Winter's Touch (42 page)

“Yes,” she said quietly, with what sounded like resignation. She pushed herself to her feet and shook out her skirt.

Carson joined her, and after straightening and fastening his pants, he waited.

Winter Fawn took his hand and gripped it tightly. “I don’t know where to start.”

“How about with a broken plate and a cut hand.”

She sighed heavily. “Yes. That is as good a place as any. Megan cut her hand.”

Carson drew in a steady breath. He had seen it, seen the blood. “I looked at her hand after you left. There was no cut.”

“I know.”

“But I saw blood. You have some on your apron.”

Winter Fawn looked down. In the glow of the rising half moon, the smear of blood on her white apron was plainly visible. “Yes, there was blood.”

“But then there was no cut. I don’t understand.”

Winter Fawn’s heart squeezed. No more evasions, no more hiding the truth from him. “There was a cut, and then there was not, because I healed it.”

Confusion gave way to denial on his face. “What do you mean, you healed it?”

“Do you remember when I held your hands after you’d fought with Mr. Vickers?”

Denial turned to wariness. “Yeah.”

“Remember how they ached, and then I held them? You said my hands were hot. And then your hands didn’t hurt anymore.”

“Of course. I’d been soaking them in cold water. Naturally your hands would feel hot after that.”

“And the pain?”

“The cold water took care of that. You can’t mean you think you somehow healed my hands, or Megan’s cut. Good God,” he whispered. “That is what you think.”

“If you have another explanation for Megan’s cut disappearing,” she said gently, “what is it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. But what you’re suggesting…”

“Remember in the mountains, the night before the blizzard, when I cleaned the wound on the back of your head?”

“What about it?” His tone said he didn’t really want to know.

“Remember how warm my hand was when I touched the wound? Remember how the pain went away and didn’t come back?”

Carson was finding it more difficult by the minute to breathe. Everything in him protested what he was hearing. “What you’re suggesting is impossible.”

“Aye,” she said quietly. “I know.”

“Winter Fawn, you’ve been ill. It hasn’t been that long since you were out of your head with fever. Maybe—”

“You would rather think I am crazy than believe me?” She pulled away from him. “Yes, of course you would. Because then you wouldn’t have to accept the truth. You wouldn’t have to accept what I am.”

He reached for her hand again and held tight when she would have pulled away. “What is it that you’d have me believe you are?”

“A freak. That is the word for someone who is not normal.”

“Honey, you’re not a freak. There’s nothing wrong with you that a little rest—”

“No!” She pulled free of his grasp and stepped back, holding out a hand to keep him from reaching for her again. “You asked me to tell you why I ran from you tonight. The least you can do is listen to me.”

“I’m listening.”

“Nae, you’re not. You’re hearing my words, but you’re not listening. A few days after my mother died, Da brought me a pair of rabbits to skin and roast for his supper. When I reached for the first one, I put my hand over the spot on its head where Da had hit it with a rock. When I took my hand away, the wound was gone, and the rabbit got up and hopped away. Before you tell me I only imagined it, ask my father. He was there, he saw it. He saw it, he told me to never do it again, and he left. He left Hunter and me to be raised by our grandmother because he couldna accept that I have the same healing gift that his grandmother had.”

Carson tried to speak, but couldn’t. Just as well, because he had no idea what to say. What she was telling him was too farfetched to be believed.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I…I can’t.”

“Remember little Juney in the well?”

“Of course.”

“You—everyone—thought her leg was broken.”

Carson squeezed his eyes shut. He could see again the tiny girl at the bottom of the deep hole. The leg bent at an awkward angle. Broken. No other way for it to bend like that.

“You’re asking me to accept the impossible.”

“I’m asking you to accept me.”

“To accept that you can somehow heal wounds just by touching them?” he cried.

“Yes,” she hissed back.

“Prove it.” He pulled his knife from the sheath at his belt.

“What are you doing?”

He rolled up his left sleeve and cut a long slice down his forearm. He had to convince her of the truth, that she was imagining things. That what she claimed was simply not possible.

“Carson, no!”

He held the arm out to her. Blood oozed from the gash. “Prove it. Heal me.”

