“What on earth is your father thinking allowing you to ride alone in this wilderness?” he said.
Her eyes suddenly widened and her jaw went slack and she stared up at him in total surprise at his brusqueness.
“How can you be so daring and foolish to ride alone when you know that I myself was only recently set free from my three-year captivity with the Sioux?” he demanded. “Do you not know that they would not hesitate to steal you away? They only recently abducted Chief Gray Feather’s daughter.”
Her mind scrambled by his rush of words, and by the anger in his voice, Flame was momentarily at a loss for words.
Then she inhaled deeply and squared her shoulders. “I’ll have you know, that after last night, when my father embarrassed me by treating me as a child in your presence, I made it clear to him that I am no longer one, and that the only way he can stop me from doing as I please is to tie me to a bedpost. And he wouldn’t dare do anything as rash as that.” She tilted her chin. “And I am not afraid of the Sioux,” she said tightly. “I’m afraid of no one.”
White Fire was taken aback by just how stubborn and high spirited she was. And though he was worried about her being so daring, he could not help but admire her.
“Well?” Flame said, straining her neck to look past him. “Aren’t you going to invite me in for a cup of coffee?”
White Fire laughed throatily. “I believe you came too early for coffee,” he said, unable to stop himself when he thought back to the dream that he had only moments ago awakened from. In truth, he wished to whisk her up into his arms and carry her to his bed.
He had to wonder what her reaction would be if he chanced it.
It was certain that she was not going to give up on their relationship as easily as he had decided to. But that was last night. This was today. He knew that he could never cast her from his mind, or heart.
And though he knew the obstacles that would stand in their way, he would let nothing or no one stop what had begun between them.
“Then I shall make the coffee,” Flame said, brushing on past him into the cabin.
In awe of her, and how she so fearlessly trusted him, White Fire closed the door and stood there and watched her as she slipped off her hat, then her gloves, and then the coat of her riding outfit.
The coil of red hair was stunning in the soft sunlight streaming through the windows. The generous swell of breasts was obvious as they pressed against her cotton blouse. Her waist was small where her skirt flared out away from it.
Everything about her threatened to rob him of his senses. He fought to keep sane and to push his hunger to kiss her from his mind.
As she tinkered in the kitchen, preparing the coffeepot with water and coffee, he grabbed a buckskin shirt from a peg on the wall and hurried into it. Nervously, he raked his fingers through his long, black hair. Then he stiffened as she came to him and looked him square in the eyes, with a smile that melted him almost into the wooden boards of the floor.
“Do you truly mind that I am here?” Flame asked, awash with feelings that she had only felt while in the presence of this man.
The dream that she had had last night made her even more determined not to allow her father to keep her from being with White Fire. After their embrace and kiss on the balcony she had gone to bed and dreamed sensual dreams of him the entire night.
She could hardly wait to get bathed and dressed this morning to come to him, to be with him.
Now it was like in the dream again as his dark eyes devoured her, telling her more than words could ever say.
“Do I mind that you are here?” White Fire said, holding back from reaching to touch her face, to draw the combs from her hair so that he could see it flutter down across her shoulders. “No.” He chuckled softly. “But I must admit, I’m somewhat surprised.”
“I had a dream last night,” she murmured. “In it, we . . . you . . . you and I . . .”
Finding it hard to be this bold, this daring, she could not say the words.
Instead, she turned and went into his kitchen and grabbed the coffeepot.
Then she went to the fireplace, to place the pot in the hot coals. She sighed heavily and gave him a forlorn look over her shoulder. “There is no fire,” she said softly.
“I shall remedy that,” he said, rushing to the fireplace. He bent down and placed kindling, small logs, then larger logs across the grate. In a matter of moments, there was a large enough fire with which to brew coffee.
After the pot was sitting at the edge of the flames, White Fire took Flame by the hand and pulled her down on the floor onto a soft cushion of blankets. It had always been his favorite place to lie in the evenings when the fire was cozy and warm.
