by Lori Benton
Clare smiled briefly at her daughter’s antics. “What happened to his mother—Red-Quill-Woman, I mean?”
“She sickened and died last winter. She was elderly, like Split-Moon.”
“Is that why you and Wolf-Alone take such interest in Wildcat? Because Split-Moon is so old?”
“Partly…”
It had caught him off guard, how sudden they’d come up against a part of his past he’d yet to share with her, that he’d thought of sharing a dozen times, but…how was he to explain that Split-Moon and Red-Quill-Woman had started out his enemies, much as Rain Crow was to her, but had become his friends despite his doing everything so wrong? She would ask why that should be and he would have to tell her everything. He would have to talk of Hannah and the part he’d played in her death.
“Wolf-Alone has a special liking for the boy. Teaches him as an uncle would.”
He didn’t wonder at her interest in Wildcat. Likely she saw in the boy what Jacob might become should she fail to get him back.
Then he wondered a thing that hadn’t crossed his mind until that moment; if Rain Crow never relinquished Jacob, would Clare be willing to remain with the Shawnees to be near her son, even if she couldn’t have the raising of him?
Remain with him, Jeremiah, as well?
The idea was a flame, drawing nearer the possibilities that had fluttered lately around the edges of his thoughts. He liked that she was trying to live among the People, to give herself the chance—as he’d once done—to see more in them than the savages his raising, and initial experiences, had led him to see. That had taken courage, a yielding of soul that hadn’t come easy, a forgiveness only the Almighty had been able to work in him. And the grace to accept forgiveness in return.
Maybe he ought to tell her everything, what was done to him, the mistakes he’d made, who he’d been before he was Panther-Sees-Him, or even Jeremiah Ring. And what his willfulness had cost him in the end, why he was trying so hard to get it right this time.
Time. That was what had covered over those wounds, but what if he bared them to Clare only to discover they weren’t truly healed? Even if they were, dared he take such a risk again? Let himself love again as he’d loved once before, this time with full knowledge of what he risked?
Love again. The thought drew him up short.
Did he love Clare Inglesby?
Holding her baby in his arms, looking at her in the firelight, blond head bent to her work, he felt the stirring of body and soul and thought if she chose to stay with the Shawnees, and would have him, he would marry her in truth.
And then he would give her his heart. Everything.
He lay Pippa on the sleeping platform and sat beside her, letting the knowledge settle in his soul, alternately warming him and shaking him to his marrow.
Clare stitched on, none the wiser to the workings of his mind—thankfully. The baby kicked her legs and cooed. He felt a stab of pity for Philip Inglesby as he bent and grasped a tiny flailing foot and rubbed the tender sole against his scratchy chin.
Pippa made a squeak of surprise. Grinning, he did it again.
The next sound that erupted from Pippa’s mouth captured his heart and wrapped around it like a clinging vine.
“Clare,” he said, turning to find her staring, face shining with firelight.
Thrusting aside the moccasin, she rose and came to bend over her daughter. “She laughed. That was a laugh.”
“I believe it was,” he agreed.
“Jacob didn’t laugh until nearly twice her age.”
For several moments they stared at Pippa, as if expecting her to do it again, until Jeremiah’s focus shifted from the baby to her mother; Clare was bending close, their bodies brushing.
She seemed to grow aware of it and straightened. She looked down at him in the strangest way, as if with regret.
“You want her back?”
“No, Mr. Ring. You may continue to amuse her, if you wish. She doesn’t seem tired, does she?”
It was safer looking at the baby. “She’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, certain sure.”
Clare laughed. “Bushy-tailed?”
Jeremiah felt absurdly pleased to have made both Inglesby women laugh in the space of minutes. “Never heard the expression?”
“Never.”
“It’s something my mother would say.”
“Your mother?”
He looked up as her gaze sharpened. But if he’d stirred in her some curiosity, she seemed to brush it aside as she went back to the fire.
