Wild Embrace

by Cassie Edwards

“Not to show disrespect to your papa, Miss Elizabeth, but I don’t think I’m goin’ to enjoy livin’ in that house,” Frannie said, suddenly clutching one of Elizabeth’s hands. “It looks too ghostly to be lived in. How long has it been vacant?”

  “I’m not sure,” Elizabeth said, squeezing Frannie’s hand reassuredly. “But we must make the best of things, Frannie. We shall make this house a grand place in which to live.”

  She eased her hand from Frannie’s. Her fingers trembled as she gave the gate a shove and it squeaked as it slowly opened. She gazed once again at the monstrosity of a house, then walked through the gate: Frannie hesitated behind her. Elizabeth ignored the other servants who had arrived at the house before them, hovering together at the foot of the steps.

  “Come on, Frannie,” she said softly. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Frannie scurried to her side.

  Elizabeth proceeded to walk toward the house, grimacing as she made her way through a thick tangle of trees and brambles. Her father had not said how long it had been since the house had been occupied, but it did seem to have been quite a long time.

  Perhaps it should be even longer, she thought bitterly to herself. As far as she was concerned, she would as soon dive into a sea of sharks than live in this gloomy house.

  Elizabeth stopped at the steps that led up to a leaning porch, and looked upward. She felt overwhelmed by the size of the house. The wind sounded lonely as it whistled around its corners. Shadows and silence seemed to close in on her. And then a shutter banged, causing her to start.

  Swallowing back the fear building inside her, Elizabeth climbed the rickety steps and went to the massive wooden door with its ornate brass ornamentation, and found it ajar. With her heart pounding, she pushed the door open, squeaking hinges greeting her, echoing into the house.

  Elizabeth and Frannie entered and searched for candles and matches. Elizabeth finally found a branch of candles on a table and lit several white tapers. She then looked slowly around her.

  She was standing in a huge foyer that led to an ornately carved archway and down a broad, columned corridor that was broken at intervals by doors, and a wide, winding staircase that led upward to the second and third floors.

  Elizabeth shuddered, feeling a sense of evil lurking inside the house. The corridor held too many dark shadows.

  “This ain’t a fit place to be,” Frannie said, her eyes wide as she looked cautiously from side to side. “It ain’t a place to be at all.”

  Elizabeth breathed shallowly. The house smelled dank and musty. The walls were paneled with dark wood. The beamed ceiling rose dim and high above her. The oaken floors were bare, and silky with age.

  Determined not to let a mere house intimidate her, Elizabeth jerked her cape from around her shoulders and lay it across the back of a sheet-shrouded chair. Then she walked boldly toward the staircase, the skirt of her dress rustling in her haste.

  “I ain’t goin’ up there,” Frannie said, staring with fretful eyes up the dark staircase.

  “Hogwash, Frannie,” Elizabeth said, casting Frannie a quick glance over her shoulder. “Come on. Let’s find a room that I can call mine.”

  Frannie hurried to Elizabeth’s side. They ascended to the second floor, and walked slowly from room to room until they found one that was less dismal than the rest.

  Yet even in this room the plaster had crumbled off the walls, showing the white laths behind it. The only furniture was an iron bedstead painted white, a nightstand on one side, and a washstand with a chipped China basin on the other. A cracked chamber pot peeked out from beneath the bed.

  Frowning with distaste, Elizabeth went to the only window in the room. It was curtainless, small, and barred, and spotted on the outside with bird droppings. It looked out onto a gray gulley in the roof. Yet beyond, Elizabeth could see the estate grounds.

  As she peered from the window, a movement from below, beneath a tree, drew her attention. She removed a handkerchief from her dress pocket and rubbed it over the pane of glass, removing enough of the filmy dust to enable her to see better.

  Leaning closer, she peered intently toward the spot where she had seen the movement, thinking that perhaps it had been one of the servants exploring.

  Again she saw movement beneath the trees, and with the aid of the bright moonlight, she was able to see that it was no one she knew. Her heart skipped a beat when she realized that she was staring down at an elderly Indian clutching a tall staff in his right hand.

