Tara nodded. “I’ll try the outbuildings, the kitchen, smokehouse, stables …”
“Stables!” Jarrett said.
They both ran from the house, down the porch steps, along the trail that led to the outbuildings, and burst into the stables. Indeed, Heidi, the roan mare, was gone.
“She has taken her—” Tara said anxiously. Then she gasped, realizing that Jennifer was standing in the stall, her little back against the wood wall of it. “Jennifer, come here!”
Jennifer obediently came to her aunt, stretching out her small arms with a smile when Tara reached for her. Tara looked worriedly at Jarrett.
“Do you know where Teela has gone?” Tara asked.
“On Heidi,” Jennifer offered.
Tara nodded, “Yes, yes, Heidi is gone. But what about Miss Warren? Sweetheart, it can be very dangerous for her here. She grew up in a big house in a big city, and she has never really spent any time outside alone before.”
“Maybe she went to Uncle Robert’s,” Jennifer offered.
“Did you point out the way to Robert’s property?” Jarrett asked Tara anxiously.
“Yes, yes, but I didn’t think she’d try to ride that way by herself!”
Jarrett knelt down by his niece. “Jennifer, is that the way Miss Warren went? I need to know, because she could be in danger.”
Jennifer shook her head, looking down. “I don’t know. I stayed in the stable.”
Jarrett groaned. “I should ride into the bush.”
“You can’t!” Tara said with alarm. “Teela’s hour is up. Warren will be here any second. Jarrett, he’ll follow you, and you might lead him to her.”
“And if I don’t go after her, the fool girl could wind up dead!”
Tara stared stubbornly at her husband. “What is the choice exactly? Let him catch her and half kill her, or take a chance with a few hours? Once it’s dark, you can start searching.”
Jarrett sighed deeply again. “Uncle Jarrett!” Jennifer said softly.
He came to his feet, spinning around. The hour was up, all right. Warren was back, standing at the broad doors to the stables with two of his officers. Both big, brawny men. Jarrett squared his shoulders, fighting the fury that smoldered within him. If Warren thought to threaten him, he had another damned thought coming!
“Where’s my daughter, Mr. McKenzie?” Warren demanded.
“Major Warren, with my whole heart I wish I knew. It seems that she has borrowed one of our horses.”
“You let her escape!” Warren exclaimed angrily.
“I had not known that she was my prisoner, sir!” Jarrett informed him indignantly.
“And, sir, I tell you, we are on the fringe of a veritable jungle! She risks an agonizing death!”
She had run from an agonizing life, Jarrett thought, but bit back the words before he could say them. Tara was right. He would have to fight his pride for the girl’s sake. “It is our belief, Major Warren, that she has ridden toward a neighbor’s property. We —”
“You will show my men the way, Mr. McKenzie, and I beg you, make haste. I will return to my ship and inform our minister that she is lost, and have him pray God to protect her person and her soul! You will inform me immediately if she is found. You will not need to mince words with me, I will know instantly of her fate!”
Jarrett longed to snap out a reply.
Tara squeezed his arm, and he swallowed his words again. “Major Warren, I will saddle my horse and arrange for mounts for your men. I understand your fear for your daughter, sir, and how painful this must be for you, and of course, I know that you tremble for her safety.”
Shaking, he turned around, striding down the length of the stable to reach his horse’s stall. Tara was calling for the young grooms to come saddle horses for Warren’s men.
She had squeezed his arm, Jarrett thought, and managed to keep him at least halfway civil, but she couldn’t seem to manage a single word for Warren herself.
But then as she slipped by the men to make her way indignantly back to the house, she sniffed and muttered, but loudly enough for all to hear, “It is a wretched thing indeed when a young woman must fear her father more than scalping!”
At the rear of the stables, Jarrett smiled.
And he took his damned time saddling his horse. He was only taking the men so far anyway. And he was only going to vaguely point out the way to Robert Trent’s plantation and hope they were green enough to get lost.
Then he would wait for darkness to fall.
* * *
She was not afraid. The green darkness seemed all around her; she couldn’t tell most of the time what was trail and what wasn’t. Stay to the left! She could go in complete circles without even realizing it. Oh, it was so frustrating!
No, she was not afraid …
She was terrified.
There was silence in the forest. A silence so great it seemed that all the World had stopped. Then the hoot of an owl would shatter the stillness and scare her out of her wits.
She rode by a stream, and the silence seemed to bear down upon her again. Then she heard a splashing noise and turned swiftly and nearly cried out herself, seeing the beady black eyes of a ’gator just protruding above the water as the creature seemed to glide sleekly through it. She nudged her horse forward, terrified that the thing meant to swim after her.
She panicked the roan.
They went flying helter-skelter down the trail, Teela just keeping her seat and praying that she was still bearing to her left.
She had been riding for hours.
Darkness was coming.
It came beautifully. First with radiant colors, crimsons that splashed through the trees and over the water. Shimmering gold, striking orange. The colors seemed to fall upon the long-legged, elegant birds that stalked through the streams and swamp. Egrets were shaded in pink and yellow, cranes seemed to glisten in gold. The vivid colors faded to pastels, and the pastels then ebbed away and shadows deepened.
