Candace McCarthy (24 page)

“Then I will bathe your wounds,” he said, grabbing her arm and tugging her toward the lake.

“Mary will care for them,” she insisted, trying to pull from his grasp.

“Mary will be busy with Rising Bird.”

Unable to argue that point, Joanna slumped with defeat and allowed Fireheart to escort her past villagers who stared at them, down the trail to the large body of glistening water.

“Sit,” he said, helping her to rest comfortably on her favorite rock.

She started to rise as he dipped a small clay bowl into the water. “Fireheart, I can tend to my—”

“Sit!” he ordered, turning to push her down. “I am the
sachem.
You will listen to me!”

Aghast that he would use his authority that way, she obeyed him, more because she was so surprised by his commanding display than for any other reason. As she watched him refill the bowl with water, she slowly came to her senses and her temper began a slow boil.

She felt a fiery heat that tightened her stomach and brought a hot flush to her cheeks. “How dare you—”

His expression as he faced her was tender, caring, and the diatribe she was about to deliver died before it left her lips. He looked as if he ... loved her.

She closed her eyes as he began to wash first the scratches on her arm. Loved her? She shivered as he raised her head to wipe a soft piece of cloth over a small scratch on the underside of her chin.

“You were a brave
Hokuaa,”
he murmured huskily. “This man was proud of Rising Bird’s Lenape daughter.”

She opened her eyes to meet his gaze, but still felt the tingling of his touch. “I wasn’t brave. I was frightened.”

He paused in the act of washing the particularly sensitive area behind one ear where she must have been cut during her first struggle with John. “A good warrior must always be fearful. To escape fear makes a Lenape careless. Back there, you were a good warrior woman, Autumn Wind.”

She flushed with pleasure at his praise. “Thank you.”

He stared at her lips. “Do not thank me, Joanna. I let you leave the village, and I should not have done this. If you had stayed, your friend Gillian might still be alive, and you would not need someone to tend to your injuries.”

He looked regretful as if he blamed himself for all that had happened to her. She knew that the opposite was true. She had acted impulsively, irrationally, anxious to flee without regard for her own or anyone’s safety.

She grabbed his hand, halting him as he moved to cleanse the tiny gouge on her breast. “The fault is mine alone, Fireheart. You must not take the guilt. I won’t allow it.”

Then, unable to bear having him touch her intimately but with dispassion, Joanna took away the cloth and stood.

“Wa-neé shih,
Fireheart. I am able to take care of the rest of my injuries.”

Joanna came into the wigwam as Mary was tending Rising Bird’s wound. The warrior was stretched out on his sleeping pallet with his wife seated on the edge, bathing his injury.

“How are you feeling?” she asked her cousin’s husband.

He grinned, and the smile reached his eyes. “This man is well. It is good to have you back with us, daughter.”

She returned the smile before meeting Mary’s gaze. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Her cousin waved her concern away. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“But Rising Bird would not be injured if not for me.”

“Nonsense!” she exclaimed. “It is John Burton who did this, not you.” She shuddered as she set down the water bowl and the piece of doeskin that she was using to tend her husband’s shoulder. “Every time I think of what he could have done to you—”

Joanna didn’t want to remember her time with John Burton. She wanted only to forget the man and what he had done.

“Did you get the bullet out?” she asked in an effort to redirect the conversation.

Mary showed her the bloodcovered slug.
“Kihiila.
It came out easily enough. I used these.” She held up a tool made of deer bone. “Fortunately, he’s suffered no serious damage.”

Rising Bird grunted. “That is what you say, woman,” he grumbled, holding the arm beneath the wounded shoulder. But Joanna saw a twinkle in his midnight-dark eyes.

Smirking, Mary shook her head. “You’ll live, husband.”

“If I can live through your medicine,” he grumbled, smiling.

Mary bent her head again as she continued to work on Rising Bird’s injury. “Joanna, we’d like you to stay,” she said without looking up.

Joanna thought she seemed tense as if afraid that if she looked at Joanna she wouldn’t receive the answer she wanted.

“I’d like to stay in the village,” Joanna admitted softly, “but—”

“What is it that upsets you, daughter?” Rising Bird asked. “Is it the property in England?”

“Kihiila.
I am responsible for so many people there, and I’ve neglected my duty to them since Roderick’s death.” She sat down on her sleeping platform. She couldn’t neglect her duties any longer because people needed her. It wasn’t right to punish them for her uncle’s deeds.

“When I received Mary’s letter, I couldn’t remain,” she continued hoarsely, remembering. “I wanted so badly to come. But I was torn. I didn’t know if I’d be welcome.”

