepled fingers from behind his big mahogany desk, Zach knew he was in trouble.

  "You wanted to see me?"

  "I think you know why," Michael said tightly.

  "Miss Jacie asked me to teach her to jump. I didn't see no harm."

  Michael suddenly slammed both his fists on the desk. "She could have been killed, and you know jumping horses is forbidden here!" he shouted at the overseer.

  Zach did not wither before Michael's angry glare and fired back in defiance, "Miss Jacie is a good rider. She wouldn't have fallen if you hadn't scared her the way you did. As for not allowin' jumpin', that's a ridiculous rule and—"

  "That is not for you to decide!" Michael bolted to his feet. "Get something straight, Newton. I make the rules, and you either follow them or get your gear and get off my land. The only reason I'm not kicking your butt over this is that Jacie made me promise not to. Now get out of here before I do it anyway, damn you."

  Zach turned on his heel and hurried out, silently cursing all the while. Damn wet-behind-the-ears upstart. Who did he thank he was, threatening to beat up on him? Zach just wished he would try, because he would find out just how little a fancy education in Europe meant in a fight.

  As for Jacie, Zach knew now she had to feel something for him, otherwise she wouldn't have bothered to take up for him like she had, telling Blake to go easy. Maybe one day he would have his chance with her, after all. Married women took lovers sometimes, and once she got a taste of a sissy like Blake, Zach would be only too glad to show her what it was like to tumble in bed with a real man.