There were lions, and tigers, too, hideous caricatures in shades of rotting gray, mottled with the black of mildew. On silent feet they circled the cage where I was trapped. I reached for my baby, but he grew man-sized before my eyes, crying that pitiful, mewling newborn whimper. Where was David? I fought the bars, but they held, and the cage started moving toward the tiny crumpled crib while ants crawled over the decaying log. "Don't think of that," he whispered. "Think of our times together. Hold on to them." There were so few of them; too few for this. "Share them with me. It's been so long."
In spite of the turmoil of the war, their house remained unharmed. Eliza suspected that her father's politics changed as necessary to protect his plantation. She also suspected that if their neighbors ever discovered his treachery they might do the damage the Yankees so far had not.
But that day Eliza was happy the house remained unharmed and that her father was still away on one of his frequent "business" trips. Was she "house proud," as the vicar's wife had once accused a neighbor? Perhaps. But perhaps she only took natural pleasure in the beauty her mother had surrounded herself with, the beauty Eliza could now share with David.
Rain had fallen steadily for the past two days, causing David to chafe at his inactivity, so when the sun had risen, bright and clear, he had insisted on adventuring outside. He refused her help, but leaned heavily on the banister as she accompanied him down the stairs.
As they stood on the veranda, David took deep breaths of the fresh morning air and smiled at the antics of birds bathing in the shallow puddles left in the drive by the rain.
"I hate to admit this," he told her after only a few minutes, "but I'm not as strong as I thought."
Eliza looked at him in alarm. "Do you need some help?"
"No." He laughed softly. "But I don't think I can manage a hike through the woods today after all."
Eliza hid her relief, at both his assurance and the fact that he would not soon be leaving.
"Should we go inside?"
She saw him wince with pain as he forced himself to resume his former military posture. "I'm afraid so," he admitted.
Her mother's piano dominated the small drawing room to the right of the entryway. As David eased himself onto a chair, from long habit Eliza seated herself at the piano.
"Do you play?"
"Not well," Eliza admitted, grimacing but seizing on any topic to draw his mind away from his pain. "My mother told me that all properly reared young ladies had to play, but I'm afraid I must not be properly reared."
"And for that, I shall be eternally grateful," David said. "Otherwise, I might not be here. Will you play for me?"
Eliza turned to the piano, hiding her flush of pleasure. "There is something I do fairly well," she said, beginning to finger the familiar keys. "My mother told me this was my song, probably in an attempt to ensure I learned at least one melody."
She played competently through the short piece and as she rested her hands on the keys at the conclusion, she felt David's hand drop onto her shoulder.
"That's beautiful," he told her. "As any song that is yours should be. Are there words?"
As the warmth of his hand spread through her, Eliza felt once again those strange emotions that had assailed her as she watched him sleep. She found her voice. "None that I know of."
He placed his hand beside hers on the keyboard. "Will you teach me?" he asked. "That way I will always have something to remember you by."
I could see David. He was at the end of a long hall, holding something wrapped in a blanket. I ran to him, but a wall of bars stopped me, encircled me, imprisoned me. I struggled against them, but they refused to open. I called to him, but he did not hear me. He looked at the blanket in his arms, and his expression was infinitely sad, infinitely lonely. If only I could get to him. Why was I locked away?
"Don't think of that. Not now. Remember . . . remember. . . ."
The days had stretched slowly into months since David had left. In spite of Bessie's care, Eliza's arm had scarred, but when she looked at it, it wasn't the pain she remembered—it was the touch of David's lips on her wrist. And when she remembered David, which was often, it was the way he had looked when he awoke and found her bending over him.
When Eliza was strong, she pushed those thoughts from her mind, telling herself that if David remembered her, he remembered her as a child who had helped him, nothing more, for she had been a child until he came. When she was not so strong, she surrendered to the thoughts, dreaming of the day he would return and take her to that wild and beautiful land in the West that he had described to her during their few short days together.
Summer was dying. The leaves, dry and colorless, rustled to the ground, and the air had a bite to it that told of a bitter winter to come.
When Eliza first saw the rider approaching, he seemed so much a part of her thoughts that she was not fully aware of him until he turned into the drive. Then, for one agonizing moment while her heart pounded furiously, she was unable to move or speak. He saw her, a smile flashing across his face, and waved. The spell shattered into crystal shards of joy.
