Tallchief for Keeps (3 page)

He opened his fist,
broad palm up. Her mother’s silver-feather-and-obsidian-bead earring gleamed against his dark skin. Elspeth’s grandmother had given it to Pauline Tallchief as an engagement gift. The earring looked fragile in Alek’s scarred palm. “You lost this that night. A village woman, a midwife, gave it to me last fall. She said that by the look of you, you were ‘breeding’ when you left Seonag two weeks after we met at the festival.”

Elspeth sat upon her pallet and clasped her arms around her bent legs, resting her chin on her knees. She studied the fire and wished Alek Petrovna back into the past.

He threw his gloves down and ripped open his insulated jacket. “Well? Where is my child? How old is it—he…she—now, four?”

Elspeth slowly lifted her head to face him. She wouldn’t give in to the temper that flickered at his taunts. She’d dealt with a houseful of wild Tallchiefs, every one of them difficult and arrogant, and nothing could be gained by facing Alek on this primitive plane.

For a moment he
held her eyes, then ripped off his coat and tossed it into a corner. While Elspeth forgot to breathe calmly, he ripped the dangling beads and silver feather from the stud and slowly pushed it through his right earlobe. Blood ran freely from the wound, dripping onto his thick sweater.

“Alek!” She leapt to her feet, grabbed a towel and lifted it—

His fingers circled her wrist, staying her. “I’ll wear your mark, you bloodless witch, until I’m damn well ready to remove it.”

He took the towel and sent her sprawling upon the neat pallet. As he placed the cloth to his wound, his black eyes slowly, insolently studied her body.

She knew he was taunting her, driving her to the edge, making her remember that night with the huge silver moon when he’d spread her beneath him, anxious for her first taste of this laughing, passionate lover. “Alek…there is no child!”

Elspeth glanced at Alek’s powerful six feet four-inch body, then lifted her chin. She had given him more
than what was safe, and now she owed him nothing.

“I know your strength, fair Elspeth, and your passion. You can clasp a man dry…wring a child from him, then—Is the child mine or—?”

She gripped the Tallchief tartan shawl to keep her hand from flying at his face. She refused to enter a verbal duel with Alek, now or ever again.

The doctor had thought her baby had been a boy.
…

She lifted her face to the wind, letting its bite cool her heating temper. “‘You’d better leave. More snow is coming.” Then she turned and walked toward her tepee.

No sooner was the tepee flap closed behind her than Alek ripped it open and stepped inside in a blast of wind and snow. She let him loom, his head angled from the slanting, insulated canvas of the tepee. Elspeth ignored him; she kneeled to toss wood on the fire. She watched the flames lick and grow, and then settled to pour tea into a china cup. She folded the tartan and glanced up, only to find him
glowering down at her. His anger vibrated in the small space.

She resented his harsh presence in the soothing tepee, draped with bundles of herbs. The disquieting scent of an enraged man swirled through the small space.

He opened his fist, broad palm up. Her mother’s silver-feather-and-obsidian-bead earring gleamed against his dark skin. Elspeth’s grandmother had given it to Pauline Tallchief as an engagement gift. The earring looked fragile in Alek’s scarred palm. “You lost this that night. A village woman, a midwife, gave it to me last fall. She said that by the look of you, you were ‘breeding’ when you left Seonag two weeks after we met at the festival.”

Elspeth sat upon her pallet and clasped her arms around her bent legs, resting her chin on her knees. She studied the fire and wished Alek Petrovna back into the past.

He threw his gloves down and ripped open his insulated jacket. “Well? Where is my child? How old is it—he…she—now, four?”

Elspeth slowly
lifted her head to face him. She wouldn’t give in to the temper that flickered at his taunts. She’d dealt with a houseful of wild Tallchiefs, every one of them difficult and arrogant, and nothing could be gained by facing Alek on this primitive plane.

For a moment he held her eyes, then ripped off his coat and tossed it into a corner. While Elspeth forgot to breathe calmly, he ripped the dangling beads and silver feather from the stud and slowly pushed it through his right earlobe. Blood ran freely from the wound, dripping onto his thick sweater.

“Alek!” She leapt to her feet, grabbed a towel and lifted it—

His fingers circled her wrist, staying her. “I’ll wear your mark, you bloodless witch, until I’m damn well ready to remove it.”

