Captive

  He looked away from her, throwing a stick upon the fire. “Jarrett will be here for you by morning,” he said.

  “But—”

  “There are only two directions in which you might have ridden. One would take you to Robert’s house. The other would bring you into the woods and swamp. My brother will send the soldiers to Robert’s. Then he will slip out by night and come here himself.”

  “Then,” she said resignedly, “I will either ride back with him. Or—ride deeper into the swamp.”

  He stood up, angry and impatient again. “You are not going to risk losing your scalp—not to mention your life, you little fool!” He strode across the room, picking up one of the bundles and releasing the tie. It was a sleeping pallet, and he spread it out by the blaze, then brought another near it along with two red plaid blankets. “Not exactly my brother’s fine house, Miss Warren, but I suppose it’ll do for the evening.”

  She hesitated, but she was exhausted. And she didn’t have much choice.

  She walked to one of the pallets and sat stiffly, amazed at how comfortable it was. She stretched out, staring belligerently up at him.

  He stood over her, looking down at her. Suddenly, savagely, he spat out two words:

  “Damn you!”

  And a second later, he was down beside her, on his knees, his hands upon her shoulders, drawing her up to him. She felt his mouth, searing, invading, harsh, so demanding. And then, so suddenly, so seductive. Tongue teasing, lips molding to hers … She brought her fingers tentatively to his hair, stroked them through it, drew him closer and closer. Upon her knees she pressed to the length of him, feeling the naked fire of his chest through the cotton of her riding habit. One hand cradled her head, the other moved up and down along her spine, holding her closer, crushing her against him, then slipped lower to her buttocks, lifted and rocked her against him.

  He lowered her to the floor. One by one he eased open the buttons of her jacket and then her blouse, parting them both. He found the string of her corset and pulled it, and her naked breasts sprang forth. He lay his face against the valley of her breasts, feeling the warmth of her with his cheek, listening to the pummeling of her heart and the catch of her breath.

  He came to his knees again, determinedly pulling her clothing from her, piece by piece.

  And when it was shed, corset here, boots there, stockings dangerously near the fire, he paused suddenly, staring at her almost harshly in the fire’s glow. He fell on her, capturing her mouth, spreading her legs, loosening his breeches to sweep and thrust into her with a raw passion that nearly brought her to a precipice instantly. She closed her eyes against the golden glow of the reaching flames, and felt the man, the fire, and the earth beneath her. It was all poignantly real, all bathed in orange and gold. It all shimmered together and became part of the drive, part of the desire. She was lifted above herself in the orange mist, striving for sweet surcease. It burst upon her, shimmering in color and warmth. She shuddered with it, trembled, fell … and became aware again of the earth, the flames, the cool night air. The still hot, slick flesh of the copper man who spoke perfect English, his searing blue eyes and rock-hard body. She turned from him, curling away, angry and heartsick, and wondering why she fell so easily each time to his seduction when he would but mock them both later.

  But his arm came around her. He ignored the fact that she stiffened. He pulled her close, secure against him once again. He stared at the flames over the length of her body.

  “Damn you!” he said softly to her. Tenderly.

  She shook her head, fighting tears. “Damn you!” she told him.

  “Don’t you see, you’ve got to go back. I’m telling you now, this war will grow worse. Ever more violent. I’m telling you to run, Teela, while you can.” His voice hardened. “Go back, go to Harrington. Don’t you see?” he said harshly. “There’s no way I can protect you. I cannot take you from Warren. I am constantly on the run, I shift from place to place. I have no world for you. This is not your life!”

  “Life is anything away from him!” Teela whispered.

  His lips touched her back, so achingly tender. Teela felt the threat of tears again, his touch was so gentle.

  “Jarrett can do something. He can go to the governor, he can go to Jesup. Hell, Jarrett even served with Jackson once, and Jackson and Van Buren are still close. A military man like Warren would not defy the president! I want you out of here.”

  She rolled within his arms.

  “I want to be free from him, but—”

  “You’ve got to leave!”