“Your cabin is nice,” Flame said, looking slowly around her, ignoring the cobwebs in the corners of the open-beamed ceiling.
White Fire drew his legs up to his chest and circled his arms around them. He slowly looked around the room, then gazed into the fire. “Everything you see, the curtains, the furniture, the kitchenware, was of my wife’s choosing,” he said thickly. “When I returned home after my captivity, it was all covered with spiderwebs and dust. I only last night worked hard at getting it back in order.”
“Before or after the ball?” Flame asked softly.
White Fire turned quick eyes her way. “After,” he said, his eyes locked with hers. “When I first went to bed, I found it hard to sleep. I chose to clean house instead.”
“What caused your inability to sleep?” Flame dared to ask, her pulse racing to think she might have been the cause.
“Because of the Sioux, there are many things that are not as they should be in my life,” White Fire said solemnly. “They the same as killed my Mary.”
“Mary?” Flame said softly. “That was your wife’s name?”
He sighed. He gazed into the fire again. “Yes, an angel if I ever saw one,” he said, his voice breaking.
“You loved her dearly?” Flame asked, trying not to be jealous of her ghost.
White Fire knew what she was trying to get from him, and understood. He already knew that she loved him. It was in their kiss last night. It was in her persistence to be with him.
“Our love was different than most who are married,” he said, turning a slow gaze to Flame. “Mary had an abusive marriage with a French voyager. I found out from Colonel Snelling that he beat her into obedience. He died in a boating accident. She was lonely and scared. I married her.”
“You didn’t marry her out of love?” Flame asked. “It was out of pity?”
“I would not exactly call it pity,” White Fire said, combing his fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his brow. “She was alone. I was alone. Marrying her seemed the thing to do.”
He reached a hand out and gently touched Flame’s face. “I never felt half as much for her as I do you, and you are but a stranger,” he said thickly. “I never truly loved her. I just sort of quietly worshipped her sweetness, her compassion for life. And she gave me the greatest gift of all—a son. Michael. Ah, how I miss my Michael.”
“I would love knowing Michael,” Flame said, shivering sensually when his hand slid down from her cheek and across her long neck, then down to a breast, where he gently cupped it through her cotton blouse.
She closed her eyes and sighed. “I so badly wish to know you—everything about you,” she said, her voice filled with deep emotion.
Then her eyes sprang open quickly and she brushed his hand from her breast. “You must think me shameful,” she blurted out. “If you compare me with your Mary, I imagine you see me as too forward—as too shameful—ever to truly love as you surely wish to love a woman.”
“I love everything about you,” White Fire said. He gently took her by the wrists and slowly laid her down on the blankets. He knelt over her, his lips brushing against her mouth. “I think I fell in love with you all those many years ago, Flame, when you flirted with me with those deliciously green eyes and wondrous smile. Yet you were but a mere child. I
placed you from my mind until the day you arrived at Fort Snelling on the riverboat. When I saw you, I knew I could never truly love anyone but you.”
He kissed her with a meltingly hot passion, his hands releasing her blouse from inside the waist of her skirt. He could feel her shudder of ecstasy as he slid his hands inside the blouse. Their flesh seemed to fuse in the heat ignited between them.
Flame had not expected to go this far when she had come to him this morning, fresh from sensual, sweet dreams of him. Yet she could not stop what was starting now. Never in her life had she been so brazen with a man as now.
Loving him so much, she could not fight this hungry need that overwhelmed any thoughts that might stop her.
But when he suddenly rose from her and stood over the fire, his back to her, she came out of her passionate reverie and tucked her blouse hurriedly back inside her skirt.
Her face flushed hot, she rose quickly to her feet. “I guess I should go,” she murmured, then turned to White Fire. “Come riding with me. It’s such a beautiful morning.”
