Runaway

by Donna Cooner

  “I still have the good sense to be afraid of vengeful warriors.”

  “But Osceola is the fiercest of the warriors—are you afraid of him?”

  “I’m Jarrett’s wife,” she said flatly.

  Robert smiled. “You simply have to try very hard to understand what no man can really explain.”

  She didn’t know if she understood anything or not, but when she looked up, she felt a sharp stab of unease sweep through her.

  Jarrett was in the doorway.

  Robert remained on his knees before her, his hands clasped warmly around hers. It was certainly a disturbing picture.

  She wanted to snatch her hands away, but she didn’t dare. She had no intention of looking guilty when she and Robert both were perfectly innocent. She rose slowly, indicating the doorway. “Jarrett has come back, Robert. And Captain Argosy is with him. Perhaps they will be willing to share their decisions respecting Jarrett’s whereabouts in the next few weeks, if not the cause and reason for them!”

  “Jarrett, Tyler.” Robert was smoothly off the floor, shaking hands with both men. If Jarrett’s enthusiasm for a greeting in return was lacking, Robert didn’t seem to realize it. Only Tara felt the fiery force of those ebony dark eyes on her, and the heat that seemed to radiate from him with each smooth and catlike move.

  “There’s no cause or reason of which you are not aware, my love,” Jarrett told her, standing behind her, his hands upon her shoulders, his lips just brushing her nape. “There is a war on. But supper is served. Shall we?”

  He escorted her into the dining room. Robert and Tyler followed. Jarrett kept the talk conversational as the meal was served, urging Tyler to tell Tara about social events in Tampa, sparse now, admittedly, but no matter what great events were taking place in the world, gossip remained.

  Halfway through the meal Robert told Jarrett what he had already told Tara. Robert had been right: though a deeply pained expression appeared on his face, Jarrett did not intend to oppose his brother’s decision.

  “Of course, James intends to see you himself, but under the circumstances …” Robert’s voice trailed away.

  “Just what exactly are the circumstances?” she demanded.

  Tyler remained uncomfortably silent. Jarrett picked up his wineglass and spun it around. “Dozens of homes have been destroyed. Farmers killed. Rich men, poor men. But you are aware of that.”

  Tara felt a chill.

  Jarrett continued. “The military has suffered deeply as well, despite the federal troops sent. Some fine men have been sent here, but local militia drop out, the men are desperate to return to their homes to see to their own families. The federals know little or nothing about this terrain, they are bogged down in marsh and swamp, the Indians fight and strike and slip into the foliage, down the streams and rivers of grass in their cypress canoes.”

  “So you are leaving again?” Tara said coolly.

  “Tara, I am in a good position to help,” Jarrett informed her. His voice was as sharply edged as her own, and she saw his black gaze fall upon Robert. Was he worried again about leaving her? Had these days meant so little?

  Yet hadn’t she worried herself? Fear that some other woman out of his past who had offered him comfort or entertainment or simple forgetfulness after Lisa’s death might offer again something that she did not?

  Like trust and honesty? she taunted herself.

  “Jarrett, you cannot be the only living human being who can solve this thing!” she protested.

  Tyler leaned forward suddenly. “Sergeant Culpeper was killed last week, Tara. In a skirmish with one of Osceola’s subchiefs, Coacoochee, or Wildcat.”

  She swallowed hard. The knowledge hurt. She could remember Sergeant Culpeper, sitting here, in this room, right in front of her. So very polite, so very young. With so much life left to live!

  She glared at Jarrett.

  Tyler continued. “Osceola sent word to General Clinch after escaping one of his traps. He told the general that the whites had guns—so did he. The whites have powder and lead—and so does he. The whites will fight—so will he, until the last drop of Seminole blood moistens the soil of this, his hunting ground.”

  “What has Jarrett to do with this?” she demanded.

  “Jarrett can reach Osceola. Few white men can.”