  “I‘m not afraid’—”

  “Then you’re a fool.”

  “James—”

  “Running Bear, remember?”

  “Will a different name make you a different man?”

  “Sometimes, yes,” he said very softly. But he smiled suddenly, looking into her eyes. “I am putting you firmly out of my life, and out of danger, Miss Warren, I swear it. But I am glad that you came into it.”

  His mouth touched hers. Once again, passion slaked, his touch was almost unbearably light, teasing. Still, Teela determinedly twisted her lips from his and forced her palms between them.

  “You don’t want me as any part of your life. You want me away and out of it!” she cried.

  “Tomorrow, as soon as I can make it so,” he agreed. “But that leaves you mine tonight, and when you have run back to your elegant bed in Charleston, I want you to remember, upon occasion, what sweet southern comfort could be found upon the dirt floor of a savage’s cabin in the woods. In that savage’s arms …”

  “Damn you!” Teela protested again, trying to escape his hold.

  But the savage’s arms were very strong indeed, and the tenderness in his lips upon her flesh was even more powerful. The tension eased from her as the fire burned and blazed high again, casting a spectacular glow upon his nakedness, and her own.

  She could damn him all she wanted.

  But she could not refuse him.

  Chapter 10

  Tara waited with an outward show of complete calm as she watched Michael Warren stride toward her porch in the midnight darkness. She stood serenely at the rail, reminding herself that Robert Trent had followed the soldiers back to her home, and that she was not alone. Of course, Warren wouldn’t dare cause trouble for her; no matter what his sympathies, Jarrett was one of the most respected men in the territory. But still, it was good to know that their very good friend stood behind her along with Rutger, the tall, husky German fellow who managed their farmland, and Jeeves, who, despite his elegant deportment and distinguished accent, was as tall and brawny and threatening as any of his ebony Zulu warrior cousins. With the knowledge that the three men hovered just behind her in the house, she need have no fear of Michael Warren.

  “All right, Mrs. McKenzie,” Warren said simply, not coming up the porch steps. “Where is my daughter?”

  “Sir, I am sorry to say that I do not know.”

  “Do you want to know what I think?”

  “Do share your thoughts with me!” she murmured, her tone laced with a sarcasm that seemed lost on Warren.

  “I think that renegade red brother-in-law of yours has kidnapped my girl.”

  “Don’t be absurd, Major. James would never kidnap anyone.”

  “This is a war, Mrs. McKenzie. And James McKenzie is a red man. A Seminole. Runaway, renegade.”

  Tara gripped the porch rail firmly, praying for patience. “Perhaps your daughter was a bit distressed, Major, and so ran rather recklessly into the forest. Jarrett has gone to find her, and he will do so, I assure you.”

  “Before or after the savages have gotten their hands on her, Mrs. McKenzie? Before or after she’s been bitten by a rattler, drowned, mauled, ripped and consumed by a ’gator?”

  “Major McKenzie, as I’m sure you’re aware, alligators prefer smaller prey than a full-grown woman. Teela is an intelligent—”

  Warren interrupted her with a loud sniff. For a moment Tara w
as startled into staring at him as he shook his head with weary impatience. “Mrs. McKenzie, the Good Book says that a daughter is to honor her father. It is God’s decree! From the moment I married her mother, I was a father to that girl, and from that first moment, she needed discipline. I used my position to see that she was to be wed to an affluent man who could provide for her and keep a firm hand upon her lawless, reckless, godless soul, and for my pains she humiliated me. Now she has evaded my righteous wrath, and I do not know if she has done so on her own, or with the help of that half-breed.”

  “Major,” Tara said softly, her eyes narrowed on Warren, “may I suggest that you do not refer to James McKenzie as ‘that half-breed’ while you stand on my husband’s property?”

  Warren leveled an arm at her, his finger wagging. “If he has taken her, there’ll be the devil to pay!”

  “You are sadly mistaken if you think that James would abduct anyone. That he would want to abduct anyone. Half the women in this territory, married or otherwise, would be delighted to enjoy his company, and they wouldn’t care, sir, if it were here, or in the very depths of the swamp. So I beg you, take your suspicions elsewhere before you create a battle within this war that turns upon you more viciously than any band of Indians ever would!”