Still troubled by how his feelings had gotten out of control with her, having almost gone as far as coaxing her to make love, White Fire breathed hard and could not answer her all that quickly. His fingers tingled from the wondrous softness of her flesh. He had gotten so close to touching her breasts, it made his knees weak.
And, ah, her lips. They had been so soft! The taste had been sweet, like maple syrup made in early spring.
“White Fire, should I leave without you?” Flame asked softly, slipping on her jacket, and buttoning it. “Have I been too shameful this morning? Will you always hate me for it?”
Hearing the concern in her soft voice, and not wanting her to ever feel ashamed of her feelings, he turned quickly toward her. “Do you not know that I could never hate you?” he said, seeing that she was now fully dressed again. “And, yes, I would love to go riding with you this morning.”
He paused, then frowned. “But what about your father?” he asked warily. “Are you certain you wish to go against his wishes this much? That you might be seen with me, someone he thinks of as a ’breed?”
“If I worried about my father over such things, I would never be free to love,” Flame said softly. She went to White Fire. She framed his face with her hands. “And I love you. Father might as well learn to accept that.”
He swept his arms around her waist and drew her against his hard body. Holding her in his tight embrace, he lowered his mouth to her lips. Their kiss was frenzied in its fiery passion. Their bodies strained hungrily together.
Then, again not wanting things to get out of hand, at least not yet, he eased away from her. His pulse racing, he slipped into his moccasins, grabbed his rifle, then took her by an elbow and led her outside.
After saddling his horse, they rode off together into the bright sunshine-dappled morning. Laughing and talking, telling each other of their families, and speaking of their wishes for the future, they rode through a thin growth of timber, mostly ash, with some elm, maple, oak, and birch. Wild roses vined up the trunks of the trees and wound along the ground in successions of pinks, whites, and reds.
They rode across a plain of tall, green grass. They rode past an occasional cornfield and cabin.
Fleecy clouds sailed overhead as they rode along the river, the fort a short distance away, where there was much activity as traders came and went in their canoes, and on horseback.
At the sight of the fort, White Fire wheeled his horse to a stop. Flame drew a tight rein beside him.
“I think you should get back home before your father decides to come looking for you,” White Fire said, reaching over to take one of her hands.
“I understand that he has hired you as his interpreter,” Flame said, smiling. “Before he realized that you and I had feelings for one another, he confided in me that he has tried for months to find someone as skilled and knowledgeable as you in the various Indian languages. I doubt he is eager to be put in the position of finding another interpreter. So he just might look past more than he might have, because you are so important to him.”
“I would not get that confident about anything your father feels or says,” he said, frowning. He waited a moment before telling her how he really felt about her father, not wanting to upset her.
Yet, by the different things she had said, and by her desire to take her freedom when she wished to, it seemed that she knew the true character of her father.
“In your father, I see such a deviousness,” he blurted out. “So be careful, Flame. I truly believe your father might be capable of anything.”
“That is why my mother eventually divorced him,” Flame said sullenly. “But I believe she made her decision too late. All through their marriage she was ill with one thing or another. I now believe it was because of the strain of living with my father.”
“Yet you came to live with him after your mother died?” White Fire could not help but question.
“Only because I saw adventure that I could not deny myself here in the Minnesota wilderness,” she said. She smiled slowly and her eyes twinkled. “Nor could I ever forget that you were headed for the Minnesota Territory all those years ago when I first met you.”
“You thought you might find me?” he said, forking an eyebrow at her admission.
“I never doubted for one minute that I would,” Flame said, giggling.
She sighed, gave him her most winning smile, then rode off. “I shall see you again very soon,” she said across her shoulder as their eyes locked and held. “I can hardly believe that I did find you, and that you love me!”
“Fate brought us together again!” he shouted back, waving as she rode on away from him.
His insides soft and mellow with an intense love that he had never felt before, White Fire laughed out loud and wheeled his horse around and rode back in the direction of his cabin. He was ready for that cup of coffee from the pot that she had made for them.