  Osceola! She wanted to hang him herself! She wanted to lay her head down on the table and cry for poor Sergeant Culpeper. And so many others. She could almost feel her heart hardening against Naomi and Mary, James and the girls. But Robert had been right—the relationship was between people, and none of them was happy to be on opposite sides of a devastating and painful war.

  The meal had ended. Plates remained half full. Jeeves would come into the room any minute and offer the men cigars and brandy in the library. They’d talk again—without her.

  She stood abruptly, determined that she wouldn’t wait tonight to be left, she’d do the leaving herself.

  “Well, if you are determined to do the army’s work, Jarrett, I can only assume you will leave in the morning. Tyler”—she hesitated, ready to tell him she was already sick to death of seeing him, but she held her tongue and managed to say other words just as true—“take care of yourself, Tyler. Keep your head down under fire.”

  The men stood up. Tyler nodded gravely to her, knowing there was little he could say now that she would want to hear. Robert caught her hands and kissed her cheek.

  She smoothly eluded Jarrett when he would have stopped her, slipping gracefully from the room, then speeding away from it.

  She didn’t go upstairs right away, but rather wandered out to the porch. The night was cool, but mild enough. She thought of the chanting and songs that filled the fields, of the laughter the servants shared within the house. She thought of the nights when she had held both her husband and happiness, and she was suddenly afraid that it was all slipping away, that when Jarrett left this time …

  “Ah, if I could but read your mind! Smooth that troubled brow!”

  She spun around. Robert had come outside.

  “It would not be difficult to read my mind. I am in a tempest! I am sorry for James, I am furious with Jarrett. He cannot end this war! He cannot control Osceola—”

  “And he cannot turn down Tyler when Tyler has terms for him to bring to Osceola.”

  “Tyler could spend the next decade sending Osceola terms. And I hate him now. I hate him because so many people are dead, and I hate him for Sergeant Culpeper—” She broke off. “Lisa would probably have managed all this so much better!”

  Robert shrugged. “She’d have been upset.”

  “Oh, how can you know?” Tara cried out passionately.

  “Well, I knew her all my life,” Robert said defensively.

  “What?” Tara demanded.

  He was very still for a moment, then he cocked his head slightly, staring at her. “You mean that Jarrett has never mentioned our relationship. You still don’t … know?”

  “Oh, my God! What don’t I know now?”

  He smiled, shaking his head. “Nothing like the fact that you’re related to a tribe of Indians, although I suppose it is a similiar situation. Lisa was my sister.”

  “What?”

  “Lisa was my sister. I came with her when Jarrett bought this land, we were friends from the start. We—” He broke off, worried as he stared at Tara.

  The world was spinning. Not blackening, just spinning in a white whir. Sister! Oh, what a fool she had been making of herself all this time. What had she said to Robert? Had she ever said anything hurtful in her jealousy, had she said or done anything foolish that might have been hard on Robert? She had imposed on him, when he must still have been in pain for a woman he had loved himself. She desperately hoped not. Robert had been so kind to her.

  Damn Jarrett, damn him, damn him.

  And she was still so dizzy. It was ridiculous, but she was afraid that she was going to mimic southern belle behavior and faint there on the porch. She was startin
g to fall. Robert rushed forward.

  It was just when he caught her in his arms that Jarrett came walking out onto the porch.

  Tara fought to still her spinning head. She blinked, gritted down hard on her teeth, and willed herself to gain strength to stand alone. Robert tried to right her. Jarrett stood just outside the doorway as tall and still as a cast-bronze figure. He walked over to Tara and Robert and for once, seemed not at all in a mood to mince words with either of them.

  He wrenched Tara from Robert’s hold, his fingers biting around her upper arm. “Well, my love, I’m not so sure that you’ll be at all unhappy or lonely with my departure this time.”

  “Jarrett—” Robert began.

  But Tara meant to have none of it. She found all the strength she could possibly want and let fly with fury, her hand striking with a determined violence against Jarrett’s cheek. He was so startled that his hold eased, and she wrenched free from him, tearing into the house and up the steps.

