“You do speak English?” he said, an ebony brow arched. She imagined it was a question he had heard directed to himself on occasion, though his white blood was every bit as apparent in his features as his Indian blood.
“Yes, I speak English,” Teela said, glad to hear a note of irritation slipping into her own tone.
“Do you plan to cling to the stair rail all night? You needn’t be afraid. I’ve yet to seize a white scalp in my brother’s house, miss … ?”
Her heart slammed suddenly against her chest. He didn’t know who she was. She hadn’t known who he was, and it was a bit difficult to equate Jarrett McKenzie with this man, except that the two did resemble one another physically. It was just that one was Indian, one was not.
She couldn’t begin to imagine admitting to any Indian that she was Michael Warren’s daughter, or even stepdaughter.
She forced her hand to go light on the rail, and to descend the steps in the most dignified and serene manner ever attributed to southern womanhood. She came to the landing in the foyer and faced him through the thrown-open doors to the parlor. She hesitated, appalled to think that she was almost afraid to go farther, afraid to come closer to the man, the impossibly elegant half-breed. But in all of her life, she had refused to show fear—Michael Warren had somehow given her that, at the least. She stepped forward again, sweeping into the room, coming to the fire that burned in the hearth and stretching out her fingers to be warmed as she continued to study him as unabashedly as he watched her.
“I have no fear of losing my scalp, sir,” she informed him.
A dark brow arched even higher. “Then you are a fool, ma’am. All scalps are in danger in this territory as we speak.”
“You did just assure me that you had yet to take a scalp in your brother’s house. And since it seems you are well versed in civilized manners, it would seem to me that you would consider it incredibly rude to begin taking scalps here tonight from a newcomer to your territory.”
She was startled when he reached out, touching the lock of hair that she had left free from the twist of braids at her neck to wave over her shoulder. She was tempted to draw back, too fascinated to manage to do so. His hands were large, powerful, yet as lean and hard as his build. His fingers were very long and deeply bronze.
His eyes, with their startling shade of blue, touched upon hers even as he idly fingered her hair. “Ah, but what a prize such a dazzling swatch of hair would make. You should be warned to take the gravest care, ma’am, for such irresistible flames in the night are seductive and dangerous.”
She drew back slightly, amazed that she should be so breathless at the nearness of any man, so unnerved. She had shocked society herself by steadfastly refusing to wed at the altar, by determining that somehow she would live by her dreams rather than her stepfather’s dictates, and still, she did feel a curious fear by even speaking so as she did with a stranger, not even speaking, but simply listening to the things he said….
“Ah, and there leaps the light of fear into her eyes. There is no color on a man—red, black, or white—that will rub off upon your person. Though I can scarcely imagine that my flesh could be more radiant than your hair.”
“You really do presume too damn much!” she heard herself hiss softly.
A slight smile curled his lip once again as he looked into the blaze that burned in the hearth.
“Ah! She swears!” he exclaimed, a teasing tone in his voice. He did not seem shocked, nor did he seem to mind.
“I’m not afraid of you in the least, sir,” she said. “Of your color, of your words, of anything, Mr. McKenzie.” He looked to her again, arching a brow. “How do you know my name—since I remain ingnorant of yours.”
It was her turn to smile. “You are most obviously a McKenzie, and you have mentioned that this is your brother’s house.”
“What makes you think I am a McKenzie? I might be related to Jarrett by my mother.”
“Your pardon. Are you a McKenzie?”
He hesitated. “Yes,” he said softly. “At least, to some, I am a McKenzie…. Why are you here?”
She opened her mouth, then hesitated with a sinking feeling. She could be glib. I am here because my stepfather is busily slaughtering all the Florida Indians he can find.
Ah, but not now, not with this man.
“I have come to join my stepfather in Florida, and as it seems he’s been occupied with business since my arrival, I was most kindly brought here until I could be brought to him.” She extended her hand, looking to shake his. “My name is Teela,” she told him, carefully omitting her last name.
He took her hand. He didn’t shake it. He turned it within his own, studying the back and then the palm. His eyes remaining upon hers, he bowed over her hand, his lips brushing it. The palm, not the back. Somehow the touch seemed incredibly intimate. And sensual. She should have never allowed it.
But then her hand was free, and he had stepped back, and she felt as if he studied her again from some vast distance, and with both amusement and disdain.
“Teela. Have you a last name?”
“Have you a first name?” she cross-queried.
His smile deepened. He was about to respond when they were suddenly interrupted by another arrival. “James, my good fellow!” came a sudden bellow.
Teela started, stepping back from the half-breed. She looked toward the open doors, where a man was entering, a young, handsome fellow with light eyes and a quick smile, as elegantly dressed on this frontier as he might have been in the finest of drawing rooms from Boston to Savannah. “Ah!” he stopped, seeing Teela. Then his smile deepened and he bowed to her, extremely correctly.
“What new flower is this to grace our wilderness?” he inquired. “James, a friend of yours? Introduce us, I do beg you!”
“Alas, Robert, I am afraid this fiery rose is a new acquaintance of mine as well. Teela, Mr. Robert Trent. Robert, Miss Teela … ?”
