Lovestorm (4 page)

Elizabeth's temper flared. “You threw me into the ocean! You tried to drown me, then you assaulted me, and now you come with a plate of clams, say you're sorry, and prattle on about the sun?”

“I have said it.”

“Why should I believe you? Why would I trust you again?” she challenged. She knew she was being unfair, knew she had goaded him with her own foolish actions, but she didn't care. Blaming him was easier than blaming herself for what had happened between them.

Cain sighed deeply. “I give you my word, word of Lenni-Lenape warrior. I do not throw you into the sea again. I do not kiss you again . . . unless you ask for kiss.”

“There's not much chance of that, is there?”

He shrugged.

“What kind of man are you? To force yourself on me because you were angry? No English gentleman would do such a thing.” Elizabeth's cheeks colored. She knew the words were a lie as soon as they slipped from her lips. There were many gentlemen who would dare as much—and more—if they thought they could get away with it.

“I did not mean to frighten you,” Cain said. “It is not the way of my people for men to—”

“To attack women? To bully them?”

“No. I was wrong.”

“I'm glad you realize it. I'm not used to being mauled.” She motioned for him to come closer. “I will forgive you this time, but it must never happen again,” she warned. “My father is a very powerful man. He could have you put into prison—hanged—and he would if he thought for a moment that you had laid hands on me.” She tried to keep from trembling as she reached for the food he carried.

Cain gave it to her with the grace of a French courtier. “I want to be your friend,” he said.

“Then you must remember your place.” Elizabeth scrutinized the bowl of food; the clams and the fish she was familiar with, but she wasn't certain what the green leaves were. “What's that?” she demanded.

“
I do not know English word, but is good to eat.”

She brushed the leaves off into the sand. “I am not accustomed to eating grass,” she said. “The fish and clams will do. But I am thirsty. Do you have ale or . . . I don't suppose you have any decent claret.”

Cain shook his head.
“
I do not know these things. We drink only water.”

Elizabeth sat cross-legged on the sand. “Very well then, bring me water to drink with my meal.”

His eyes narrowed. “There is water in wigwam.”

She took a bite of the broiled fish. It was seasoned and cooked to perfection. “Fetch it then,” she ordered.

“I catch the fish for you. I cook it,” Cain answered slowly. “I will show you where
mimipeek
—fresh water pond—be. I will not carry water for you.”

“You can't expect me to carry water!”

“Why I cannot?”

“I told you. I am Lady Elizabeth Anne Sommersett. I am an English noblewoman.”

Cain smiled and nodded.

“Well?”

He folded his muscular arms over his bare chest. “I am Shaakhan Kihittuun. I tell you I do not carry water for healthy woman. If you have thirst, carry.”

Elizabeth sprang to her feet and threw the bowl into the sand. “How dare you speak to me like that?” she demanded. “You haven't understood a word I've said to you.”

A slow smile spread over Cain's face. “Do you have husband?” he asked.

She blinked. “What?”

“Are your ears full of salt too? I ask you, Englishwoman, do you have husband?”

“I told you before, I am betrothed to Edward Lindsey, son of the earl of Dunmore. I am going to Jamestown to be married.”

Cain's smile became a grin. “Good.”

“What are you smirking about?” Elizabeth braced her fists against her hips and glared at him. “You're infuriating,” she sputtered. “You're crude and barbaric and—”

“And I will be your husband,” he said.

For seconds, Elizabeth stared at him, too shocked to speak. “What did you say?” she managed.

“I take you from the sea,” Cain said, “and I mean to have you for my wife.”

“Y
ou think I'd marry you? A savage?” Elizabeth stiffened with indignant fury. “I'd sooner wed a dancing bear!”

Cain chuckled as he placed the remainder of the fish and clams into his own food bowl and kicked sand onto the small campfire. “A wise hunter knows that the woman bear has sharper teeth than the man bear,” he said. Ducking into the wigwam, he returned with his bow and quiver of arrows slung over his shoulder.