She had stopped to watch the sun fall upon the water. Now she shivered fiercely, silently calling herself a fool. This was madness. She hadn’t the least idea of what she was doing.
A wolf howled. The sound seemed to shoot straight along her spine. She shivered again and forced herself to continue onward.
Soon she was thanking God for the moonlight that rose above her. If not for that moonlight, she would be blind. Each time the moon slipped behind a cloud, the darkness was all but complete. She had to draw in on her reins then, sit tight and shiver, and wait for the light.
It grew worse. Oh, so much worse! When she sat, she could hear rustling. Tree branches moving. There were creatures near her, creatures of the night. Wolves, bats, perhaps.
Indians.
It grew to where she could not stand the sound of the slightest rustle. She talked to herself aloud. She sang. But she had to listen.
She welcomed the baying of the wolf.
She knew what it was.
But the rustling …
She didn’t know what time it was. She had been riding for endless hours. Her stomach growled: she was half asleep and still terrified as she rode when she heard a rustle again.
Right behind her.
She reined in. Wide awake now, listening with such an intense effort that it was painful.
Nothing.
She nudged the roan. Moved onward.
And again …
There came a rustling.
She drew in on the reins. The roan pranced, letting out a whicker of unease. But once again Teela could hear nothing from behind her. “Come on, girl, now, come on,” Teela said encouragingly to the horse—and to herself. “Those cabins must be up ahead somewhere very close. We’ve got to reach them.”
She gave the roan a little kick. They started off at a trot, but Teela slowed to a walk. She could scarcely distinguish the trail before her.
She ducked beneath a branch. A scream rose in her throat as the branch moved.
The branch was a snake
.
She didn’t know what kind of snake, perhaps a harmless one. She hadn’t heard a rattle, and she was on dry ground now, riding away from the river, so it shouldn’t be a cottonmouth.
It didn’t matter! If the creature had landed on her, she would have screamed and screamed. She would have become hysterical. She would have galloped into the darkness, galloped even into death …
Thank God the snake hadn’t fallen on her, but the rustling was sounding behind her again. Her heart leapt to her throat. She wasn’t imagining it; it was real. She was being followed. Stalked.
“Hurry, girl, oh, hurry!”
She nudged the mare again, this time heedless of the darkness ahead or any threat that might await her there. She was being followed. What she had done had been insane. There were wild bands of Indians out here, Indians who hated Warren, Indians who would gladly take the scalp of a young white woman with long red hair.
The thrashing behind her grew louder. Boldly louder. There was a horse behind her!
She turned back.
In the darkness she could see only a bare-chested horseman. Dark-haired, intently riding down hard upon her. She screamed out loud; it didn’t seem to matter. She slammed her heels against the mare’s sides, ready to plummet into whatever hell awaited her rather than lose her scalp.
The hoofbeats caught up with her. She leaned low against the roan’s neck, but it did her no good. Strong copper arms reached for her, wrenching her from the roan’s back. She tumbled to the ground, the powerful body of a man atop her. She inhaled to scream, but gasped instead as her name was snapped out: “Teela!”
She blinked against the sudden spill of moonlight that dispelled the shadows on the face above hers.
“James!” she cried.
“What the hell are you doing out here alone?”
“Why were you stalking me?” she asked instead of replying.
“Are you alone?”
“Of course I’m alone. And you nearly scared me to death. My God …” She slammed both her fists furiously against his bare chest again and again. Until he caught her arms, wrenched them down. “Stop it!”
“You bastard! You could have let me know it was you—”
“I had to know that you were alone,” he insisted angrily.
“But—”
“Even now,” he snapped, “Warren could be following you. What are you doing out here, fool woman? Do you know the dangers of this place?”
“Yes!” she snapped.
“Then?”
“Will you please get up?” she asked coldly.
He did so, offering her a hand but dragging rather than helping her up. He still seemed exceptionally angry and tense. He caught her arm and propelled her forward.
“What—”
“The cabins are ahead.”
“We can ride—”
“We could have ridden, yes. But the horses have gone on ahead of us,” he informed her dryly.
She walked stiffly before him, aware of his heat so close behind her. It seemed to Teela that they came upon foliage so heavy that there couldn’t possibly be anything ahead of them but brush. Then James went before her, shoving branches, leading the way.
She cringed, slipping through the leaves and branches, wondering what crawled upon them. She was glad of the darkness so he couldn’t see how frightened she was.
At last the foliage cleared, and they came into a copse where there were several strongly built cabins hewn out of logs. Teela paused, and James went before her. She followed. He entered one of the structures, and she hesitated, but a moment later, light came from the cabin, and she followed him inside.
In a hearth against the far wall he had built a small fire. It cast a fine glow of warming light against the darkness. She walked toward it slowly, searching the cabin.
There were still signs of life here, though the village itself seemed a ghost town. There were rolled bundles of cloth, an area by the fire where there were a number of utensils, wooden spoons and bowls, a cast iron skillet, a coffee pot, and steel tongs. The cabin seemed sparse, only a few blankets covering the plain floors, but tonight it seemed the most welcoming place on earth.
