Phillips snapped out the words as he was already leaving them, disappearing into the growing gloom.
“I’ll tell Tay where you are,” he said, in a tone like a warning.
“He must think I’m in danger from you,” she said, her gaze unwaveringly fastened to Walks-With-Spirits’s.
You are. Let me tell you now, you are.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking deep into her eyes with a feeling like silent laughter moving him inside. “He seemed very concerned about me and my troubles. Perhaps he thinks I’m in danger from you.”
And I am. It is the Great Spirit’s own truth that I am.
The laughter inside him was a pitiful bravado in the face of that fear.
She took a step toward him.
He reached out and touched her mouth with the tips of his trembling fingers.
It wasn’t enough. He had been wrong about that. It was not enough.
Desire flooded him, stiffened his loins, weakened his legs. His lips flamed with the need to kiss her again.
But that way lay madness, he was living proof of that now. And the quick intake of her breath told him she knew the same thing.
She was helpless, too, however. Her lips closed against his fingertips in a kiss light as the brush of a butterfly’s wings. She kissed them again.
He thrust his fingers into the silky mass of her hair and cradled her cheek in his palm. He ran his thumb over her fragile, high cheekbone, traced the pert shape of her nose. The smooth, unspeakable softness of her skin moved against his hand as she snuggled her face into it and sent a warm melody singing through his blood.
He tilted her head back on her slender, beautiful neck and took her mouth with his.
And she took his heart away. With one, tiny welcoming whimper, deep in her throat, she reached right out and took his heart from his chest to keep forever.
She kissed him with a sweet, honest urgency like a promise and his eyes burned with tears.
How had he ever walked off into the woods without her? How would he ever do so again?
But someday soon he would have to.
Slowly, his arm burning all the way to his shoulder, he dropped it to hang useless at his side. He looked her up and down, devoured her face with his eyes and then forced them to fix on the ground, on her pale skirts swaying like a candle’s flame against the grass, its color changing from green to black in the quick-falling darkness.
“What did you want to tell me?” he asked, his voice too husky to recognize. “Or did you just say that to get rid of Phillips?”
“No. I want to say that I lied to you, and I’m sorry,” she said. “You are the only man I never lie to, and I won’t do it again.”
“Why not?”
“I … want us always to trust each other.”
Always.
The word hit him like the sharp blow of an oak branch across the back of his neck.
Bless her innocent heart. Always would be one moon’s worth of days and nights and that was all. That was why he must not touch her again—for her sake, not for his.
He’d known that all along. Why was he so weak when he was with her?
“What he did you tell me?”
“I said that I’m going to keep on trying to save your life only to assuage my guilt.”
He could barely hear her for the roaring of realization in his ears.
One evening, one, wrapped in the warmth of her smile and basking in the light of her eyes inside the cozy walls of the cabin, and one kiss—the very first one at the horse shed that had fired his blood and shattered his bones—had ruined him. When the afternoon shadows began to grow long today, he had come to her like a goose returning to its mate.
“And what did you have to say to Peter Phillips?”
Her face fell.
“He just kept telling me that the curse killed Jacob,” she said. “He wouldn’t tell me a thing about Jacob’s enemies.”
She came a step closer, her skirts swishing against the grass with a whispering like the voice of a spirit.
“I’ve got to go see William Sowers,” she said fiercely, “and ask if he overheard anyone arguing with Jacob. He worked for weeks building the mercantile and, aside from Phillips, he probably spent more time around Jacob than anyone else in these past few weeks.”
“Don’t go alone,” he said simply.
He knew when he said it he would go with her if she asked him. William Sowers was trustworthy, but it was a long way to his place and no telling what witch-hater would watch for Cotannah to ride by. He would not let her be in danger from someone else like Jacob Charley.
She looked at him, her eyes like shining dark pools in her pale face.
“If you went with me, I wouldn’t be alone.”
“And ride back from there in a thundering silence as we rode for hours from Greentree’s Crossing?” he said softly.
Her face changed, one quick emotion after another racing across it like birds flying across the sky. He saw it, he felt it, when the one realization he was willing upon her swept down and settled on her heart.
“No,” she said slowly, “we won’t act like that anymore. Ever. No matter what happens, let’s promise each other that. It’s a waste of precious time.”
He couldn’t help himself then, as hard as he tried to make himself be strong. He reached out and pulled her to him, wrapped her in his arms, and cradled her head against his heart.
Over and over again he stroked his hand through her hair, feeling the silk of it on his skin like the blessing of sunlight on a bitter cold day.
Chapter 14
It was in that moment that she knew how much she loved him and that she would never love anyone else. He wanted her, yes, just as Tonio and the other men who had held her had wanted her—she could feel his desire in the thrumming tension of his muscles and the hardening of his body against her. But unlike the others, he wasn’t concerned with pleasure, he hadn’t taken her into his arms for that reason. What Walks-With-Spirits cared about was her, her spirit, her real self.
She tightened her arms around his slender waist and nestled her cheek deeper into the solid solace of his chest, let every thought roll right out of her head. He was what she had needed all her life long.