He wanted suddenly to tell her about himself, about the farm in the Shenandoah. His parents, both dead now. Even Hannah. But maybe she didn’t care to know. He was trying hard to fathom her mind. It wasn’t but two months since her husband’s death, yet when she cried in the night he didn’t think it was for Inglesby. But she must be mourning him in her way. At least mourning the life she’d had.
He gazed at her now, wondering again what it would be like if she was his wife. She wouldn’t be calling him Mr. Ring, for one thing.
As if she knew what he was thinking, she raised her eyes to him, and he saw the color rise to her cheeks. He wasn’t the only one sensing the growing intimacy between them, but it seemed to fluster her.
That wouldn’t do.
“Clare, this arrangement we have going is in name only, for the purpose of—”
“Getting Jacob back,” she said so promptly he knew he’d been right in surmising the reason for her discomfort.
“Aye. And I don’t mistake it for anything else, but…I do consider myself your friend.”
After a moment she nodded, accepting that. She seemed as distant as she had all evening, but guarded now. No longer serene. He wished he could read her mind, her very thoughts, and where had he been going with this?
“With that in mind, I was wondering…would you consider calling me Jeremiah?”
Her eyes flared in the firelight. She seemed to weigh the request, the silence stretching, making it seem more complicated than the simple thing it was. But who was he to judge what she found complicated? Her request to him must have seemed the simplest thing in the world when she’d made it. She’d lost her son. She wanted him back. He was able to help her, and he’d agreed to do it. Yet look how tangled it had become. For both of them.
“Not Panther-Sees-Him?” she asked, a slight teasing note in her voice, as if she was trying to lighten their mood again.
“I’d rather you called me Jeremiah.”
When he said no more, she gave a hint of a shrug, as if it mattered little. Or she wanted him to think so. “I’ll call you so if you wish…Jeremiah.”
He let the sound of it wash over him, almost wishing he’d asked her to call him the name by which he’d been known in Virginia, a name he hadn’t heard since…
A rustling at the door caught their attention.
Wildcat poked his head inside the lodge. He took in the sight of Jeremiah on the sleeping bench and started to speak, then noticed Clare by the fire and said, “I was looking for Wolf-Alone. He is not here?”
“No,” Jeremiah replied, though he didn’t think this was what the boy had begun to say.
Wildcat shot another look at Clare, who smiled in welcome. “Would you like to come inside? You could tell me how your bow-shooting went today.”
“It well,” the boy said in English. “Thank you.”
He ducked back outside, leaving Jeremiah taken aback. Wildcat and Clare had been spending time together, along with Crosses-the-Path, practicing English. He thought the boy liked her, but his behavior just now had bordered on the rude. Unless…had he wanted to speak to Jeremiah alone?
Pippa’s eyes had grown heavy-lidded at last.
“Mind if I go out for a bit?”
Clare stood, looking puzzled by the boy’s behavior but not terribly troubled. As if that, too, didn’t really touch her.
“I don’t mind.” She put the moccasin alongside its mate and came toward the sleeping platform.
/> Jeremiah headed for the door-hide.
Outside in the late summer dusk, the boy was walking away, though with dragging feet. Jeremiah called to him.
Wildcat turned quickly, as though he’d hoped to be followed.
Jeremiah closed the distance between them. “All right. What is it?”
He led Wildcat away until they were well out of earshot of anyone who might overhear. Then the boy answered his question.
It was the third night. The moon was high and bright, the sky a web of stars against the black. Though her path was well lit, it took longer than Clare planned to traverse the maze of lodges without arousing the alarm of man, woman, or dog. Wishing to kindle no suspicion by setting aside provisions, she’d brought little besides Pippa and her cradleboard, into which she now secured the sleeping baby, the noise of the procedure covered by the chatter of the creek at the wide bend where she intended to cross. She had clouts for the baby, a blanket from her bed, a wildly beating heart, and, contrarily, a weight of regret that had increased with each step taken from Jeremiah, asleep in Wolf-Alone’s lodge.
