Captive (22 page)

But it was too late to worry about their situation. Frankly, he had to be grateful that it was his brother who had come upon them. He was accustomed to being very careful through the night, to sleeping with an eye half open … damn, he was accustomed to being alert and weary. But this morning …

His alertness had all been for her.

Jarrett, simply dressed in cotton shirt, high boots, and breeches, was already in the doorway.

“James, we’ve serious trouble. I have been riding half the night, searching all the while, praying the rest. Miss Warren has run from her father, and it seems that the major—”

Jarrett broke off cleanly in mid-sentence.

He had been staring at his brother.

Now he was looking at Teela.

Jarrett was not easily taken by surprise, and he was quick to recover form it, but not until his pure amazement at the situation had registered upon his features.

“Sweet
Jesu!”
he whispered, stepping into the cabin and closing the door behind him.

“She is aware that she has to go back,” James said rather harshly. “As a half-breed and intimate of Osceola, I rather doubt her father will entrust her into my care, and I cannot lead him into the very Indian hideouts he would most like to destroy.”

“Well, I’m damned aware that she has to go back—” Jarrett began.

“Will you please cease discussing me as if I were a vegetable, gentlemen?” Teela interrupted.

Jarrett arched a brow to James.

James shrugged. “She’s a reckless little firebrand. No wonder Warren has such problems with her. She has to go back with you, but there has to be a way to keep her from being dragged about Florida with him. She’ll die along with him if some of the warriors whose families he has murdered get to him. And … he beats her.”

Teela turned to stare at him with startled eyes. Miserable eyes. They fell as her cheeks took on a pink hue. He had embarrassed her. She was very proud, and very unhappy, that he knew, but still, Jarrett had to know the truth as well, and there was little time to be subtle about anything now.

She spoke with her eyes downcast. “I am a remarkably strong person, gentlemen, and I am not afraid of my stepfather.” She hesitated. “I hate him, but I am not afraid of him.”

“You haven’t the good sense to be afraid when you should,” James said impatiently.

“If you will both listen, we believe we have the solution. John Harrington is here. He came the back way to Robert’s plantation while his troops went on by river to meet up with Warren. He’d not even been aware that
Warren was on the river, able to get here so quickly. He has orders that they are to take the river as deeply inland as they can, then start marching eastward to join up with another command. Warren will have precious little time to take his daughter anywhere, and John is determined that he can convince the major he must leave his daughter at Cimarron.”

“How does John intend to do that?” James asked. Jarrett hesitated. “Perhaps he should explain …”

James shook his head. “He intends that they should announce Teela’s agreement to an engagement with him?”

“Yes,” Jarrett said flatly.

“I cannot do it,” Teela gasped.

James spun around and strode to her, pulling her to her feet with a strength and passion that left her no recourse but to struggle to claim her blanket rather than fight with him. His fingers remained like a vise around her arms as he spoke to her, as harshly and coldly as he could manage.

“You must do it. You’ve no choice.”

“It isn’t fair to—”

“It must be done, you must go back. Dammit, Teela, you can’t just run away in a swamp!” He kept his eyes furiously hot on hers, not relaxing the brutality of his hold on her in the least, and spoke to his brother. “You’ve got to get her out of here completely, Jarrett. When they have all gone to battle, see that she is sent home, back to Charleston.”

“I’ll do my best,” Jarrett said quietly.

“I don’t wish—” Teela began.

“It doesn’t matter. You must tell your father that you will marry John. Perhaps you should give it some real thought,” he added, wincing at the hardness, the bitterness, of his own voice. “John is a damned decent fellow, and will make a delicate little white girl a fine husband if he just survives this all with his scalp.”

“Let go of me!” Teela whispered furiously. He
thought that there were tears in her eyes. He couldn’t really tell, they were so filled with anger.

Jarrett cleared his throat. “I think I’ll step outside while you, er, dress, Miss Warren. We must get back. If we don’t, your stepfather will have his crew halfway here, and this is a safe haven for many of the orphans who are moved throughout this nightmare. We don’t want the copse found.”

