"I'll get him," Harrison took the few steps to where William slept in the furs and squatted. "William," he said gently. "William, wake up."
Leah watched from Asare's hearth as Harrison spoke his first words to his son.
William rolled over, waking slowly.
"William, you must get up. Asare dies."
William opened his eyes. "What?" he asked sleepily. "What did you say to me, redskin?"
Leah saw a flash in Harrison's dark eyes. He almost cringed at William's response to him.
Please, William, she prayed silently. Show him your good side, your compassionate side.
"I said the old man Asare dies," Harrison repeated evenly. "He calls for you."
William sat up, drawing his knees under him. "So let him die," he answered coldly.
Harrison turned to Leah and their gazes met.
It had never occurred to Leah until this moment that there would be a problem between Harrison and William. For some silly reason she had assumed that he would love Harrison as she loved him. She got up and came to William. She pushed Harrison gently aside and squatted in front of her son. "Wills, he's dying."
"I don't care. Let the red bastard die."
Leah felt her hand tremble as she reached out to William. This was all wrong. This wasn't how her son was supposed to be behaving. Not her William. "Wills, didn't this man take care of you? Wasn't he the one who bought you from the man who took your from the fort? Didn't Asare take care of you when you were sick?"
"Yes. So?"
Leah could hear Harrison stand up behind her. She knew he must be thinking how cold and uncaring William was behaving. Of course he didn't understand children. He didn't realize how hard this had all been on William. The boy was just reacting poorly to a difficult situation.
Leah grasped William's hand and forcibly pulled him to his feet. "Wills, he's dying and he wants you to come to him. Out of respect—"
William turned up the corner of his upper lip in a sneer. "A man can't respect a redskin! Mother, I'm a Beale."
Leah tightened her grasp on his arm. "Out of respect for me," she said slowly but sternly, "you will come and say goodbye."
Reluctantly William allowed his mother to lead him to the hearth. Harrison hung behind them.
When they reached Asare, Leah knelt, pulling her son down beside her. "He's here, Asare," she said. "A . . . Aeana is here."
"Aeana?" Asare struggled to open his eyes, opening and closing his hand. "Aeana?"
Leah took William's hand and pushed it into the old man's.
"Here," she said. "Here he is."
Asare smiled. "Loved you, boy," he murmured as he squeezed William's hand. "Loved . . ." He wheezed one last time and then his head fell back.
Leah watched as Asare's chest failed to rise again and his hand went limp.
Running Rabbit gave a strangled cry and Leah leaped up, letting go of William. She went to Running Rabbit kneeling on the other side of Asare's body and she put her arms around the old woman. Running Rabbit struggled to remain in control of her emotions.
"It's all right, cry," Leah crooned, rocking her as if she were a child. "It's all right to cry for the man you love."
"My Asare," the Mohawk woman moaned. "My heart, he is gone."
Leah was so caught up in the woman's grief and trying to ease her pain that she didn't see William pull his hand from Asare's limp one, get up, and walk away.
Harrison followed the boy to the lodge doorway. It was all he could do to speak calmly without too much malice in his voice. He knew he shouldn't be too judgmental. He knew that if he was going to have a good relationship with his son it was going to take time. But someone needed to tell the boy how poorly he had behaved and if Leah wasn't going to do it, he was. "You don't seem to be appreciative of the man who gave his life for yours."
William glanced at Harrison, then away, as if he could dismiss him. "He was an Indian. Now he's a dead Indian."
Harrison's palm ached to strike the boy. Leah had told him how intelligent their son was, how good his memory was, how much he loved the Tidewater soil. She hadn't told him he was a brat. "It shouldn't matter what color a man's skin is. A good deed is a good deed. That man protected you. He cared for you until your mother could get here."
William shrugged. "She didn't have to come. I was coming myself, on my own."
"I doubt you'd have made it."
"That's what he said. Fool."
