Captive (26 page)

“I think we’re all set here, thank you, boys,” Tara said. When they had gone, she said, “There’s some hot
brandy-laced tea right on the small table, Teela. Towels and soap there by the tub.” Just before she left the room, she paused in the doorframe. “I thought you might like a little privacy for a while, some moments alone. Take your time, and come down this evening whenever you feel like you’d enjoy company again.”

“Thanks,” Teela told her. She walked forward, almost overwhelmed with the kindness and understanding she always seemed to feel from Tara. She hesitated, realizing again that she was covered in blood. “Thank you,” she said again.

Tara nodded and closed the door behind her.

Teela moved to stand before the full-length swivel mirror near the bed, by the washstand. She looked like the murder victim in a theatrical production. But it was no play, and there had been real victims, and their death had been a very violent form of murder indeed. She touched her cheeks again, shivered, and began ripping the blood-spattered clothing from her body. She tossed it all by the fire and gratefully sank into the hot water in the hip tub. She threw the pins from her hair and sank beneath the water. For a few minutes, she couldn’t seem to scrub herself strenuously enough, from her scalp to her feet. Finally, convinced she was free from the crimson stains of death, she laid her head back against the rim of the tub, her fingers resting idly atop it as the steam rose above her.

Fear shrieked within her as a hand suddenly clamped firmly over her mouth. Her fingers dug into the tub as her body stiffened, then tore at the hand upon her mouth as she strained to twist and see her assailant.

She went dead still. James lifted his hand from her mouth, drawing a finger to his lips.

He had come straight in from the bush where she had last seen him, bare-chested, hair still queued back, a knife thrust into a sheath at his hip. He held a rifle in his free hand. His doeskin boots were damp, as if he had waded through water in his trek to return to Cimarron.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, furious that
he had frightened her so. She hugged her knees within the tub, inching back against it as far as she could.

“John’s ship remains at the dock. Axe there any soldiers in the house?”

She shook her head. “No,” she told him. “Even John has remained aboard the ship.”

“Why?”

“They are going to bring the wounded to the hospital at Fort Brooke as soon as possible.

He walked away from her, going to the table where Tara had left her the tea tray. Along with the liquor-imbued brew, there was a plate of small meat pastries and tea cakes. James set down his rifle, selected a pastry with each hand, wolfed them down, and then poured a cup of tea. He drank it swiftly, shuddering with the warmth of the brandy. Then his eyes were back on her again, and he returned to the tub, staring at her. He arched a brow, then knelt down beside her. “I was very hungry,” he said softly. “Hazard of the job.”

“Why were you in that battle today?” she asked him.

“Scarcely a battle. A skirmish, nothing more.”

“What does it matter what you call it? Men died.”

“Do you refer to red men or the white ones?”

“All of them.”

He shook his head slowly after a moment. “I just don’t think you realize sometimes that I am as much a part of them as I am a part of … of this. Jarrett’s life. The men out there today who let out their awful war cries. The ones in breech clouts, turbans, and feathers. Who speak a different language, who paint their faces. Scalp white soldiers. And their wives.”

“Why were you in the skirmish?” she asked stubbornly.

“Because I was with those men. They were part of the group Osceola and friends liberated from the detention center at Fort Brooke the second day of June.”

“Liberated?” she queried softly. “Some men are saying that Osceola forced some of them to escape whether
they wanted to or not. Even here, at your brother’s house, I hear all the rumors and news.”

“I don’t know exactly what occurred,” James said evasively. He swore softly with impatience. “I am one with them and not one with them. They seldom let me in on their plans if they involve bloodshed; they are well aware of how divided my life has become. I come into council meetings to give opinions, as spokesperson for what remains of my own tribe, and to advise on what the white soldiers may or may not do.”

“One day,” she warned softly, “Osceola might kill you.”

He shook his head. “You do not know him, you do not understand him. He will not kill me. He knows that I was with many of the men, guiding them southwest-wardly. Once they’ve reached their families, I’ll know who still wishes to come in and accept the government’s compensation for moving west. Today was not meant to be a battle on anyone’s part. The soldiers weren’t really looking for Indians; the Seminoles definitely weren’t looking for the soldiers.”