Mary looked at her, her eyes filling with tears. “I know,” she said quietly. “We are glad you came.”

Joanna gave a soft smile. “I am, too. I thought,” she went on as if she hadn’t been interrupted, “that I’d left the estate in good hands, but—”

“But?” Mary prompted.

“ ’Twas John Burton I left in charge,” she said with regret. “I left that madman to run Neville Manor.”

“You do not sound like you wish to return to that place,” Rising Bird said, moving to sit despite his wife’s protests.

Joanna shook her head.

“Isn’t there anyone else who can run the property?” Mary asked.

“I thought not . . . until recently. Now I believe there may be someone. Roderick Neville’s rightful heir. But I don’t know where he is, or if he’d want the property.”

When husband and wife looked at her with questioning gazes, Joanna explained. “Kenneth Neville,” she said. “After we’d left the village, John Burton told me that Roderick Neville had a son. Roderick disowned the boy when the child left with his mother.” She became thoughtful. “I imagine that the wife left him because he was cruel to her....”

She didn’t finish speaking aloud her thoughts. Mary already had an inkling of the abuse Joanna had suffered at her uncle’s hands. If he’d been cruel to his niece, he had probably been cruel to his wife and child. Why else would mother and son have left him?

“I should go back,” Joanna said with a sigh. “If only to put my affairs in order, and find someone to take over the estate.”

“But you will return to us?” Mary looked hopeful.

Joanna studied her cousin with sadness. “I don’t know, Mary. I’d rather not go at all. I love it here. I think you know that now.” She smiled at each of them with affection. “And I love both of you, but I’ve been away so long. I’m not sure I belong here with the Lenape people.”

She wasn’t sure she could endure watching as Fireheart and Moon Dove built a life together.

Mary opened her mouth to speak her thoughts, but Rising Bird must have guessed what his wife would say for he stopped her with a look and a touch on her arm.

“I don’t know what to do,” Joanna said.

“Whatever you wish to do,” Mary replied. “You must do whatever you choose. But please, Joanna, know always that you belong here with us, with the Lenape People. You are the daughter of the Lenni Lenape. You are Autumn Wind, the daughter of our hearts.”

Joanna was touched by Mary’s words.
“Wa-neé-shih,”
she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.

 

 

Fireheart discovered her alone in the forest where she’d been gathering herbs and plants. “You are going to leave again.”

Joanna jumped up when she heard him. She spun to find him only a few feet away from her.

“Fireheart!” she gasped. “I didn’t hear you come!”

The sight of the chief stole her breath. Fireheart was the perfect image of a Lenni Lenape warrior with his glistening dark eyes, long shiny dark hair, and honey-brown skin. He was bare-chested, muscled, and without a single body hair on his breast area or stomach. She saw his strength reflected throughout his form, in his powerful chest, arms, and muscled calves and thighs. His copper armband gleamed in the summer sun.

“Joanna?” he said softly.

“Yes, yes, I think I must,” she replied. She swallowed hard as she looked away, conscious that she’d been staring at him.

“Will you come back?”

“I know not.”

“Your home is with the Lenape,” he said. “Mary Wife and Rising Bird will miss you if you go.”

And you?
she thought.
Would you miss me at all?
Or would Moon Dove help him to forget her?

She wanted to know. Had to know. “Will you miss me?”

He didn’t immediately answer. His silence drew her gaze to him. “This man will miss you, as will my people—
your people.”

It wasn’t the answer she’d hoped for. Joanna hid her disappointment.

“You will not miss me.” She walked several feet to gaze out into the forest and the water that bubbled along in the stream just ahead of her.

“Autumn Wind.” He was suddenly beside her, his breath in her ear, his nearness sending tiny tingles down her neck and spine.

She turned to face him expectantly.

“I will miss you. Must you go?”

She thought of the land, the people, Neville Manor. She nodded.

“What if this man asks you to stay?”

Her heart gave a lurch before it started to pump harder. “Moon Dove—”

“I ask about you, not Moon Dove.”

What was he implying? she wondered. That he would give up Moon Dove, and marry her if she stayed?

“What are you telling me? That you will not marry Moon Dove?”

He touched her cheek, stared at her so long that she became uncomfortable.

Fireheart gazed at the woman he loved, and struggled with his conscience. He had already promised to wed Moon Dove. His heart belonged to Autumn Wind, but Moon Dove was his people’s choice. He couldn’t tell Joanna that he wasn’t going to marry Moon Dove for he must wed the Indian maiden.

She gazed up at him with imploring green eyes. He loved her eyes, the color of the forest in the bright light of day. Her hair was golden like the sun with a splash of red like the coat of the fox. Drawn back in a knot at her nape, it was still beautiful. He couldn’t help himself; he lifted a hand to touch her hair.

