“Teela, isn’t this where we left off last time? I warn you—” he began.
But she threw herself against him again so hard that she sent them both flying from the bed. He managed to twist to buffer her from their fall, but she didn’t seem to notice at all. “You really are one scurvy, detestable bastard. You—”
“Teela!” He managed to catch both wrists. “Teela, damn you, enough—”
“Don’t you dare say that word to me! Enough! Nothing is ever enough for you, everything is your way. You’re demanding, unreasonable—” She broke off breathlessly because he had managed to roll her weight from him. He rose, dragging her up with him. She instantly began the fight again, ripping an arm free from his clutch to aim a fist right for his jaw. He ducked and she swung into his arms. He plucked her up and threw her back to the bed. When she rose to fight again, he was quick and ruthless, wrestling her down and pinning her wrists to the bed as he straddled her.
“Whose child is it!” she spat out. “Don’t you even think about asking me that question again!” she warned him.
“How could I not? You lived among the soldiers and whites far longer than you have been with me! You all but had a death grip on Harrington when you watched me being paraded by toward the Castillo. You were with Harrington—”
“Who has been nothing but the nicest man in the world, the best friend imaginable to both of us! How dare you doubt him? How have you the damned bloody nerve to doubt me—”
“Nerve! You walked away from me, ran away from me! Knowing damned well that for once I couldn’t catch you!”
“My lord! What a shame!”
“You could do what you pleased because you knew a dozen soldiers were ready to shoot me if I defied an order.”
“Did they shoot you? Obviously not!”
“They stopped me, they—”
“And the poor fellows are all beaten black and blue and sorely bruised for their efforts while you look none the worse for wear, McKenzie.”
“You wanted me dragged back to prison.”
“It was a fitting place for you!”
“Why, you little witch! You—”
“I didn’t even know about it!” she spat out.
“I was humiliated,” he informed her tensely.
“Good! You need to learn a little humility.”
“I might have died for you!”
“Why not? You are willing to die for everyone else.”
“But I might have died just to hear an answer from your lips.”
“To a question you’ve got no right to ask!”
He was floundering, he thought. “You wouldn’t fight your own battle!” he accused her lamely.
“I’ll fight you anytime!”
“Will you? Just try to scream again and see if the soldiers won’t come back and take care of things for you now!”
“Oh!” she cried furiously. She had the strength of a wildcat and almost managed to dislodge his hold on her arms. She tossed her head, trying to find some flesh to sink her teeth into again.
“My love, that’s hardly civilized—”
“Well, how does one deal with a savage!” she countered, wrenching one wrist free. She tried to strike out at him; he just barely managed to catch hold of her again. She was far more wily, swift, and determined than many a man he had met in battle. “Get off and get out, you wretched—” she began, then stopped, gasping. She went dead still, staring at his face yet seeming to see nothing at all.
“James!”
“What?” he cried, his sudden fear heavy in his voice. In the passion of their argument, he’d forgotten the babe. If he’d hurt her, hurt it … “What? Damn, Teela, talk to me. Are you ill, have I harmed you …” His voice broke to a whisper. “The babe … ?”
“Oh, James, it’s moving!” She caught his hand, dragging it down to her abdomen. At first he could feel nothing. Then a ripple like a tiny hand seemed to stretch across the inner length of her womb, slight, scarcely discernible, but there, so completely there.
“Our child,” she said suddenly. Her voice broke with emotion as she added, “You really are a wretched bastard. How could you doubt me?”
“It’s not that!” he whispered fiercely, his hold on her easing as he sat back on his haunches, holding his weight from her. He smiled ruefully, swept with a soreness different from any pain he had known, fully aware that his behavior had been less than exemplary many times. He battled forces he couldn’t begin to control, and thus did come across too bitter and too hateful. He had accused the whites of grouping the Indians as one kind of human being, of not realizing there were those who respected life, learning, and happiness, those who loved children and would sooner die themselves than harm a child. He hadn’t been able to accept the fact that Teela could really love him for what he was, and that John Harrington could be a friend and not a rival. Very, very gently he moved a wild strand of hair from her face, his fingertips just brushing the softness of her cheek. “I all but threw you away,” he said softly. “Then despised the fact that you might have gone.”
She lay still, staring up at him, her eyes slowly taking in his appearance. Tears suddenly glazed her eyes. “It’s your child. Yours. And whether you are glad or not and seek to throw me away again or not, I am glad. I will love this baby, and I won’t teach it hatred or bitterness. I will let it know every possible thing that is good and wonderful about both races. I’ll—”
He silenced her with a kiss. Salty tears mingled with the unbelievably sweet taste of her. When he lifted his lips from hers, he took both hands and placed them around her rounded abdomen.
He shook his head. “Teela, I don’t know how to make you understand. In my heart I wanted you to love me. But by all sense and logic, I truly wanted you gone, away from here, away from the danger. Away from Warren. When I walked through St. Augustine, a prisoner, I heard what people said. About the Indians, about me. I am proud of all that I am, but I hated them for what they said. Hated them for being white, for being so prejudiced. And I couldn’t believe then that you could really want me … my life … once you had tasted all that went with being white once again. It was perhaps one thing to feel desire, excitement for a brief time in the wilderness … but that is so very different from a lifetime. And you didn’t tell me. That’s what triggered every evil thought within me. You didn’t tell me about the baby. In the copse.”
