A shiver soared through Spotted Eagle. The owl was warning him that it was time to leave his sorrows behind. With a lifted chin, a proud stance, and dried eyes, he began descending from this place of private prayers and knew that one day, he would see Sweet Dove again.
And he now felt more man than child.
Chapter Three
Eighteen Years Later
Saint Louis, Missouri 1870
The tepees were colorfully designed with paintings depicting the sun, lightning, and the various seasons of the year. The village seemed deserted as Jolena crept through it after having become separated from her companions in Blackfoot country.
Scarcely breathing, she tiptoed through the village. The smell of meat cooking somewhere close by came to her, but food was the last thing on her mind. She was terrified to be alone in the deserted Blackfoot village, wondering where everyone was. She expected them to pounce on her from all directions at any moment now. Even though Jolena's own skin was of a copper coloring and her hair was jet black, proving her Indian heritage, she was dressed as a white woman dresses, and she knew not a word of the Blackfoot language should she come face to face with one.
How would she explain her dilemma?
Would they even care?
Suddenly she stopped with a start and gasped when a Blackfoot warrior came from one of the tepees and blocked her way. She soon discovered that she was not so stunned by his sudden presence as she was by the warrior's utter handsomeness, and when he reached a hand out and very gently touched her face, all of Jolena's fears melted away…
Jolena's bedroom windows were swathed with sheer, lacy curtains, gentling the first beams of sunlight to reach her pillow, awakening her. Her dark eyes flickered open. Her pulse was racing; she still felt the same melting sensations that she had just experienced in the dream. So many nights now she had dreamed the same dream of the same handsome warrioronly this dream was different.
He had actually touched her!
Placing her hand on the same cheek that he had touched in her dream, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to imagine that her hand was his and, going even further, imagined that she was feeling his lips against hers…
Knowing that she must stop these fantasies, Jolena wrenched her eyes open and dropped her hand from her face. Instead of the handsome Indian, now the center of her attention was the sudden excitement filling her with the remembrance of what lay ahead of her, beginning today.
As she plumped the pillows more comfortably beneath her head and ran her hands along her satin coverlet, she gazed toward the window and watched the sun etch its patterns through the lace, knowing that this would be the last morning in her bedroom for many months, perhaps even as long as a year.
That she would actually travel clear to the wilderness of the Montana Territory seemed hard to believe. She had fought hard to convince her father to allow her to travel with the party of lepidopterists who were searching for the euphaedra, the rare butterfly that had once again migrated far from the jungles of Venezuela. So long ago her father had followed the same lead and had not found the butterfly. It seemed that the only thing he had discovered and taken back to Saint Louis with him was a daughter…
Slipping out of her four-poster bed, her bare feet sinking into a thick carpet, Jolena could not help beaming, caught up again in the tale that her mother and father had shared with her after she had been taunted once too often by her playmates for being an Indian.
Her floor-length sheer nightgown streaming along behind her, Jolena went to a full-length mirror and gazed intensely at herself. She ran her fingers over her face, studying her smooth, copper skin, high cheekbones, and dark brown eyes.
Then she ran her fingers through her waist-length hair that was blacker than charcoal. When she had just been six years old, she had begun to realize the difference between herself and the other girls with whom she attended school.
It had been a rude awakening when some had mocked her for being an Indian, even calling her a "savage."
She had quickly learned that having a different color of skin made a difference.
She had asked her parents to explain about her "difference"why wasn't her skin like theirs if she was their daughter?
She had listened raptly when they had told her about having found her lying with her dead Indian mother on the trail while they had been searching for the rare butterfly. They had fallen instantly in love with her, had taken her in, and had raised her as their own.
She had been told that they did not know her Indian tribe, nor did they know who her true father was.
Ever since then, she had wondered about her true heritageher true people.
Yet she had held her head high and had accepted what life had handed her. Her adoptive parents had always treated her wonderfully and she was as close to her adoptive brother, Kirk, as any sister could be to an older brotherwell, he was only a few months older.