"David!" she cried, gathering her skirts, rushing toward him. "Bessie, come quick. David has returned!"
Eliza ran, unmindful of her hair, which had slipped from the pins and fallen free, forgetting the decorum that Bessie had tried so hard to instill in her, aware of nothing but David and the fact that he really had returned. He stepped from his horse, waiting beside it, but as she reached him, she remembered that her dreams had been only hers and she didn't know if he felt the same. She stopped in front of him, looking up, suddenly very shy.
But then she was in his arms, being lifted high, and his laugh was ringing out with hers. His eyes met hers. The laughter died. He put her down, his hands falling from her waist.
"You're not a child anymore, are you?" he asked.
She shook her head, once again unable to speak, the feeling of his arms around her being added to her treasure of memories. She wished for a moment she were a child, because then he could have gathered her to him—but that wasn't the embrace she wanted.
"You're thinner," he said.
Eliza managed a smile and found her voice. "You're looking well." And then, unable to say what she wanted, not knowing what else to say, she walked with him toward the house.
"Mr. David!" Bessie's greeting rang from the house as she hurried toward them. "Oh, Mr. David, we're so glad to see you back here safe."
"Thank you, Bessie," he said. "I'm glad to be back. Have you been taking good care of Eliza?"
"I've been trying," Bessie told him with a laugh, "but sometimes that gets mighty hard to do."
David was looking at her again, and Eliza felt herself flushing.
Bessie took charge. "Come on in and get some food in you."
In the kitchen, while Bessie and David bantered back and forth, Eliza sat silent, stealing glances at him from under her lashes when she thought he wouldn't notice.
"I'm sorry all we have is this skimpy old soup," Bessie apologized as she set a bowl of the steaming vegetables before him, "but I killed our last scrawny rooster a week ago. If I'd known you was coming, I'd have saved him for you."
"Don't worry about me, Bessie. This is better than I usually get," he said, laughing, but his gaze lingered on Eliza's face before he turned to the soup.
He is truly beautiful, Eliza thought as she watched him. But was his face a little more lined, or was it just that he was tired that made him seem different somehow? Not vulnerable—he had never seemed vulnerable, even when he had lain unconscious—but less the bronze god she had made him in her dreams. More human, more open to hurt, and, she thought, bending her head to hide the color she felt staining her cheeks, easier to love.
David finished his meal and rose to his feet. "That was just what I needed, Bessie," he said slowly. "Now, if you two will excuse my bad manners . . ." He looked steadily at Eliza, forcing her to meet his eyes. "I must go."
"Not so soon!" Eliza cried, forgetting her shyness. He couldn't leave her again.
He stared down at her. "No," he said in the same soft voice, still looking at her. "No, you're right. It is too soon to leave."
He turned to Bessie with a smile. "How would you like some meat for supper?" he asked.
"I'd like it so much, I'd think the good Lord had done us a special favor. But you don't dare go shooting around here."
"Let me worry about that." He started for the door.
"Wait," Eliza said breathlessly, surprising even herself. "I'm going with you."
Bessie frowned, and David looked at her strangely, but nothing mattered except that she had to be near him, if only for a little while, even if he never cared for her.
In the woods, her shyness began to leave. "I'm glad you're here," she said.
"I was beginning to wonder." He smiled at her, easing the sting of his words, as he picked up a branch and began stripping the bark from it with his knife. "You've become more . . . quiet."
As they walked, he whittled almost absently at the branch and began humming a tune under his breath. She listened, entranced, as she recognized the melody. "You remembered."
"How could I forget your song?" he teased her gently. "I may not be able to play it, but I'll always remember your trying to teach me."
"Oh." He had remembered her as a child. Only a child would have been so excited about a silly melody. She blinked back tears of disappointment. Well, she wasn't a child, but he would never know that unless she got over her speechlessness.
"What . . ." she began. He turned from his whittling to her.
She refused to be silent any longer, but what topic was safe? The image of him lying on her bed, near death, swam before her, and as she looked at him, so strong now, she knew that at any moment he could be torn by another bullet. . . . She chased the thought from her mind.
"What are you doing in this war?" she whispered.
Was it her imagination, or did his expression soften?
