"The trinket has been returned without anyone's knowledge. I will not mention this incident to your brother."
"That is good because he would send me home to the village."
"As he should." He watched her walk across the room with a heavy pot in her hand. "As should I, if I could spare the escort for you."
"Do not trouble yourself with this woman again, Fire Dancer. She will not take what is not hers." She looked at him. "But do not send me home to Mother. Let me stay. Let me catch the white husband, if I can."
Fire Dancer nodded. "We will not speak of this matter of the trinket again. You may stay here until our party returns to our village, but if no marriage is made, this man must take you home. It is his duty to our mother."
She smiled, switching back to English. "John Allen says he loves this woman. He will marry me."
"This man hopes you are right, if that is what you truly want. I must go and find your brother. He is anxious to go elsewhere, but I will bid him stay. They say the French major approaches. We will begin our peace talks again and perhaps come to some conclusion without more bloodshed."
"Good night, Fire Dancer." She followed him to the door and kissed him on the cheek. "This woman thanks you for the goodness of your heart."
He slipped out the kitchen door and into the cover of darkness. Her sisterly kiss made him wish for one of another kind— one as sweet as honeysuckle sprinkled with morning dew. A kiss of passion. Mack-en-zie's kiss.
Fire Dancer walked along the wall, keeping out of sight. He couldn't get Mackenzie out of his mind. At first, he had just been curious about her. He was fascinated by her wit, her intelligence, even her odd looks. He could think of nothing but her. It was almost as if she was beginning to possess a part of him. Fire Dancer knew that it was madness, but it was as if he was unable to control his logic when it came to her.
Right now he was concerned. She ran from him today after they had kissed under the tree boughs. Why, he was not sure. It was obvious to both of them that it was what she had wanted. He would see her tonight and know what was in her head. He had to.
Mackenzie chewed on the tip of her paintbrush. The sketching had gone so quickly that she had brought out her oil paints. She stared at the small portrait. The light of several stinking tallow candles illuminated the room.
Fire Dancer stared back at her.
The portrait was only two hands tall and one wide and easily hidden. That was why she had made the canvas so small. Fire Dancer would never find it in the room.
At first she had intended to paint just his bust, as she had with Major Albertson. But after she'd gotten the idea to paint him in secret, she realized she could not do him justice by merely painting his head. A full view would capture the subject more accurately.
So she had painted him standing proudly, dressed in his loincloth and quilled moccasins with the leather vest he was so proud of. Behind him she would eventually fill in trees and perhaps even part of the jagged palisade wall.
At first Mackenzie had felt guilty about painting Fire Dancer against his wishes. But that was all nonsense about possessing a man's soul, and if he were an educated man, he would know that. She was honestly doing him no harm. He would never know she had painted his likeness. He would leave the fort when the peace talks were over and then she would add his portrait to those of Major Albertson and Major DuBois to the crate to be transported to London. She would get her first commission payment and Fire Dancer would not be hurt in any way, real or imagined.
She leaned forward and added a stroke of black paint to his long, sleek hair. "Take your soul, indeed," she muttered.
Mackenzie had worked all evening on the portrait, even excusing herself from supper. She suddenly had a burning desire to finish it. With Major DuBois riding for the fort, she'd be able to start his likeness next week. She told herself she had to spend as much time on Fire Dancer's portrait as possible, but in truth, she had skipped supper for fear of seeing him.
Mackenzie didn't know how she felt about their kiss today. Well, she did know how she felt. She smiled with giddy pleasure. She felt wonderful.
But her head was what she had to think with, not her emotions or the strange feelings coursing through her veins. The kiss had been the most wonderful thing that had happened to her. It was even better than the Christmas morning her grandfather had given her that first box of paints.
But of course the kiss could lead to nothing. She knew that. He was a heathen savage. She was a colonial woman with a life back on the Tidewater. It was pure sexual attraction, the devil's work. It was her desire to defy her father and Joshua, and the rules of common society that had prompted her to kiss him.
When she thought of it all logically, it made sense. She was just exercising a childish desire to rebel. And maybe she was just a little infatuated with her subject. Surely that happened sometimes to an artist. When an artist stared at a man's face, at his muscular, half-naked body, it was natural that she should think herself attracted to him.
Mackenzie added one more stroke with the black brush and then dropped it into a little can of linseed oil. She checked her pocket watch, one that had once been her grandfather's. It was nearly midnight. Would he come? She hoped not. She hoped so.
Mackenzie picked up the small canvas from the easel. If the English government liked it, perhaps they would even commission her to paint a full-sized one. Perhaps she'd even get to go to England and work on it there, if she was lucky. The possibilities were endless.
Mackenzie kneeled on the floor and slid the portrait under her cot.
"Mack-en-zie . . ."
It was him.
She popped her head up. Her heart suddenly raced the way it had this afternoon at the stream. She wasn't ready for him yet. She wished she had a nightrail to cover herself. She hadn't prepared herself for what she would say to him. She scrambled to her feet and let the counterpane fall to cover the cot and what lay beneath it.