He stroked her hair with his big hand over and over again, and the ease it gave her flowed from her scalp down her neck, down the length of her spine, collapsing her against him until they were melted together so surely they would never come apart. For an endless while he held her there, in the purpling twilight, and she clung to him, warm and safe, while the evening air grew briskly chill.
She clung to him until she had soaked up his closeness to fill her, until his presence had eased her heart and filled it lipping full with the sweet knowledge that this, this was love, come to her at last. This magic connection between them was love, this comfort and wanting and needing to give to him was what she had feared for so long.
But she shouldn’t have. Loving Walks-With-Spirits didn’t make her afraid. She lifted her head and leaned it back into his cradling hand, looked up into his half-open eyes.
“I love you.”
A smile, a quick, blinding smile that made her go weak in the knees came over his face and lit his eyes.
“I love you, Cotannah. That is the truth—in my body, in my spirit, in my harmony.”
She laughed.
“What? I don’t disturb your peace anymore?”
“You disturb every inch of me,” he growled, and pulled her even harder against him to prove it.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and went up onto tiptoe to meet his blazing kiss, his mouth lusciously moist and so hot it branded her, his body a rooted oak, strong enough to cling to in a rolling wind. He was as famished for comfort, for love as she, he crushed her to his chest and devoured her mouth with lips and tongue and teeth.
Then suddenly he stopped, as if sorry to have been greedy, and changed the kiss without ever breaking it, changed it to a slow, lovely savoring.
But not a gentle one—a tasting of lips and a twining of tongues that made shivers of pleasure run all through her blood.
She ran her hands over the bulging muscles of his shoulders and his back, stroked the satiny club of his bound hair, then jerked the rawhide thong from around it to drive her fingers through it before she began to caress the back of his big neck, glorying in the sheer strength she found in this vulnerable part of him, his skin sleek beneath her palm, his hair soft and shifting across the back of her hand. He scraped his teeth lightly over her lower lip and made a rough purring sound deep in his throat when he felt her trembling.
Then he trailed the tip of his tongue around the shape of her lips and dipped inside again, shoving both hands into her hair to catch her head in his hands as he had done that very first time in the cabin and he held her there, helpless and willing, while he plundered her mouth and drew her soul right out of her body. Deep, deep at the woman’s core of her she opened to him, wept for him to come in.
He cradled her head in one hand, then, and with the other reached to cup her breast. She turned a little to give him the aching tip, and he ran his rough thumb across it. The glory of the touch blazed through her like a fire.
Then a blow hit her at the backs of her knees.
“’Tannah! What you doing? ’Tannah!”
Even with the voice rising into a hopeful wail, and the small body with its rough splint supporting one arm pummeling her legs through her skirts, it took a while for her to realize that Sophia had joined them. Walks-With-Spirits tore his mouth from hers and clasped her to him, holding her head in the hollow of his shoulder, shaking all over now, as she was, while he circled his hand on her back.
“Sophia!” Emily’s voice called from out of the dusk. “Where are you, you little rascal girl?”
“Mama!” Sophia screamed. “I found ’Tannah.”
Then Emily’s voice, and Tay’s, sounded from someplace very near, and Walks-With-Spirits spoke to them over her head.
“Tay,” he said. “Do you know where William Sowers lives?”
“Over near Standing Rock Mountain,” Tay said. Then Emily cried out.
“Oh! Oh, my goodness, we are so sorry! We didn’t mean to intrude. We just never dreamed … Sophia! Come here.”
But Sophia’s one healthy small arm was firmly clasped around Cotannah’s legs and Walks-With-Spirits was loosening his hold on her. With a last squeeze of a hug, Cotannah let him go and turned to bend down and pick up the baby.
Emily reached out.
“’Tannah, let me take her away …”
Cotannah laughed. She couldn’t keep from laughing, the joy rising in her was growing so great.
“No, it’s all right,” she said. “Sophia’s come all the way out here in the dark to find me.”
“Dark!” Sophia agreed.
Tay was talking to Walks-With-Spirits, their bass voices rumbling quietly in the dark. The moon and stars were coming out overhead, and the sharp night air carried the scent of pines and junipers. Cotannah took in a long, shaky breath of it and held Sophia’s face to hers.
Life is wonderful right now at this moment. For this one instant, everything is all right, for the first time since I was born.
“What is it about William Sowers?” Emily asked.
Cotannah told her.
“Walks-With-Spirits and I are going to see him early in the morning,” she said, when she had explained. “I found out nothing from Phillips, but William has been around Jacob nearly as much as Peter those last weeks before his death, and he may know of some enemy we haven’t heard about.”
“He might know something,” Emily murmured. “But William’s a responsible person. I think he would’ve come forward by now if he did.”
Cotannah felt disappointment flood her face at that news.
“I’ll go talk to Olmun tomorrow and find out if he knows of any more enemies Jacob may have had,” Tay said quickly. “But it wouldn’t hurt to talk to William, too.”
A little silence fell.
Emily shivered and wrapped her shawl more tightly around her.
“Well, we’ll surely all keep on looking under every stone,” she said. “You must really question Olmun, Tay, and make him answer you.”
She sighed.