She closed his eyes as he stroked the shiny strands from her forehead to her crown. He felt his fingers tremble when she moved her head slightly so that his hand found her cheek.

“Fireheart,” she whispered. She raised thick eyelashes to meet his gaze.

He struggled with his need to touch her, love her, and with his sense of duty and honor to his people and his wife-to-be.

“Uitiisaa,”
he murmured as he caressed her soft cheek.

She smiled at him and touched his face as well. “And so are you.” He had called her pretty, and she felt he was, too.

“I want to kiss you.”

She nodded. “
Kihiila.
Kiss me. I want it, too.”

With his heart hammering in his chest, he lowered his head to take her mouth, and felt the ground shift beneath his feet as her lips softened and opened.

The contact of their lips was like making love. Slowly, hesitating at first, they dipped their tongues into each other’s mouths. Then with a groan that came from deep in his throat, he couldn’t hold back any longer, and the duel of tongues grew fiercer. They held each other, their bodies pressed close, straining to be nearer while their mouths mated in glorious wonder.

His manhood was hard and throbbing beneath his loincloth. Fireheart wanted to press her to the cloth and join with her. But as he pulled away to cup her face, he realized that it would be wrong. She expected promises that he couldn’t give her.

She said she had to leave, to go back to England across the sea. It had been many summers before she’d returned. If she left again, she might not come back . . . and if she did, it could be many summers that passed again.

“Joanna,” he said.

Something in his tone alerted Joanna, stealing her from the pleasurable haze created by their kissing. She saw the conflict in his expression, the pain, and felt a cold dread seep into her bones.

He wasn’t going to ask her to be his wife. He would wed Moon Dove. “You are going to marry her.”

He released her and nodded.

“Why?” she cried. “Why do you kiss me and marry her?”

“I am already promised to her.”

“You are the
sachem!”
she cried. “The chief! You should marry whom you wish.”

“You are going to England,” he said simply.

“But I can come back!”

“Like you returned after seven summers?” he accused.

“I wouldn’t be gone that long! I just have to find Ken—” She halted. What if she couldn’t find Roderick’s son immediately? What if it took months, years to find him? She couldn’t leave England until he was found. If he wasn’t located, what else could she to do but stay in England?

A glint came into Fireheart’s eyes as he studied her. “You know this, too. You may not come back. I must have a wife. Children. You cannot be this wife. You must go back to your uncle’s home.”

“He is not my uncle!” she cried, refusing to be connected to that man any longer.

“Then why must you leave?”

How could she explain about the people there who needed her? About those who had suffered as she had suffered at Roderick Neville’s hands? How she felt it was her mission to make up for their suffering, their pain?

Wasn’t that the reason she wanted to find Kenneth? To right a wrong by giving a son his father’s property, land that had been denied him, but should rightfully be his?

Kenneth Neville’s birthright,
she thought.
Neville Manor belongs to Kenneth.

“I have to go,” she said hoarsely, her throat tight with emotion. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“As this man does not expect you to see why I will marry Moon Dove.”

She understood all right. He couldn’t possibly love her as she did him if he could marry another. Why couldn’t he just wait for a few months?

Gazing up into his handsome face, she knew that was impossible. Fireheart was a Lenni Lenape chief. There would be many things over the months that took his attention. The Iroquois were still a problem. The Lenape people would move their village elsewhere when the time came that their fields here would produce no crops, and the weather changed, forcing them to seek a more sheltered place.

She smiled at him wistfully, battling tears. “I guess this is good-bye then,” she said.

He nodded, his expression taut, stern. Perhaps he too was fighting to conceal emotion. She only wished he loved her as she loved him.

The crime of it all would be if he did love her, but his responsibility as the chief kept him from following his heart.

“Good-bye, Yellow Deer,” she said, using his childhood name.

He did not protest for he seemed to understand that she was acknowledging her feelings for the boy he’d been as well as the man he was now.

“May the Great Spirit protect and guide you in your journey home,” he said.

“Wa-neé-shih,”
she whispered, and turned away. From now until the time she left—be it days or weeks—they would be as strangers.

She had come back to tell him of her love yet she had kept silent. Why had she kept silent?

She spun to tell him. “I love you!” she cried, but he had gone, disappearing into the forest and from her life. It was probably for the best that he hadn’t heard her words, she thought. Fate had determined both of their paths . . . paths that went in different directions.

“I love you, Fireheart,” she whispered, but only the forest listened.

Her throat aching, her chest tight, Joanna crumpled to the ground and gave in to tears.