I know what you want from me, Bay. I’m just not sure I can give it to you.
I love you. I missed you.
It had taken only seconds for them to say with their eyes what was in their hearts. It took a moment longer before Rip said in a voice husky with emotion, “Welcome home, Bay.” He took the few steps necessary to put his hand on her shoulder, as he might do with a son. “Welcome home.”
Rip’s words released Cricket from the trance in which she’d been held, so just as Rip was reaching for Bay to draw her into his arms, Cricket’s engulfing embrace cut them off from one another, and the opportunity to reach across the immense chasm that lay between them was lost.
Sloan had followed Cricket, quickly embracing Bay and then stepping back again, uncomfortable with this overt expression of love, uncommon as it was in this household.
“Goodness!” Cricket said with a laugh as she caught a whiff of Bay’s hair. “We need to get you into a tub! But since we have dinner on the table, maybe you’d like to eat first.”
Cricket grabbed Bay’s hand and tugged her away from Rip and around to her chair at the table. “Sit here, Bay, and I’ll fix you a plate of food. What would you like?”
“It all looks good.” But Bay’s eyes remained on Rip. She wondered if her father would have embraced her if Cricket hadn’t interfered.
“Tell us everything,” Cricket said as she set a plate piled high with ham and sweet potatoes in front of Bay. “How did you get here? Where did you come from? What was it like?”
Bay stared at the fork in her hand that felt so foreign, looked with confusion at the food she’d once loved, and tried to get comfortable in the straight-backed chair that forced her feet flat on the ground. “I . . . I hardly know where to begin. Why don’t you talk while I eat? Why are you here, Cricket, instead of with Creed at Lion’s Dare?”
“I’m here so my daughter, Jesse, can be christened at Three Oaks,” Cricket announced.
“So you had a daughter,” Bay said, smiling with pleasure. “Long Quiet said—”
“Long Quiet? Long Quiet found you? Is that how you got here? Did he bring you? Where is he?”
Cricket didn’t leave time for Bay to get a word in edgewise, but Bay was grateful for the respite. Speaking English was a chore. She was glad she’d had the chance to practice with Long Quiet, for she still occasionally had to stop and say a word in her head before it would come out in English.
What should she say to them about her relationship with the half-breed Comanche? What could she say? She couldn’t bear to tell them that she’d been married to Long Quiet and he’d abandoned her. It was hard enough for her to accept that he hadn’t loved her enough to leave Comanchería and live in Texas. How could she hope to explain their relationship to her family?
“You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to,” Sloan said.
Bay glanced quickly at Sloan, grateful for her understanding. But she had to say something, and it would be easier if she just got it over with now. So she explained, “Long Quiet found me among the Quohadi Comanches. I was owned by a war chief named Many Horses. Long Quiet convinced him to let me come home.”
“Where is Long Quiet now?” Rip asked. “I want to thank him.”
“He’s gone to Laredo. He . . .” Bay couldn’t speak over the lump in her throat. Was this going to happen every time she mentioned Long Quiet’s name?
Cricket jumped in to fill the silence. “He’s meeting Creed in Laredo. He promised to help out the Mier prisoners who are trying to escape from Castle San Carlos in Perote.
“Go on with your story,” Cricket urged.
“I . . . I had a child named Little Deer. But I couldn’t bring her with me. I . . .”
The stillness of the others brought Bay’s speech to a halt. Of course, she realized, they thought the child was hers, and that would mean she’d lain with some Comanche buck. Well, that was the truth, even if they would never know the Comanche she’d lain with was Long Quiet. And she would not deny her relationship to Little Deer.
When she spoke again, she told them everything she thought they would want to hear about her life among the Comanches and kept from them what she thought they wouldn’t understand. She told them how Many Horses had been her protector and how she’d been accused of being a sorceress, which was why Long Quiet had been able to take her so easily from the village.
She didn’t tell them she’d married Long Quiet. The pain and humiliation of being left by him was too great. Thus abbreviated, her story did little to satisfy the three curious minds at the table.