“Where are you going?” she demanded.

“To sup in quiet.”

Elizabeth flushed and looked down at her fish and clams laying in the sand. “And me? What am I supposed to eat?”

He shrugged. “What you catch.” He turned away and walked inland toward the trees.

“When will you be back?” she called after him. “Cain!”

He kept walking, giving no indication that he heard her.

“Damn you,” she muttered, kicking at her ruined dinner. “It would serve you right if I starved to death.”

For a few seconds, Elizabeth considered gathering up the clams and washing them in the ocean. She got as far as retrieving one and holding it at arm's length, but immediately wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I'm not that hungry,” she declared. “I'd never be that hungry.”

Yet, even as she tossed the shriveled clam away and brushed the sand off her garment, she remembered the terror of being in the longboat. She had suffered terribly from hunger and thirst; she would have eaten a raw fish or even a bird if she could have caught one. If I was marooned on an island, I might eat it, she admitted to herself, but I'm not that hungry now.

She remembered seeing cornmeal in a container in the hut. Eat whatever she could catch indeed! She'd simply take Cain's flour and prepare some kind of coarse bread. She'd never actually done any baking, but she'd played in the great estate kitchen as a child. She'd seen the cooks bake dozens of kinds of breads and pastries. How difficult could making cornbread possibly be?

Picking up a stick, she dug the coals out of the sand, knelt, and blew on them. The ashes glowed red, and she patiently fed small twigs into the coals until they flared into flame. Then, satisfied that she had resurrected Cain's cooking fire, she went into the wigwam for the corn flour.

As she rummaged through the woven containers, she noticed a gourd hanging at eye level. She took it down, unstoppered the wooden plug, and poured a little of the pale golden contents into the palm of her hand. To her delight, it was honey, sweet and delicate—as delicious as any she had ever tasted at home.

“Just the thing to have with my cornbread,” she murmured. She found an empty clay bowl that seemed clean and scooped several cups of cornmeal into it. There was no milk or butter to go into the dough. “I'll use water instead.” There was salt in a tiny bowl. How much do I need? she wondered. Alfreda the cook had often declared that bread without salt was like a man without a wife. “Salt, surely,” Elizabeth mused, “but how much?”

She dropped to her knees on the deerskin rug. She'd watched Alfreda mixing and kneading bread, but the exact measurements of the ingredients had never seemed important. Alfreda had made ten loaves at a time, so it was difficult to imagine how to make enough for only one person. After pondering awhile, she decided that the best thing to do would to be to simply use salt water from the ocean for her dough. “It's bound to be cleaner than that stagnant pond Cain wanted to send me to,” she reasoned.

Taking the gourd of honey, a wooden spoon, and her bowl with the cornmeal, she went back outside. She left the honey by the fire and walked down to the ocean's edge, and mixed a little of the cold sea water into her meal. She stirred until the mixture was smooth, then sampled it. She wrinkled her nose as the tasteless goo coated her tongue and stuck to the roof of her mouth.

Sighing, she walked back toward the wigwam. Sea salt obviously wasn't enough. She'd have to add real salt, and then, when the batter was right, she'd think of some way to bake it. She'd be damned if that heathen savage would get the best of her. It would serve him right to come back and find her dining on bread and honey!

An hour later, Elizabeth was in tears. She had burned two fingers, scorched the side of Cain's boat paddle, and lost half of her flat, hard biscuits in the sand. In any case, what was left of her baking was inedible to anything but a seagull. “Even a pig wouldn't eat this slop,” she wailed, spitting what was left in her mouth into the fire. “Ugh!” Shuddering, she cleaned her mouth with the back of her hand.

Sinking onto the ground, Elizabeth buried her face in her hands and wept, not only for her ruined dinner, but also for the disaster that had separated her from her own people and left her to the mercy of a heathen savage.

Gradually, the tears slowed and she regained control. “Bawling like a kitchen slut over burned biscuits,” she sniffed, wiping her nose. “A Sommersett.” The hot New World sun must have baked her brain!