“Now it’s hard to get Olmun to admit that Jacob ever had a falling-out with anyone when everybody knows he had to intercede for him many a time in one dispute or another. He’s rescued Jacob from scrape after scrape, but now he refuses to remember any of that—he seems to be trying to proclaim Jacob a martyred saint.”
“Daisy told me that in town she heard Olmun saying that Jacob would never have tried anything with me if I hadn’t led him on,” Cotannah said.
Emily patted her arm.
“Don’t you take that to heart,” she said. “Like I said, Olmun’s refusing to see reality.”
Cotannah sighed.
“About Jacob he is, but he’s telling the real truth about me,” she said.
Then she marveled that she could speak of it so calmly, that the guilt didn’t overwhelm her. It was still there, but its cold fingers couldn’t even dent the warm feeling that filled her. Walks-With-Spirits was in this terrible predicament because of her, yes, but now the power of her love for him would make her strong enough to save him.
“I don’t care if you were making eyes at Jacob like crazy, if you were wearing that shameless dress or even if you told him you wanted him to ravish you right then and there on the ground,” Emily cried. “When you started telling him no, then he should’ve taken his hands off you!”
Cotannah smiled and hugged her friend. “I love you, Mimi,” she said. “You are the most loyal friend I ever had.”
Then she marveled that she’d said that, too, and that she’d meant it. It seemed incredible that there’d ever been a time that Emily had betrayed her. It seemed even more incredible that there’d ever been a time when she’d thought she loved Tay.
“Tay?” Walks-With-Spirits said. “May I impose on your hospitality and sleep in the shed with my friends here tonight?”
“You bet. We’d like to have you.”
A new, raw happiness filled Cotannah, a feeling so powerful it made her believe she could rise and fly. He was going to stay at Tall Pine tonight and go with her to see William Sowers tomorrow.
That’s all she ever wanted for the rest of her life: Walks-With-Spirits with her tonight and tomorrow.
They turned and started walking toward the big house in a tightly knit group, Emily, as usual, making small talk.
“We’ll all have hot chocolate and popcorn,” she said. “It’s way too early to go to bed yet.”
“Choc’late!” Sophia crowed, and Cotannah danced a few steps with her in her arms.
Walks-With-Spirits didn’t ask to stay the night at Tall Pine so he could come to her bed tonight or she to his—she knew him well enough to know that. But he had asked to stay because he was feeling the very same way she was feeling about him: he could not bear to go away and leave her, to be in another place where she was not there.
They loved each other. Neither of them would ever be able to go away and leave the other, not ever again.
By the time the sun had climbed halfway up the sky the next morning, Cotannah and Walks-With-Spirits were within three miles of their destination. The closer they came to the big hill called Standing Rock Mountain, the more excited she became. Not once, had he agreed with her that William Sowers just had to know something that would help them, but she knew it was true.
“I know you think it, too,” she said, finally, “so you might as well admit it.”
He threw her a slanting glance that she couldn’t quite read.
“And how do you know what I think?”
“The first thing you said to Tay when they found us kissing last night was to ask him where William Sowers lives,” she said triumphantly.
“That’s true,” he said, and he smiled at her in a sad way that scared her, “but I said it
not because I believe Sowers knows something that will help us but because for that first moment, when I had just torn my lips from yours, I had to hope that he did. Because I can’t help but hope for many, many years of kissing you or die.”
Shock brought stinging tears to her eyes.
“Well, what about this moment, this one right now?” she cried. “Don’t you still feel that way?”
His topaz eyes blazed at her.
“Yes! I could kill right now and deserve my death sentence for one taste of your mouth.”
She melted in her saddle.
“But I don’t know whether William Sowers will help us. I don’t know what we’ll find out, if anything, and I’m worried sick that you have your heart so set on finding a secret enemy for Jacob.”
“I know we will!”
“Cotannah,” he said, “I cannot bear for you to be disappointed. Please try to wait and see.”
They said no more, and she rode beside him with a little smile on her lips, for she knew she was right.
“There’s the Standing Rock Mountain,” he said, after a little while.
She followed his glance to the low mountain curving blue-purple against the sky. He rode out ahead of her and turned off the road onto a grassy track that led into the woods.
“Here’s the trail to the Sowers place,” he said. “Tay said it’s less than a mile from here.”
They rode single file through the woods without talking any more and soon came out into a rail-fenced clearing, a pitifully poor little solitary farm. There were a few head of cattle grazing in a long, narrow pasture, two milch cows, some chickens and guineas and two mules and five goats scattered about the property. The log cabin home sat in front of a small grove of oaks on a rise to the west of the ramshackle barn and pens. Behind it lay a scraggly attempt at a fall garden.
Walks-With-Spirits started his horse down the slight incline. Cotannah followed on Pretty Feather. As they approached the cabin, a man hobbled slowly around one corner of it into the front yard, gazing straight ahead, holding a forked stick in his hands. Not William. An old man with his hair in two long, white braids.
The old man saw them then and stopped in his tracks. A woman stepped out onto the porch as they halted the horses. She looked almost, but not quite, as old as the man who had begun walking toward them. His face had wrinkles upon wrinkles, but his eyes looked alert and sharp.
After the Thunder Page 23