“So Long Quiet brought you home after all,” Cricket said when Bay had finished. “He always said he’d find you. And he kept his word. I think we should have a party to celebrate your homecoming.”
Bay turned pale. “You can’t . . . I mean, I don’t want anyone to know . . . people will think . . .”
“People will think it’s about time you came home from gallivanting around England and the Continent,” Rip said.
“What?”
“That’s the story we told when you were captured,” Sloan explained. “First that you’d gone back to Boston for more schooling, and later, when you still hadn’t gotten back, we simply said you’d gone for an extended trip to the Continent with an acquaintance of Rip’s who factors our cotton in England. Otherwise, we knew that when you did come home, it would be difficult for you to return. . . .”
Sloan stopped and bit her lip. All it would take to make Bay a social pariah was the knowledge that she’d been captured by Comanches. That fact alone would label her a fallen woman, unfit for the company of the local planters’ wives and daughters. For it was a well-known fact that the Comanches raped their women captives. The question was there so clearly in Sloan’s eyes that Bay actually answered it.
“I was never raped.”
Sloan looked at Bay for the first time with her heart instead of her head. There was a sadness about Bay that made Sloan wonder whether she hadn’t suffered more than she’d admitted. How strange her sister looked. Not like her sister at all, but like . . . like some Comanche woman.
“I don’t want to meet anyone,” Bay said. “Especially not—”
“Damnation, Bay,” Rip interrupted his daughter. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. We’re having the christening for Jesse in a couple of weeks, and we’ll just use that opportunity to let all the neighbors see you’re back home safe and sound and none the worse for wear after spending a few years away . . . on the Continent,” Rip finished.
“But I haven’t been on the Continent.”
“I know one particular young man,” Rip said, too caught up in his hopes and plans to realize Bay had contradicted him, “who’ll be delighted to know you’re back. I’ve been putting him off for almost six months now, telling him you’d be home any day. He’ll make a fine husband for—”
“I don’t want a husband,” Bay said, rising abruptly. “And I don’t want to meet the neighbors or anyone else. I just want . . . I just want to be left alone!”
Three years ago, Bay would have turned and run. Now she just walked away and on up the stairs to the room that had been hers. She closed the door behind her in relief, then turned and realized that nothing in the room was familiar. All the things that had meant anything to her had burned with the house. Everything that tied her to the past was gone. She walked slowly to the window and looked out over the empty cotton fields. She didn’t belong here.
She hugged herself with her arms, trying to get a grip on emotions that threatened to fly free. Long Quiet was lost to her. She would have to learn to survive without him. But if there was one thing she’d learned over the past three years, it was how to survive.
She whirled when she heard the knock at the door. Perhaps if she didn’t answer, whoever it was would go away. The knock became more insistent. Bay sighed and crossed to the door. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me and Sloan,” Cricket answered. “Let us in.”
Bay knew she couldn’t keep them out forever, and her sisters were both stubborn enough to stand at the door all afternoon if need be. She opened the door and stepped back. Cricket had come prepared. She carried a handful of clothes, brushes, a comb, and a pair of slippers. Sloan carried a large wooden tub.
“I figured you’d want to bathe off some of that trail dust,” Cricket said.
Even as Cricket spoke, Stephen, the Negro servant who managed Rip’s household, arrived with the first buckets of hot water. “It’s a good thing you finally come home, young lady,” Stephen said warmly. “I ain’t tole nobody else where you really been gone to all this time, and I ain’t gonna tell,” he said as he emptied the buckets into the tub. “Wouldn’t be right folks holdin’ up their noses at you. Ain’t your fault what happened. Shore ’nuf ain’t.”
“Thank you, Stephen,” Bay replied. She stood aloof while Cricket made all the preparations for the bath. She was more than ready to exchange a warm tub for cold river water, and soap for the sand she’d used to wash herself during the past three years. Except she knew that when she stripped off her clothes, the scars she’d gotten among the Comanches would be visible, and she didn’t feel like explaining anything else today.