She got to her feet and looked around the clearing. She needed fresh water to rinse her face and wash the bite of salt from her mouth. The pond Cain spoke of must be nearby. Taking his dugout paddle for protection against wild animals, she set off in the direction he had indicated earlier.

The pond was only a few hundred yards inland from the campsite, hidden by low trees and shrubs. A sloping bank led down to the water. Cautiously, Elizabeth approached and crouched down to splash some of the cool water on her face, then she cupped her hands and drank. Despite the brown color, the water was sweet and clean tasting. Gratefully, she drank mouthful after mouthful, unable to get enough of the cool liquid.

At last, when her thirst was satisfied, she lay on her stomach propped up on her elbows and stared at her reflection in the water. The sunburned face that peered back at her was almost unrecognizable. Shocked, Elizabeth realized that the braided hair and deerskin shift made her look like a kitchen wench rather than an English lady.

“This is all a nightmare,” she whispered into the still afternoon. “I'll wake and find myself on the ship bound for Jamestown . . . or better still, I'll wake in Father's London house.”

A scarlet-hued bird lit on a branch not an arm's length away and trilled loudly as if to mock her.

Elizabeth smiled at the insolence of the little creature. The bird hopped closer, fluffed up its feathers, and stared at her with round, coal-black eyes. “Hello,” she said softly. “Are you an Indian too? You've the feathers for it.”

The bird twisted to tuck in a stray wing feather, then fluttered away into a tree top. “Goodbye,” Elizabeth called after it. “Come see me again.”

The air was still so warm that she decided to wash her hair. It felt sticky from the salt water, and the plaits banged against her sunburned neck like tar ropes when she walked. She would wash it and brush it out, then try and arrange it in some sort of order. “Bridget always parted my hair in the middle and dressed it into deep side ringlets.” Her hair was so thick that her maid never needed to pad it with false hair like most women were forced to do. But Bridget was far away in England. “I'll have to do the best I can.”

Hair still damp and tangled, Elizabeth returned to the wigwam to find her fire had burned out. There was no sign of Cain. Nervously, she entered the hut and sat down to wait.

The minutes passed slowly into hours. Darkness settled over the land, and the day sounds were replaced with strange rustlings and weird, echoing cries. Elizabeth huddled beneath a deerskin robe, straining her ears for human footsteps and hoping desperately that Cain would come back. Eventually, fatigue overcame fear, and she fell into a restless sleep.

The sun was well up over the eastern horizon when Elizabeth ventured from the door of the wigwam. She paused outside and straightened, looking up and down the beach for any signs of movement.

The pristine sand stretched as far as her eyes could see in either direction, bordered on one side by the rolling blue-gray sea and on the other by stunted forest and dark green shrubs. There were seagulls wheeling and dipping over the surf, and several strutting pompously down the beach, but nothing large enough to be a man.

“Where are you?” she shouted. “Cain?” The only sound was the crash of the surf and the cries of two quarreling gulls.

“Damn you,” she said as she turned in the direction of the pond. She'd been so certain he would come back to the wigwam in the night. What if he never came back? What if she were truly alone in the wilderness?

She kicked at a weathered clam shell with her bare foot. The edge of the shell cut her big toe, and she winced. “If he doesn't come back, I'll take food and supplies and walk down the beach until I come to a settlement. If he said that way was wrong”—she glanced north—“then I'll just go the other way. I'm bound to find Jamestown sooner or later.” She grimaced. Brave words—but utterly ridiculous. Without a guide, she could never find Jamestown. She would starve, or die of thirst, or be eaten by wild animals. “I'll have to stay here with Cain until I can convince him to take me to Jamestown,” she murmured, “even if it takes weeks.”

The ground was cool beneath her feet this morning, but the air was fresh and invigorating. She breathed deeply, taking note of how new leaves were forming on the trees and everything was turning green. There was a primitive beauty to this land, she admitted. The sky seemed bigger, the clouds whiter, and the vegetation more vivid in color. It wasn't anything like the ordered landscape at home, but she could understand why some Englishmen called America the new Eden.