She didn’t like to dwell on what he would think when he found her gone. He’d proven himself a good man, despite his choice to live among heathens. She’d been fortunate he’d come along in her time of need. But things had taken an unexpected turn at Yellow Creek. She understood why he’d failed to keep his promise. So now that she’d taken matters in hand and would soon be reunited with her son, why did she feel as though she was failing in some way?
She would sort it out, but not tonight. Tonight only Jacob mattered. And escape for them all.
With Pippa secure in the cradleboard, she removed her moccasins and felt her way across the stones of the creek. She didn’t slip. Pippa wasn’t jarred awake. She reached the other side, donned her footwear, and made her way downstream to the spot where she was meant to meet Jacob. As she crept along the creek bank under the starry sky, stepping cautiously for fear of snakes and roots, it was all she could do not to call his name, aching to hear him call back from the riverine darkness ahead.
She would miss Jeremiah. She’d let down her guard with him these past days, much more than she’d intended to do. Without the constant strain of her need and his inaction souring the air between them, she’d felt free to simply be with him. She’d found a surprising pleasure in his tenderness with Pippa, how he’d been the one to illicit her first laugh. He could be gruff at times, aloof for no apparent reason, but he was also calm and patient and—
Ahead in the darkness a stick snapped.
A voice spoke. Another answered, sharp with surprise. Both were masculine, and they went on speaking, barreling over each other, rising with unmistakable anger and challenge until she could make out their disputing words.
“You won’t do it again!”
It took an eternity to cover the last brushy yards and emerge into the clearing where Jean-Paul Cheramy was meant to be awaiting her. He was there, with a string of laden pack mules—Clare smelled them before her eyes picked out their bulky shapes. The trader’s pale hair identified him, struggling on his knees in the grip of…was it Wolf-Alone?
A third figure stood over him, moonlight glinting off the knife blade held to the trader’s throat.
“Clare—keep back!”
Jeremiah.
She advanced on the trio, looking wildly about at men and mules bathed in silvery light that obscured as much as it revealed.
“Jeremiah? What is going on? Why are you here?”
“Madame, he—” Mr. Cheramy’s attempt to speak was cut off by a flurry of rough handling from his captors.
“Stop—what are you doing to him?” She halted a mere pace from the men, their faces now visible in the night. “Where is Jacob?”
Panic writhed up from her belly, wrapping around her brain and confounding her thoughts. She didn’t see her son, didn’t hear him.
Jeremiah passed the knife to Wolf-Alone and reached for her, fingers closing hard around her arm. “I said stay back. I don’t want you hurt.”
She yanked free. “Where is my son? And what are you doing to Mr. Cheramy?”
“Him?” Jeremiah’s contempt was unmasked. “Keeping you from throwing your life away on him.”
“My life? What are you saying? Mr. Cheramy agreed to help me! Why won’t you release him?”
“No,” Jeremiah said, a command to Wolf-Alone as much as in answer to her. “He never meant to help you—or Jacob, who is still asleep in Rain Crow’s lodge.”
“He’s still with Rain Crow?”
Everything was shattering. Again.
“Yes. Now listen—”
“No. Jeremiah, no! I don’t understand. Mr. Cheramy was to bring Jacob to me tonight and lead us out of this place, back to the Ohio. I’ve waited for you to do the same.” Her plan spilled out as if speaking it would keep it all from flying to pieces. Keep her from coming apart. “I understand why you cannot help me now. They’re your family. She’s your sister. But I want my—”
He grasped her shoulders. “Clare, be silent!”
“I’ll not be silent. I—”
“Perhaps if you will not be calm and listen to Panther-Sees-Him,” a voice said from the darkness, “who is trying to tell you what is happening here, maybe you will listen to me?”
It was a woman’s voice, rich and deep and Shawnee, though one who’d long since mastered English. Jeremiah released Clare as a tall, lithe figure stepped from the shadowy wood.
Even by moonlight Clare recognized Nonhelema.