She still refused to supply her last name. She extended her hand again. “Mr. Trent, how do you do?”
“Suddenly, quite well,” he responded. He kissed her hand. The top of it. He was utterly charming. His features were pleasant, his smile contagious. He was tall, but the man she now knew to be James McKenzie was taller. Robert charmed. James somehow captivated. He seemed created of fire and energy and leashed passions, all giving off a heat that intrigued and mesmerized her.
“Well,” McKenzie said suddenly, “I see our hostess, and must share a word with her. I will leave you lovely children to become acquainted with one another.”
He bowed, and strode toward the parlor doorway. Tara McKenzie was indeed there, having come down the stairway. Two older gentlemen with their wives at their sides had come into the house, and there seemed to be a growing commotion at the entryway as more and more guests arrived.
“I am frequently a visitor here,” Robert Trent was saying, “yet I had no idea that we might expect a newcomer this evening.”
“I just arrived this afternoon on Jarrett’s ship,” she told him.
“Are you staying with us long?”
“I … I’m not sure.” He waited patiently with a pleasant smile for her to continue. “My father—my stepfather—is with the army. He summoned me to join him, but apparently he became embroiled in some action when he was to have come for me. I am to receive an army escort from here to join him.”
“Who is he? For the vast distances you will find here, it can be a curiously small world.” She hesitated. “Michael Warren.”
“Warren!” Robert gasped. Then, very quickly, he tried to compose himself. “I’m sorry—”
“So am I!” she admitted softly. Even as she spoke, she heard musicians from the center hallway tuning their instruments. Guests had wandered into the parlor. A waltz was struck, and Robert bowed very deeply to her again.
“Shall we?”
“Indeed, thank you.”
He swept her out to the floor. Just moments ago she had been alone in the parlor with the
strangely intriguing James McKenzie; now the dance floor was filled with swirling couples.
“Warren!” Robert repeated softly. “A monster, I know.”
“Well, thank God! I’d feared to hurt your feelings by betraying what ill will I bear the man. Yet I must say, I cannot imagine him as the father of any creature so exquisite and refined!”
Teela smiled. His compliments were bold, but sweetly spoken, apparently sincere. “Thank you,” she told him. “He’s my stepfather.”
“Still, a crime.”
She was smiling again, enjoying the exhilaration of being swept around the floor. It had been a long time since she had been at anything remotely resembling a party, a very long time since she had had her ego stroked by such kind words. Robert Trent was charming. And handsome. And she was enjoying his company very much.
Yet suddenly she was no longer spinning. Robert had stopped at a tap upon his shoulder.
James McKenzie was there again, eyes burning their blue fire as he spoke politely to Robert. “May I cut in, sir?”
“Indeed,” Robert said with a sigh. “Alas, such is life! I cannot sweep you away for the evening!”
He released his hold on her. Teela found herself swirling across the floor once again, guided by the commanding touch of the striking half-breed.
He was an excellent dancer. Lithe, graceful, skillful. She might have floated on air. She was painfully aware of his touch, of his gaze upon her. Curious, intrigued, and still, after all, seemingly touched with a hint of contempt. Because she was white? Because she had suffered his improprieties without slapping his face?
“Is it just me? Or all white women?” she found herself asking.
She was startled by his rueful smile. He hadn’t expected the question.
“All white women,” he assured her.
“I’m so glad.”
“But then … you especially.”
“Then why are you dancing with me?”
“I’m still after your hair.”
“But you wouldn’t take a scalp in your brother’s house.”
“Perhaps I’ve no interest in removing it from your head.”
“Just what is your interest?”
“I’m not quite sure…” he murmured, his voice strange. “Indeed, I’m not just exactly sure myself.”
The music stopped suddenly. They remained before each other, staring at one another.
Then Teela heard her name called. “Miss Warren! Ah, there you are!”
It was her host. Jarrett McKenzie, moving through the now crowded dance floor, coming nearer and nearer.
“James! Ah, well, I see you’ve met our guest.”
James stared at his brother. “The, er, child to whom Tara referred?” he asked, his question for his brother, his eyes still on Teela.
“She was a bit older than we expected.”
“You just called her Miss Warren.”
There was a deadly chill to his voice.
“She’s his stepdaughter, James,” Jarrett said.
But suddenly James wasn’t listening or talking to his brother any more. He had lowered his head to her, his lips very nearly against her ear as he spoke. “Your name is Warren?” he demanded of Teela, his tone so low and husky it sounded like a growl.
Teela moistened her lips. “Yes, Teela Warren,” she stated, chin high as she clenched down hard on her jaw.
To her amazement, he suddenly started laughing. His laughter had a bitter sound to it. Taunting, rough against her ear.
“Warren!” he spat out. Softly. So softly. “Ah, well, now I understand my interest in you, and it’s not one that would please or entertain you in any way, Miss Warren. I would simply like to see the whole of your wretched family burn in the most blinding fires of hell for all eternity.”
He spun around, exiting the room with long, hard strides. A chill swept through Teela, and it was long moments before she realized that he had spoken so very quietly that only she, and not even his brother, had heard the full bitter impact of his words.