"Right now?" he asked. It must have been her imagination, because his words were impersonal. "Acting as a sort of glorified courier between the Choctaw Nation and Richmond."
"No," she stammered. "I mean why? Your land seems so far away, so different. Why were you drawn into this war? You can't be fighting for the same reasons we are." She stopped, but her fear found words. "Why do you take the chance of being wounded or—or killed for a cause that isn't your own?"
"Isn't it?" he asked. He leaned against a tree and started whittling once more, speaking as carefully as he shaped the stick. "It isn't the slavery issue, although some of us do have slaves. It isn't state's rights, because we certainly aren't a state and don't want to be. What we're fighting for is more basic than either of those issues."
His hands stilled, and for a moment the grimness of his expression gave her fear of another sort. "We're fighting for the survival of our nation, for our land which the government in Washington already wants to take from us, for our wealth which is controlled by someone other than ourselves and which has been invested in southern banks, for our integrity as a free people. If the Confederacy doesn't win, we stand to lose more than a war. We could lose everything."
"David, I—"
He silenced her with a quick gesture, took aim, and sent the carved stick sailing through the air. She heard it strike something behind her. With a triumphant chuckle, David walked a few feet into the brush and returned with the stick and a dead squirrel.
"Who are you, David Richards?" she asked when her laughter had passed. "At one moment you seem no different from a southern gentleman, and the next you're a wild little boy."
"I'm both," he said. "A product of two proud nations. Sired by one, born to and raised by another. Educated in the woodlands and mountains of my mother and the universities of my father.
"And you? Who are you, Eliza?"
"I don't know," she said slowly, meeting his eyes and realizing as she spoke that she really didn't know. "Sometimes I feel as though I am living for a definite purpose. Sometimes I almost know what it is. Sometimes, though, I feel as though nothing new will ever happen, that I'm living a life I've already known in another time, another place." She studied his face for any reaction.
He spoke quietly. "Was I in that other life, too?"
"You must have been," she said, her shyness gone completely. "Do you think—do you think me very strange?"
He shook his head and, taking her arm, led her deeper into the woods.
By the time they reached the creek where she had been sitting when she first saw him, David had a number of squirrels in his catch and had begun teaching her to throw the squirrel stick.
"Is this more of your education in the woodlands of your mother?" Eliza asked, falling to her knees beside the creek and holding her cupped hands to the water for a drink.
"Definitely," David said, dropping down beside her and stretching out on the grassy bank.
She was aware of his presence beside her, but it was as though he had always been with her. The silence between them was not heavy and strained as it had been, but calm, peaceful, as though their thoughts were flowing together without the need for words.
"I know a hill," David said, breaking the silence, "sitting alone in the middle of a wide river valley. From the top of the hill you can see, in the distance, mountains surrounding you. And the soil is as rich and fertile as that found in the bottomlands.
"When the war is over, I'm going to clear the top of that hill and plant an orchard, but first I'm going to build a house—not just an ordinary house, but one fit for a princess."
Eliza listened to the music of his voice and saw, as in a dream, the house rising on the top of that enchanted hill.
"There is a story my people tell of a woman so beautiful that the only way her suitor won permission to marry her was by promising her guardian that his people would lie upon the ground so that she might walk upon them as she came to him as a bride. I cannot promise that, but I can promise my bride—"
The vision before Eliza's eyes shattered. Of course he would marry. But why did he have to tell her now? Why did he have to spoil this one perfect day? Once again the tears welled in her eyes, and she stared at the creek, her back to him so he would not see.
"—that when she and I go to church on Sunday, people from miles around will comment on David Richards's beautiful lady."
Oh, he was cruel, she thought. Cruel to torment her. She could see the woman, a woman of his people who shared his beautiful bronze coloring, long, straight black hair, and flashing eyes that wavered under no one's gaze.
"And when I am elected principal chief, she will be first lady of my people, as she is already first lady in my heart."
She felt numb. Try as she would, she couldn't stop the tears from streaming down her face. She heard him moving behind her and then he was beside her, his hands on hers. She tried to twist away, but he touched her cheek with one slender, tanned hand, and turned her to face him. His eyes read hers.
"That is," he said, "if you wish it."
"If I wish it?" she whispered. She thought her heart would burst within her. The trees, the creek, the ground itself seemed to be spinning around them. "Oh, David . . . oh, David." She could barely speak. "I thought . . ."