Jeremiah seemed as startled by her appearance as was Clare. Wolf-Alone stood, dragging Mr. Cheramy up with him so they were all on their feet before Cornstalk’s sister, whose teeth flashed white as she smiled at Jeremiah and his brother.
In the moonlight it seemed a feral expression, more warning than warmth.
“I am not surprised to find the two of you here, though I think you did not expect to see me this night. I will tell you how I come to be here. Then you will tell me the same.” With a brief sweep of her hand in the semi-dark, Nonhelema indicated the trader. “Together we can decide what is to be done with that one.”
“Je vous en prie,” Mr. Cheramy began, an edge of desperation in his voice, but that same commanding hand raised against him, bidding him to silence and implying threat should he fail to heed.
Clare clamped a hand across her mouth, overcome by tears of disappointment and mounting remorse. Why had she thought this would ever work?
“This man,” Nonhelema went on, to Clare’s surprise and mortification addressing her, when all she wanted now was for the night to swallow her whole, “this one who I have much liked in the past—he is good to look at, is he not? And charming in his speech—him I have allowed to come into my town for trade even after my brother turned him away. This man, with whom you have allied yourself, went to the sister of these warriors and sought to purchase the boy who was born to you, who is now hers. She would accept no price for him. This she told me when she came to me as the sun was setting yesterday.”
Clare gaped at the trader, standing rigid in Wolf-Alone’s grip, head raised. Proud, it seemed.
She had surmised he’d meant to take Jacob without anyone knowing, that there would be subterfuge involved. He’d been so confident this could be done that she hadn’t thought to question how exactly he meant to do it.
Mr. Cheramy had tried to buy Jacob?
“So,” Nonhelema continued, “I set a watch on this man, and when it was told to me he was leaving in the night with all his mules and headed toward my brother’s town, where he is forbidden to go, I rose from my bed and followed.” Cornstalk’s sister turned to address them all. “Now here I find you gathered, and I am ready to be told what this is about…though I have a good idea already.”
Mr. Cheramy was shaking his head. “No, Madame. This is not what it appears. I had only the truest intentions of aiding this woman. I came here to tell her…of my failure.”
The man now hung his
head, though it seemed a calculated gesture. And his words, somehow they now rang false. Had anything he ever said to her been truly meant? Maybe none but this last. Failure.
“You are lying,” Jeremiah said. “You came to entice her away regardless of this failure, with some flimsy promise of fetching her son away eventually if only she left the Scioto with you tonight.”
“This is not true!”
Nonhelema gave the trader’s protest no heed. “It is with regret that I tell you, Cheramy, that as it is in my brother’s town so it is in mine: you are no longer welcome. You may do your trading across the river among Puckeshinwah’s people—if he still welcomes you. I did not want to believe it of you, but I see now that what the people of my brother’s town have said of you is true. You are a man who lures women away to do them no good.”
Clare remained as baffled by this turn of events as she’d been the moment she stepped into the clearing, ignorant of whatever the rest of them seemed to know full well. All she knew was that the trader didn’t have Jacob, hadn’t kept his promise.
And she had been a fool to trust him.
At Nonhelema’s request, Wolf-Alone was preparing to escort Cheramy and his mules away. The ripe scent of fresh droppings filled the damp night air.
Pippa, long since awakened in the cradleboard, started to cry. Jeremiah took Clare’s hand to lead her back toward the creek and Cornstalk’s Town.
She halted, balking as any mule. “Is no one going to explain any of this to me? I at least have things to say to you!”
Jeremiah never slowed his step; she was forced to move again or be dragged off her feet.
“We’ll talk,” he told her. “Or rather I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen. But not here.”
Inside the lodge, Clare waited in seething silence while Jeremiah fed the fire—surely for light rather than warmth, for the night was muggy and close. Methodically he laid stick after stick over the embers, watching them catch flame, until she could take it no more.
“Jeremiah?” Speaking his given name still felt awkward, but it was satisfying to say it through gritted teeth.