Then he must concentrate solely on Michael.
But he knew that Flame would always be there in his mind no matter what else he pursued while they were apart. He closed his eyes as he envisioned the time when they could both feel it was right to make love.
His cabin only a short distance away, White Fire opened his eyes and wheeled his horse to a stop when he saw a horse tied to the hitching rail just outside his cabin.
Not recognizing the horse, he drew a tight rein and slid his rifle from the gun boot at the side of his pinto.
Riding at a slow lope, he proceeded, his eyes wary, his heart pounding.
Chapter 15
Our state cannot be severed, we are one
One flesh,
To lose thee were to lose myself!
—John Milton
So unsure of who might be waiting for him in his cabin, his three years with the Sioux fresh on his mind, and not trusting that they had accepted his release that easily, White Fire dismounted in the shadows of the trees and tied his horse’s reins around a low limb.
His rifle clutched in his right hand, he moved stealthily toward his cabin, his eyes watching for movement on both sides of him. He knew that many Sioux could be hiding there. Although Chief Gray Feather’s warriors had escorted their Sioux captives back to their home, which was far from this area, warning them never to return again, White Fire could never believe the Sioux would allow the Chippewa to dictate to them.
Yet he knew that Chief Gray Feather was aware of the other bands of Sioux a day’s ride from here. If Gray Feather had taken any Sioux captive, those others who got word of it would rebel. There would be an out-and-out war between the Sioux and Chippewa, and no one wanted blood spilled needlessly.
White Fire reached his front door and saw that it was slightly ajar. He inhaled a nervous breath, then kicked the door open and jumped into the cabin, his rifle poised for firing.
He was quick to lower his rifle when he saw Chief Gray Feather sitting on the blankets before a gently burning fire in the fire
place. Around him on the floor were many tied bundles, and something else that made White Fire’s eyebrows fork with wonder.
“You see the gifts?” Chief Gray Feather said, smiling up at him. “They are from me to you.”
Very aware of why the chief was there again, bearing many gifts, White Fire smiled awkwardly. He leaned his rifle against the wall, then went and knelt down on his haunches beside the chief.
“When I saw the horse outside, I did not recognize it as yours,” White Fire said, trying to ignore the gifts which he knew were Gray Feather’s bribe to make him do what he wished—marry his daughter.
“The bay-bay-shee-go-gah-shee, horse, was a gift to this old chief from a friend in a neighboring village,” Gray Feather said. “I have brought special gifts to you from Gray Feather. Take. Enjoy.”
“I understand why you have brought the gifts,” White Fire said, his voice drawn. “But—”
Before he could finish, Gray Feather interrupted him. “There are blankets, pelts, jewelry,” he said, motioning with his hands toward the bundles. Gray Feather rose and stretched out a hand to White Fire. “Stand before me,” he said thickly. “Listen seriously to what this old chief says. It is being said from the bottom of his heart.”
White Fire stood up. He swallowed hard when the Chippewa chief placed gentle hands on his shoulders and gazed into his eyes with much warmth and pleading.
“My nee-gee, friend, I have come again to ask you to leave this white world behind you and be my daughter’s husband,” he said. “Be a father for my granddaughter! I would be proud to have you as a son. White Fire, I saw it in a dream! The face of the man sitting at my right side in council was you. You sat there in the capacity of a son.”
White Fire was torn by feelings at having to disappoint this wonderful man again, especially since White Fire himself felt so much for him, as though they were father and son.
Yes, he could understand the chief’s persistence, for the chief’s feelings for him had begun before he had left to join Colonel Snelling at the fort. This, perhaps, was why White Fire had felt the urge to leave. He had never joined the Chippewa with plans of staying with them forever. It was just something that he had gotten caught up in. Their magic and mystique had been so intriguing it had been easy to stay with them and learn. Until he had arrived at the Minnesota Territory, he had been denied everything of his Indian heritage. The hunger for it had been fed while living with the tribe.
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