He spoke lightly, gently teasing her, and yet hesitantly. "Is that a yes, or a no?"
"Yes," she said. It was so right, so very right. "Yes, yes, yes."
"You're not afraid to go so far away with me?"
She wasn't. "I'd go anywhere with you, or for you."
And then, as had happened so many times in her dreams, even as she marveled at the sensation of having done the same thing at some other time, he drew her face to his and gently touched his lips to hers. All thoughts of that distant time faded. There was only the present. Her arms crept around him. A warmth she had never known spread through her, and she arched closer, eager to savor its glow. The forest sounds died away. There was only the two of them reaching for each other, needing each other until, with a long, shuddering sigh, he lifted his head and held her tightly against his chest. She listened to the thunder of his heartbeat and marveled at the needs pulsing through her, pushing their way through the confusion in her mind.
Finally he helped her to her feet and reached for the squirrels. She retrieved the stick, and silently they walked back toward the house.
"Take me with you now," she pleaded as they reached the clearing.
"Would that I could," he said, "but there is no safe place to take you. Word has reached Richmond that Fort Smith has fallen to the Yankees. They already occupy the Creek and Cherokee Nations. By the time I get home, our nation will probably be occupied."
"But you could be—"
He silenced her. "Nothing is going to happen to me. Nothing would dare happen to me. And as soon as I can after the war is over, I will be back for you."
"You're leaving now?"
"I have to, Eliza." He flashed a wistful smile at Bessie, who had come from the house to stand beside them. "Take good care of her for me, will you?"
"I sure will, Mr. David. I took care of her mother, I'll look out after her, and I reckon I'll be caring for her little ones, too."
He turned to Eliza and, laying his hand against her cheek, looked down into her eyes. "I love you," he told her. "In this life, in all that have gone before, in all that are to come. Evermore. Remember that."
And he was gone, leaving only the memory of their last, desperate kiss and the promise, "after the war." After the war. After the war. The words echoed through empty hallways, past deserted rooms and around an overturned crib. I was alone, with only ravaged dreams to remind me of all that had been lost, of all that the Yankees, and Owen Markham, had taken from me. "You're not alone. Not alone. Not . . ."
Eliza had wandered to the edge of the woods picking blackberries. Bessie wouldn't let her go any farther, saying it wasn't safe. Of course, she'd said that the day Eliza had found David. David. Eliza's thoughts turned to him again, as they did so often. The war couldn't last much longer. She couldn't quite picture the life they'd have together in the West, but she wasn't the least bit scared. She found herself humming. Her song. And she smiled. Life would be wondrous, wherever they were, because they would be together.
She had stripped the last of the berries from the cane before her and put them in the now full bucket when she saw the two riders. They came from the woods just beyond the thicket and were galloping in her direction. Yankees! Eliza cast a glance at them and then at the house, too far away to reach before they overtook her.
"Well, well, what have we got here?" one asked in a harsh, nasal voice, as they reined in their horses.
"Looks to me like we got a nice reward for a long day's ride," the other said, laughing.
Guiding their horses between her and the house, they dismounted and stalked toward her.
"Not much meat on her bones," the first one said.
"Hell, not much meat anywhere in this part of the country," his partner answered. "But a scrawny chicken is better than no chicken at all."
At last freed from her paralysis, Eliza threw the bucket of berries at them and ran, screaming for Bessie at the top of her voice. One of the soldiers tackled her, knocking her to the ground. She scrambled up, clawing and kicking.
"I'm coming, Miss Eliza," she heard from the house. "Hey, you white trash, leave my little lady alone!"
"Jesus!" one of them said. "It looks like a mama bear coming for her cub." He twisted Eliza around. "You her cub, girl?"
"Naw, Jenson. She's white. You like 'em fat; want to try the black bear?"
Jenson snickered. "Let me get a closer look at her first."
Bessie lumbered toward them, a butcher knife waving from her hand. "You let go of her or I'll cut your hearts out and feed them to the rats."
Eliza heard the shot ring out from beside her and watched Bessie crumple to the ground. Jenson holstered his revolver.
"What the hell'd you do that for?" the other asked.
"I don't like them ugly." He yanked Eliza closer to him.