Much more welcoming than the man before her.
He stood straight, shirtless, wearing only boots and breeches, his arms crossed over his chest. He glistened copper in the fire’s glow, muscles rippling with each breath, chin set and hard, eyes like blue steel.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Well, I promise you, I didn’t come to find you!” she assured him.
“So what are you doing here?”
She sighed. “What difference does it make?”
“An incredible difference. If you’ve led your father out here—”
“Stepfather!” she snapped. “Stepfather, stepfather, stepfather!”
He stiffened harder, staring at her. “If you have led him out here—”
“Led him out here? I am trying to escape him!” she cried.
Her voice seemed to linger on the air. He didn’t move, nor did she.
Then slowly he exhaled. “You just came riding here by yourself in the dead of night?”
“It wasn’t the dead of night when I left.”
“You rode on a trail, having no idea of where it would lead?”
“I had some idea,” she said uneasily. He stared at her and she shrugged. “When we were riding this morning, Tara told me that there were cabins out here, that you had lived here. Once. Before …” Her voice trailed away. She swallowed miserably. She started over. “I didn’t know that I’d find you out here. I just hoped for a place to … wait awhile.”
He still stared at her, then shook his head wearily. “No one knows you came?”
She shook her head fiercely. “No! Except—”
“Except?” he demanded.
“Your … daughter,” Teela said. “Jennifer brought me water.”
“My six-year-old has more sense than you do. And she would certainly have more chance of survival alone.”
“I was doing fine until you attacked me.”
“I didn’t attack you.”
“Well, I was on my horse. And then I wasn’t. My greatest danger then was dying from fear. I was on the ground; you were on top of me. Close enough to an attack, I’d say.”
“I had to know that you were alone.”
She was silent a moment, her own anger suddenly beginning to boil. “How dare you! How dare you behave as if I would willingly bring him after you!”
He shrugged. “I don’t give a damn if he comes after me. I think I would like him to!” he added in a strange whisper. “But I don’t want him out here. My people—survivors and mediators—come here to use these cabins, seeking shelter from the wilderness, from the night. From the cold that sometimes comes. I don’t want them burned down. I don’t want the white army finding this place.”
“But your people have fled.”
“I don’t want the village burned,” he repeated.
“I came to escape, I swear it. I did not come to cause any trouble, to you or this place.”
“You are trouble,” he said irritably.
She fell silent, then swung around, heading for the cabin door. “Fine. Then I will leave.”
“Get back here!”
She kept going. A foolishly defiant gesture because in seconds he’d taken a firm, biting hold of her arm and swung her back around. “Now what are you doing?”
“Trying not to be trouble, to leave you in peace,” she said angrily.
“It’s too late for that,” he said. He prodded her toward the fire. “Sit down, warm your hands. They are freezing.”
She hadn’t much choice. She didn’t even really get to sit; his little push sent her down to her knees, but die fire was warm, and she did stretch out her hands, shivering. The warmth was wonderful.
He came down beside her, pressing a silver flask into her hands. She stared at him. “Brandy. I imagine you need it.”
S
he did. She swallowed some down, winced, and swallowed another sip before handing the flask back to him. He stared at her a long moment, then shook his head. “Why? Why would you risk your life, riding into hammock and swampland you know nothing about?”
She stared into the crackling flames.
“I didn’t lie to your fa—to Warren today. There are bands of warriors out here. Off Jarrett’s property you could be in very serious danger. It’s probably well known by now that Warren has a daughter. I cannot tell you how fiercely he is hated.”
“And I cannot tell you how fiercely I hate him myself!” she cried softly.
It seemed an eternity that he still stared at her; then he suddenly reached out for her. She stiffened, then slowly eased back into his arms when she saw that the anger had died out of his eyes. She rested against his chest, and they both stared into the flames.
“Did you really walk out of your own wedding right at the altar?” he asked with a trace of amusement.
“I didn’t do it to hurt anyone.”
“You are a defiant little creature,” he mused. “But that casts you into even greater danger here.”
“Why?”
“Because there is a war on, a horrible war. You should go home, go back to Charleston.”
“I didn’t ask to come here; I was brought here.”
James shook his head, his chin brushing her hair so that she felt the motion rather than seeing it. “Jarrett will have friends with influence over Warren; you’ve got to go home, get out of here. You don’t belong here; you’re not a part of this.”
He caught her shoulders, setting her from him so that he could meet her eyes. His own blue had narrowed and all but darkened to black as he stared at her intently. “Marry Harrington,” he told her. “Let him send you home.”
She jerked from his hold. “You are beginning to sound just like Michael Warren!” she accused him. She stood up and paced away from the fire.
She looked around the walls. A deerskin lined one of them, with drawings of a hunt upon it. There were other small touches: calico curtains decorated a small window.
She turned again to watch him and realized they were thinking the same thing. This had been his family home. He had lived here with his wife. She was invading a sanctuary.