Music filled the room again.
Chapter 4
James sat on the porch rail, staring out into the night. The breeze was balmy and he closed his eyes, listening. He could hear laughter and music from within the house, and he could hear the sounds of the night from without. The slow lap and fall of the river, the whisper of the breeze through oak and cypress. Crickets letting out their night call. The mosquitoes didn’t seem to be biting tonight, the gentle wind moving a little too quickly for them. It was a perfect night, the air a gentle caress, and, with the sounds of revelry within muted slightly, it seemed as peaceful as could be. Of course, quiet brought out the true beauty of the place. Sliding downriver silently in a canoe, seeing the wild orchids growing, the glitter of the water where sun broke through the tree branches … yes, there was the beauty. And there were still places to go where that peace was unbroken. Where the modern world had not intruded, where the sounds of gunfire didn’t shatter the balmy green tranquility.
It was a pity he could so seldom see those places, so seldom touch them.
He could feel the ruffles of his frilled shirt against his wrists and throat. Once again he could clearly hear the music from within. He leaned his head back against the column that braced the rail. Most of the people inside the house were his friends. People he had known for years. He had lived their life; he had received white schooling, he had been welcomed in his brother’s grandfather’s house in Charleston, and because he was his father’s son, many whites had ignored his Indian blood. He could feel his heart ache for many of the white people who had been caught in the war. For the young plantation wife who had watched her husband killed, her farm burned. Who had felt a bullet pierce her side, a Seminole knife lift her scalp from her head … and then lived to tell of it by playing dead while bitter Seminoles shrieked their triumph and danced before the fires.
It was a horrible picture.
But he had been in battles himself.
Just last year Andy Jackson, still President Jackson then, had given the command of the army to Florida’s governor, Richard Keith Call. Call had plodded along, determined on a course of action, bogging down in swamp, losing men to fever and sickness, finding that supply depots he had ordered built had never risen out of the muck. But a major offensive had still taken place on the With lacoochee River. The men under Call had assumed the black water was very deep; it hadn’t been much more than three feet. Major David Moniac had attempted the crossing, but a Seminole bullet had sent him facedown into the river. No one else had tried the crossing. Hundreds of men, women, and children behind the fighting forces had been saved by that failure of action. The strangest thing was that Major David Moniac had been a full-blooded Creek Indian, a graduate of the United States Military Academy. The whites were trying to convince the Seminoles to move west and rejoin their now distant kin, the Creek nation, but meanwhile they were using Creek troops against the Seminoles. There were so many ironies.
James had fought that day. Caught up in the running, in the skirmishing, in the drive to survive. Desperate as any man to protect the innocents behind the battle line. He had fired his gun, used sword and knife savagely. He shook now to think of it. He had feared that at any moment he would come upon a soldier he knew, a man with whom he had shared whiskey or wine, a debate, an argument, a drawing room poker game.
Caught between two worlds, he had created his own ethics, his own standards and rules. When troops attacked, he would fight back. He had no choice. But he would never take part in a raid, and come hell or high water, he would never make war on women or children. His white blood didn’t necessarily dictate that decision. He knew many braves who refused to take part in the slaughters on the plantations. Even Osceola despised the idea of war on women and children, though as war mico Osceola had turned his gaze from depraved acts of war often enough. But for as many “red men” who would slaughter whole families, there were equally as many who would not murder innocents, even in the nam
e of war.
James knew there were as many good men in the white military—despite the things that happened under such men as Michael Warren.
Just thinking of the man again seemed to seize mercilessly upon his temper, cause his blood to writhe and boil within him. He looked down and saw that his fingers were shaking slightly. He’d learned about the Supreme Spirit from his Indian kin, about the Christian God from his father. They were one and the same, and no matter what the Great Father was called, James was grateful to him suddenly that Naomi had died of fever and not at the hands of a white man.
He clenched his teeth together tightly against an onslaught of pain that was like a physical blow. He would never, ever forget coming home, back to the place deep in the swampland where he had secreted his people, and seeing the fire, the back of the man, Naomi draped in his arms. The man, his brother, turning slowly, tears stinging his dark eyes. Naomi, beautiful in death, striking, so lovely that she seemed to sleep. James had taken her from Jarrett, held her in silence, and his brother had remained beside him, not speaking a word, knowing, sharing what he could. But it had been worse. His younger daughter, Sara, had been dead three days. His mother had been very ill, but well enough for the People to take her more deeply into the swamp to keep her from the danger of the encroaching white troops. Such men as Warren would not care that she had been tender and good, that she had raised and adored another woman’s white child as she had Jarrett. Robert Trent had taken Jennifer back to Cimarron and Tara, and Jarrett alone had waited with the bodies for James to come, a brother to share a brother’s grief, a brother who knew more thoroughly than most full-blooded Indians how a burial for such loved ones should take place.
But she hadn’t died by white hands. By a bullet from a soldier’s gun, or the steel of an enemy’s blade. If she had died so, at the hands of such a man as Warren … His eyes opened. He stared out at the night again. From within he heard the soft sound of a woman’s laughter.