He took the towel and sent her sprawling upon the neat pallet. As he placed the cloth to his wound, his black eyes slowly, insolently studied her body.

She knew he was
taunting her, driving her to the edge, making her remember that night with the huge silver moon when he’d spread her beneath him, anxious for her first taste of this laughing, passionate lover. “Alek…there is no child!”

Heartbeats later, as he stared coldly at her, her words echoed in the tepee. She’d never spoken the secret buried in her heart, and now it tore her apart once more.

Alek slowly removed the towel, ignoring the steady flow of blood. “No? Another lie, like the name you used when we met? Fearghus. Yes, that was it…Fearghus, not Tallchief.”

She hated giving him anything. “Fearghus was my great-great-grandmother’s name. I used it to make connections, to make my studies easier—

“Ah, yes. The American weaver woman, they said, come to Scotland to study the Paisley shawl at its Scottish roots and to dig out some legend about the one you inherited. Now tell me about my child.”

“Alek…” Elspeth swallowed the pain that had never dimmed. From his sister Talia, Elspeth knew
how deeply the Petrovnas cherished their children. Perhaps he needed peace just as she did, and then he would leave. “There was a baby. I miscarried—”

In that instant, Alek paled, his eyes closing as the knuckles on his fists turned white. A vein pulsed in his muscled throat, standing out in relief, and his nostrils flared, dragging air deep in his lungs. Then the next heartbeat, he crouched before her, his brilliant eyes damp and cutting at her from beneath fierce brows.

“Damn you! If it’s true, not another lie, you must have taken something…did something. You discarded my baby like dirty laundry without the slightest care about…the father. Then you ran back here where you’d be safe, tucked away in this nest of Tallchiefs. Oh, yes, I’ve researched the entire family and I’m good at what I do. They won’t be able to help you….

Well, nothing can protect you now, Elspeth. Not from me. You’ve given me no choice—”

Elspeth leapt to her
feet; she couldn’t—wouldn’t—stop the anger welling up and bursting from her. Alek had stepped into her life, wrenched her pain from the past and spread it before her. If he believed she had deliberately lost their baby…She hit his chest with the palms of her hands with enough strength to send him sprawling backward.

Elspeth slashed a dark look at him as she stalked back and forth over the small area near the fire. She stooped to toss the bloody towel into the fire, wishing Alek were as easy to remove from her life. The towel ignited, and so did her temper. “Your baby. Your choice…Pushing earrings through your ear—”

“Earring. One ear. Singular.”

“Oh, yes. You’re a journalist, aren’t you? Five years ago, you were off for a little romantic holiday before you returned to the wars. What was that you said when you were done and ready to be on your way—‘As good as I’ve had. Thanks for the good time’? I burned that wad of money you tossed at me, Alek. Thanks, but no thanks.”

Because he
looked so shocked, she saw no reason to spare him. She doubted that anyone had cut Alek down to size, but he’d forced her into a corner. “I’ve never told anyone, Alek. You want the clinical details? Fine. I’ll send you the doctor’s name and the hospital in London. I was studying with a talented weaver, a distant relative, when—”

She dashed away the tears flowing down her cheeks and folded her arms protectively across her body. “Damn you, Alek.”

She closed her eyes, waves of pain crashing over her again. Elspeth felt herself sink to her knees, heard her trembling whisper above the cold mountain wind. “He was only three months into term, Alek. According to the doctor, it was for the best…. For the best…” she said, repeating the phrase that had echoed through her heart for years.

She hated the sobs tearing out of her, and pressed the tartan to her face to muffle them. She was naked now, stripped of control by Alek Petrovna, and she hated him for that.

Two

E
lspeth’s cries tore into
Alek; he hadn’t prepared for this
…twist,
he decided was the right word. A story twist that didn’t make sense for him. He’d planned a methodical revenge, not the softening within him.

Well, hell, Alek thought, suddenly drained of all his revenge, his motivation for bringing Elspeth to her knees. He’d planned his revenge, devising a plot that would tether Elspeth to him. He’d intended to take his revenge methodically, slowly. He’d hated her for hiding his child, for leaving him with an ache too deep to bear.