  “An Indian!” she gasped quietly, placing her hand to her throat, recalling the tales of the Indians’ hatred for the house. She had hoped that those troubles would remain in the past.

  Yet, it seemed not. Elizabeth watched, stunned at how quickly the Indian disappeared from sight.

  “Who?” Frannie asked, edging close to Elizabeth, trying to also see from the window. “Who might you be seein’, honey?”

  “An Indian,” Elizabeth stammered. “An old Indian. And he was carrying a staff.”

  Frannie gasped and placed her hands to her cheeks, her dark eyes wide with fear. “An Indian?” she cried. “Lord have mercy, Elizabeth. Has he come to take our scalps?”

  “I don’t know why he’s here,” Elizabeth murmured.

  When she realized how frightened Frannie was, she turned to her and drew her into her arms. “It’s best not to tell anyone about this,” she softly warned. “I don’t need a whole household of servants too frightened to sleep at night.”

  “You’d best tell your father,” Frannie said, pulling away from Elizabeth. “He’d do away with that Indian real quick like.”

  “No, I’m not going to tell Father,” Elizabeth said, turning to the window again. Her eyes scanned the land for signs of the Indian, yet didn’t find any. “No. Don’t tell Father. He’s got enough on his mind. Let me take care of this.”

  “But how?” Frannie cried. “It’s too dangerous! What if the Indian sets fire to the house?”

  Elizabeth turned back to Frannie and took her hands. “Frannie, if this Indian had wanted to burn the house down, he’d surely have done it long before we arrived,” she said, her voice much calmer than her insides. She could not deny that she was afraid, yet she was also intrigued. Perhaps a little bit of excitement was what she needed to fill her days. She would try to find the mysterious Indian and discover why he was there.

  Chapter 3

  If ever any beauty I did see,

  Which I desired, and got,

  ’twas but a dream of thee.

  —DONNE

  The next day Elizabeth slipped into her dress of pale green cotton organdy with its embroidered designs of white lilies on the skirt. Her lovely breasts swelled above the low, round neckline.

  Standing before a full-length mirror, she began pulling a hairbrush through her long red hair. She yawned. She had spent a restless night hearing creaking sounds in this strange house, and listening to the surf pounding against the walls of the bluff below her window.

  Wondering again about the mysterious Indian, she turned and walked to the window. Raking her gaze across the land below her, searching again for any possible signs of the elderly Indian, she lowered her hairbrush to her side. She knew that she should be more afraid of the Indian’s presence than she was, but for some reason she was more curious than frightened.

  And he had seemed harmless enough. He was an elderly man, surely only wandering aimlessly about because he had nothing else to do.

  Through the filmy haze on the window, Elizabeth peered into the distance, thinking that anything as beautiful as this land could mean nothing but a peaceful existence for its new inhabitants. She admired the forests of white pines and hardwood sweeping down the flanks of the mountains, and saw by the water, the dark green leaves of white birches trembling in the morning breeze.

  She stretched onto her toes to look at the brilliant sunlight flickering on the waters of the Sound.

  “My, oh, my, Elizabeth, I thought you were going to sleep the mornin�
� away,” Frannie said, as she came into the bedroom. She puffed and fluttered around the bed, fussing over the blankets. “Honey, you’d best get yo’self downstairs and get a warm breakfast. This mausoleum of a house makes one’s bones ache somethin’ fierce.”

  Elizabeth turned a warm smile to Frannie and lay her hairbrush on the nightstand beside the bed. “Frannie, it’s still early,” she said, securing her hair back from her face with a pale green satin ribbon. “What did you do? Get up at the crack of dawn?”

  “Earlier than that,” Frannie said, giving Elizabeth a frown. “The noises in this place kept my eyes wide open mos’ the night. I’m sure the house is haunted, Elizabeth. You watch yo’self. Somethin’ might grab you as you go explorin’ from room to room.”