If the roles had been reversed, Bay felt sure she would have been sensitive enough to offer Sloan or Cricket some privacy. But neither Sloan nor Cricket offered to leave, and they were trying so hard to do and say the right things that she would have felt callous asking them to leave the room.
When Cricket had finally shooed Stephen out the door for the last time, she turned to Bay and said, “Now, let’s get you out of those filthy clothes. What is that smell in your hair, anyway?”
“Bear grease.” Bay’s voice was muffled because Cricket was busy pulling the poncho up over her head.
“Damn, Bay! Your back is a mess of scars,” Sloan said.
“Oh, my God!” Cricket exclaimed. “You’ve been tortured!”
Bay grabbed the deerskin poncho that Cricket had removed and protectively covered her breasts with it. She backed up against the wall so her sisters wouldn’t be able to see the horrible scars. “Surely you didn’t think being a Comanche captive was all honey and roses,” Bay replied bitterly. “What did you expect?”
Cricket said nothing. The tears in her eyes spoke for her. But Sloan admitted, “Frankly, I expected worse.”
Bay snorted derisively. “I could always count on you to be honest.”
“You don’t seem to have been starved,” Sloan continued, eyeing Bay’s full figure, “and except for those scars you’re hiding and a few more freckles and calluses, you don’t seem to have changed much.”
“The changes are inside,” Bay snapped. “They can’t all be seen.”
“You’re certainly more testy,” Sloan observed with a wry smile. “But I guess that’s to be expected. Things must seem pretty strange to you right now.”
That bit of understatement made Bay burst out in hysterical laughter. Sloan and Cricket looked at each other in confusion, which quickly turned to worry as Bay’s laughter became gasping sobs.
Bay quickly found herself surrounded by love, awkwardly offered by two people who hadn’t had much practice at demonstrating their feelings. Cricket hugged her tight. Sloan put an arm around her shoulder. Both murmured soothing words of comfort, which were equally awkward for Bay to accept, because receiving comfort wasn’t something with which she had much experience, either. For the moment, it was simply enough that she knew she was welcome here.
At last Cricket released Bay and said, “You don’t have to take a bath if you don’t want to. I only thought—”
“Oh, I do want a bath,” Bay interrupted. “But I haven’t had one in so long that—”
“We can give you privacy if you’d rather,” Sloan offered. “We just didn’t think you’d want—”
Cricket interrupted her to suggest, “I could wash your hair for you if you like, Bay, and—”
“I could scrub your back while you tell us all about Your Life Among the Indians,” Sloan finished for her, as though she were reading the title to an exciting new novel.
Bay burst out laughing, but this time with happiness. “You two haven’t changed a bit,” she said. “Getting a word in edgewise when you’re around isn’t any easier now than it was before I left.”
“Then you’ll let us help?” Cricket asked.
“Yes, yes, I’ll be glad if you stay,” Bay said. In fact, it was wonderful to be able to talk and talk and talk. She was sure she wasn’t going to get tired of their company anytime soon.
But Bay had overestimated her tolerance for the excitement of having two such inquisitive sisters, after such a long period of being so much alone. Long before the bath was over, Bay was wishing for the privacy she’d so readily abandoned at their pleading. She found that many of the things they wanted to know about were things she’d rather forget. She found herself avoiding direct answers to their questions and telling them about humorous incidents, distracting them from the more unhappy aspects of her life among the Comanches.
“I’ve got some muslin underdrawers for you,” Cricket said as Sloan wrapped Bay in a large towel. “I can’t believe you didn’t wear anything under your buckskins.”
“It really was fine,” Bay insisted. Except the first time she’d had to bare herself to Long Quiet, she thought.
“If you say so,” Cricket replied skeptically. “Now let me slip this gown over your head, and you’ll be ready for bed.”
Bay frowned. “Bed? It’s the middle of the day.”
“But you look exhausted,” Sloan said. “Why not take a nap before supper?”
