Megan shrieked and started crying. “I didn’t mean to,” she wailed. “I didn’t mean to.”
Winter Fawn embraced her and lifted the girl’s hands from the dish water. “Of course you didn’t, lassie. ‘Twas an accident, that’s all. Hush now, don’t cry. You’ll make your pretty blue eyes all puffy and red.”
Megan hiccupped and sniffed. “It just slipted.”
“I know, I know. Sometimes that just happens.”
“I cut my hand.”
“Here, now, let’s have a look.” Already holding the child’s hands, Winter Fawn turned them over to check. Blood oozed from a slice across the palm of her right hand.
“Oh,” Megan wailed. “It hurts.”
“Nae.” Winter Fawn quickly slipped her hand around and covered the cut with her own palm. She felt the heat instantly, and the sting of the cut as the pain shifted from Megan to her. “You’re not hurt, not at all,” she crooned, hugging Megan to her with her other arm. “That silly ol’ number two plate just scared you, that’s all.”
Megan’s tears stopped instantly. “Oh, it’s hot.”
“Aye, hush now. There,” she said as the pain faded away. Cupping Megan’s hand in hers, she held it up. “See? There’s no cut there. You’re not hurt at all.”
Megan stared at her hand, then at Winter Fawn. There had been a cut, and now there wasn’t. Winter Fawn quickly dipped both their hands into the dishpan to get rid of the blood. She used her apron to dry Megan’s hand, then placed a kiss where the cut had been.
“Is it magic?” Megan asked, her face and voice filled with awe.
Unease crept across Winter Fawn’s shoulders. What could she say to keep the child from talking about it? Obviously telling her there had been no cut would not work. The girl had felt the sting and seen the blood.
Of course, since there was no trace of a cut, and the blood had disappeared into the dish water, no one was likely to believe a story about magic. But if she talked about it, Winter Fawn would be reduced to essentially calling Megan a liar, and she knew she could never bring herself to do such a thing.
“Aye,” she whispered. “’Tis magic, and a secret. If you tell anyone, it will never work again.”
“I mustn’t tell?” Megan whispered, her eyes wide. “Not anyone, not ever?”
“Not anyone.” Winter Fawn kissed the tip of her nose. “Not ever.”
“Okay,” Megan said with a grin, no longer whispering. She peered over Winter Fawn’s shoulder. “We mustn’t tell anyone, not ever.”
“So I heard,” Carson said carefully.
Winter Fawn whirled to find Carson and Gussie standing beside the table looking wary, confused.
“I declare,” Gussie whispered.
Panic seized Winter Fawn by the throat. Here was her opportunity to explain, finally, to Carson, yet all she could do was run.
“Winter Fawn,” he called as she flew out the door.
She did not pause. Ignoring Hunter and Bess’s startled expressions, she leaped from the porch and ran. With every pounding step, the word freak echoed through her head. Around the side of the house, past the garden, toward the sheltering trees along the river where the shadows of dusk gathered and offered concealment. Visions of two-headed men and three-eyed women waited for her, sprang out to point at her. Freak. Freak. Freak.
“Winter Fawn!”
She closed her eyes and leaned panting against the wide trunk of an old cottonwood. She had not outrun him. Foolish to think she could.
“Winter Fawn, talk to me.” He placed his hands on her shoulders.
They were strong hands, warm hands. Powerful, capable. Yet they could be tender and gentle, too. Clever enough to drive the breath from a woman’s lungs and all thoughts from her head. Despite her fears, she felt her knees turn to water from wanting him.
“What just happened in there? What’s going on? Why did you run?” With a gentle tug, he turned her until she faced him. “Talk to me.”
She swallowed around a lump of fear. “What would you have me say?”
He dropped his hands and stepped back. “You can start with telling me what just happened with Megan.”
The distance he placed between them felt as wide as a canyon. One by one she felt her emotions shut down. Better that than to feel the yawning emptiness of realizing that she might never be able to cross that canyon and reach him again. He might very well not want her to. “I don’t know what to say.”