He climbed in through the window. "This man feared you would lock the window this night." He rolled over her cot and then instead of jumping up as he usually did, he stretched out on his side on the bed. He propped his head on his hand.
She turned away, wondering if it was really necessary that he display his body like that. After all, female or not, she was human and of the child bearing age. Even women had certain feelings . . . down there . She was discovering that pretty quickly.
"You do not speak for once, Mack-en-zie? Are you ill?"
She turned to face him, crossing her arms over her breasts, as if she could somehow isolate herself from him. Where were all those logical, reasonable thoughts now that he was here?
But instead of logic, all she could think of was their kiss, and wish that he would kiss her again. "I . . ." Without realizing it, she touched her lips with her fingertips; the memory of his mouth burned on hers. "I . . . I'm just tired, that's all."
"Come." He patted the cot. "Sit. Rest. This man will not stay long."
She stared at the place where his hand rested on her mother's patchwork counterpane.
"This man will not harm you," he said softly. "I would not touch . . . or kiss what is not offered."
This was her chance. If he was going to speak so frankly, so could she. Now was a good time to bid him farewell. She could tell him to leave and not come back again. She could tell him her father was suspicious of him. She . . . she could tell him she was going to marry Josh . . .
She took the three steps to the cot and sat down. Her knees felt weak.
Without hesitation, he slipped his hand to the nape of neck and guided her mouth downward toward his.
She sighed as their lips met. "Fire Dancer," she breathed against his lips. "This . . . this isn't right." But as she spoke, she nipped his lower lip with her teeth. She pressed her mouth against his and slid her hand over his flat, hard stomach.
"There," he said as he raised his mouth from hers.
"There?" She stared down at him as she remained leaning over
him, her hand still on his warm skin. "There what?"
"There. We both wanted to kiss. We could think of nothing else. Now we kissed. Now we can speak of what this is between us."
She took her hand from his waist and laid it in her lap. It was too tempting to touch him like that. It made her want to touch him elsewhere. "I don't know what you mean."
He laughed.
"What?" She couldn't help but smile. "Why are you laughing at me?"
"I laugh that you can deny what you feel. You whites, you are all alike in that way."
She crossed her arms on her lap, rubbing at the sienna paint drying on her thumb and forefinger. It was almost exactly the same shade as his skin. ''I don't know what I feel, Fire Dancer." She rose from the cot to pace. "Honestly, I don't."
"It is not what we expected, this passion we feel. No, Mack-en-zie?"
"I would say not. I . . . I'm a colonial woman and you . . . you're . . . you're—"
"A savage?"
She ran her hand over her face and brushed the loose strands of hair back. She was spending too much time painting. She wasn't getting enough sleep. She was having a difficult time collecting the thoughts in her head. "I never called you a savage. It's only that we are so different, you and I."
He sat up. "This is true. This man knows all the reasons why he cannot come here at night in the darkness. The soldiers would hang this man, if they knew." He rose off the cot. "But this man cannot stop coming. He cannot stop thinking of Mack-en-zie," he reached out to touch the hair that fell over her shoulder, "and how she makes him feel inside." He touched his chest with his fist. "Here."
Mackenzie's gaze slid toward him, as if drawn magnetically. Everything she had grown up with and had been taught told her that this was wrong. Yet when he offered his arms, she stepped into them.
Fire Dancer wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her so close they were hip to hip. It was the most intimate position she'd ever been in with a man, and it amazed her how well they fit together.
"Mack-en-zie." He brushed the hair off her neck and kissed her there. "This man will talk to the British and French majors and then he will go home to his people."
"And I will go home with my father to the Chesapeake." Then she said what he hadn't. "And we will never see each other again."
He lowered his mouth again, kissing her harder. Mackenzie wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer until their bodies molded as one. "I don't want you to go," she whispered. "I don't want to go."
He smiled sadly. "For this man's whole life he looks for a woman that makes his blood boil and his heart sing and what does he find? A white woman in a British fighting fort."
She rested her cheek on his shoulder. "It could never work. There is no compromise." She meant it as a statement, but a part of her saw it as a question. A remote possibility.
"No, Mack-en-zie. This man cannot join your world. I have a duty to my people. I would never fit in here. I would make you sad."
"And I cannot leave my father. I . . . couldn't be an Indian." She smiled sadly. "Imagine that."
He kissed the tip of her nose. "So, should this man go now? Should the good-byes be said now?" He stroked her bare shoulder and her breasts tingled beneath the linen sleeping gown. "Should we end what cannot be, now, before hearts break?"
Mackenzie couldn't believe this man was saying such things to her. Heartbreak? Was he trying to say that this was love they felt? Her father had always said that true love made no sense. Did true love also see no barriers of race or religion?
"Mack-en-zie?"
She knew he waited for an answer, but she had none. She just knew she didn't want him to leave her.
She drew back a little. "Can't we spend what time we have left like this?"
He stroked her cheek. "You do not want this man to go?"
She smiled up him. "Not now." She took his hand and led him toward her sleeping cot. "Right now, I'm so tired that I don't want to think about it." She plopped down on the edge of the bed. "I just want you to hold me."
He sat down beside her and slid his arm around her waist. "This man can do that for you, Mack-en-zie." He kissed her temple. "He only wishes that he could do more."