Cricket was already turning down the covers of a maple four-poster with two thick feather mattresses. Bay eyed the mattresses with longing. The bed looked tremendously inviting. “All right,” she agreed. “I’ll take a nap. But be sure to wake me up for supper.”
Bay was already yawning by the time Sloan had adjusted the curtains in the room to shut out the bright sunlight. Bay climbed into the bed, thinking it felt heavenly. So soft. So utterly soft. Like Little Deer’s skin. Or a pony’s nose. Bay curled into a ball in the center of the bed and hugged herself, effectively shutting out the other two people in the room.
Enough. She’d told them enough. She’d shared enough. She needed to be alone now to give all those jumbled-up, confused feelings a chance to settle down.
“Get some sleep, Bay,” Sloan said, resting a hand on her shoulder.
Cricket smoothed back the wispy tendrils of hair that had dried around Bay’s face, then leaned over to drop a kiss on her sister’s cheek. “Rest now. Don’t worry about anything. Now that you’re home, everything will be fine.”
The sound of a man’s angry voice startled Bay awake. Her dream of dancing in Jonas Harper’s arms rapidly faded, leaving her confused and disoriented. As her fingertips grazed the soft feather mattress beneath her, she realized she wasn’t in Many Horses’ tipi. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. No slanting tipi walls pressed down upon her. No smell of rancid meat and woodsmoke burned her nose. Bay pressed her fist against her mouth to stifle her cry. Where was she?
All too soon, the reality of her situation became plain. Shadow, Long Quiet’s wife, was no more. She was Bayleigh Falkirk Stewart. And she was home at Three Oaks.
She couldn’t face the thought of sitting at a table eating supper with her father and sisters, smiling and pretending everything was fine. Nothing was fine. The rough chambray gown grated on her skin. The muslin drawers were too constricting. The bed was too soft. And she grieved for those she’d left behind, especially Long Quiet.
Bay rose from the feather mattress and stripped off the clothes she wore. She wrapped her naked body in a cotton sheet and sought out the braided rug on the hard floor. She would lose herself in sleep. Perhaps in the morning everything would look brighter.
Only moments later the door was thrown open and a huge shadow spilled across her. Bay held her breath.
“Bay?”
That was the angry voice she’d heard, the one that had awakened her, the voice of her father. She kept her eyes closed, hoping he’d go away.
But he didn’t.
He lifted her up into his arms, and she prepared herself to be put back into the too-soft bed. Instead, Rip sat down on the bed and settled her into his lap, one arm around her shoulders to support her. She heard his breath catch as his other hand roamed the scars on her back as though to erase them, to erase her pain. He huffed out the breath of air he’d been holding, then trailed his hand across her face, marveling at her cheekbones, tracing her eyebrows. His hand smoothed the hair from her forehead, and she could feel his breath fan her face, as he leaned down to press a fatherly kiss on her forehead.
She could not remember the last time he’d touched her with such tenderness. Why hadn’t he reached out to her like this when she’d first arrived? Why wait until now, when he thought her asleep? She felt his thigh muscles tighten when the tear leaked from beneath her eyelash. She was sure he would speak then, was sure he would bluff and bluster as he usually did when caught off guard.
But he didn’t.
He caught the tear with his thumb and wiped it away. Then he rose, lifting her tall woman’s body as though she were but a child. He turned and placed her in the bed, covering her with the quilt and tucking it in around her chin.
Bay’s throat was swollen so thick she thought she might choke. She wished for the courage to ask him if he’d missed her. She wished for the courage to tell him that she loved him.
“Stay in bed,” he ordered, his voice brusque. “There’s no reason to be sleeping on the floor. By the way, I’ve invited someone to come over for supper tomorrow, someone I know you’ll want to see. I expect you’ll be feeling better by then. Good night, Bay.”
Then he was gone, without a word of explanation for what he’d done, without a word of love for his disappointing daughter.
Bay climbed out of bed and curled up on the braided rug. It was a small defiance, but defiance all the same. If he’d just look at her, he’d see the difference.
Comanche Woman Page 19