"Bessie!" she screamed, struggling to free herself.
"Ain't no one going to help you now, little gal." He reached for her bodice, but stilled his hand at the sound of another shot. The second Yankee slumped to the ground.
A small band of soldiers emerged from the woods. Eliza gasped when she recognized the captain at their head. Owen Markham stepped from his horse, his gun aimed at the man who held her.
"Move away from her," Markham's voice grated through the waiting silence.
"Now, Captain, we didn't mean no harm. We was aiming to come back, just as soon as we had some fun with the gal."
"Move away from her."
Eliza felt the hands release her.
"Even our deserters don't make war on women or children," Markham said as he pulled the trigger. Eliza watched the man fall, but it wasn't real. Bessie was real, and she lay motionless on the ground.
She stumbled toward Bessie, but Markham caught her.
"I've got to help her," she protested.
He snapped an order to a soldier. "See to the Negress."
The soldier walked to Bessie and nudged her with his boot. "She's dead."
"Bury her."
Eliza struggled against him, but he held her. "Be still," he said in the same voice he used with the soldier.
He took her arm and half led, half dragged her to the house. "Stay here," he commanded. "I'll leave orders. You'll be safe."
Eliza raised tear-filled eyes to his face. "Why?"
Markham answered a question she had not asked. "I don't want someone else pawing over what belongs to me. And I will have you."
Marie LeFlore appeared beside David at the end of the hall, her long, black hair hanging down her back, Red Feather clasped in her little girl arms. I called to her and she waved at me. She took the bundle from David and brought it to me, smiling as she did so. The bars parted to allow the blankets to pass through. I took them eagerly, uncovering the baby's face, but the face of Owen Markham stared up at me. As I screamed, the bundle deteriorated into a mass of red feathers swirling about me, blinding me. "Don't think about Owen Markham. Don't think about the Yankees." I have to. They were part of it. "They don't matter anymore."
Eliza went downstairs reluctantly, puzzled by her father's summons to join him in the library. But her wonder at the strange command paled beside the joy that enveloped her, putting color in her cheeks and a brightness in her eyes, a joy which, since the arrival of David's letter, had covered everything with a blanket of sweet contentment and breathless anticipation.
The letter lay tucked beneath her bodice, but the words were written on her heart, to be called forth or to creep forward on their own, to thrill her again as they had when she first saw them in his beautiful, flowing script.
The message was brief. He was in Washington City. Finally, ratification of the treaty seemed imminent. His nation was safe. And he missed her. "I shall come for you in midsummer," the letter read. "The home I have promised you will not be completed by then, but I can wait no longer. Each day seems an eternity."
She paused by an open window. The moon bathed everything with its silver glow. A warm breeze carried into the house the familiar spring sounds of crickets, bullfrogs, and a solitary owl, and the fresh, newly washed scent left by the late afternoon shower. The smell of death was gone, the war was over, and David was coming for her. Could the night be anything but perfect?
With a smile she realized that she was humming. Her song. How David had laughed as she tried to teach him to pick out the melody on the out-of-tune piano in the drawing room.
With a sigh, she drew herself away from the window. Her father waited. Tapping lightly on the closed door to announce herself, she entered the library. Her father and another man sat in a pool of soft light near the fireplace with their cigars and brandy. At first she didn't recognize the visitor. Without his blue uniform, he seemed only vaguely, disturbingly familiar, the candlelight muting the golden highlights in his hair and throwing shadows across his strong, chiseled profile. But when the two men rose to meet her, she saw the mockery and possession in his eyes. A band tightened around her heart, and she hesitated.
"Come, come, daughter," her father said as he motioned her to his side. "Now is not the time for feminine modesty."
As Eliza walked to him, she glanced at the almost empty decanter on the table; obviously her father had again, as so often lately, had far to much to drink.
"I understand that although you have met our guest, you have never been properly introduced." He spoke too rapidly. There was a precision in his usually casual drawl and he radiated a tension that made her back stiffen. "Eliza, may I present Owen Markham."
She nodded coolly, a light frown creasing her brow. "Captain."
"Now, now, Eliza. Not 'Captain.' The war is over. Mr. Markham is with the Department of the Interior now. In a highly responsible position, I might add."
Eliza tried to conceal the embarrassment she felt for this man who was her father. Why was he fawning over this—this Yankee?