In the deepening shadows Carson saw the light fade from her eyes. She was withdrawing from him again. Farther this time, faster. More completely. He grasped her shoulders again. “Don’t do this.”
She blinked up at him as though he were a stranger. “Don’t do what?”
“Don’t shut me out.”
She smiled slightly. “I love you. Did I ever tell you that?”
His heart skipped one beat, two. Never had he expected to hear those words in a tone that meant good-bye. “No, don’t.”
Frowning she cocked her head. “Don’t love you?”
He recognized that blank look in her eyes now, and it terrified him. He’d seen it before in the eyes of men in battle, men who had seen too much, men who could no longer accept what was happening around them so they closed themselves off in their minds where the horror could no longer touch them. To see that same look in Winter Fawn’s eyes now made no sense. And that scared him all the more, because he didn’t understand what put it there. He gripped her shoulders tighter. “Don’t leave me,” he said fiercely, pulling her to his chest. “Whatever’s wrong, we can fix it. Don’t shut me out, don’t leave me.”
She was trembling. “I’m so frightened.”
He held her closer. “Of what, honey? What scares you so much?”
Her arms slipped around his waist and held him hard. “The thought of losing you.”
“No.” He kissed her forehead, her temple, her cheek. “You’ll never lose me. Never,” he added fiercely as he took her mouth in a kiss so possessive that she had to know, had to understand that she was his no matter what, and nothing would ever change that. Fear sharpened the edge of his passion and the kiss turned more fierce, went beyond possessive. He plundered, he ravished. With his mouth, his hands, he branded her as his.
“Yes,” she whispered harshly when he left her mouth to devour her neck. “Love me, Carson, love me.”
“I do.” He took her down right there on the ground and ran his hand up her skirt. “You know I do.”
When he touched her there between her legs, she cried out. Frantically she fumbled with his belt buckle.
He tasted his way up her jaw and to her mouth and pushed her hand away. In seconds his pants were undone and pushed down, her skirt up to her waist.
Carson had one thing on his mind. Possession. If he couldn’t get through to her any other way, he prayed this would reach her, prove to her that he wanted her in his life, that he loved her and would not easily let her go.
Their bodies joined, and primitive instincts ruled. It was hot and hard and fierce. No pretty words or soft touches. Only racing hearts and pounding flesh. Hotter. Harder. Faster. Flashes of light. Yawning darkness. Something powerful just out of reach. Coming closer. Closer. Until it was there in their grasp. It exploded around them, within them, and when it turned and slammed into them they cried out together.
When they could breathe again, when they could think, Carson levered himself up and pulled her onto his lap. “God, I’m sorry. I never meant to…” He kissed her eyes, her nose, her lips. “You deserve better than the hard ground for your bed. Are you all right?”
Still reeling, Winter Fawn nodded. “I think so.”
Carson smoothed a hand across her cheek. “Now do you understand what it’s like for me? You’re a part of me, you’re inside me, a part of every thought, every breath. Do you hear what I’m saying? I love you.”
This time when she looked up at him, there was no blankness in her eyes. They glowed with warmth and love. “I like the way you m
ake your point.”
“I’m glad.” He kissed, her, this time with all the tenderness that was in him. “I love you. Whatever is wrong, we can face it. We can fix it, or we can learn to live with it, but I won’t let it come between us. Talk to me. Please.”
“Yes,” she said quietly, with what sounded like resignation. She pushed herself to her feet and shook out her skirt.
Carson joined her, and after straightening and fastening his pants, he waited.
Winter Fawn took his hand and gripped it tightly. “I don’t know where to start.”
“How about with a broken plate and a cut hand.”
She sighed heavily. “Yes. That is as good a place as any. Megan cut her hand.”
Carson drew in a steady breath. He had seen it, seen the blood. “I looked at her hand after you left. There was no cut.”