Harrison grabbed William's leather sleeve. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself to speak of a dead man that way."
William turned on Harrison, staring up at him with hostile black eyes. "Who are you to speak to me like this?" He jerked his arm from his father's grasp. "I don't know who you are, or what you are to my mother, but you'd best mind your own business, redskin!"
Harrison caught William's shoulder and spun him around, all patience lost. He didn't know why the boy had no manners, but damned if it was time someone taught him some! "Listen to me, you little upstart—"
"Harrison!"
Harrison looked up to see Leah standing behind them.
"What's going on?" she asked.
Was that a tone of accusation he heard in her voice? Harrison let go of William's shoulder and the boy bolted. He ran across the lodge and out through the doorway.
Leah stood there for a minute as if in indecision and then went out after William without a word.
With nowhere to go Harrison could only stand there, his anger boiling in his chest. Leah was such a sensible woman. Where had her sense gone in raising their son? How could she have allowed Beale to have formed his young mind with such rigid, intolerant thoughts? How could Leah have raised a son who was prejudiced, knowing his father was half Shawnee?
Harrison strode back across the lodge toward Asare's hearth, a bitter taste in his mouth.
"I'm only saying you should have handled it better," Leah repeated calmly as she walked beside Harrison.
They had left the Mohawk village mid-morning with food sacks and snowshoes tied on their backs. One of the men had given Harrison a precious Brown Bess musket, black powder and ammunition.
It had been hard for Leah to leave Running Rabbit, but she had hugged and kissed the older woman and swore she would never forget her and her husband and what they had done.
Now Leah, Harrison, and William headed south east. They would have to hurry if they were going to make it out of the Catskills before winter hit them hard with the first heavy snowfall. William ran ahead on the path, leaving Harrison and Leah privacy to talk.
"I could have handled it better?" Harrison groaned. "Damn it, I wasn't handling anything. Asare was dead. I was angry at how the boy behaved and I just reacted."
"You frightened him. You tried to bully him. He's only eight years old."
"Leah, that old man died so William could live. Eight years is old enough to understand that. It's old enough to show some respect."
"You're being too hard on him."
"You're being too soft on him. Christ, he sounds like Beale with that arrogant holier than thou tone in his voice."
Leah traipsed through the snow at Harrison's side, trying to remain in control of her emotions. She felt like she'd been through a sugar mill these last few days. So much had happened, so much had changed. She didn't want to overreact with Harrison, but she felt she had to defend William.
"Can you just give him some time? He's been through a terrible ordeal. He was captured by Indians. Of course he's going to be resentful of them."
"He was captured by men who were cruel to him. My guess would be that Asare and Running Rabbit were never cruel to him. They demonstrated nothing but concern for the boy. Leah, the old man loved him enough to carry him through the mountains on his back!"
"You're an adult." She ducked under the branch that Harrison held up for her. "It's easy for you to see the difference."
"That's weak, Leah. Weak. The boy's too damned smart for those kinds of generalizations and you know it."
"You're worried about this redman thing. That's it, isn't it? It's because you're half Shawnee. You're afraid of what he'll think of you."
"You're damned straight I am! How do you think this makes me feel? My son hates me. He doesn't know me, but he hates me because my skin is a different color than his. Hell, it's not even a different color. He looks like me, Leah. It's like staring into a mirror of the past when I see his face. How the hell didn't anyone ever guess?"
"Edmund's grandmother was black Irish. Everyone said he took after her with his dark eyes and olive skin."
Harrison gave a derisive snort. "My point is that it's going to be hard for the two of us to get to know each other when he makes his first impression by putting men into categories of white like Beale or not white."
Leah didn't know what to say. She honestly didn't know how to deal with the problem. But it was her problem. She loved Harrison and she wanted to make a life with him. But she loved William too, and if this was ever going to work, she was the one who would have to make it work. "I'll talk to him," she answered softly.