  In her room she paused by the window, inhaling great gulps of air. After a moment she could breathe. She still couldn’t think.

  She stood gazing out at the darkened lawn, her back very stiff.

  She heard Jarrett when he entered the room, and she knew that he was staring at her long and hard.

  “How dare you!” she said after a moment, shaking. “How dare you! To accuse us, when you were hiding the truth again!”

  “What truth?”

  “He’s your brother-in-law!” she cried.

  “And what the hell difference does that make?” Jarrett demanded furiously.

  “Oh, my God!” she breathed. “You didn’t tell me, you didn’t warn me! And I said so many things to him!”

  “Whatever indiscretions you shared with him were by your own choice.”

  “I wouldn’t have hurt him!” she cried raggedly. “I wouldn’t have spoken about Lisa to him. If you hadn’t kept this particular secret—”

  “I didn’t mean to keep it a secret!” he snapped in interruption. “But then again, why not? Your life is one huge, continual secret!” he reminded her.

  “And your life is one compromise after another!” she charged him.

  “We aren’t talking about me at the moment.”

  “I’m talking about you. And the fact that you’re leaving again.”

  “Damn you, Tara, I have to go.”

  “Yes, you have to go! Always you! You can’t fight for them, and you can’t fight against them. You’ll just have to go and convince that murdering bastard Osceola that he must stop his war!”

  “Yes, I have to try, Tara. For the Seminoles and the whites—I have to try!”

  “And you think that you will have the power to tell Osceola he must cease his violence and make an entire people surrender and go west to live on barren lands?”

  “Tara …” he warned, his voice becoming a growl, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

  “Well, McKenzie, if you can’t stop Osceola, then you have to quit befriending him!” she said heatedly. She spun around at last. “You have to stop trying to negotiate with him! Let others go. You can’t take up arms against your brother, but Osceola has no problem making war on the whites. The insane thing is to send you in. Someone else should go—let someone get close enough to kill him.”

  “If someone were to kill Osceola like that,” Jarrett spat out angrily, “we’d have a martyr on our hands!”

  “You can stay out of it! You can refuse to see him, to talk to him! Jarrett, all those plantations burned, so many people killed!”

  “Indian villages have been razed as well.”

  “You’re white! You’re white!” She wasn’t even sure why she was feeling so hysterical. Perhaps it was Sergeant Culpeper’s death. Perhaps it was all the fear and anger bottled up in her heart.

  “I will not go to war against my brother!” he thundered out.

  “But you are very quick to doubt your brother-in-law! And me!”

  “I have never really doubted Robert.”

  “Then it was only me you were doubting on the porch when your manners were so lacking!”

  “My manners?” His brow suddenly arched up very high. “You’re forgetting where I found you.”

  “I don’t forget. You don’t let me.”

  “And I can’t change who and what I am!” he roared. “And if I do appear disturbed, it may only be because you are running to him at every available opportunity!”

  “He’s far more pleasant to be around!”

  Jarrett was dead still for a moment. She could see the pulse ticking furiously at his throat.

  “Well, he just may be accompanying me out tomorrow,” he said very softly. “So alas! You will be minus his company as well.”

  “You’re still going? No matter what I say?”

  “You’re my wife. You will please see my point of view in this and honor it!”

  She inhaled, drawing herself up stiffly. “I’m not allowed a point of view?”

  “Damn it, Tara, you’ve seen—”

  “Then perhaps you’ve no longer got a wife!”

  What was the matter with her? She was just so sick at heart, and most of all she didn’t want him leaving again. He’d wanted to stay at peace with his family. But the war was escalating; it was horrible. He wasn’t going to be allowed to remain at peace, and he didn’t see it. The military had come to him; he would go. If Osceola had sent for him, he would have gone. And when he left, her heart would go with him, and she would pray that one of his own people, angered by his stand, didn’t kill him, and pray that some renegade Indian, hating all whites, didn’t decide to chop him up into little pieces.

