by Donna Cooner
“What if you find you have to?”
Jarrett cocked his head to his brother. “What of you?” he asked softly. “Men have been murdered by their own kind by not taking up arms against the enemy.”
“I haven’t taken up arms—but I have never betrayed any of my people. I have never signed a treaty, or agreed to take my people to the barren lands west of the Mississippi. Still, it is true. It seems in this we must take care, for we may both have enemies among our own people. And by the way, what did your new wife think about your turning down a military command?”
Jarrett shot him a quick look, wondering that information could travel so much more swiftly than men. But he knew that he had been watched all the way home from Tampa, and he’d been sure the ones watching him were doing so at his brother’s command.
Protecting Jarrett from other Indians, perhaps. And keeping an eye on any white man—his brother included—for the Indians.
James was grinning, pleased to have taken his brother by surprise and pleased especially to taunt him on this issue.
“My new wife has no right to comment on any of my choices,” Jarrett said with a scowl. James’s dark brow shot up, his grin deepened.
“Now, that, brother, is not a chivalrous attitude! Shall I take that to mean that your so recently arrived bride is not aware that she is now kin to half the savages in the area?”
James was highly amused; Jarrett cast him a deeper frown. No good. James kept grinning.
“The last thing I imagined you coming home with was a bride!” James told him.
“I had not imagined to do so either,” Jarrett assured him.
“You married her by accident? A man spills food by accident, brother. It is much more difficult to take a bride by accident.”
“I never said I married her by accident.” Jarrett groaned.
James sobered suddenly. “It is just that after Lisa …”
“Lisa has been gone nearly three years,” Jarrett said flatly.
“You said you’d never marry again,” James reminded him softly.
Jarrett shrugged. James was determined to pursue the issue, as surely no other man would have dared to do. “But you have now acquired a new wife and brought her into the midst of this powder keg. And if I am not mistaken, she doesn’t know a thing about me or my family.”
Jarrett stood, hands on hips, walking to the water, looking across it. The winter sun was clear, yet somehow gentle. The air was cool, the breeze slight; the moss dripping from the trees to the water was lifted and stirred by it. A crane came into view in graceful flight, sheering above the water, coming to rest just atop it. Light waves rushed out around the creature, causing the water to ripple. The scene was beautiful.
Peaceful.
This was the home he loved, the enchantment he had seen in his mind’s eye when Tara had mocked his savage land.
“Jarrett?” James said.
Jarrett didn’t turn. “No, she doesn’t know about you—or my family. I didn’t refrain from telling her because I was afraid of her reaction.”
“Then?”
Jarrett turned again. “I married her because she was in some kind of serious trouble.”
“What trouble?”
“I don’t know. She was … running.”
“Another runaway?” James inquired musingly. “But how—”
“I won her in a card game.”
“You married a woman you won in a card game?” James said incredulously.
“They were strange circumstances. She didn’t belong where I found her. Since I did marry her, I can vouch for that.”
“If you’d merely bedded her, brother, you could have vouched for the same. This is one time I wish I’d been with you in your wondrous New Orleans.”
Jarrett gave a grunt of aggravation and impatience and James immediately sobered again. “All right, big brother. You won her in a card game, then she ran—from whom or what you don’t know. So then you married her.”
“Something like that,” Jarrett agreed, amused himself at last.
“All right, so I’m not so surprised. I’ve heard that she is exceptionally beautiful. True?” James asked.
Again, Jarrett shrugged. “She …” he began, then said flatly, “Yes. She is very beautiful. Nearly perfect.”
“Don’t resent her for it,” James advised him.
“What?” Jarrett said sharply.
“It is almost as if you bear her a grudge for her beauty,” James advised him. “A beauty that was enough to bring you to the altar when you didn’t intend to be there.”
Jarrett shook his head. “I didn’t resent bringing her there. Maybe I didn’t want a wife, but I do need one. I wasn’t coerced, seduced—forced. I married her with full intent to do so. But …” He strode back to the log and sat again beside his brother. James was probably the only one he could ever speak completely honestly with regarding the situation. “I noticed her the moment she came into the tavern … then I saw the outrage, fear, and determination on her face when she suddenly found herself the stake in the game. At first I meant only to get her out of the situation she was in that night, feed her, give her a reprieve from the place for the night. Then suddenly it seemed we were being followed by half the thugs in the city, and I still didn’t know a thing about her.”
“And you still don’t?” James murmured.
“Right. I couldn’t demand or even threaten the truth from her, I couldn’t leave her—” He broke off with a lift of his shoulders. “I definitely wanted her,” he said very softly. “You’re right there. I wanted her badly enough to behave quite rashly, but Robert was the one who suggested that a marriage would be a good idea. She needed to disappear—I had a whole savage wilderness in which she might do so.”
“Ah, but you refrained from telling her the whole truth about your savage wilderness—because she refused to tell you the truth about herself even then? Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Ah!” James murmured. “So my new sister-in-law is an elegantly beautiful mystery woman. I can’t wait to meet her. Of course, under the current circumstances … if I were to ask you both to dinner she’d probably assume that I wanted her to be dinner.”
