The Bearwalker's Daughter (8 page)

Smiling at the look she gave him, Jack tilted the flask to her tempting mouth. She sipped, coughing. After she recovered, he pressed her to a second swallow and a third. He knocked back a hearty swig of liquid fire and thumped his chest.

“Ahhh. That hits the spot. If I hadn’t left the house in such a huff, I would have brought my musket and hunted us up some dinner.”

Her black brows arched above widened eyes. “Surely we won’t be here that long?”

They would. Streams ran hard with all the rain and the one they’d forded to get here would be well up over its banks. Trying to appear nonchalant, he shrugged. “We’ll see.”

He laid his tomahawk on the worn floorboards. Settling back on the bearskin, he propped himself on his good arm and stretched out his damp boots toward the flames. “Now, tell me why we’ve really come? It wasn’t only the rain that brought us.”

“No.” She swiveled her head at the cabin. The flickering flames cast shadows over the dim interior. “I’m not certain, ’Tis just that I was born in this very room and Mama died soon after. Neeley says I took my first breath as she took her last.”

“I’m not sure why Mama was so poorly,” Karin went on. “Uncle Thomas says fever, but I think it had to do with my father. Uncle Thomas said they weren’t wed, not properly, anyway,” she confided in hushed tones. Then her expressive features creased with hurt. “He must have left her with child and it broke her heart, which is truly terrible of him.”

“Indeed. But perhaps he couldn’t help the separation,” Jack suggested.

Softer warmth suffused Karin’s eyes. “I have often wondered that. But why?” She pressed a finger to her chin. “Maybe he was a sailor. A Spanish one.”

If she’d suggested a British general, Jack could hardly have been more surprised. As it was, he nearly choked on the gulp he’d taken from the flask; it was all he could do to answer evenly. “We’re far removed from the sea, hundreds of miles from the nearest port. I’ve journeyed with men from all walks of life during the war, including sailors, and they spoke of the sea.”

She dropped her gaze from his. “So it stands to reason that a Spanish sailor loved my mother and had to leave suddenly and was lost at sea.”

He suspected this wistful conjecture sounded unlikely even to Karin, although her imaginings intrigued him. “Anything’s possible if you cast all reason to the wind.”

“I didn’t,” she argued.

The pout at her mouth beckoned to him damn near irresistibly and he battled to keep his hands and lips to himself. “There is one other thing you might consider regarding your father.”

She locked her eyes on his. “What?”

“Whether your mother left anything of his behind. Say, some sort of gift,” Jack prompted, with something very particular in mind.

Karin lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Neeley did say my father gave Mama a necklace, but I couldn’t persuade her to describe it. She said Grandpa wouldn’t allow Mama to keep it.” Karin brightened. “Pirate gold, maybe?”

Where did she come by these notions? “I doubt even Mister McNeal in all his wrath would throw gold away.”

“Oh, he didn’t toss it. Neeley said Mama hid the necklace before she died.”

Jack sucked in his breath with a subtle hiss. Now
this
wasn’t whimsy, but something tangible.

He mustn’t appear too eager. “If you were Mary McNeal, where would you hide a forbidden necklace?”

Her brow creased in thought then Karin said, “Here in the cabin, I suppose. She was ill and heavy with child, so not given to long walks.”

This time Jack applauded her logic. “Find the necklace and you’ll have a vital link to your father.”

She eyed him closely. “You seem very sure.”

“I am.”
What
luck
. Jack could hardly believe his good fortune. The irreplaceable necklace might be hidden in this very room.

Shequenor had been adamant in his desire for its recovery along with his daughter, almost as if his time on this earth were waning; and more, as though the necklace held some sort of magical power. Not that Jack believed in magic, but he respected Shequenor above any living soul—feared him too. He sensed an almost inhuman quality about the indomitable warrior.

Perhaps if Jack prodded Karin’s memory, she might help him unlock the long-buried secret to the necklace. After that, he didn’t bloody well know, except to take matters step by step and scheme for all he was worth.

She fixed on him with a suspicious light in her eyes. Her unswerving focus followed him like a sheep dog’s as he stood with forced casualness to remove his coat and hang it from a peg on the log wall inside the door. Then he returned to the fire and added more kindling. Flames snapped at the fragrant hickory.

“Warmer now?” he asked.

She nodded, her expression sharply contemplative, and untied the cloak at her delectable throat.

He dragged his eyes from the tempting curve of her neck—how he’d love to bury his lips in that sweet skin—and lifted the damp mantle from her to hang it on a peg beside his coat. Aware of her gaze boring into his head, he turned and walked back to her. The scrutiny she targeted him with crinkled the corners of her eyes.

No need to inquire the reason, even if he were in ignorance. All rushed forth from her in a torrent. “What are you not telling me? You’re concealing something, I feel it. And don’t say ‘tis only because you have more experience than I.”