The pond seemed exactly as she had left it the night before, except that this morning the surface of the water had become a shining mirror sparkling in the sunshine. A pair of ducks paddled lazily near the far bank, and birds called to one another from the branches of a graceful cedar swaying overhead. Eagerly, Elizabeth dropped onto her knees and reached down to scoop up a handful of water.

Suddenly, a hairy gray beast with gleaming sharp teeth sprang snarling at her from the bushes. “Wolf!” Elizabeth screamed and fell backward, slipping down the bank into the waist-deep icy water. She caught a glimpse of two bloodred eyes as the creature leaped past her and vanished in the bushes. Still screaming, Elizabeth scrambled up the muddy bank and fled toward the wigwam.

She looked back over her shoulder as she ran, to see if the wolf was chasing her, and slammed with full force into an immovable object. Stunned, Elizabeth staggered and would have fallen if two sinewy arms hadn't closed about her.

“What is it?” Cain demanded. “What is wrong?”

Weeping hysterically, Elizabeth slumped against his chest, unable to convey more than the single word, “W-wolf.”

“Speak slowly,” he instructed. “I can't understand you.” He gathered her up in his strong arms and carried her back toward the campsite. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head and sobbed against his bare chest. “It . . . it tried . . . tried to . . .” She sniffed and attempted to wipe her runny nose, an impossible feat when both arms were clutched around Cain's neck in a viselike grip. ”. . . snarled . . .
″
She shuddered, remembering the fierce expression in the wolf's eyes. “I jumped . . . into the pond,” she managed. “The wolf . . . wanted . . . to eat me.”

“N′tschutti
, beloved, I should not have left you alone so long,” he soothed, kissing the top of her honey-gold hair. “Are you certain it was a wolf?” He looked down into her tearstained eyes.
″Munsee
has much shy.”

She nodded. “A wolf. It was gray and big with long, white teeth and horrible eyes.”

Cain reached the clearing beside the wigwam. Clearly, Eliz-a-beth was safe now from whatever had frightened her so badly, but it was pleasant to hold her thus, and even more pleasant to feel her warm breasts pressed against his body.
“
I do not know why a wolf would do as you say,” he stalled. “It is the way of their clan to run from the smell of man.”

She pressed her face into the hollow of his throat, and he felt a warm tightness growing in his loins. He had not shared his blanket with a woman since the moon of snapping branches, and desire was thick in his blood. Reluctantly, he lowered Elizabeth to the ground. Whatever might bond them in the seasons to come was not yet. He knew instinctively that to rush her would be to lose her trust forever.

“Wait here in the wigwam,” he said. “I will hunt out this wolf.”

“It might be gone by now,” she said nervously. She glanced toward the trees. “Or it might come while you′re—”

“You will be safe,” he promised, giving her hand a final squeeze. “I will not go far.”

She nodded, wiping her eyes. “Be careful.”

“The wolf is my totem. I speak his tongue. I do not think
munsee
will harm me.”

Elizabeth smiled at him weakly. “Maybe . . . maybe I frightened it away with my screaming.” She shivered in the salt breeze that blew from the sea.

“Take off your wet garment,” he said. “Wrap yourself in skins. This one does not wish you to have fever.” Dismissing her with a nod, he turned toward the fresh water pond. If a wolf had attacked Eliz-a-beth, it must be sick. He would have to track and kill it—a terrible crime against one of his own totem—before it could make other animals sick.

As Cain covered the short distance between the wigwam and the pond, he freed his mind of Eliz-a-beth and all other thoughts but the hunt. He reached deep within his being, allying himself with the men of his father's blood, with the Lenni-Lenape, stretching back until the dawn of time. Cain Dare, the Englishman, fell away, leaving the white-hot core of Shaakhan Kihittuun, a man as much a part of this sand and forest as the gray wolf itself.