The door closed. Teela jerked her arms to free herself from James’s hold.

He was tempted not to release her. He felt the most agonizing urge to force her down to the ground again, forget the world outside, hold her, make love to her again, fast, furious …

It was insanity.

It didn’t matter. He wanted to damn Warren to every hell on earth and beyond. He wanted not to care if the man rode a thousand men inland searching for them both. He didn’t want to give a damn about the war, about the women or the children, the whites or the reds. There were a hundred places in the swamp where he could take her. Hammocks where she couldn’t be found …

Maybe. The white soldiers pushed ever deeper, the Indians ran ever harder. She would be at risk no matter what he did. If he held her, others would be tortured for information they would not have. He would be a complete outcast.

He would never be able to see his daughter. Teela would never get to feel the simple touch of a soft bed. Dine off delicate porcelain, sip fine English tea.

“James—”

He released Teela instantly. Turned his back on her. “Get dressed,” he said sharply.

“I know that I have to go back. I wouldn’t have Michael Warren following me here, hurting you—”

“He’d die if he tried,” James assured her, softly but passionately.

“Hurting others. I know that I must go back, but it
was the truth you heard at the table, I will not marry a man I have not chosen myself—”

“Harrington is in love with you,” James grated out, fingers clenching into fists at his side.

“I am not in love with him.”

“You haven’t given him half a chance.”

She was silent a moment. He felt her eyes piercing into his back.

“You needn’t fear,” she informed him, her voice very proud and tinged with ice. “I will do nothing that will betray you.”

He spun around. “I have already told you; I am not afraid of Michael Warren. I would welcome the chance to kill him.”

“Or die in trying!”

“I will not die until he is dead.”

“You are flesh and blood!” she cried out.

“I will not die until he is dead,” James repeated. His heart seemed to pause, skip a beat, then pummel with a slam against his chest. She was halfway dressed, but still her bodice was loose, and her breasts were nearly bared. Her wild red hair was tumbling everywhere, and her chin was very high; she was quite determined. He took a step toward her and caught her arms, drawing her close to him. “Go back with my brother and John. Don’t take pride to a point of stupidity. John is a good man—”

“Yes! And I cannot use him or lie to him—”

“Then don’t lie. But give him a chance.” He released her again, turning her around to deftly do up the ties at the back of her dress. He lifted her hair from her nape and fought the temptation to press his lips against the smooth soft flesh there one last time.

He let her hair fall.

She stood very stiffly and whispered, “What chance would I give him when—”

“A fair chance!” he snapped. “For there can be nothing for you here except games you would play with a red man!”

Before she could speak again, he turned swiftly and exited the cabin with all speed, not daring to look back.

Outside, he found Harrington along with his brother. John and Jarrett were both dismounted, standing by their horses, talking quietly as they waited.

“James!” As always John Harrington offered him a warm smile and a firm handshake. James felt his stomach lurch. From the moment Harrington had first seen Teela, he had been in love with her. Or in love with being in love. It didn’t matter which. How could he define or judge anything John might have felt for her when he couldn’t describe or understand his own passion and obsession?

And pain.

“Thank you for coming, John. I understand we’re in the midst of quite a situation with Warren.”

“Warren is a bastard!” John said softly, looking over James’s shoulder. Teela would be coming out of the cabin. “Thank God you found her, James, before some evil befell her.”

“There are seldom any warriors in this immediate area now,” James said.

“I meant evil within the terrain itself, James. What manner of man could be so hideous that his own child could welcome a rattler?” He lowered his voice still further. “I swear I will do everything in my power to keep her safe from him.”

Their hands were still clutched together in a firm handshake. James felt his hold upon John tighten. “Keep her from her father, and from the battlefield, John. That is all I ask you.”

“I swear it.”

“I am in your debt.”

“I have been in yours many times.”

“Marry her quickly, if that is what it takes.”