Leaning against one corner of the stone hearth, he considered her with a slight smile. “No fooling you, is there?”

She absorbed his good-humored jibe as though unsure if he were serious or spoke in jest. “I think you could fool me plenty, if you have a mind to. But you won’t, will you? Did Sarah say something about my father?”

Jack’s mother might’ve mentioned they were all sworn to secrecy by John McNeal, practically on pain of death.

“Don’t keep me in the dark an instant longer. I beg you.”

Her earnest entreaty nearly made him forget all else. He wasn’t a hard man, just independent, and hated having to manipulate her. “I shall tell you all I know in time, but it’s not everything you badly want to learn.”

Breath escaped her in an exasperated whoosh. “Whatever you tell me is more knowledge than I possess now, Jack McCray. You, a near stranger, are better informed. Folks have put me off my whole life.”

“For good reason.”

“So they say. But how am I to determine the truth? Give me the chance to decide for myself. Please.”

The light in her remarkable eyes reminded him of sunbeams dancing on lake water. Watching Karin, hearing her appeal, sent a peculiar pain knifing through Jack. Apart from Peki, he’d never mightily wanted anything. Even the tenacious battles he’d fought in that seemingly never-ending revolution hadn’t affected him as deeply, nor had he cared as much about the outcome as he did now. Hoof beats drummed in his chest and his manhood swelled with a whole intent of its own.

He knelt and covered her protesting mouth with his palm. “Hold on. Let’s find the necklace first before you give me the tongue lashing I no doubt deserve.” Or he claimed something that he didn’t.

****

Jack slowly withdrew his palm from Karin’s lips. Why did his light touch feel so right, his low voice stirring to her shivery center? She was as heady as if she’d finished off that flask he’d pocketed. Maybe the fiery brew had affected her more than she realized?

No. These sensations went far beyond a few swallows of whiskey. Tumultuous cannons fired inside, tumbling her into an uncertain world of red moons and shooting stars, her universe exploding. And there was no one to hold onto, except him. She almost grabbed his hand, and thought better of it.

What, then? What should she do?

In stillness, she kept her eyes fastened on his, colored the hue of the woods in summer. She couldn’t look away. Then a quavery sigh escaped her. “Oh, Jack.”

Tenderness washed over his face. “Let me guide you.”

“I suppose I must.”

A smile lifted the corners of his masculine, deeply sensual, mouth. “Let’s begin with your mother. What else have you been told of her that might be of use? Let your mind journey back and the past flow through you.”

Rain drummed on the roof and wood sizzled in the hearth as Karin ferreted out every scrap she’d ever heard, weighing some, discarding others. Then a memory returned like the whiff of a nosegay long since forgotten. It might mean something.

“Neeley once said Mama sat curled by the fire much of the time in those last days, staring into the flames as if she saw something.”

Jack eyed the glowing hearth. “Not something.
Someone
.”

His insight took Karin aback. “You mean him?”

“Probably.”

She gestured at the bed built against the wall, its high back lovingly carved by her grandfather. “Neeley only just told me Mama died there where I was born.”

Crossing both arms over her chest, she said, “Of this I’m certain, Mama was kind and beautiful. Whatever she died of, ’twas a broken heart. Papa should have come to her, whoever he was. I would tell him so to his face if I could.”

“Whew.” Jack drew back as if at a sudden wind. “You’re not such a milksop after all.”

His exaggeration lessened Karin’s ire only slightly. “Well, it makes my blood boil. Why did he leave her to grieve herself to death?”

“If you want answers, begin by finding that necklace.”

She blew out her breath in frustration. “Neeley says she cleaned this cabin from top to bottom and never found anything out of the ordinary.”

She scanned the massive hearth rising from the floor. The smoke-blackened stones danced with light up between the shadowed beams overhead. “Might one of these stones be loose and the necklace tucked in behind a crevice?”

“That’s the spirit,” he praised her. “Let’s try further down first.”

Jack tapped his fingers over the gray-brown rocks, his magnetic presence a palpable force urging Karin ever nearer. She was all the more determined to resist. Leaning in, she brushed his arms and chest, so strong beneath his shirt. Only the barest touch, but a potent surge ran through her. She faltered, trying to conceal her acute awareness of him as they tested each stone not too hot to touch. She might as well try to ignore the room set ablaze.

Karin’s cheeks heated at his reference to her mother’s illicit pregnancy. “Perhaps a loose floorboard or a chink in the wall? Let’s spread out,” she said, not trusting herself to be this near him. “I’ll try the floor.”

Not risking a backwards glance, she dropped to her knees on the dusty boards and hitched up her skirts. Crawling along, she prodded at the wood with her fingers. If a furtive place existed anywhere here she’d find it. Kindling crackled while rain squalled outside, but it was warm and safe in the cabin, except for Jack.

Was any woman safe with him? Karin actually craved another heated kiss. Exasperated by her unruly emotions she pummeled the floor harder than necessary in her search.