Chapter Nine
Okonsa stood outside the rear door of the kitchen resting his foot on the stone that served as a step. One stroke at a time, he leisurely shaved the bark off a stick with his long-bladed hunting knife.
He could hear his sister singing. Her voice made him smile. She had been so unhappy since the death of her husband, He-Whose-Name-Could-Not-Be-Spoken, Okonsa's best friend. She had hoped to have children by him. Instead he had been killed in a skirmish with the British.
The truth was that he'd been killed when their party had attacked the redcoat soldiers, but no one knew that. Everyone in the village thought the soldiers had attacked them. It was the way Okonsa wanted it. It was the only way to make the Shawnee of the Turtle Clan understand.
Okonsa heard Little Weaver approach the door. He stepped out of the way just before she threw a pan of dirty water onto the ground.
"You splash me, sister," he said in Shawnee.
She glanced at him and then clunked back into the kitchen in her leather shoes.
Okonsa hated to see her like this, working like a dog for the white swine. It made no sense to him. White men had killed her husband. White men had killed their father and had raped and tortured their mother. How could she want to be one of them?
He followed her into the kitchen that stank of lye soap and burnt animal fat. "This man came to tell you it is time you pack your sleeping mat."
She halted and faced him, the dishpan still in her arms. "What do you mean?"
"In Shawnee," he corrected. "The soldiers might hear us."
Reluctantly, she spoke in Shawnee. "You tell this woman she must go. Fire Dancer tells this woman we do not go yet. He waits for the Frenchmen. They will talk of peace again with Major Albertson."
Okonsa tucked his knife into its sheath and the stick into his belt to work on later. "There will be no peace. We do not go yet, but the time draws near. This man will come for you, sister, and we will leave this foul place."
Little Weaver set down the dishpan. "I will make ready. When you come for me, brother, I will follow."
He picked up a cold corn biscuit from the tree trunk table as he passed it on his way out the door. He had expected more of a fight out of her. This was good. Maybe she had spent enough time with the white men to know that she wanted no part of them. "This man must go away. Two days, maybe three. When he returns, we will go home." He hesitated at the door. "Only do not tell our brother, Fire Dancer." He grinned. "It will be a surprise."
"What will be this surprise?" Fire Dancer spoke the last word in lightly accented English.
Okonsa tried not to appear alarmed by his cousin's sudden appearance. He rearranged his testicles beneath his loin skin. "If I tell you of this surprise, it will not be a surprise." His gaze met Fire Dancer's and he grinned boyishly. "No?"
Fire Dancer made that face he always made when he was suspicious of Okonsa. "Why are you inside the fort walls, brother, now that darkness has fallen and the great gates are closed?"
Okonsa swaggered beside his cousin. Both men were careful to walk along the palisade fence inside the shadows so as not to be detected by the redcoats.
"I would ask you the same, Fire Dancer."
"I but look after my cousins."
Okonsa waved his finger. "I am not a boy any longer that you must follow me day and night."
"When we were boys, you found trouble when I did not follow you, Okonsa."
Okonsa ground his teeth. He was in a good mood and he would not let Fire Dancer ruin it. It was a strange relationship the two shared. Their mothers were sisters. When his parents died it was Fire Dancer's mother who took him and Little Weaver in and made them her own. Okonsa loved Fire Dancer for all that he was. And he hated him for all that he was.
"Battered Pot tells th
is man you, and he, and six others leave at dawn. I asked him where you go but he made no reply." Fire Dancer stopped beside the corner of one of the fort's outbuildings. This one held black powder and munitions. The door was locked with an iron padlock. "Where do you go, Okonsa?" Fire Dancer probed.
Okonsa shrugged and walked on. "Only hunting."
"He says you will be gone a sunset or two, perhaps three."
Okonsa nodded. He had learned long ago that the trick to lying was to believe in your own lies. "This is true, brother. The white manake have hunted this land until there is not a decent buck for a day's run. My men and I, we will bring back fresh meat. You can take some to the white woman, if you want." He felt a stiffening in his man rod at his mention of the red-haired woman. "Better yet. This man will take it to her himself," he baited.
Fire Dancer glanced at him, but would not take the worm. "We go home to the village soon. I think it will be better for all of us. Your head is too full of English things, the same as your sister's."
Okonsa stroked his scalp lock of hair thoughtfully. "You are wise to take our men and sister back to the village. This talk of peace is a waste of a man's breath." He slashed his hand in the air. "There will be no peace. If we don't kill them first, they will kill us. All of us. They will take our land. Our women. Our people will be broken. I say we kill them all now while they sleep."
"That is why the chief sent me and not you to these peace talks." Fire Dancer halted at the rope that dangled from the wall. "Go, Okonsa. Go back over the white fence before you are caught and we both are hanged from our gizzards."
"What? You do not come?" Okonsa mocked. "Do not tell this man you court the white woman with the fire hair."
"Good night, brother."
"Aieee!" Okonsa grinned. "You like her too, eh?" Then he frowned. "But this man had thought he might have her for himself. She is hot for me, you know."
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