Chapter Thirteen

“Amanda? What does Amanda have to do with this?” Taylor exchanged a glance with her cousin, who looked as if she’d just seen a ghost. Nervy excitement mixed with fear and ate at Taylor. She felt she was at last on the verge of answers, only now she wasn’t so sure she wanted to hear them and the awful truths that lay at their roots. A nagging voice inside her head said hearts would be broken and people would be dead before her life was finally sorted out. Again, her Cherokee prison guard’s warnings and his curse came to Taylor, leaving her breathless … and helpless to stop what she’d put into motion simply by being here and being alive.

Camilla James didn’t answer Taylor’s question. She simply sat there, staring at the wooden flooring of the gazebo and shaking her head slowly. “It’s all coming undone,” she murmured, speaking more to herself than to her daughter and Taylor.

Amanda sent Taylor a look of fearful confusion and then got up, going to her mother and kneeling in front of her, taking her hands in hers. “Mother, what is coming all undone? And why is Taylor not safe? Or me? Who would harm us?”

Aunt Camilla shook her head and cupped Amanda’s cheek in her hand. “No one will harm you, Amanda. It’s just that … well, I don’t want you to hear what I have to say. It doesn’t concern you. Not directly. Just … please, allow me to speak with Taylor. In private.”

Taylor squelched the urge to jump up and retrieve Amanda and tell her to leave them be, as her mother had asked. But such interference on her part between mother and daughter would be considered inconceivably rude by Cherokee standards of behavior. And so Taylor sat, her heart pounding dully, her eyes wide … and waited.

Amanda had stilled, staring up at her mother. Silence passed like heartbeats. Suddenly she sprang to her feet. Her hands were balled into fists. “No. I won’t, Mother. I can’t. From what you just said I gather that you’ve always known Taylor was alive. And you’ve kept her away from me. How could you? You know how I love her. All those times I wanted to see her—and you told me she was dead. How awful of you. Tell me—and tell Taylor—what is going on.”

“I cannot.” Sounding strong and angry, Camilla James jumped up, advancing on her daughter as Amanda backed up. Taylor sat silent and stricken. Mother and daughter behaved as if she weren’t there. “We all love Taylor. Me. You. Her Indian mother. Your Uncle Charles. It’s just that … you don’t understand.”

Amanda’s soft pink face contorted into a reddening mask of pain and anger. “Of course I don’t. So tell me. Make me understand. Make me see why I’ve been separated all these years from Taylor. Tell me why you told me she’d died as a child, Mother. Tell me. What reason could be good enough?”

The low bench seat hit the back of Amanda’s knees. She sat down abruptly, this time right next to Taylor, and clutched at her hands. Taylor intertwined her fingers with Amanda’s. Her hands were every bit as cold as Taylor’s were. With Amanda, she stared up at her Aunt Camilla. The dark-haired woman covered her face with her hands and took deep breaths. When she lowered them, she was dry-eyed. She sought Taylor’s gaze. A soft smile claimed Camilla’s face as she reached out to stroke Taylor’s cheek. “You are indeed beautiful, Taylor. I never wanted to leave you.”

Her aunt’s hand was warm against her face. Taylor smiled. “I thank you and would have you know that I do not have feelings against you for going. You are my aunt. You had to go with your husband and your daughter. That is as it should be.”

Camilla nodded, sending Taylor a look that said she pitied her—or perhaps pitied her lack of understanding. “Yes, darling. I did. I had to go. But I never wanted to leave you behind. It’s important to me that you understand that.”

Taylor frowned, again recalling the scene eleven years ago of Camilla James’s leave-taking of Taylor and her mother. It had been frightful to the child she had been. It next occurred to her that her aunt could answer for her all the whys to her life. Taylor cocked her head at a questioning angle and asked the one word: “Why?”

Camilla James paled and turned her back on Taylor and Amanda, who could only look at each other and shake their heads. Into the silence came the sounds of birds chirping, of somewhere a dog barking … and approaching footsteps, more than one set, announced the arrival on the scene of two more people. Taylor looked toward the sound, and her heart took a thrilling leap. Grey and her father were nearing the gazebo … and they didn’t look the least bit happy.

“What’s wrong?” Grey called out, quickening his steps.

Taylor stood up, going to stand at the low railing that ringed the gazebo. “Aunt Camilla has just asked me to take money and to leave here before something bad happens to me and Amanda.”

Grey gasped, but Taylor noted her father’s reaction. He looked as if all the blood had been drained out of him. “Camilla, no!” he called out, hurrying forward, his hands held out to his sister-in-law. “No. We cannot—I will not—lose her again.”