  “I want my daughter by the morning, Mrs. McKenzie,” Warren said firmly. “And that’s final.”

  He spun around, striding away toward his ship.

  Despite herself, Tara was shaking.

  Why in God’s name had Teela run so recklessly into the interior? Tara paused, angry for a moment that Teela’s behavior was going to hurt James. He had a tremendous inner strength; it allowed him to walk with his head high and steady between two warring peoples. He still managed to do so, even with the hostility increasing daily. But since his wife and daughter had died, he’d had his share of anguish. He didn’t need it increased with a man like Warren on his heels.

  She let out a shaky breath, her anger replaced with a twinge of guilt. Teela couldn’t have known that her stepfather would instantly cry abduction if she ran away. She had just fled his tyranny, pure and simple. And James could be very far away by now.

  Tara turned to walk back in the house and paused again, smiling. She was ringed there by her three protectors; Rutger, Robert, and Jeeves.

  “You handled him with good McKenzie courage!” Robert applauded her.

  “I was quite proud, ma’am,” Jeeves agreed.

  Rutger swept off his cap to give her a bow.

  “I wish I felt I’d done something!” Tara said, shaking her head. “What if something horrible does befall Teela? What if Jarrett doesn’t find her? Warren will be lobbing cannon fire on this house by tomorrow night!”

  “Jarrett knows the land out there like the rooms in this fine home, Mrs. McKenzie,” Rutger assured her. “He’ll find the girl.”

  “Oh, I think that Master James will have found her long ago, Mrs. McKenzie,” Jeeves said knowingly. “In fact, were I a gambling man, I’d bet on it.”

  Tara frowned at him, wondering at his certainty.

  “Tara, we’re not without political pull here,” Robert Trent reminded her, a handsome smile curving his lips. “If Warren becomes too difficult, we can do more than fight him. We can put some military pressure on him from above that will curl his toes. And speaking of which …” Something caught his eye and he stepped past her. “Rider coming, from the direction of my house!” he said with surprise.

  “Oh, God, now who?” Tara murmured.

  “More military,” Jeeves murmured.

  They all stared at the rider coming closer in the night.

  “Ah, the military!” Robert said, and laughed. “The good military. What a fine scenario, eh, Tara? We’ve got good military and evil military, good Indians and savage killers. Oh, God, but what a wretched war! And still, Mrs. McKenzie, this fine fellow riding so hard upon us may just be the trick to save us all from a very nasty situation, eh?”

  He grinned at her, stepped past her, and hurried from the porch to greet the man who raced so hard to reach them.

  Michael Warren strode aboard his ship, saluting to naval captain Julian Weatherby. Weatherby saluted sharply in return.

  There were forty-two men aboard the sloop U.S.S. Lysandra, not counting Warren and Weatherby: twenty-five of them the remnants of two companies of regular infantry while the remaining seventeen were navy. Most of the navy ships on patrol around the territory of Florida were stripped down to skeletal crews in order to provide General Jesup with the manpower needed to solve the Indian problem. Michael Warren and these men were to meet up with several other companies of regulars and Florida militia to join in the pincer campaign Jesup was determined must come about before the year’s end. Warren knew, however, that he had time on his side. As usual, coordinating movement in the territory was frustratingly difficult. Government policies seemed to change daily, from the official attitude toward the Seminoles to the pay and rations for the soldiers.

  They’d made a serious mistake in Washington when they’d tried to exchange the soldiers’ whiskey ration for sugar and wheat. Enlistments had dropped off sharply, and complaints within the ranks rose bitterly.

  Nothing would happen too quickly toward the grand movement Jesup was planning. Skirmishes would continue, especially since Osceola and Alligator and Wildcat were in the near vicinity. But Jesup’s grand scheme would take time. And Michael Warren could take some time with it.