The water was growing chill. She lifted her hands together and looked at them.

“There was so much blood!” she whispered miserably.

“And so much more will be spilled,” he said. “And you need to be out of it!”

“I have become a part of it.”

“You are no part of it! Do you think that a day trailing after the soldiers will make it so? You belong in your silks and lace, behind a spinet. On the ballroom dance floor.”

“I was good on the field today.”

“Patching up Seminoles as well as good white soldiers?”

“Yes!”

“I might have lain out there, injured, bleeding.”

“Stop it!”

“You shouldn’t have been where you were.”

“I was
afraid
you might have lain out there, injured, bleeding.”

“You cannot be afraid for me.”

“You cannot fight!”

“That’s what you refuse to see! Sometimes I have to fight. Realize it, accept it. I was born to this. You were not. Go home, go away!”

“You had to be with the warriors; I had to be with the soldiers.”

“Don’t you see, it is not your place!”

“It was where I had to be!”

“Damn you! You are risking your life!”

“You risk yours constantly.”

“It is my battle, my very existence. It is not your war to wage!”

“I’ve every right—”

“No, damn you, you have not!”

He was suddenly up on his feet, reaching for her, catching her hands, pulling her to her feet. She shivered violently with the chill of night air against her as the water sluiced from her body. He seemed heedless of it. Nothing seemed to matter at all, no words were important. He caught her about the waist and lifted her from the tub. Instinctively she clung to him, arms about his neck as he strode across the room, water dripping from her damp body and soaking hair across the fine rug and highly polished hardwood floors. She closed her eyes for a moment, nearly dizzy with the sweet pleasure of having him near again. She didn’t care what he was saying to her. His chest was hot and sleek, rippling with hard muscles, alive with the thundering beat of his heart. She was so very glad he was here, and yet afraid in a way she had never been before.

She had lived without him now, after knowing him. She had come to feel the loneliness. The cold of having touched the fire, then knowing privation from it. She hadn’t known how to describe what she felt for him, and now she knew that Jarrett was right. She was in love with him. All of the reasons that she should not love
him added to the fact that she did. That he would not take an easy path, that he demanded he be recognized for all that he was, that he could not help but fight the injustices against the Seminoles, all these things were a part of what had so entrapped her. Perhaps. Yet she had known as well the first time she had seen him that he would enter into her heart and soul, into her dreams, her longings. It did not help to realize how deeply she cared, how much anguish she would feel when he slipped away again, a wraith in the night. An outlaw, a renegade.

Her eyes opened and met his. “You cannot so simply do this,” she informed him.

“No?”

“You slip into a room without knocking, after throwing threats at me over the fallen body of a friend. Your manners are those of—”

“Of a savage?” he suggested.

“Don’t play games with me!”

They had come to the bed. He held her tightly for a moment, then eased her down, coming atop her.

“But I feel very savage,” he said softly.

The scent of him was sensually musky and masculine. His flesh seemed to generate a heat that eclipsed everything around it. His body against hers stirred desire and haunting memories and sweet promises of magic.

“Then perhaps you should run back into the woods,” she told him.

“Perhaps not. Perhaps I am right where I belong for this moment.”

“Where you will not stay when the moment has passed!” she challenged him.

He inhaled sharply, staring down at her. “You,” he said sharply, “need to go home. To remember that my manners are wretched. That I belong in the woods. Do you understand me? You need to remember all that!”

“You needn’t keep warning me!” she cried.

She was startled by the sudden violence of his movement as he leapt from the bed. She shivered, her naked flesh left cold by his departure. But he was as restless
as a panther stalking the woods, as swift, as fluid, casting aside doeskin boots and trousers, covering her once again with the warmth of his body.

