White Eagle's Touch (18 page)

He didn’t answer; seemingly intent to do nothing more than stand there, staring at her.

“Oh,” she said after a time, “you want me to reach up and kiss you?”

His grin widened in acknowledgment and he nodded.

She moved up closer to him and, standing on her tiptoes, placed a slight peck on his cheek.

“Did I forget to tell you that I would like the kiss on the lips?”

She sighed, “Details, details.”

She reached up and pressed her lips against his. At once, warmth spread throughout her body and, although she felt like doing anything but, she ended the kiss. Backing up, away from him, she stopped, her eyes focused on the ground.

“Hmmm,” he said. “I like that very much, but I would also like…more.”

She didn’t glance up at him. She couldn’t. All she seemed capable of doing at the moment was staring at the ground. “You ask for too much, I think, White Eagle. I am afraid our past encounters have perhaps given you the wrong impression of me, but mayhap that has been my fault. I am not a woman of easy virtue and I—”

“Do not speak my name.”

“Oh, yes. How insensitive of me. Please, excuse me, I…”

“And I know you are not that type of woman.”

“…I forgot about your name and I… You do?”

He nodded. “It does not stop me from wanting to kiss you, however.”

She stared up at him, at his features so clearly defined in the moonlight. She looked at his dark eyes, his high cheekbones, his full lips, those lips she had so recently kissed… She gasped and, glancing away from him quickly, she said, “Please, Mister…”

“Call me Indian or friend, or you could call me your love.”

“White Eagle, please, I really must insist…”

He gave her a stern look.

“Oh, yes, please forgive me, again, your name.” She found she could gaze up at him now, but she still clutched her robe to her as though it were the personification of safety. She said, “I must call you something, I am afraid, and Indian doesn’t seem quite…proper. Yet your name is something I must not speak, either. Would you be offended, sir, if I were to call you simply…Eagle?”

He smiled at her before he said, “I think that would be…proper.”

“Good then, Mr. Eagle.” She smiled back at him. “As long as we are both awake and prowling the grounds of the fort, might I ask you something that has been on my mind since the day I spoke with you at your lodge?”

“Humph,” was all he said.

But it seemed to give her permission to continue, and so she said, “You mentioned that you had known my parents, if you might recall, and I was wondering if you could tell me now what it is that you remember of them.”

“Aa,
yes,” he said, “I knew your parents; also, too, your uncle, but is this something you want to discuss now? It might take me a long time to tell you all you desire to know.”

She gave him another swift glance. “Yes, well,” she said, gazing back down at the ground, “I seem to have some time here tonight, and I believe that I would greatly like to hear your reminiscences of my parents. I cannot sleep, you see, and this might…calm me. But please, you don’t have to tell me all that you know…at least not yet.”

“Humph” was all he said before he fell quiet. After what seemed like forever, he continued. “
Aa
, yes, I will tell you about your parents, but we must find a place where we can talk, where we will not be noticed by the white man’s guards.” He glanced around him. “Come.”

She hesitated. “Where do you take me?”

“You will see. There is a place, here in this fort
,
where we can talk undisturbed. Come.” He held out his hand to her. “You will be safe with me, I promise you.”

Katrina glanced at him, then at his hand and, after no more than a moment’s hesitation, she reached out to place her own palm within his.

And why should she not? Regardless of anything else about this man, she trusted him implicitly.

Odd, that, she thought, as she let him lead her away. She might not trust anyone else in the world but White Eagle…

“And so my parents loved each other very much?”

“Very much, yes.”

Katrina smiled and glanced around the most easterly of the fort’s bastions where she and the Indian now sat. She was perched upon the rear of a cannon, with White Eagle squatting before her on the floor.

So, she thought, her parents had loved one another well. Somehow that knowledge atoned for all the trouble she had been put through in this place. She sighed and captured White Eagle’s attention.

“Tell me again,” she said, “how you knew them, my parents.”

There was something in White Eagle’s gaze that made her think he held back, as though there was something more he wanted to tell her.

“Your father often came to our camp,” he said after some deliberation, “with your uncle—”

“And my mother?”

“Not at first.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “that makes sense. She would have stayed behind, my father unwilling to bring her more deeply into the wilds.”

White Eagle remained silent, his gaze as hooded as that of his namesake.

“And how did you come to be so close to them?” A glint of a smile crossed his face. “My people were at first uncertain of these men who came amongst us. We were accustomed to traveling north to do our trading with the English in the Queen’s land, and so when these men came to us, we did not know what to do. Our chief, deciding that he would let a shooting match resolve whether the men would live or would die, chose me to help these two men with their arrows. I was only about three winters old.”

“What sort of match was it?”

“It was a shooting competition, a tournament to see who was the best marksman.”

“I see. And you say it was done with arrows?”

“Aa,
yes. Our chief would throw many objects in the air and your father and uncle tried to shoot an arrow through them.”

Katrina nodded. “And did they win?”

“Saa,
no, they were as helpless as a baby eagle is on the ground, but they tried so hard and put up such a good show that we decided to let them stay with us. Because I had helped them, they were welcomed to the lodge of my family while they were in our camp. I came to know them well.”

Katrina fell silent. And she couldn’t help noticing that the moonlight, filtering in through several portholes, bathed her companion in a hazy, albeit romantic glow.