“I admit,” Jarrett said, “she is … not pleased with the situation in which she finds herself.”
James laughed. There was a slightly hollow tone to his laughter. “Who is pleased?” he murmured softly.
“She’s frightened,” Jarrett said. “She refuses to admit to fear, ever. Even when she is running. I’ve told her that we will be safe, yet she still behaves as if I snatched her from danger only to cast her into the pits of hell.”
“We are all savage against one another here,” James said with an edge of bitterness. “Why shouldn’t she be afraid?”
“I have assured her there is no need.”
“But you have neglected to tell her that your house would be spared in any raid. That every major chief, for peace or war, would walk around your property. Because of all white men, you honor your word.”
“Because the Indian James McKenzie, Running Bear, is my brother,” Jarrett corrected him.
James grinned again. “You lived among my people before I did, Jarrett. You stand among my people as your own man, and upon your own reputation and deeds. Perhaps you should let her know that.”
“Perhaps, since I did snatch her from some awful fate, she might have some faith in me.”
“She arrived to hear about the massacre of Major Dade and his men—I am certain such tales could cause a wavering in the strongest of faiths!” James advised him.
Jarrett stood restlessly again, pacing to the water, staring across it. James was right. Tara had been right. He owed her explanations. It vexed him. He wanted her to have faith in him, and he wanted her to come to him with her own explanations.
“Perhaps she has heard even more,” James said behind him. “There are those who claim that your first wife died at our hands.”
Jarrett brace
d himself, amazed at the pain that could still knife through him.
“And that’s a lie,” he said roughly. “Who would tell her such a thing?”
“Many men—and women,” James said flatly. “Perhaps you should tread gently.”
“And perhaps,” Jarrett said, spinning around to face his brother, “you remain unaware of just how much she is keeping from me!”
“But you are asking her to live in this world of yours—you are not living in her past.”
“Her past may follow us yet, and I will be ill equipped to deal with it!”
James threw up his hands. “I leave you then to your anger, big brother!” he said. “Yet I remain curious to meet this rare new beauty of a sister-in-law, perhaps even the soon-to-be mother of my nephews and nieces.”
Jarrett wondered about his brother’s words for a moment. He wanted children. He was convinced that his lands would prosper with the years to come, that peace would eventually reign here, and that he had a fine legacy to leave behind him. He wanted a son to hold, to teach, to watch grow. Robert had said that he had needed a wife, whether he wanted one or not.
The problem was, he admitted, he wanted the wife he had acquired too much.
He took a deep breath, trying to swallow some of the tense twist of emotions within him.
“I’ve got to go home,” James said. “I was just anxious to see you since all of this exploded on us.”
Jarrett nodded, stepping forward, and the two embraced warmly for a moment, then stepped back from each other. “Bring Mother my love,” Jarrett said, referring to Mary McKenzie, who lived now with James—Sean had passed away nearly a decade ago. “Give kisses to Sara and Jennifer,” he said, referring to his nieces. “And give a really deep, passionate one to Naomi,” he added, referring to his sister-in-law, a half-breed like James, and a rare beauty with golden skin, hazel eyes, and ink-dark hair that fell nearly to her knees.
“A passionate one, eh?” James queried.
Jarrett nodded, his lips curling into a grin, his eyes sparkling. “Very passionate.”
“Wait till I get my hands on your wife,” James warned. “If you want to go around passing out kisses—and watch that passionate one—you’d best come to dinner soon yourself, with or without your new wife. Mother will be anxious to see you, to remind you that you remain her son, no matter what war we may fight.”
Jarrett nodded. “I’ll come soon,” he promised.
James grinned and turned, ready to disappear into the trees.
“James!” Jarrett called to him.
James paused, turning back.
“You remember. You’re my brother, no matter what war other men fight.”
James smiled. “Aye, Jarrett!” he agreed, lightly imitating their father’s deep brogue. “We remain the sons of Sean McKenzie!”
“Aye, and that’s a fact!” Jarrett returned in kind.
James smiled, turned, and disappeared, his footfalls silent.
Jarrett stared after his brother for several moments, then looked back to the water. The crane had flown away. The surface of the water was serene. The copse seemed encompassed in a sun-dappled silence.
Yet it was all a lie, he thought. It was the beauty he was fighting for, and yet …
He didn’t even have an enemy to fight.
He inhaled and exhaled. He had been anxious to come back, and all hell had broken loose in his absence. He did have things to attend to.
And a reluctant bride. One who had caused him to lie awake throughout the long night. Agonizing. Wanting to touch her.
Not wanting to want her so badly.
Come what might, it was time to return to her.
And suddenly he was very anxious to do so. He’d been a damned fool. He had been so worried that she meant to run away from him again that he had been, in his strange way, running away from her.
He smiled suddenly. No more.
He whistled sharply. Charlemagne lifted his head from the tuft of grass he had been ripping from the creek bed and trotted obediently to him.