“I know.”
“But I saw blood. You have some on your apron.”
Winter Fawn looked down. In the glow of the rising half moon, the smear of blood on her white apron was plainly visible. “Yes, there was blood.”
“But then there was no cut. I don’t understand.”
Winter Fawn’s heart squeezed. No more evasions, no more hiding the truth from him. “There was a cut, and then there was not, because I healed it.”
Confusion gave way to denial on his face. “What do you mean, you healed it?”
“Do you remember when I held your hands after you’d fought with Mr. Vickers?”
Denial turned to wariness. “Yeah.”
“Remember how they ached, and then I held them? You said my hands were hot. And then your hands didn’t hurt anymore.”
“Of course. I’d been soaking them in cold water. Naturally your hands would feel hot after that.”
“And the pain?”
“The cold water took care of that. You can’t mean you think you somehow healed my hands, or Megan’s cut. Good God,” he whispered. “That is what you think.”
“If you have another explanation for Megan’s cut disappearing,” she said gently, “what is it?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But what you’re suggesting…”
“Remember in the mountains, the night before the blizzard, when I cleaned the wound on the back of your head?”
“What about it?” His tone said he didn’t really want to know.
“Remember how warm my hand was when I touched the wound? Remember how the pain went away and didn’t come back?”
Carson was finding it more difficult by the minute to breathe. Everything in him protested what he was hearing. “What you’re suggesting is impossible.”
“Aye,” she said quietly. “I know.”
“Winter Fawn, you’ve been ill. It hasn’t been that long since you were out of your head with fever. Maybe—”
“You would rather think I am crazy than believe me?” She pulled away from him. “Yes, of course you would. Because then you wouldn’t have to accept the truth. You wouldn’t have to accept what I am.”
He reached for her hand again and held tight when she would have pulled away. “What is it that you’d have me believe you are?”
“A freak. That is the word for someone who is not normal.”
“Honey, you’re not a freak. There’s nothing wrong with you that a little rest—”
“No!” She pulled free of his grasp and stepped back, holding out a hand to keep him from reaching for her again. “You asked me to tell you why I ran from you tonight. The least you can do is listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
“Nae, you’re not. You’re hearing my words, but you’re not listening. A few days after my mother died, Da brought me a pair of rabbits to skin and roast for his supper. When I reached for the first one, I put my hand over the spot on its head where Da had hit it with a rock. When I took my hand away, the wound was gone, and the rabbit got up and hopped away. Before you tell me I only imagined it, ask my father. He was there, he saw it. He saw it, he told me to never do it again, and he left. He left Hunter and me to be raised by our grandmother because he couldna accept that I have the same healing gift that his grandmother had.”
Carson tried to speak, but couldn’t. Just as well, because he had no idea what to say. What she was telling him was too farfetched to be believed.
“You don’t believe me.”
“I…I can’t.”
“Remember little Juney in the well?”
“Of course.”
“You—everyone—thought her leg was broken.”
Carson squeezed his eyes shut. He could see again the tiny girl at the bottom of the deep hole. The leg bent at an awkward angle. Broken. No other way for it to bend like that.
“You’re asking me to accept the impossible.”
“I’m asking you to accept me.”
“To accept that you can somehow heal wounds just by touching them?” he cried.
“Yes,” she hissed back.
“Prove it.” He pulled his knife from the sheath at his belt.
“What are you doing?”
He rolled up his left sleeve and cut a long slice down his forearm. He had to convince her of the truth, that she was imagining things. That what she claimed was simply not possible.
“Carson, no!”
He held the arm out to her. Blood oozed from the gash. “Prove it. Heal me.”
With a cry, she seized his arm, clasping her palms against the cut.
“Wha—?” Carson couldn’t get the rest of the word out. Her hands were hot against his skin. Abnormally hot, as hot as if she were still suffering the fever that had nearly killed her three weeks ago. The pain seemed to flow out of his arm directly through her hands. She whimpered as though in pain herself.