It seemed to be true what she had heard of moonlight and romance, that it is the finest illumination for lovers. For she had never seen White Eagle look so handsome, nor so…appealing.

His dark hair hung far past his shoulders, except for a small section of bangs which fell straight across his forehead. A single owl feather dangled from one of his sidelocks, and a tubular shell ornament, fashioned with blue-and-white beads, dropped down from the top of his head, over the side of his face. He wore shell earrings in his ears and a blue-and-white beaded choker.

He had thrown on his tunic this evening, the buckskin article ornamented with scalp locks and beaded circles of red, yellow and blue. Stick figures, depicting successful fights, were painted onto his shirt while fringes of leather, well over a foot long, hung down from the seams. And draped around his shoulders, Grecian style, was his buffalo robe, this article of clothing stripped of hair on the outside and decorated with painted battle scenes.

His leggings adhered perfectly to his thighs, accentuating every hard muscle there, while long fringes trailed on the ground. On his feet he wore moccasins, embroidered with circles of blue-and-white beads.

He looked more masculine than any man of her acquaintance, and it didn’t matter that he wore beaded earrings, choker and feathers. There was nothing effeminate about this man.

The smell of the tanned hide of his clothing was fast becoming a pleasing odor to her, and Katrina, as she gazed into his raven black eyes, wondered how she could ever have thought this man a mere savage.

Keen intelligence gleamed from his eyes as he sat gazing at her, and she realized she felt safer with this man, more at ease and able to be herself, than she had ever felt with anyone.

And she became aware that here, before her, was a man of honor, a man of pure and undaunted ethics, a man she had begun to think of and to call, friend.

What an odd comparison to make, she thought:

He, who was considered by some to be savage, acted and conducted himself in a manner more courteous, more chivalrous than any of her fine, aristocratic friends, including her fiancé.

How strange.

She asked, “Was my mother beautiful?”

“Aa,
yes,” he replied, “very.”

She smiled. “I thought it would be so.”

“And why did you think so? Because of her daughter?”

She blinked. “Pardon?”

He continued, “Because her daughter is more fair than even the delicate beauty of the wild rose? More lovely than the flushed sky at sunset?”

She blushed, and, for the first time in her life, she felt uncertain of what to say, what to do. At length, however, she murmured, “I think that you compliment me.”

“Do you only think it?” he asked. “Perhaps I should tell you more strongly what I see.

Maybe I should even say to you that I meant every word of what I have said.” When she looked away from him, he whispered, “You are more beautiful than any woman, than any person or thing of my acquaintance.”

“Mr. Eagle,” she muttered, “you mustn’t say such things to me.”

“And why must I not?”

“Because I am—” she looked down.

“—To be married?”

She nodded.

“Beware of this, Little Moonlight,” he said, “I believe this man you have chosen is not being honest with you.”

She hesitated and glanced over toward White Eagle. “What do you mean? Not honest about what?”

White Eagle didn’t speak for several moments. In due time, however, he said, “I have said all that I can for now. You will have to observe this man more closely and decide for yourself if he speaks with a tongue that is true or not…about himself and his…love for you.” White Eagle paused for a very long time then, before he asked, “Who are these young men who are always hanging on to him as though they were only newly born and he their mother?”

“Who?”

“The two young men who—”

“Oh, them. They are only servants.”

“And what is a servant?”

“They are people who wait upon a person, people who keep clean a person’s possessions and home, who fix and serve meals.”

“Ah, they are men who are women.”

“No, they are only people who come from a poorer background and who must work to earn their living.”

“Are they?”

“Yes,” she said, “they help him to dress and to do all the things that are expected of a gentleman’s servants in return for their own livelihood.”

“To dress?” Again, White Eagle delayed speaking for quite some time, until at last, he said, “And you are certain of this man’s affection for you?”

“He does not love me, if that is what you mean.”

“You know this?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And this does not matter to you?”

“We are not marrying because of any pretense of great affection for one another.”

White Eagle appeared shocked, and, within the space of a moment, the atmosphere within the bastion became very quiet. At length, he went on to say, “I can understand why a woman would sometimes marry without any great love for her husband. Sometimes she is too young, or her parents or her brother demand it of her. But a man? I cannot understand why a man would marry a woman he did not love. Only if a man’s more-than-friend or his brother died, would that man be required to make a marriage without love. But this would only be so as to take on the family of his brother or his more-than-friend, for their survival. It is done out of duty. Is this why the Englishman marries you?”

“No,” she said simply.

Again, silence, until White Eagle spoke, “Then why does he marry you?”

“To obtain…my money. My inheritance.”

“Saa!
No!”

She sighed.

“How can this be? It is the man who must earn the right to marry a woman, not…”

He had been looking away from her; he suddenly turned toward her. “Why have you decided to marry this man?”

Again, Katrina drew a deep breath. “I am uncertain that this is any of your affair.”

White Eagle made no response. He didn’t repeat his question, but his eyes bore into hers.

At last she said, “I am marrying the marquess because by doing so, I could…raise myself into a higher position of standing within my society.”

“Humph!” White Eagle grunted. “While I can understand that this is not an unreasonable decision for a woman to make—she must ever consider the welfare of herself and her children—to marry for love
and
a higher position, that would be the best thing of all.”