Runaway (22 page)

Soon, however, Nathan came with a dinner tray for her, and she discovered she was starving. She ate quickly, then paced the cabin. She stepped outside to realize that the rain had stopped. It seemed that they moved at a crawl, and she shivered fiercely as she stood on the deck. Night had fallen. She stared at the shoreline and thought that she had never seen anything so horribly
dark
. Yet the darkness rustled. She wondered if half-naked bodies were moving within the foliage, and
after a moment she hurried back inside the cabin. For a while she paced again, certain that she would never sleep. The ship had slowed to a mere crawl, and she could dimly hear the men talking at the helm, their voices low one moment, bursting into husky laughter the next.

The later it grew, the more uncomfortable she felt in her clothing. She had loathed the idea of undressing this night; she was still angry over the night that had passed, still aching with puzzlement about just where her husband had slept.

Where—and with whom.

But at length she undressed and donned a matronly calico nightgown and curled up on the bunk. She laid her head down and began to mentally torture herself all over again, one minute listening for an Indian attack, the next wondering if her husband intended to return to his cabin tonight.

She must have slept. She found herself in a thick, silent green forest. Her feet were bare, and she was running. She was listening and listening. She could hear the pounding of her heart. It was a pulse that blocked out all else. Instinct warned her of sound. The sound of breaking twigs, of footfalls against the hard-packed earth.

William was there, ahead of her. She tried to call out to him: she was desperate to reach him and escape the savage mutilation promised her by the pursuing Indian.

He carried a tomahawk. His head was adorned with a feathered band. His eyes and hair were pitch black; he was bare chested, running after her in a pair of doeskin breeches, nothing more. The expression on his face was determined and grim, and with each passing second he was closer to her. He was an Indian, she thought. One moment, yes … then he was Jarrett. She tried to scream, and still there was nothing but silence. She
tripped on a root sprawling out from one of the tall, moss-covered trees. Her gown blew behind her as she fell in a slow and terrible motion. She looked up. The tomahawk, adorned with endless little leather dangles that held the blond and brown scalps of white men, began to fall. She tried to scream again.…

S
he must have screamed, because the next thing she knew, she was being shaken awake. For a moment she thought she was staring into the eyes of the Indian of her dream, but soon recognized her husband’s eyes and taut features, shadowed in the low-burning candlelight. His hair had been tied back in a queue. In a wild panic she fought his grasp, then heard his voice.

“Tara! What in God’s name is it?”

She stared at him and wrenched back from his grasp. The dream was still so horribly real!

“Tara, you were dreaming.”

“Dreaming the truth!” she cried out, so affected by the dream that she was shaking like the moss-laden tree branches in the storm winds.

“Tara—” He reached out to her again, but she shook her head wildly, avoiding his touch as if he had the plague, curling as far as she could into the corner of the bunk as she hugged her knees to her chest. “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!” she whispered. “You don’t know—you don’t care! You’re just sailing blindly into the midst of them.”

He swore, rising. For a moment she hated herself. He had reached out to her. She hadn’t been able to let him touch her, not at that moment. Now, as he stood before
her, naked torso gleaming in the candlelight, muscles rippling, eyes afire with their ebony fury, she was bleakly sorry.

“The only
blind
thing I have done, madam, is marry you.” He spun around with those words, and she was startled to hear herself cry out.

“Where are you going?”

He turned back, a brow arched. “Where I may sit—without touching you,” he told her. With an exaggerated movement he drew out his captain’s chair from beneath his desk and sat on it, still staring at her as he poured himself a long drink from the rum bottle in his bottom drawer. Taking a swig from it he settled back, propping his legs up on the desk. He suddenly let his feet fall to the floor and stared hard at her. “Unless, of course, you want me entirely out of the cabin?”

She stared at him in silence.

“Ah!” he murmured. “Exactly what I thought. I’m not to leave you alone now that I’ve so wretchedly dragged you out here, but I am to keep my distance!”

She remained stubbornly silent. In his present mood there was little she could say.

“Go to sleep!” he told her after a moment.

“McKenzie—”

“Damn it, Tara!” His voice was like a low growl. “Go to sleep!”

Stiffly she stretched out, turning away from him. She lay awake, so intensely aware that he was there, his eyes burning into her back. She would not sleep again. She listened to his movements and thought about her dream. The man chasing her had been an Indian, but so like Jarrett.

She listened to him breathe, listened to him drink straight from the rum bottle. He would weary of his vigil sometime soon, she thought. He would come and lie
beside her, and even if he was angry, he would touch her again. And he would hold her.

But he didn’t come to lie down beside her. In the morning she realized that he must have spent the entire night in his chair. He had said that he would not touch her, and seemingly had meant it.

Wretchedly, she rose. She washed and dressed and came out on deck. She waved to Nathan, who had climbed up the main mast and looked out over the riverbanks.

Looking for savages? Surely.

But he waved back to her cheerfully. She nodded and started for the helm. Jarrett was at the wheel, and he still wore the outfit—or lack of one—that made her think he was part savage himself. His feet remained bare, as did his torso, and all that clothed him were the form-hugging breeches. Strands of black hair fell over his forehead this morning, and when his gaze met hers it seemed both black fire and ice. She winced inwardly, aware that he was not fond of her at the moment.

“Ah, good morning, my love. How did you sleep?”

“Fine. And you?”

“Very well. A rum bottle can be an excellent companion. Surprisingly warm, when bodies that should be are not!”

She might have responded richly to the taunt, but she chose not to.

“Any more Indians in your dreams?”