A smile of secret amusement played over Owen Markham's lips as he advanced toward her. "You will excuse me, Eliza? Sir? I must see to the horses."
Eliza felt a chilling band of fear tighten within her as Markham left the room. His words had not been a request, but a command. It was no longer "Miss Eliza" when he addressed her, but "Eliza." She tried to hold on to the contentment with which she had entered the room, but she felt it being stolen from her. She turned to her father. He filled his glass and smiled at her as he resumed his seat, but she felt no reason to return the smile.
"Mr. Markham has done me the honor of asking for your hand in marriage."
The band twisted. The contentment shattered. She felt the blood draining from her face.
"And I have assured him you will accept."
"Father!" It was ragged cry, full of disbelief and horror.
"You could do worse, Eliza," he said, staring at the brandy he swirled in the snifter before taking a long drink. "The war is over. He is an influential man. You will be well cared for."
Her father had never allowed her to argue with him, to in any way defy his wishes, but now she knew she had to. "I do not wish to marry him."
"Many women do not wish to marry the man selected for them. I fail to see that as a valid objection. In time, you will learn to care for him, or at least to care for your position as his wife and the mother of his children."
Eliza closed her eyes, suppressing a moan, and the letter near her heart rustled against her flesh. Her father had never permitted secretiveness from her, yet she had kept from him the most important secret of her life. "I love someone else," she said softly, "and I have promised to marry him."
"Who?" he asked sharply, slamming his snifter on the table. "Damnation! What went on in my absence? What did that uppity and slatternly Negress allow to transpire?"
Eliza's head jerked up at his words, but she bit back her angry denial, knowing it would only fuel her father's anger. Bessie had been neither uppity nor slatternly; she had been, until David, the one person to show Eliza love since her mother's death. But Bessie was not the issue here; David was, and her love for him.
"We gave comfort and sanctuary to a wounded Confederate officer, a gentleman, as I know you would have done had you been here."
"A gentleman?" he asked incredulously, but she saw the gleam of speculation in his eyes. "Someone who courted you and proposed marriage to you under the protection of my roof and has not bothered to make himself known to me? What kind of gentleman is that?"
She dropped to her knees beside his chair, pleading with him. "He's coming in midsummer to speak with you, Father. He would have spoken sooner, but you were away so much, and he had to return to his nation. He was needed at home so badly after the war."
"His nation?" he asked. "France? England? From which nation does your Confederate gentleman come?"
Eliza hesitated. Too late, she heard the warnings clamoring in her heart, in her head.
"I'm waiting."
Yes, he was waiting, and she had said too much not to speak now. She readied herself for his reaction, praying that at least the common cause of the Confederacy might sway her father. "The lands to the west."
"The lands to the west?" he repeated blankly. Then his face contorted. "Indian!" he roared, pushing her away from him. "You've soiled yourself with a savage?" He rose from his chair and stood looking down at her. "I was concerned about a Yankee," he said bitterly, "but I would rather see you married to a Yankee, I would rather see you ruined, than squatting beside some redskin's teepee."
"Father, it's not like that. He's not like that," she cried, but he turned from her and paced the room, heaping verbal abuse upon her and overriding her words.
None of it mattered to him. He wouldn't understand David's nobility or his gentleness or his dedication to his people and the nation they were trying to save, any more than he would understand the love the two of them felt for each other. She would not expose any of it to his sarcasm.
When he paused in his tirade to draw a deep breath, Eliza rose to her feet and interrupted him. "I do not wish to displease you, Father, but this is one thing I cannot do. I will not marry Owen Markham. I have promised myself to another, and I intend to keep that vow."
She turned to leave the room, almost reaching the door.
"Eliza, Owen Markham is with the Department of the Interior."
She faced him. "His position does not impress me."
"The Department of the Interior, Eliza," he repeated, and she saw triumph in his eyes. "His duties include dealing with the rebel nations. They are at his moment negotiating treaties that could spell the end for those so-called nations." He shook his head. "You won't go to your Indian. And even if you did, he wouldn't be foolish enough to take you in."
She felt the room closing in on her. She could not endanger David, but there had to be some escape from the horror of belonging to Owen Markham. There had to be. "And I if do not marry anyone?" she whispered. "If I simply refuse to take the vows?"