  Elizabeth giggled as she swung away from the window and began walking toward the door. “Frannie, you seem to have survived the morning without being assaulted by ghosts,” she teased. “And I would wager that you have already been in all of the rooms, cleaning. It’s not like you to let anything go long without a thorough dusting.”

  Frannie pulled the last of the blankets up over the plumped-up pillows. Then she went to Elizabeth and gave her a soft swat on her behind just as Elizabeth started to step out into the corridor.

  “Get on with you,” Frannie said, chuckling. “And I must admit, honey chil’, you’ll soon see that things don’t look all that bad. Now that I’ve seen the rooms in the daylight, with the sunshine comin’ in at all of the windows, and with the dustcovers removed from the furniture, I think we can be comfortable enough here. The furniture is plush and the hardwood floors will be beautiful once they get a good polishing.” She clasped her hands. “And the rooms is grand.”

  Frannie then thrust her hands inside her apron pockets. “But it’s still too cold for my liking,” she said, giving a glance toward the marble-faced fireplace in the room. “But once we get all of the fireplaces goin’ with a fire, I’m sure it’ll soon be warm enough.”

  Elizabeth gave Frannie a hug. “Frannie, you know that you’d be happy anywhere as long as you had a roof over your head and me to spoil,” she said, laughing softly. “I love you, Frannie. I don’t know what I would have done without you after . . . after Mother left.”

  Frannie patted Elizabeth’s back. “Now, now,” she murmured. “Let’s not get to talkin’ about your mother. She’s a part of your past. Let it go, honey. Let it go.”

  Elizabeth stepped away from Frannie. She nervously ran her hands down the skirt of her dress. “Just when I think I have forgotten her, she’s back on my mind again,” she said cheerlessly. “I have never given up hope that Mother would return and my life would be normal again. But that is such a hopeless thought—I must stop thinking it.”

  “Yes’m, you must,” Frannie said, then placed her chubby hands at Elizabeth’s tiny waist and led her into the corridor. “Now you go on and eat some breakfast. There are plenty of eggs, bacon, and biscuits. And I unpacked a jar of honey just for you. That’ll sweeten your thoughts if nothin’ else will.”

  Elizabeth turned and planted a quick kiss on Frannie’s cheek. “You’re such a dear,” she said, then bounced down the staircase.

  When she reached the first floor, she was amazed at how much of the mustiness of the house had already cleared. The house now smelled of clean linens and furniture polish.

  Before going to the kitchen to eat, Elizabeth went from room to room, smiling when she saw how Frannie had already made them presentable, even inviting. Even the shadows seemed to be lifting.

  And Frannie had been right. The furniture was plush. And someone had paid a lot of money for the fancy tapestries that hung along the walls with the many gilt-framed portraits.

  Elizabeth then went to the library and stopped short, appalled by the array of horns bristling on the far wall, overwhelming the rows of books that lined the room on three sides.

  As Elizabeth looked slowly from horn to horn, she recognized those of the deer, antelope, and longhorn steer. Then she paled and placed a hand to her throat when her gaze found a perfect specimen of a bobcat. It was perched on a stand, as if ready to pounce on her.

  She grimaced, thinking that the taxidermist who had prepared this animal for viewing had been quite skilled and exact. The eyes of the animal were gleaming into hers, and its sharp teeth were glisteningly white and bared.

  She could not help but feel threatened by this room that reeked of death and danger, so she fled to the parlor and felt no less unnerved. No matter how much Frannie had tried, this room retained its mustiness, the sweet fragrance of the furniture polish unable to overcome the stale aroma of cigar smoke and smell of mildew that hung heavily in the air.

  “This won’t do,” Elizabeth said. “This won’t do at all.”

  She walked briskly to first one window, and then the next, lifting them open so that the room could have an airing.

  A brisk, chilly breeze blew in, ruffling her dress and the bow in her hair. She hugged herself, shivering.

  Yet she did not want to close the windows until the room smelled better. So she turned and eyed the fireplace. Wood was stacked neatly on its grate, old and yellowed newspapers wadded between the logs, to be used to help start the fire.