With a cry, she seized his arm, clasping her palms against the cut.

“Wha—?” Carson couldn’t get the rest of the word out. Her hands were hot against his skin. Abnormally hot, as hot as if she were still suffering the fever that had nearly killed her three weeks ago. The pain seemed to flow out of his arm directly through her hands. She whimpered as though in pain herself.

Suddenly he knew that somehow she was. His pain became hers. He could see it etched on her face.

He lowered his gaze, and shock froze his heart in his chest. She had rolled the sleeves of her dress up so she wouldn’t get them wet when washing the dishes. Her forearms were bare. As he watched, a thin line of blood appeared on one. The left one.

It was madness. It was impossible. It was…

Finally she released his arm. When he looked, there wasn’t a mark on him, nor on her. There was blood, on each of their left forearms. But no cut. He had deliberately sliced himself with his own knife. The knife was still in his hand. He had not imagined the cut, the pain, the blood.

Now, all but the blood was gone. He stared at her in shock. “How?”

“I don’t know. Da says his grandmother had the same…ability. I think of it as a gift. He calls it a curse.”

“Christ.” He ran his spayed fingers through his hair. Then something slammed into his back and pitched him forward into darkness.

Winter Fawn gaped as Carson grunted and pitched forward. The arrow sticking out of his back made no sense. “Carson?” In a daze, she knelt beside him. “Carson?”

Then reality burst through her.
An arrow!
“Carson!” As she reached for the arrow, her gaze darted frantically toward the river.

Who? Where?

Crooked Oak.
She saw him jogging from beneath the trees along the river, not a dozen yards from where she and Carson had just been.

She tried to scream, but there was no air in her lungs. With all her strength, she gripped the arrow with both hands and tore it from Carson’s flesh. She threw it aside and slammed her hands over the wound, one hand atop the other for extra force and heat.

Instantly the pain struck her in the back. Carson’s pain. She cried out against it and felt a wave of dizziness.
Concentrate. Get past the pain. Heal the wound.
She’d never tried to heal so bad a wound before, except her own, that time in the mountains. She’d never faced so much pain from another.

Then something slammed into the back of her head. Before everything went black, one thought flew through her mind—
not enough time.
She hadn’t had enough time to heal him.

Winter Fawn came to lying on her side on the ground. Pain throbbed at the back of her skull. Groggy, but remembering the arrow she had torn from Carson’s flesh, she reached for him.

“Good.”

Crooked Oak!

“You are awake,” he said.

She gasped and sat up, then gasped again as pain lanced behind her eyes. There was a small fire, she realized. On the other side of it sat Red Bull and Spotted Calf. She did not see her uncle. The only other person there was Crooked Oak, who loomed above her.

Crooked Oak, who shot Carson.

“What have you done?” she cried. “You killed him!”

“Yes.” Satisfaction was plain on his face and in his voice. “If you had not cried out,” he added with disgust, “I would even now have his scalp to decorate my lodge. But there was only time to kill him. I shall need to take other scalps to make up for missing his.”

It couldn’t be true, she thought frantically. Carson could not be dead.
Man-Above, do not let him be dead.

But the arrow had sunk deep. She had made everything much worse by ripping it out. So much worse. And then everything had gone black. She lifted a hand to the back of her head and felt a large, tender lump. Merely disturbing the hair there hurt.

Crooked Oak must have hit her. She had been unconscious.

He had killed Carson.

Winter Fawn’s heart and soul cried out in anguish. The pain was too deep for tears. Like a wounded animal crawling into a den to lick its wounds, she retreated to the den of her own mind where the truth could not touch her. Nothing could touch her. She was empty. She did not exist.

“You do not weep or wail.” Crooked Oak crouched beside her. “This is good. You will be glad to be my wife. But you gave yourself to that white man,” he said between his teeth. “For that you must be punished.” So saying, he backhanded her across the face and knocked her down.

The blow jarred her from the nothingness she had fallen into inside her mind. With a snarl she rolled to her feet and sprang at him.