"Which tribe, Eliza? There weren't so many of them that fought against the government in Washington that, if this conversation were made known to him, Markham couldn't take vengeance on all of them, if he so desired."
"No," she whispered. "You wouldn't."
"He wants you. Badly." His eyes raked over her, and she saw the gleam of victory burning feverishly in them. "Enough to offer me a way to save what my family spent generations building. I don't know, however, if his wanting you would extend to offering marriage if he knew about your past indiscretions, and I hesitated to put it to the test. Unless you force me to. I do know this. I will tolerate no further opposition from you. You will leave with Owen Markham tonight to become his wife, or you will leave with him tonight to become whatever he wants of you. I would advise you to be grateful that so presentable a man has offered matrimony."
He brushed past her and stopped at the door without looking back. "I'll leave you now to compose yourself while I tell Markham that you have accepted his very flattering offer."
As he closed the door behind him, she heard the key sliding in the lock. For a moment she was unable to think. Locked in the room, with no one to turn to, panic held her immobile until one word screamed itself at her over the confusion in her mind. Run! she heard. Run from this house! But she was not to be allowed that, either. From beneath the window a low laugh drifted upward, and she realized that her father and Markham stood below.
Frantic now, she searched the room for any means of escape and found none. That knowledge forced her to recognize a single truth: she couldn't run. Had every door and window been open to her, she could not leave. She had given her father the one weapon that could hold her here.
Numbness crept through her. She drew David's letter from her breast and reread it; then knowing that not even this would be left to her, she touched the corner of the letter to a candle and knelt beside the empty fireplace, watching her future curling into one black ash. The last word to blacken was "eternity," and it taunted her, "eternity, eternity, eternity," as the numbness overwhelmed her.
She felt a hand on her arm, although she had not heard the door open, and it tightened, lifting her to her feet. His face still mocked her. His eyes still held possession, and now something else. "I told you that one day you would belong to me."
The numbness lifted once—later that night, when he took her, painfully—and she prayed for it to return, to seal her away from a shame she hadn't dreamed could exist, to give her the only escape she would ever know from the prison her life had become.
"Shhh. Quiet, now. Remember our afternoon. The water is bubbling in the creek. The grass is soft beneath you. The air is crisp and fresh."
But my baby . . .
"You are on that creek bank. Life is full of promise and just beginning. Remember that. Hold that to you. Sleep now, and dream. Dream of that autumn day so long ago. Sleep."
A lamp near the door cast a dim glow over the room. My eyes felt as though I had ground sand into them, and my head pounded furiously when I awoke, but I felt curiously rested.
Eliza's music ran through my memory. I knew the music. Like someone who had seen something too overwhelming to comprehend, I held on to that one inconsequential fact. I knew Eliza's song. Beethoven's "Fur Elise" was the third selection on the first side of the tape I had played almost continuously during the drive from Columbus, Ohio, to Richards Spur, Oklahoma. It was a melody so familiar, even the ice-cream vendors in Columbus blasted it from loudspeakers to summon neighborhood children to their trucks. And it was a melody I had loved since childhood. The rest—the rest I could not even consider at that point.
But at last I could answer Martha's question. Yes. Here, of all places, I was safe. The wing chair was turned toward the window and someone was seated in it. For a moment I seemed almost a part of my dreams, but I recognized Mack's worn boots.
"Won't Joannie be worried about you?" I asked, pulling myself up to a sitting position. The sound of my voice made my head pound even harder.
"Aunt Martha said it was time for you to be waking up," Mack drawled casually. "She didn't know what your state of mind would be, so I was elected to sit with you. She left some things for you on the bed table."
I noticed the tray then, took two of the aspirin, and placed the damp cloth over my eyes. It didn't seem a bit unusual for Mack to be there.
"Where is Martha now?" I asked.
"Where she always is when she has a problem to solve," he said with a gentle laugh. "Cooking."
After a few minutes I felt the aspirin beginning to work.
"Mack?" I asked. "Did she tell you what happened?"
"Just that John Richards was mixed up in it some way." While there was no curiosity in his voice, I thought I detected a bitterness that seemed foreign to the easygoing Mack I knew.
"Watch out for him, Elizabeth. Even if he is your kin, I don't think you can trust him."