  “That’s what I’ll do. I’ll build a fire,” she whispered to herself. “That might also help lift the rank odor from the room.”

  Spying matches on a table, Elizabeth picked up a few and took them to the fireplace. She knelt down before the hearth and struck a match and held the flickering flame to the newspapers until several of them caught fire. Then she stood, patiently waiting for the flames to ignite the logs.

  Once they did, she turned to go get the breakfast that awaited her.

  But she didn’t get far. She was stopped by billows of smoke quickly filling the room. The smoke from the fire wasn’t drawing up the chimney. Instead, it was escaping into the room in great puffs of black.

  Elizabeth realized that the chimney must be clogged with something, more than likely a bird’s nest. Her eyes burned from the smoke. Her throat was closing up with it.

  Coughing and choking, she tried to feel her way to the door that led to the corridor, to escape to the outside. But before she reached the door, her hand touched something—someone.

  Startled, she looked up and peered through the screen of smoke and found herself face-to-face with an Indian. And it was not just any Indian. Nor was it the elderly Indian that she had seen the previous night.

  This Indian was handsome. His piercing steel-gray eyes mesmerized her as he stared back at her with what seemed as much surprise at seeing her, as she had at seeing him.

  Her sight swept quickly over him, seeing how muscled he was in his clinging buckskin attire, and how tall he was.

  Her gaze returned to his face. She was struck speechless by his handsomeness. She had heard that there was such a thing as love at first sight, in which one look weds two souls in everlasting devotion. She wondered if she was now experiencing such a phenomenon.

  He was causing strange sensations to flood her insides.

  Stunned by her reaction to the Indian and where her thoughts had taken her, Elizabeth remembered the past history of the house. How the Indians had obviously hated it.

  She took a quick step away from the Indian, his handsomeness not enough to quell her fear of him.

  “Who are you?” she managed to ask. “Why are you here?”

  Strong Heart was shocked, having never expected to find a lady in the house. From a nearby high bluff he had watched the activity on the beach. He had seen the moored ship, and several white men erecting some sort of building on the beach. He had thought that all of the white men were there, having not suspected that someone else might be here—in the house.

  When he had looked toward the house and had seen the smoke billowing from the windows, his first thought was of his grandfather, and that he may have finally found him. His grandfather could have set fire to the house to keep the intruders on the beach from l
iving in the old house that sat on the hallowed grounds of the Suquamish. Strong Heart knew that many years ago some of his ancestors had tried to burn the house down, but white people had stopped them by slaughtering them.

  Since then, none of Strong Heart’s people had tried to rid the land of the house. They had found peace and harmony elsewhere, on land far from this place of death and sadness.

  Only recently had Strong Heart become acquainted with the house and grounds, when he had returned to search for his missing grandfather. But the house had been empty the other times Strong Heart had gone through it.

  Now it seemed it was lived in again.

  And, he thought to himself, the house was now inhabited by someone as entrancing as the roses that grew wild in the forests.

  The woman’s hair was as red as the most lovely of the wild roses. Her eyes were as green as the grass that blanketed the earth and the sides of the bluffs. Her cheeks were as pink as the interior of the conch shell that could be found along the shores of the Sound.

  He looked down, seeing the swell of her breasts and the way they were heaving. She seemed to fear him. That he regretted, for he had not come to harm her. Nor would he ever.

  She was not the sort of woman any man could harm. His gaze lifted and he saw such innocence in her eyes and delicate face.

  Then his mind returned to sanity. He must ensure his safety. Fearing that the white men on the beach might also be drawn to the house by the smoke, and not wanting to be seen there, Strong Heart knew that he must leave.

  But first he would remove the lovely lady from the smoky house, no matter that her mere presence on this hallowed ground should anger him.

  When would the white people ever realize that this land could never belong to anyone but the beloved dead of the Suquamish? When would they ever realize they desecrated this land?

  But having fought this battle inside his heart more times than he wanted to count, and never winning, Strong Heart cast the sorrowful thoughts from his mind and whisked Elizabeth up into his arms and carried her outside to the porch.