Kirk was postponing his further college studies to accompany her on this journey to the Montana Territory, hoping to succeed at what their father had failed at all those years agoto find the rare butterfly that had been sighted there.
A shiver raced up and down Jolena's spine when she thought about the Indians of the Montana Territory. The Blackfoot were among those tribes, and her dreams had always been about the Blackfoot. She had known this by the color of moccasins the handsome Indian always wore.
Black.
In her studies of the Indians of that region, she had learned that the Blackfoot Indians always wore black moccasins.
It gave her a strange sort of thrill to know that she would soon be mingling among the Indians of the Montana Territory. The guides for this expedition were, in fact, supposed to be Indians… perhaps one of the guides might be as handsome as the warrior in her dreams!
And perhaps she might even discover her true heritage. Yet she doubted she would. She was now eighteen years old. Her Indian mother had died long ago, and her Indian father had probably forgotten the child that had been born the day he had lost his wife.
And the Montana Territory was a wide and spacious land.
It did not seem at all possible, or logical, to Jolena that her true heritage would be revealed to her all that easily, if ever at all.
Sighing, Jolena hugged her nightgown around her and went to the window. Outside, she could see willowy branches of purple spirea drooping over the white picket fence separating the front lawn from the street. Daisies flourished inside the fence, and redbud, dogwood, and azaleas spangled the landscape with their pastel glory. If her window were open, she knew that the air would be thick with the scent of flowers.
Saint Louis was a lo
vely city, a city that had been good to her.
But it was June, the beginning of summer, the season that stirred the side of Jolena's personality that yearned for adventure.
She was going to bid Saint Louis a fond farewell, looking forward to the land that awaited herand perhaps her precious discoveries!
Eager to get her day on its way, Jolena hurriedly dressed in a floor-length demure gray dress. It was void of any frills or fanciness of any sort for this, her first day of travel on the steamboat Yellowstone up the Missouri River.
After she was dressed and her long, black hair was spilling down her back, she went to her desk and began sorting through papers and books, deciding which ones to take that would be the most valuable in her search for the rare butterfly.
Choosing one and then another, she soon had more than one valise stuffed with journals and books. Smiling, she grabbed them up into her arms and left her bedroom.
Her arms too full even to see her feet, Jolena made her way slowly down the steep staircase. ''That's a sure-fire way to break your neck, sis," Kirk said, coming quickly up the stairs to rescue her. He took her heaviest books and tucked them beneath his own arms. "Lord, Jolena, are you taking your whole library with you? You know it's only going to make the journey more cumbersome for you. I don't see that as wise."
Jolena did not have time to comment before a loud, commanding voice spoke from the foot of the stairs.
"I think this whole foolishness about going after that elusive butterfly isn't wise," Bryce Edmonds said firmly. "I'd hoped you'd reconsider, but by the looks of those trunks by the door and those stuffed valises, I see that I was foolish to think that you might decide against this venture at the last minute."
Jolena gave her brother a nervous grin as he glanced at her, then smiled more gently at her father. She was always saddened to see how he was wasting away with a strange sort of paralysis, now confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. There was only a trace of his former handsomeness in his smile and eyes. His hair was gray and thinning. His face was all lines and shadow. His shoulders were bent and lean.
She could hardly bear to look at his legs as they rested limply in the wheelchair. They were mere bones, his muscles having atrophied almost to nothing.
She scarcely remembered how he had once looked, except that when she looked at her brother, she knew that she was seeing the mirror- image of their father with his boyish freckles, blond hair, and a face that made girls take a second look at him.
She could envision her beautiful mother having been enamored by her young husband all of those years ago, and it saddened her that her mother was no longer there to share life with her husband and children. Charlotte had died trying to give birth to a second child.
Jolena thought that if her mother were still there to look after her father, he would not have that lonely, haunted look in his eyes as often as he did now.