A savage warmth, as he had warned …

He had never taken her so swiftly, with so little thought to the art of seduction, with such a stark purpose. She wanted to feel anger, to protest his invasion, thunder against his very touch. She swore softly, damning him. She did allow her fist to pummel his back. But then a ragged sob escaped her, and she held tight to him. The encroaching darkness of the night seemed to sweep over her, and into her, and under its cover she dared to let the intensity of her longings rise and soar. In time she was dimly aware of a staggering constriction within him, of a thrust that seemed to tear into her heart. Warmth like a flow of molten lava filled her, and she shuddered violently, finding sweet release in a moment of all but blinding pleasure.

He didn’t let her go. He stayed with her, holding her.

Then, to her amazement, he was suddenly swearing. His weight shifted from hers; he was up, slipping into his breeches and boots.

As she lay dumbfounded, he exited the room into the hallway.

Shaking, Teela sat up. Furious with him, with herself, she rose and hurried to the tub, where the water was now startlingly cool. She scooped handfuls to her face, allowed it run down the length of her, cooled herself again. She found her towel, rubbed furiously, and wrapped it about herself, talking aloud in a hushed and miserable whisper.

“Damn him. Damn him. Damn him! It has nothing to do with being savage, he is just rude and cruel. I hate him. I’ll have nothing else to do with him, I won’t, I won’t!”

She drew a chemise and pantalettes from a drawer within the wardrobe, wrenched the first over her head and stumbled into the second, then tried to tighten the ties. She stood in front of the swivel mirror, drying her hair with her towel, brushing it through with her fingers.
Time slipped away; her hair began to dry. She grabbed up her brush and gave it a furious hundred strokes, then a hundred more. Her emotions continued to plummet and spiral. She felt numb one moment, ready to cry the next. She was not going to do so. She was going to dress and walk downstairs, and the next time he appeared anywhere near her …

The door opened and closed softly. She spun around at the sound.

He was back. He appeared almost ridiculously civilized now, wearing a clean white shirt along with his brown breeches and boots. His black hair was unqueued, brushed and sleek. Standing there, he was tall and striking, dignified, somber and handsome, and she was alarmed by the anguish that raced through her at the sight of him.

“I don’t care how ‘savage’ you’re feeling. If you enter my room again, you had best knock first!”

He didn’t respond for a moment. Then he told her quietly, “I told my brother that you will not be down.”

“Well, you have no right to speak for me. I will be going down.”

“No, I think not,” he said, striding toward her. He smiled, and she realized that she was holding her brush in a threatening manner.

He reached for it, taking it from her hand. “When you are here, near me, involved in this wretched war, I am determined that I must speak for you.”

“I will be going down.”

“Not tonight.”

“You will not tell me what to do. You walk in here like the king of the forest. You simply take what you wish—”

“I was very, very
hungry
,” he said softly.

Tears stung her eyes. “You simply take what you wish,” she continued, “then walk away. You—”

“I came here,” he interrupted, “and barely remembered the one who is the most important person in my life, my daughter. I barely remembered her because of you.”

“You might have said—something.”

“Damn you, I came to you first.”

“You came to me to find out who was in the house.”

“I came to you first,” he repeated tensely.

Teela fell silent, watching him. He stood so close to her. Every breath she took seemed filled with him. The air seemed charged as if with lightning.

“I will be gone when you awaken. But until then I will tell you again to go home, to turn away from all of this, to run away from me. That’s exactly what I want you to do. I just want you to do it tomorrow. After tonight.”

“Go away now!” she whispered vehemently.

But again he shook his head. And she gasped a desperate little sound, throwing her arms around him. He caught her, held her very tight. He kissed her hungrily, slowly, sensually. He ran his fingers through her hair, down her back, over her buttocks, holding her tighter and tighter against him. At last he lifted her and carried her until she felt that she was falling down into clouds. Her chemise and pantalettes were luxuriously stripped away; his own clothing was more quickly shed. His every touch was erotic, unbearably so, tenderly so. A stoke here against her flesh, the intimate brush of his lips there, the caress of his palm, and again the feel of his lips, the hot, liquid fire of the tip of his tongue …