She took him by surprise and they tumbled to the dirt. She used her nails to scratch, her teeth to bite. She kicked and gouged and hissed like an enraged cat.

Crooked Oak could scarcely believe what was happening. He managed to grab her hands, and she sank her teeth in his arm. He howled with pain and outrage. “Harm me, will you?” With his fish he punched her in the jaw. She fell limp across his knees.

Across the fire, Red Bull licked the grease of the quail he’d just eaten from his fingers. “She must have had a fondness for the white man.”

Spotted Calf grunted. “He will beat it out of her, as he should.”

Crooked Oak waited until his breathing calmed, then pushed her to the ground. Seething with rage, he bound her hands and feet with strips of rawhide. The whites had tainted her. She would not be allowed to display such temper again. He would school her in the proper ways of a good and obedient wife. Nothing in the prophecy said that she had to accept him, only that he walk by her side.

Gussie was worried. Carson had followed Winter Fawn outside, and they’d been gone for hours. It was after midnight and they had yet to return.

Megan had been so excited about the “magic,” running on and on about how they weren’t supposed to tell anyone.

Gussie couldn’t blame Carson for wanting an explanation. She wanted one herself. At the sound of the plate shattering she had dashed from her room. She had seen the blood. After Winter Fawn and Carson had gone, she had examined both of Megan’s hands herself. There was not a mark on the child.

How long would it take for Winter Fawn to explain? Where was she? Surely Carson had found her quickly. There was no real place to hide except the barn, and that took mere minutes to search.

When first Winter Fawn then Carson had raced out the door, Bess and Hunter had come inside and asked what was happening.

Gussie had been hard-pressed not to explain, but what could she have said? How did one explain the inexplicable? She held her breath and waited to hear what Megan would say. The child, bless her, was incapable of keeping a secret.

But all Megan said was, “I broke a plate.”

Gussie had finally hinted that Winter Fawn and Carson were having a slight disagreement, and that the two should be left to work things out on their own.

And they should. But it had been
hours
.

Unable to wait any longer, fearing something terrible had happened, Gussie donned robe and slippers and carried a lantern onto the porch. They had headed around the house toward the river. Could one or the other or both have fallen in?

Oh, dear, she didn’t know what to do. “Carson?” she called softly. “Winter Fawn? Are you out there?”

She was going to feel like a ninny and an old busybody if they were standing behind the house kissing. And if that’s what they were doing for all this time, she was going to give them both a piece of her mind for worrying her so.

Stepping off the porch, she started around to the back of the house.

She almost tripped over Carson.

“Oh! Carson!” Nearly dropping the lantern in her haste, she knelt beside him and gaped at the blood on his back. “Carson?”
He cannot be dead. Dear Lord, not Carson, too, please, God, not Carson.

With a trembling hand she touched his shoulder. It was warm. Thank God it was warm. “Carson, can you hear me?”

He groaned.

He’s alive! Thank God!

She had to get him into the house and see how badly he was hurt. But where was Winter Fawn? Gussie stood with the lantern and made a circle around Carson, but saw no sign of her. She needed help, yet she hadn’t heard Innes return from town yet.

“Hunter!” Stumbling through the grass, she ran toward the bunkhouse. “Hunter!”

He rushed out to meet her, and the two of them, with a little help from Carson who was coming around, got him into the house and onto his bed.

“Winter Fawn,” he moaned and tried to push himself up.

“No.” Gussie pressed him back down. “You mustn’t move.”

Carson blinked his eyes open. “Where’s Winter Fawn? What happened?”

“You’ve been hurt,” Gussie explained, tearing open the back of his shirt. “Can you tell us what happened?”

“We were talking.” Gradually, through the fog of pain, he remembered. “We were talking and something slammed into my back. That’s…all I remember.”

“You have a hole in you. You’ve been shot, Carson.”

“I didn’t hear a shot,” Carson said.

Hunter leaned over and inspected the wound. “Not gunshot,” he said tensely. “An arrow, and it’s been ripped out of you.”

“Oh, my!” Bess rushed into the room. “I heard voices. What— What happened to Carson?”

“Help your aunt,” Hunter ordered tersely. “I’m going out to look around.”