“I didn’t realize!” she whispered in return. “I would have told you. It’s just that I didn’t know. Honestly. I—”
“I’ve been afraid,” he told her quietly.
“Afraid? I’ve never seen you afraid of anything.”
“I’ve been afraid of wanting you, knowing that I can’t have you.”
“But you do have me.”
“How?” he demanded. “How do I have you? What have I done but give you an illegitimate child. A red one at that. Ruin you in society. It isn’t as if I’m a lawyer or a doctor having difficulty paying his bills. I’m an Indian. Red.” He caught her hand, brought it to his chest as he had once before. “Feel the red, my love, because you’ll be burned by it, yet it’s as if you haven’t the sense to feel the pain.”
“I feel pain when you’re gone. When I am in fear for your life. When I don’t know—”
She broke off. They were both startled by the sounds of hoofbeats on the streets below them.
“Horses!” she whispered. She stared at him then. “My God, James, how can you be here? As you are … in the middle of the night? You escaped—you broke out of the Castillo!”
“I had to.”
“Why? If they’ve discovered that there has been an escape, they’ll be hunting you down!”
James jumped up. He walked quickly to the open balcony window. How long had he been here? It appeared that the first streaks of dawn were just filtering into the sky. It wasn’t the middle of the night anymore. It was nearly morning. And there were horsemen coming.
In military uniforms.
He had to leave his
brother’s home, and do so without delay. Even as he realized his dire situation, the door burst open. Jarrett, in a long robe, stood there.
“Sweet Jesu, James, you’ve got to get out of here, and fast.”
“I’m not going to be afraid of the military. I’m not going to run from them now,” he decided. “I’ll turn myself in to you, and you can bring me to Hernandez or Jesup and we can tell them that my life has been threatened at the Castillo. I intend to clear my name on Warren’s ridiculous charges that I led the massacre against his men.”
“James, you don’t understand. It’s not just the military now,” Jarrett said. “It’s Warren, and his men aren’t army, they’re cutthroats.”
“Warren!” James said incredulously. “Warren has returned to St. Augustine, discovered the escape, and come here so quickly? It can’t possibly be Warren—”
“James, you knew he’d been informed that you were here,” Jarrett reminded him. “And I’m telling you, I recognize the man! I don’t know how he has managed to move so quickly, only that he has. Perhaps he arrived at the Castillo with his troops just as the escape was discovered. What difference does it make? He is here, riding toward this house right now.”
“Oh, my God!” Teela breathed. She stared at James. “You knew that he knew you were in St. Augustine? You shouldn’t have come here! You fool, you shouldn’t have come—”
“I had to come,” he told her.
She leapt to her feet, racing across the room to the place where he stood by the window. “You’ve got to go quickly, please! He’ll kill you.”
James hesitated. “And what will he do to you?”
“Well, he can’t kill me,” she stated, and added bitterly, “Not in front of witnesses.”
“But he can take you from Jarrett’s house.”
“James, you’ve got to leave us. You have to go,” Jarrett said.
“I should have this out with him!” he cried passionately. “He hasn’t the right to his cruelty, his determination to destroy so many lives.”
“James!” Teela pleaded, “don’t be insane. You can’t talk to him rationally. You can’t fight an entire company of men. You’ve got to go.”
“Wait—” James said.
“For the love of God, go!” Jarrett exclaimed.
“Please!” Teela added.
He didn’t want to go. The greatest feeling of unease was ripping through him, and not because Warren could have him fired upon by a half dozen rifles at once. He didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to leave Teela.
But it seemed that she and his brother were right; he would only invite disaster if he stayed. With no logical argument, he couldn’t fight Jarrett and Teela, and it was certainly true that he couldn’t tackle Warren and all his men alone and bare-handed. He stared at Teela one last time, then turned and ran silently for the balcony. He leapt over the rail, balling his body to fall to the ground with a spring action, then stayed hunched low behind the shrubbery as he watched the riders approach, stopping in the front.
He saw the first man on horseback, saw him as he reined in.
Saw Warren.
The man’s eyes seemed alight with a fanatical glow. He had the greatest zest for a chase, a pursuit.
For murder.
“Surround the place, men!” he ordered. “See that no one goes in or out. Pay me heed! That renegade half-breed will not hide behind his brother’s white flesh tonight!”
James counted the men. Ten of them with Warren, all of them armed with rifles, knives, and bayonets. As they scattered, Warren observed the house with that same gleam, seeming to grow brighter in the night.
“Indeed!” he said softly, almost to himself. “Tonight that McKenzie half-breed will pay the price of his wretched audacity—with his blood. With his blood, by God, I swear it!”
With that, Warren dismounted and started for the house.