  “I don’t have a wife?” he demanded. The words were deep, husky, and each shook with anger and emotion. From head to toe he seemed composed of sinew, muscle—and tension. Silence followed his words. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.

  “Maybe not!” she cried, wishing with all her heart that she hadn’t started this argument, yet very much aware now that she had taken it too far and frightened, suddenly, by the intensity of his anger. Courage! she warned herself. She couldn’t back down, not now, not when she had come so far. “Maybe not!” she repeated, and she squared her shoulders, striding back across the room, determined to walk by him and escape downstairs until he had cooled off.

  She brushed past, yet got no farther. His hands clamped down on her arm, pulling her back.

  “No wife, eh?”

  She’d never seen his eyes so black, yet so touched by glittering fire. She could feel the biting pressure of his hands upon her, the searing anger that seemed to create an inferno within him, between them.

  “You don’t care to treat me as one!” she cried, head thrown back, eyes blazing as well. Dear God, she was losing her mind, pressing him so! “A real wife is allowed an opinion. If Lisa were here to tell you not to go—”

  “Lisa would never dictate to me!” he snapped in interruption. “Lisa knew the situation, she was familiar with it, we shared—” He broke off suddenly, throwing a hand into the air. “Lisa knew the situation!” he repeated angrily.

  “And she wasn’t a coward, and she understood!” Tara said, enunciating the words as crisply and evenly as she could manage.

  “And she’s dead!”

  “But you would have treated her as a wife. You would have listened—”

  He never heard the last because he was already interrupting her. “You are sadly mistaken! My greatest pleasure in life is treating you as my wife!”

  “Memories of a ghost are your greatest pleasure!”

  She shouldn’t have spoken. His eyes narrowed. His teeth clenched. “You needn’t fear. There are no ghosts here tonight.”

  “She is always in your thoughts.”

  “She is always in yours! Leave it be, Tara! I am telling you, leave it be!”

  “I—”

  “Stop!”

  She gasped, the breath knocked from her, for she was suddenly up in his arms and all
but flying through the room, for his strides were fast and furious as he carried her to their bed, all but throwing her upon it.

  “You cannot plan to leave me and have me in the one breath! You—”

  “I could not bear to leave you without having you!”

  “Damn you, Jarrett! If you think you’re going to ride out, don’t you dare think that you’re going to—”

  He was down beside her, his fingers entwined with hers, his lips a fire upon her own, the force of his body upon hers overwhelming. Oh! She longed to fight him into eternity, defy him, beat him with a response that was pure ice.

  But God help her, it seemed that the very flames of his being took flight within her. Sweet simmering honey poured through her veins. She throbbed; she ached. She longed for the weight of him, the feel of him, the heat of him, and she even understood completely his words to her, for she really couldn’t bear his going away if he didn’t touch her, if she didn’t try to hold on to him one last time, cherish and remember the scent of him, the feel of his flesh, the ripple of muscle and sinew, the thunderous rise and fall of his breath, the feel of his kiss.

  His lips raised a breath from her. She twisted away. “I hate you!” she sobbed out. “I hate you for leaving, I hate you for it!”

  “Damn you!” he whispered hoarsely. “Damn you!” But he swept her into his arms again. His lips found hers. Blue flames seemed to burn around her. She tried to slam her fists against him again.

  But then her arms wound around him. Her hunger and passion soared to frightening, dizzying heights, a tempest that raged both wild and sweet.

  She had barely exploded with the cataclysm of it when it began again. His hands, his kiss, upon the length of her. Touching her, lightly, slowly. Stroking. Brushing, teasing. Her throat, her belly. Thighs, the small of her back. Her breasts, her lips, the very heart of her desire. And again she burned, more deeply, more hungrily, and yet, when the sweet explosion seized her, she drifted down in misery.

  None of it meant anything. He was leaving. And he was furious with her.

  “Tara!” he demanded, his hand upon her shoulder as she lay with her back to him.