“Any in real life, McKenzie?”

“Lots of them,” he assured her, inclining his head toward the riverbank. His eyes shot to hers again. “But none you need worry about.”

“I am immune?” she inquired with polite sarcasm.

“You are.”

She strode to the rail. Yesterday’s rain had drenched
today with beauty. The greens were all the richer. Purple wildflowers twisted from the trees. The sun shone overhead in a dazzling golden brilliance, and the winds had died completely.

“Admit it!” he called to her softly. “It is beautiful; it is paradise.”

He was right. It was a strange beauty, savage, different, very far removed from civilization. Its very danger seemed compelling, and still she couldn’t bring herself to agree in any way when he was so determined to mock and taunt her.

She spun around. “One man’s paradise is another’s hell!” she reminded him.

His lips curled into a smile that held little humor, and she lowered her eyes quickly, then hurried past him. She ran back to their cabin and forced herself to once again spend her day sewing.

Jarrett stayed out of the cabin until it was very late. She closed her eyes and feigned sleep, and he took his seat at his desk once again.

And slept with the warmth of his rum bottle.

Tara did not sleep so easily. She lay awake and wretchedly wondered why she couldn’t just reach out herself.

But wondering about his activities in Tampa plagued her, cut her heart, wounded her pride. She couldn’t reach out.

And so she lay awake.

She slept very late the following morning. Indeed, she only awoke because she could hear the sounds of so many shouts. The crew called out—voices answered from elsewhere.

She realized that the
Magda
had ceased her constant rolling, and that the ship had docked.

She leapt up and ran to the cabin door, throwing it open, heedless of her nightdress. They had come to a dock, a very large and grand one, stretching into the river for well over two hundred feet along a strip of cleared, rich green grass. Small wooden buildings lay at either end of the dock, one windowless and one with windows. Yet between those two buildings she was given a perfect view of an exceptionally beautiful and grand house, built upon a piece of land nicely elevated above the river. The house was handsomely built in the customary colonial style, with its rear porch to the river, a porch with massive white columns. The house itself seemed huge to her, larger than anything she had seen in the North or the South, with numerous chimneys, a trail of outbuildings, and the most graceful lines she had ever seen. She narrowed her eyes, thinking that the structure itself had been crafted with greatest care, the walls sturdily built of some form of concrete and brick, the columns and porches made of native woods that had been whitewashed and now glistened beneath the sun. There were huge breezeway doors entering into the house from the rear porch, and she was certain, from the house’s symmetry, that duplicate doors would open out to the front porch, and that an open hallway would extend between the sets of doors. The idea was to catch the breezes from the river and cool the house, and she was certain that this house would function perfectly with the river, the breeze, and the landscape. Above the porch a balcony stretched out across the upper story of the house. Doorways led from the higher rooms out to the balcony. She could imagine the beauty, looking out over that balcony at night, with the stars and the moon casting down soft light upon the river. She could imagine
the mystery as well, for the balcony also gave a fine view of the deep, lush forests that began far across the expanse of the rear lawn.

Flowers, even in winter, grew in abundance around the wide porch and the length of the house. Far to the left of it she could see endless fields, and those fields seemed to be in different shades, as if they provided for different crops. It was simply magnificent, and she found herself staring at it, wondering how it could exist in a land that had hitherto appeared to be nothing more than swamp and jungle.

“Cimarron,” Jarrett said, suddenly at her side.

“Cimarron?”

“It’s what we call it.”

“Cimarron,” she murmured, repeating the name once again. It seemed to roll on her tongue, as beautiful as the house. Then she remembered he had once told her the word was Spanish for
renegade
or
runaway
.

And white men had twisted it into the word
Seminole
.

Jarrett McKenzie, she was certain, had never run from anything. But she had. She had come to this house, a startling Eden within the savage land. Perhaps she belonged. She was definitely a runaway herself.

“Making your arrival as mistress of the place in your nightgown?”

She spun around at her husband’s question. He was well dressed himself this morning in a white shirt, crimson waistcoat, and ebony frock coat and breeches. His black hair was slicked back—his black eyes appeared almost diabolical as he gazed at her, challenging her once again.

“Surely Lisa would never have done so!” she heard herself say, and she was stunned and horrified by her own words, but it seemed he had mocked her, and though she had not wanted to do so, she had lashed back
in return. It happened all too easily. She wished that she had not spoken. She couldn’t take back the words that seemed to linger painfully on the air.

“No,” he said softly. “She would not have done so.”

“If you loved her so much,” Tara said, very softly now, ruing her words again even as she spoke, “why did you marry me?”

He swore, a muttering beneath his breath that she didn’t quite catch. His eyes seemed darker than ever, obsidian, and as black as stone. “Well, we had barely met, my pet, so I can hardly claim great devotion. We both know why we married.”

“But if you loved her so much—”

“For the love of God! What is this foolish argument now? Indeed I loved her. She is gone. And the entire household is about to meet the new mistress of Cimarron clad in a nightgown!”

“No, McKenzie,” she said coolly, “they’ll not meet me so. And you’ll never have cause to bemoan my appearance or manner, I do assure you.”

“Then, madam, I stand assured!”

He’d find no more reason to taunt or mock her, she swore, hurt and seething inwardly.

She swiftly spun on a heel and turned back into the master’s cabin, slamming the door. She thought that he would throw the door back open and follow her just to inform her that she was not allowed to do such things, but he did not. She heard his soft, husky laughter as he walked away from the door, and though it stung her, she also thought that there was a sound of bitterness to that laughter, and her heart began to ache.