Harrison was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his tone was gentler. "Leah, I don't want this problem to come between us. You've been to hell and back these last few weeks, and you deserve a little happiness. I want to be the one to make you happy. I want us to all be happy together. I want to get to know my son. I want to love him like you love him. I want to look at him the way you do." He caught her hand and squeezed it through his leather mitten. "As much as I love you today, I want to love you more. We have such a future together."
"Future?" She stared up at the sky. She noticed a wall of gray was moving toward them from the northwest. "And what is our future now that I'm a widow?"
Harrison caught her shoulders stopping her in midstride. "What's our future together?" He looked down at her with those black eyes she had come to cherish again. "You're going to be my wife, Leah, and I your husband."
She couldn't resist a smile as she looked up at him. By all that was holy, it felt good to be loved again. "Husband and wife? How? Harrison, I can't live in a wigwam. I have a plantation to run. I have a son to raise."
"We have a son to raise."
She wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging him. "We have a son," she whispered. "But Tanner's Gift will be his someday. I have a responsibility to the land. God willing we're going to win this war and then William won't only inherit the land, but the country as well."
"I don't know enough about your war or why you believe in it. I've been away too long to understand it fully. But if you believe in the cause, if my father believes, then I do."
She laughed. "I'm not asking you to fight. I do my share for the war right there in my fields. I grow food to feed hungry soldiers, even a little cotton to spin thread."
"You're not asking me to fight?" he teased. He took her hand and they walked side by side, swinging their hands like school children. "Then what are you asking? You want me to shed my animal skins for silk tights and a pair of breeches? You want me to become a colonial planter again?"
"I wouldn't ask that of you. I couldn't. You've made your life with the Shawnee."
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'd like to be master of Tanner's Gift. I could play cards till all hours, race good horses, take myself a mulatto wench."
She scooped up a handful of snow off the ground and crushed it into his face. "Do it and I'll slit your throat myself," she threatened, ducking away before he could grab her.
Harrison bound after her. He caught her with two long strides knocking her down into a deep snowdrift. Leah laughed and squealed as he rubbed cold snow on her mouth. She kicked and struggled to get away.
"Ask me," he said.
She rolled her head back and forth, laughing. "What? Anything. Just let me up!"
"Ask me to come to Tanner's Gift. Ask me to be your husband and William's father."
Leah ceased struggling. Her hands found his shoulders. Their gazes locked. She had tried not to think about this, for fear Harrison wouldn't be willing to come home to Delaware. But he was saying he would come; he was telling her he would do it for her and for their son, wasn't he? "You would give up your life among the Shawnee for me?"
"It's been a long time since I was content there, sweet. Maybe I never was. I went to the village to get away from you and the world I thought had turned on me. But that was never really home. I missed my books. I missed my father." He kissed the tip of her cold nose. "I missed you. Come spring Starlight moves the village west. Everyone else went long ago. I never really considered going. I could never really fit in. I've too much of my father in me, I think." He smiled nostalgically. "I'd say it was well past time I came home, wouldn't you?"
Leah brushed her lips against his. "I love you," she murmured. "Remember that always."
They kissed again, but this time it was a lover's kiss, A kiss that sealed their future.
When Leah opened her eyes she saw William's knee high moccasins at eye level. She looked up to see him standing there appearing more like a general than a boy.
"Mother!" he admonished.
Harrison jumped up, grabbing Leah's hand and pulling her out of the snow.
"William," Leah said gently. She knew she had to tell him about Harrison, that she loved him, that he would be her husband, but this didn't seem the place or the time. So what did she say?
"William, I know this is difficult for you to understand, but—"
"Mother, you dishonor my father, your husband, with such behavior and you disgust me!"
Before Leah could say another word he stomped off down the path leaving her hurt and bewildered.
Chapter Twenty-three
Kolheek leaned against the inner wall of the small cave he'd discovered and fed bits of dry wood to the fire. His left shoulder ached so badly that his thoughts were jumbled. He could feel the weight of Leah-Beale's flintlock ball pressed against the shattered bone.