Indian style, Jarrett threw his leg over the stallion’s back, flicked the reins, and started back.
Chapter 10
Tara stood on the porch, staring out onto the landscape that stretched away from the back of the house. The grass was beautifully green and an abundance of wildflowers grew at the river’s edge creating a fantastic splash of color, even in winter. The water drifted by on a swift current this morning. The December air was not cold, but pleasantly cool, with that swift, silent breeze moving it along.
Jarrett was gone. She had stayed awake most of the night, waiting for him, wanting to say something, but he had not appeared in the bedroom where he had so determinedly told her she was to sleep.
She gritted her teeth hard, feeling the breeze, listening. She could hear the men in the fields. Black men, red men, white men, and all kinds of mixtures of the three. All of them hired men. She wasn’t sure if it had anything to do with a dislike of slavery on Jarrett’s part, or if it was just good business sense. Florida was a place where any runaway could find help. Often the Indians’ problems were brought about by their refusal to turn runaway slaves back over to white bounty hunters.
She shivered at the soft touch of the breeze, marveling again that a place could appear so serene and so beautiful, truly like an Eden or paradise, and yet offer such an abundance of danger. She didn’t understand Jarrett, and perhaps that created half her fear. She didn’t want to be afraid, didn’t want to be a coward, and that, too, made things so much worse! But there had been so much panic in Tampa. People thinking that perhaps the Indians would attack even there. And yet Jarrett had been determined to come here.
Why hadn’t Jarrett been afraid as well? And why had he refused to take a commission with the military? And why did it seem that there had been a strange understanding between her husband and the military man who had approached him and waved to her when she had stood aboard the Magda, watching the civilization of Tampa slip surely away? Jarrett, it seemed, wasn’t willing to do exactly what they wanted him to do.
They would call on him at another time. And he would oblige them in some other manner.
If they were all to live so long!
She walked to the porch rail, fingers gripping it tightly. He was disappointed in her, of course. She bit into her lower lip, wondering how things had managed to go so badly. Not that they had even begun on terms of the greatest friendship! But nonetheless, she had been fascinated with him from the moment she had first seen him, when she had been warned that the Black Irish one had a certain spell. And it had seemed that passionate emotional ties had wound ever more tightly around her since that time. At first, though perhaps he’d harbored no great love for her, he had been a passionate and considerate lover. And just when she had discovered that she longed for both the passion and the tenderness, life had intruded.
“He is a tyrant!” she whispered softly.
But then she surely hadn’t done much for the relationship, screaming that she didn’t want him touching her.
And now, despite any debts she might owe him, she was stubbornly determined that she would maintain pride and dignity and surrender nothing of her heart to a man who seemed to sleep wherever he chose while dictating to her.
And all this while she was terrified nearly every minute that a Seminole tomahawk might come crashing into her skull.
She didn’t want to be afraid. She simply was.
Not as she had been before. She had known her danger before. And she didn’t want to go back. Even if she were to perish here, it would be better than going back.
She just wanted Jarrett to use some sense, to realize what had happened, to see that his wondrous Florida was a savage land, no matter how serene and well run his plantation.
She swung around suddenly, no sound but some instinct warning her that someone had come upon her. He had.
Jarrett stood at the open doors to the back breezeway, feet apart, arms casually crossed o
ver his chest as he watched her. She wondered what he was thinking, and she didn’t like his expression. There was, she thought, a mocking contempt in his hard black eyes, and she had to remind herself just how very disappointed he was in her. She didn’t measure up to his real wife, Lisa.
She reproached herself quickly for the thought. Lisa was dead. And Jarrett really hadn’t said much about her. Perhaps that was it. Jarrett hadn’t said anything at all.
“So I see you’ve survived the night,” he said lightly.
“And would it have mattered to you if I hadn’t?” she inquired. She wanted to bite her tongue instantly, but it was too late. The childish words were out.
He arched a brow at her without an answer and without further words of recrimination. She felt even worse. As if her back were up against a wall.
But there had been all those whispers in Tampa Bay behind her back. Nancy Reynolds had hinted that Jarrett’s first wife had perished at the hands of the Indians.
She stood still for a moment, wishing that she could strike him in the head with something and make him realize that he should be out …
Slaughtering all the Indians? she wondered, the inner question somewhat taunting.
But she didn’t know any Indians. And she did know what had happened to Major Dade and other white men.
He walked across the porch, smoothly and almost in silence, not a board creaking beneath his feet, and she found herself trembling as he approached. She longed to reach out, to touch him. No, it was something deeper. She wanted to go back to the time before this wall had risen between them. So much had happened so quickly. It seemed that life had become the utmost struggle, and then he had been there. She had been so accustomed to running and fighting on her own: Then he had come. And though the future with such a man had been a challenge all its own, she had to admit that there had been the most wonderful moments when she had felt completely secure. He hadn’t married her for love, there had never been such a pretense, but there had been those magical moments in his arms when she had felt cherished. She wanted to be held again. She wanted to feel that the world would be right, because he would shield her from it.