  Captain Weatherby eyed Warren suspiciously after his proper salute. Weatherby didn’t like Warren, and Warren knew it. Weatherby was a Southern salt, not Floridian but right out of the Louisiana bayou. He fit into the swamp waters as if he were a ‘gator himself. And he’d had too much time to meet up with the Indians. He liked a few of them. He was too quick to sympathize with their plight.

  Warren didn’t have that problem himself. He’d seen the face of his enemy, and his enemy was a heathen, an enemy of God.

  “Did they find your daughter, Major Warren?” Weatherby asked politely. He knew the answer. Warren wanted to smack that phony worried expression off his face.

  “They’re not going to find her too quickly,” he growled. “It’s as clear as day that half-savage red man has taken off with her.”

  Weatherby arched a brow. He shook his head. “I’ve known James McKenzie a good while, Major. Doesn’t seem likely to me he’d be forcing anyone anywhere. The man’s still grieving for his wife, for one.”

  “He can kidnap and grieve at the same time, can’t he?”

  Warren was the superior officer here. But Weatherby was a stubborn man.

  “Can’t see it, Major.”

  “Don’t you go feeling sorry for the redskins, Captain. You’ll find a knife in your throat for your efforts.”

  “I just know James McKenzie. He’s an honorable man.”

  “Honorable man or no, Captain, if I don’t have my daughter back by morning, he’ll be one dead Indian.”

  “Half Indian,” Weatherby corrected.

  “You will follow orders, Captain!” Warren reminded him.

  “Yes, sir, I’ll follow orders, Major,” Weatherby said.

  He watched Warren head for his cabin. He spat on the deck. “In a pig’s eye!” he retorted after him. He wasn’t going to get himself and the navy boys killed because Warren wanted to take after James McKenzie into the swamp. McKenzie didn’t want to kill anybody. But if he was pursued, he damned well might join up with old Philip’s son, Wildcat, or Alligator, or worse. He might just join up with Osceola, and then there’d be hell to pay, all right.

  Weatherby was a military man. He didn’t mind going to war, even when he’d parleyed with his enemies and made a friend or two among them. But he’d be damned if he’d outright commit suicide just because Michael Warren was one of God’s great asses!

  He started to head off for a good night’s sleep himself, but he paused, listening to Warren talking to his men on deck.

  “When you see a little cockroach,
boys, you don’t pause. You don’t think, ‘why, that’s just a baby cockroach.’ No, boys, no, you don’t! You take a look at the ugly little thing, and you know it’s going to grow up to be a big hideous old cockroach—just bigger, faster, and harder to kill.

  “Or think on a young rattler! Not much venom when it’s small. But it’ll grow up to be deadly. Well, Indians, especially Seminoles, are just the same. We chase them into swamps, and they just get tougher. Little ones still have that rattle on their tails. They will grow up to be big and deadly. So when you see a little rattler, you can’t think that it’s just small and insignificant. Remember that it will be one big monster to sink its fangs into you later down the road. You’ve got to squash it. God’s own justice, you’ve just got to squash it out when you see it, and boys, you can’t listen to that claptrap you hear about good Indians. The only good Indian is a dead Indian. The so-called ‘Spanish’ Indians ain’t good, and the Negro Indians ain’t good, and not even any of those half-breed Indians who talk as good as you or me is any good. If I don’t have my daughter back when the sun comes up tomorrow, for the love of decent white women everywhere, we’re going in, men. We’re going in to battle that savage!”

  A cry went up on deck. A battle cry.

  Weatherby winced. Warren’s men on board must still be a little green if they could let out a holler like that. Give them time. Let them hear a few Seminole war whoops in the midst of battle. Those injun cries were enough to make a man’s hair stand on end.

  Weatherby was a fairly religious man himself. He looked up to heaven. “Lord, I don’t mind dying when I must. But if you’re going to lead me into death, don’t let it be with a man who seems to keep his brains where he sits … in his pants, if you know what I mean, Lord!”

  He turned around to head for his cabin. It looked like tomorrow was going to be one damned bad day.

  The dawn was barely a promise against the darkness when James awoke.