“James, sweet
Jesu!”
John said uncomfortably. “I haven’t the right—”

“No. I am the one without rights.”

“We must go,” Jarrett interrupted quietly. “She is waiting, and we should make all haste back.”

James turned at last to see that Teela had come out of the cabin and that she had remained a good thirty feet from them, standing quietly, waiting.

She had subdued the wild mane of her fiery red hair, winding it into a regal knot at her nape. Her hands were folded before her, and she stood very straight and very still, very dignified.

Only the liquid turmoil in her remarkable green eyes seemed to give away the tumult within her.

They had left their horses in the copse behind the cabin. James walked around for hers and brought the mare back to the front. Jarrett and John had mounted their horses already. James brought the mare right up beside them, then lifted Teela when she would have mounted on her own. She stared down at him once she sat atop the horse.

“Take care,” he told her. She continued to stare stonily down at him, and he turned to his brother.

“Keep her safe. She will not have the sense to remain so herself.”

“We’ll manage,” Jarrett promised him.

He nodded again to John, took Jarrett’s hand. “God go with you, brother,” Jarrett told him.

James nodded with a smile. “You, too, brother.”

“Take care when you come back in. Warren is trying to claim that you abducted his daughter.”

James glanced at Teela, allowing his eyes to slide over the length of her again.

“James,” John said, “it’s a serious matter—”

“I will be with the people who have asked for their government settlement and agreed to go west. I will meet Warren on the field, or in any court of law.” His eyes remained on Teela. He bowed suddenly, very deeply, with every bit of courtly manner he had ever learned. “Good-bye, Miss Warren.”

“Good-bye, Mr. McKenzie.”

James stepped back. The horses started forward. He
watched them as they moved onto the trail. She did not turn back.

But then …

She did.

She stared at him as he stood just outside the cabin, still barefoot, bare-chested, loose black hair just touching his shoulders, skin bronze beneath the heat of the sun. Barely dressed.

Hardly civilized.

She had to go …

Yet he felt like doubling over with the pain of it. He lifted a hand to her. She couldn’t possibly have heard him, but he spoke out loud softly anyway.

“Until we meet again, Miss Warren. Until we meet again.”

They shouldn’t meet again, he told himself firmly.

But something inside him knew.

They would.

Indeed, they would meet again.

“
S
o you have come to join us in battle again, Running Bear. You have spent your time with your brother, and learned again that one drop of Seminole blood makes a man’s skin red.”

James shook his head, dropping before the fire to sit cross-legged and study Osceola. He had spent nearly ten days traveling and looking for the war chief, a fact that was wearying in itself. The ground was hard, harder for those who did not know it. The Seminoles could run in any direction and slip into the earth itself, or so it seemed.

He had found Osceola traveling uncomfortably near Fort Brooke with a large contingent of warriors. But, James thought, Osceola did not look well, was not well, and it was obvious that Osceola knew it himself. The war
mico
was a proud man, an intelligent man, and still a fierce one. He was handsome with his fine eyes, broad cheekbones, and penetrating stare, and James liked him even when they disagreed. Perhaps James was lucky he had never felt Osceola’s wrath; the agent Wiley Thompson had caused Osceola humiliation, and he had paid with his life. Charlie Emathla had wearily turned himself in, and in so doing turned against his people in the eyes of Osceola, and he, too, had died. Osceola had begun this war as a firebrand, and he did not regret the blaze a bit. But he was human. He had run and fought in the cold of winter, in the cruel heat of summer. He had run through the rains and lightning. The war, the fight, the
weather, the damning weaknesses of humanity, were telling on him.

“I have come to tell you that I am planning on leading a group of survivors from the otter clan to Fort Brooke. There are no warriors among them. The warriors are all dead. The widows are weary. The children are starving. The old are in pain.”

Osceola stared at the fire for several long minutes before replying. He stared at James again.

“General Jesup is a strong enemy.”

James shrugged, lifting his hands. “He is a strong enemy, but he has faltered under the pressure of politics and swampland, just as the many tough men who came before him.”