Chapter 26
James slipped along the flower bushes growing beside the walk, keeping very low. Warren’s men had all dismounted. James could have stolen a horse and disappeared quickly into the night—except that he knew he wasn’t going anywhere, not until he had seen what Warren had in mind.
He didn’t leave the yard. He crawled quickly to a heavy branch of a very old oak in the yard and climbed it. From where he perched, he could see dimly into the parlor of the house, and into Teela’s room above it. He heard a rustling below him as Warren’s men surrounded the house, two to the back, two in front, and two to each side—two, with their guns loaded and aimed, had entered the house with Warren. The fellow on James’s side of the house was all but beneath him, guarding a window.
Candlelight suddenly blazed throughout the house. James heard Warren, demanding entry and the right to search the place. He heard Tara speaking next, her voice outraged. He strained to listen as others spoke. Jarrett warned Warren in no uncertain terms that he would have words with the governor, General Jesup, and even Martin Van Buren if Warren didn’t get himself and his men out of the house.
“Your half-breed brother staged the disappearance of some of General Jesup’s most important captives! If you think that Jesup will overlook your brother’s part in the escape, McKenzie, you are sadly mistaken.”
“This is private property, Warren. My property. And I want you off it.”
“I can’t oblige you, sir. Now stand aside, or I will shoot.”
“You shoot me, and I can guarantee that you’ll go on trial for murder. If you live that long. The half-breed you’re hunting would find a way to slit your throat.”
“Ah, yes, McKenzie, you know his violence as well as I do!”
“I know your dishonorable violence.”
“Let him search the house if he wishes, Jarrett,” Tara said. “We can speak to his superiors about him at a later time.”
“I’ll start in my daughter’s room,” Warren said. “Newman!” he barked out, addressing one of his men. “If he moves to stop me, shoot him!”
“I’m not going to stop you. Search your daughter’s room. My brother isn’t there.”
James quickly drew his gaze to the second floor. He saw through Teela’s window as Warren came bursting through her hallway door.
“Well, daughter!” Warren stated, a wealth of venom in the two simple words.
“Warren,” Teela said in return. “You’ve returned alive and well from the bush.”
“Indeed!”
“What a pity, sir, for all those who will continue to die because of you.”
James did not hear Warren’s next words, for the man lowered his voice to a deadly quiet pitch.
And he didn’t hear what Teela had to say in return, but he definitely heard the venom Warren spilled out after. “Injun-lovin’ whorel Vilest bitch seed I’ve ever seen thrown out of woman …”
Warren was suddenly across the room, one of his hands in Teela’s hair, holding her taut by a thick hank of it.
“I’ll kill you, girl! At the very least I’ll kill that brat bastard you’re carrying!”
* * *
Kill you, kill you, kill you, kill the brat …
She wasn’t in the forest, or the swamp. On a pine barren, or anywhere that might have been called wild or dangerous. Yet here it was. Her nightmare.
She had run and run, and heard the footsteps after her all the while. Because there had been nowhere to run. Warren was the monster in her life. The savage.
The one who meant to kill her babe.
She shouted out expletives to him, words she hadn’t realized that she knew …
Kill the babe, oh, God, no. She couldn’t let him, couldn’t let him. But she had no weapons. He was strong. A military man. A well-trained savage.
She had to fight him.
For the baby.
Their baby.
James tensed, ready to spring. Teela didn’t even scream, she just gritted her teeth, her nails digging into Warren’s hands with such force that he shouted, freeing her. She started to back away from Warren. He caught her
with so stunning a blow she fell backward against the wall. Then he started to hit her. Again, and again.
James saw red. Blood red.
Reason deserted his mind; no thought of the possible consequences deterred him. He leapt down from the tree and headed for a trellis to skim up the wall to Teela’s balcony.
One of Warren’s men, guarding the window, stepped toward him. “Halt!”
James kept going.
“Halt, or I’ll shoot!”
“You ass! He’s beating his daughter!”
“He’s her father; it’s his right!” the man defended.
James moved so swiftly the soldier was never able to raise his rifle. He knocked the man unconscious with a solid blow to his jaw. He flew to the balcony, then propelled himself swiftly into the room—and onto Warren.
He caught the man by the throat, spun him around, and slammed his fist into his face. He heard a crunching that assured him he had broken the man’s nose. Warren swore, trying to lash out in turn, but a vivid, hot anger, unlike anything he had known in all his life, seized hold of James.
He had killed men before. Killed them in battle. Killed them because they would have killed him first.
He had never wanted to kill.
Now he did.
He beat Warren, and beat him again, until he fell to the floor. Then he crawled atop the man, ready to smash in more of his face.
But he heard Teela’s voice, crying out to him.
“No, James! God, no! They’ll call it murder. They’ll want to hang you for it. James, you can’t kill him. You just can’t do it.”
Her hands were on him, long fingers digging into his arm. He barely heard her at first. The whole of the room seemed to be spinning in red.
He stopped and looked at her. Her hair was wild; she was flushed. Yet there were no marks on her face. If she’d been seriously hurt, she gave no sign.
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