He added another stick to the flickering fire.
The bleeding had stopped, but now the wound burned with the evil spirits of infection. When he peeled back his leather tunic he could see streaks of red fingering out from the wound. He knew that if he left the lead ball embedded in his flesh, the streaks would spread until they reached his vital organs and then he would die.
The bitch. A few inches lower and she'd have struck him in the heart and killed him where he stood.
He smiled to himself as he pulled his blade from its sheath on his waist and held it up to the fire watching how the light gleamed off the steel.
But he didn't die. Kolheek lived. Kolheek lived to yet seek his vengeance.
He thrust the knife into the flames to burn away the evil spirits.
This injury was but a minor inconvenience. The loss of the boy was but a trial on the warrior's path. The woman Leah-Beale would not get away with the dishonor she had caused him at his village. Kolheek was not a man second best. Harrison would not get away with taking from him the woman he loved.
Kolheek blinked to fight the fog of pain and fever that threatened not just his thinking, but his consciousness. Who was it that he and Harrison had fought over so long ago? Had it been the black-haired Rain-Of-Spring, or had it been the fiery-haired Leah-Beale?
He would give her another chance. He would take her. He would give her the chance to love him as he had loved her, a final chance . . .
Kolheek pulled back the shoulder of his tunic to reveal the ugly wound. He turned slightly so as to get the best of the remaining sunlight. Outside the sky was gray and ominous, a snowstorm imminent. It would most likely be days before he would get out, but that was all right, it would give him time to heal. Kolheek had killed two rabbits and left them outside the entranceway to the cave carved out of the mountain. The rabbits would provide him enough food to eat and the snow would provide plenty of water. By the time the storm passed his shoulder would be healed sufficiently for travel.
Kolheek touched the tip of the razor-sharp blade to his flesh
and bit down on the corner of his tunic, bracing himself. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
When the storm passed, when he was stronger, he would track Leah-Beale and the Harrison. He would take the woman from the half-breed who thought himself better than others. He would show her that he was the preferable one, that he was a better man than the half-breed. He would let her make the choice—a second chance to make the right choice, the only choice. And then . . .
Kolheek sank the tip of the knife into his flesh and bit down hard on the leather in his mouth. He fell the knife tear through the skin and finally heard the metal of the knife strike the lead of the ball.
And then . . . She would be his or she would die again . . .
With a cruel twist of the knife he popped the ball out of the bloody hole and fell back against the cold stone of the mountain. With a last surge of determination he crushed a handful of prepared dried herbs from his medicine bag into the hole and covered it with a patch of leather. As he held the leather patch to his shoulder to staunch the bleeding, he stared at the cave wall concentrating on the image in his mind of the red-haired woman's face. He felt his knife slip from his hand but lacked the control to retrieve it. Everything was fuzzy now, the pain, the image of the woman he loved . . .
Patience, that was all a man needed to get what he wanted. Patience.
Kolheek closed his eyes and surrendered peacefully to unconsciousness.
"I say we keep walking," William insisted, running ahead of Leah and Harrison. "We keep moving. I have to get the messages to Lieutenant Ross. Papa said I had to do it as quickly as possible. The information might be vital to our army. That's what he said."
The snow had begun falling just after noon. At first it had been light flakes drifting from the heavens in a sheet of glittering white. But now the wind was howling and the snow was stinging their faces as it blew sideways out of the northwest. The snow was accumulating fast and the temperature was dropping.
"William, Harrison thinks it's best we stop and prepare for the storm. We get stuck without a fire in a blizzard and we'll freeze to death."
"Blizzard! It's just a few flakes." William floundered in a drift, flapping his arms as he tried to get to his feet. The harder he struggled, the deeper he sank in the soft snow. "We can't be weak. We have to keep walking."
Whispered Promise Page 23