Suddenly he knew that somehow she was. His pain became hers. He could see it etched on her face.
He lowered his gaze, and shock froze his heart in his chest. She had rolled the sleeves of her dress up so she wouldn’t get them wet when washing the dishes. Her forearms were bare. As he watched, a thin line of blood appeared on one. The left one.
It was madness. It was impossible. It was…
Finally she released his arm. When he looked, there wasn’t a mark on him, nor on her. There was blood, on each of their left forearms. But no cut. He had deliberately sliced himself with his own knife. The knife was still in his hand. He had not imagined the cut, the pain, the blood.
Now, all but the blood was gone. He stared at her in shock. “How?”
“I don’t know. Da says his grandmother had the same…ability. I think of it as a gift. He calls it a curse.”
“Christ.” He ran his spayed fingers through his hair. Then something slammed into his back and pitched him forward into darkness.
Winter Fawn gaped as Carson grunted and pitched forward. The arrow sticking out of his back made no sense. “Carson?” In a daze, she knelt beside him. “Carson?”
Then reality burst through her. An arrow! “Carson!” As she reached for the arrow, her gaze darted frantically toward the river.
Who? Where?
Crooked Oak. She saw him jogging from beneath the trees along the river, not a dozen yards from where she and Carson had just been.
She tried to scream, but there was no air in her lungs. With all her strength, she gripped the arrow with both hands and tore it from Carson’s flesh. She threw it aside and slammed her hands over the wound, one hand atop the other for extra force and heat.
Instantly the pain struck her in the back. Carson’s pain. She cried out against it and felt a wave of dizziness. Concentrate. Get past the pain. Heal the wound. She’d never tried to heal so bad a wound before, except her own, that time in the mountains. She’d never faced so much pain from another.
Then something slammed into the back of her head. Before everything went black, one thought flew through her mind—not enough time. She hadn’t had enough time to heal him.
Chapter Nineteen
Winter Fawn came to lying on her side
on the ground. Pain throbbed at the back of her skull. Groggy, but remembering the arrow she had torn from Carson’s flesh, she reached for him.
“Good.”
Crooked Oak!
“You are awake,” he said.
She gasped and sat up, then gasped again as pain lanced behind her eyes. There was a small fire, she realized. On the other side of it sat Red Bull and Spotted Calf. She did not see her uncle. The only other person there was Crooked Oak, who loomed above her.
Crooked Oak, who shot Carson.
“What have you done?” she cried. “You killed him!”
“Yes.” Satisfaction was plain on his face and in his voice. “If you had not cried out,” he added with disgust, “I would even now have his scalp to decorate my lodge. But there was only time to kill him. I shall need to take other scalps to make up for missing his.”
It couldn’t be true, she thought frantically. Carson could not be dead. Man-Above, do not let him be dead.
But the arrow had sunk deep. She had made everything much worse by ripping it out. So much worse. And then everything had gone black. She lifted a hand to the back of her head and felt a large, tender lump. Merely disturbing the hair there hurt.
Crooked Oak must have hit her. She had been unconscious.
He had killed Carson.
Winter Fawn’s heart and soul cried out in anguish. The pain was too deep for tears. Like a wounded animal crawling into a den to lick its wounds, she retreated to the den of her own mind where the truth could not touch her. Nothing could touch her. She was empty. She did not exist.
“You do not weep or wail.” Crooked Oak crouched beside her. “This is good. You will be glad to be my wife. But you gave yourself to that white man,” he said between his teeth. “For that you must be punished.” So saying, he backhanded her across the face and knocked her down.
The blow jarred her from the nothingness she had fallen into inside her mind. With a snarl she rolled to her feet and sprang at him.
She took him by surprise and they tumbled to the dirt. She used her nails to scratch, her teeth to bite. She kicked and gouged and hissed like an enraged cat.
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