There was no child to hold in his arms.
…

The ache grew within him, even as his hatred for Elspeth eased. The miscarriage had torn her apart, her sobs proof of her mourning. Elspeth had wanted that child as desperately as
he—Alek read that knowledge in the aching curl of Elspeth’s body, her fingers gripping her tartan length. She’d always mourn the baby—

Alek carefully placed the china cup upon its saucer when he wanted to smash it. He rose slowly, a healed broken bone or two aching now. He stood very still, his fists clenched at his sides, bracing himself against losing a child he’d never known.

Elspeth lay curled upon the woven blankets. The sobs came raw, straight from her soul.

He swallowed, moistening a throat clogged with emotion.

Alek closed his eyes, listened to the wind howl beyond the canvas and saw Elspeth as she was back then—dancing passionately around the Scottish bonfire. He saw her lie upon the ancient rock, her face flushed with desire, her lips swollen from his kisses. Half-drunk on native brew and whiskey, he’d thought of her as a moonlit goddess with slender curves and dark, mysterious places. He’d teased her, enchanted with the chase…loved her—took her virgin body for his
own. She’d tasted of life, a drink he’d needed to remember his attachment to the human race.

He’d wanted that child desperately, because he wanted his life to go on, a damn Petrovna trait. Then, too, the selfish gene within him needed more, a healing only the gift of a child could offer.

“Elspeth…” He crouched by her side and placed his hand on that sleek hair, lightly, tentatively, afraid that she would push him away. “Elspeth, don’t cry.”

She dashed his hand away.

He hated the sound of crying. He’d heard enough for a lifetime. He wiped his hand across his face, steadying his shifting emotions. Alek gently placed his hand on her head again. When she did not push him away, he stroked her hair lightly down to her shoulder.

The silent sobs racking her body shot up his arm, straight to his heart.

There was nothing he could do but lie beside her.

Alek held very still, allowing his tears to flow down his cheeks. When she didn’t draw away, Alek
stroked her hair, drew the tartan plaid around her and whispered her name. He laid his arm gently across her back, so as not to frighten her. He wanted her close to comfort her, and yet for his own need, as well. They’d created a baby between them, and he wanted to linger in the thought before burying it. “Elspeth…shh.”

She turned her face to him, a blur of black eyebrows and lashes and shimmering eyes. “You’re crying.”

The tip of her nose almost touched his. Her breath swept across his lips. “You’d better go. The snow has begun.”

He fell into gray eyes shimmering with tears and cursed himself as he whispered, “How do you know?”

“Listen to the wind….” she whispered unevenly, and instead he heard his heart beating slowly, cautiously.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Alek’s lips touched hers once, lightly. “I’m sorry for that night.” Was he? That night had given him hope that the world was still pure.

Tears shimmered in her eyes, and her look was disbelieving. He kissed her again to soften the past,
a kiss much like those he gave his sisters when they ran to him with scraped knees. Then Alek forgot everything but the taste of Elspeth’s lips. He licked a tear from them and she stiffened, drawing away.

“How dare you!”

Alek traced the black hair crossing her damp cheek with his fingertip.

He watched a single swallow move down her elegant throat. He kissed her again, softly. “The child would have been my first.”

Her lids closed,, but he wouldn’t allow the dismissal. He slowly brushed his lips across hers, finding one corner of her mouth and then passing to the other. He remembered the clean smell of her, the scent of wind brushing through the heather and then, when she lay trembling and warm, the intimate scent of a lover. He remembered how sweetly she had given herself to him, as though she would not touch another lover in her lifetime.

Alek damned his tears and the emotion welling up in him. Without a care for his plans to make Elspeth
pay, Alek buried his face in her throat and clung to her.

Elspeth held very still in his arms and then, with a sob, she wrapped her arms around him, holding tightly. She began crying again, and this time he rocked her against him. She cried until exhaustion allowed no more and the fire burned low. Alek tucked his chin over her head and drew the shawl over her carefully. Tonight they mourned a child.

Alek watched Elspeth sleep, drained by her emotions. While the firelight flickered on her too pale face and gleamed upon her black hair, Alek’s mind moved through his discovery that there was no child.

For months, he’d built his life around a plan for revenge, to hurt Elspeth and to claim his child.