She felt guilty for being so eager to leave him. Without her and Kirk there to keep him company, what might his days and evenings be like? Though there were many servants at his beck and call in this great mansion perched on a high cliff that overlooked the Mississippi River, they might not be enough.
But nothing was going to stop Jolena from going to the Montana Territory.
She was being drawn there for more than one reason.
She raced on down the stairs and gave her father a warm hug and a kiss on his cheek. "Please be happy for me," she whispered to him. "I so badly want to go. Say that you understand?"
Bryce placed his bony fingers to Jolena's shoulders and leaned her away from him, his eyes meeting hers as he gripped her shoulders. "Daughter, I don't think I've ever been able to talk you out of anything," he said thickly. "You've been willful and adventurous for as long as you've been able to walk and talk. As for going to search for that damnable butterflyI understand. I was driven to search wide and far for it myself. But damn it, Jolena, Montana Territory is so far away. Anything can happen."
"Yes, I know," Jolena said, easing from his grasp. She took her valises and set them on top of her trunks, then turned and faced her father again as he wheeled his wheelchair around to meet her sad stare. "But I do so badly want to go, father."
"And I do give you my permission and blessing," Bryce said, hanging on to how she called him father todayfor next week, even next year, she might be saying that to someone else. If she should manage to somehow discover her true heritage and find her true father, he would lose everything that was most precious.
His daughterhis beloved daughter!
He wasn't sure if he could bear it.
"Now let's not talk anymore about it," he quickly added. "Breakfast is waiting in the dining room. Let's go and eat our fill. Especially you two young'uns. Who's to say what sort of food you're going to get on that steamboat?"
Kirk laid the rest of Jolena's valises aside and went to his father's chair and took over pushing it for him. He gave Jolena a nervous stare as she walked on ahead of the wheelchair, a bounce in her steps this morning that seemed different.
And he knew why.
Though she had not spoken about it, he knew that she was anxious to see if she could find which tribe of Indians was her own, and to see if she could even find her true father. Although she was not going to just out-and-out search for these things of her past, he knew that it would be at the back of her mind day in and out, and that somehow she just might come upon the answers by chance.
He feared this clean to the core of himself, for he knew what this would do to their father. It would devastate him, perhaps even kill him from the heartache of losing her to another. Losing her to a man by exchanged marriage vows was one thing. Losing her to a man whom she would be calling "father" was another.
Kirk had tried his damndest to talk Jolena out of going on this expedition with the other lepidopterists, despite having become one herself at the age of sixteen because of their father's teachings.
But she had vowed to her father that she would find the elusive, rare butterfly and bring it home to him for his collection.
No matter how hard their father had denied wanting to have the butterfly, no matter if deep within his heart he wished now that he had not taught her the skills of his sciencedoing so mainly to fill the void in his life that his paralysis had causedJolena would not be convinced that this rare butterfly was not still as important to him as it had been those many years ago when he had also traveled far to search for it.
Jolena could feel the strain between herself and her father and brother. She knew she was the cause, yet she would not allow anything to ruin this wonderfully exciting day for her. As each moment passed, her excitement built in leaps and bounds.
She walked smoothly on down the long corridor, where doors opened on each side of her into a ho�
�me enchanted by the play of the light from the chandelier in each room.
Jolena moved into the dining room with eager steps. The walls were mellow with flickering light from the great stone fireplace along the far wall, the furniture and glass and memorabilia in the spacious room glinting in sunshine as it poured through the row of windows opposite the fireplace.
She stepped up to the table and stood behind her chair. She waited to sit down after Kirk arrived and positioned their father's wheelchair at the head of the table.
Placing her hands behind her, anxiously clasping and unclasping them, she gazed around her, knowing that when she became homesick, she would remember this room best of all. It wasn't only a dining room. There were also comfortably plush chairs and a sofa that sat in a wide circle before the fireplace. The room was painted a glossy burgundy, making it a cool retreat at luncheon and a warm haven at night as the family nestled around the fire.
Savage Illusions Page 3