Taylor’s aunt turned toward Charles James. “But we have to send her away. If we don’t, then Stanley will—”

“Camilla!” Charles shouted her name, making of it a command for silence. His eyebrows lowered angrily. “Not another word. You’re obviously distraught, and you don’t know what you’re saying.”

Grey spoke up, drawling in a knowing manner. “I think she knows exactly what she’s saying. And I believe it’s time she said it.”

“Wait,” Amanda ordered, turning to her mother. “What does Father have to do with all this?”

Charles James answered for her. “He’s my brother. We’re all family, Amanda. Your mother just meant your father would … have the same feelings we do about Taylor.”

Taylor stood up. “You mean about me leaving, don’t you?”

No one said anything. Taylor looked from her aunt to her father. Neither one of them would meet her eyes. She locked gazes with Grey. He appeared every bit as angry and frustrated as she felt. Taylor forced her attention back to her white family and spoke again. “You cannot push me away. I will not leave until I have the answers you can give me. Since I was nine I have lived away from you, my father. I was told Amanda was dead. A lie. I want only to know the why from you … and then I will go.”

“No,” Grey said, cutting off anybody who might have been about to speak. “We’ll leave now, Taylor. Come with me, please.” He held his hand out to her.

Before she could move, her father brushed Grey’s hand aside. “No. She is my daughter, and she will stay here in my home with me.”

Grey rounded on the older man. “Like hell she will. She’s not safe in this house.”

“That’s twice, Grey. After everything I’ve confided to you, you still believe I would harm my own child?”

“She’s been harmed enough by the lies her family has told her, my friend. She will stay with me until this nasty business is concluded. And then she may do as she pleases, go where she will.”

Taylor’s father’s tone became pleading. “But it’s not proper for her to be unchaperoned in your house, Grey. I insist she stay here.”

“I’m afraid you’re in no position to insist on anything, Charles. She goes with me. Taylor?” Grey again held his hand out to her. His dark eyes bore into hers.

In his eyes, Taylor could see a flicker of uncertainty. She immediately alleviated it—and surprised herself—by stepping out of the gazebo, going to him, and taking his hand. She then turned to her family. They were knotted loosely together, a picture of helplessness and loving concern. It wasn’t lost on Taylor that she stood apart from them with Grey, separated from them by mere feet … a matter of inches, which may as well have been miles and years. “I love you all,” she began, her head held high, her bearing proud. “And I am sorry if my being here and alive is causing you pain.”

*   *   *

Grey held Taylor close to him. They lay in bed, naked and intertwined, in the middle of the afternoon and much to the scandal of the entire Talbott household staff. Not that he cared or that it could be helped. Taylor had needed him. She of course hadn’t said as much. In fact, she hadn’t said anything on the entire ride home. Silently she’d stared out the small opening that was the brougham’s window and kept her own counsel. Grey had feasted on her elegant profile and his heart had gone out to her. But she was of a proud and stoic nature that didn’t invite intimacy of the sort that would have had him telling her how sorry he was the situation with her family had soured.

Grey found it very curious that she gave freely of her body to him but not of her heart or her thoughts. To Grey this said she didn’t know much of real love, of trusting someone, or of intimacy with another soul. But when he thought of what he knew about her and could surmise of her life—how hard it had been, how much other people had taken from her—he couldn’t really call himself surprised. But what he could do was vow that if she would allow it, he would be glad to teach her how to give of herself in other ways.

But not today, not while she was emotionally exhausted. The shocks and surprises had cast her up and down much like a ship on troubled waters. On the ride to her father’s, she’d been excited and anxious. But on the ride home—home, Grey liked how that sounded, especially when he was including her—but on the ride home, she’d been subdued and saddened. He had barely got more than a sniff or a shrug out of any inquiries he’d made about her well-being. Not even the much-vaunted man-bird Bentley had been able to draw her out. And so the two men had let her be. When they arrived home, she’d said nothing but had gone directly to the horse barn to see Red Sky.

Grey had come inside. Anxiously he’d paced about in the library and waited for her, wondering if she’d come to him or if she’d hop on her horse and leave. About the time he felt certain the suspense would kill him, she’d come to him with the solemn pronouncement that her horse needed to be exercised and that she wished to go riding. Not one word about the afternoon’s events, what she may have learned or even a question about what he may have found out. Her reticence hadn’t really surprised him because it was just like her. She kept so much inside. As she hadn’t included an invitation for him or anyone else to accompany her on her excursion, he’d quickly insisted on going with her. That outing had yet to happen because … well, this being in bed had happened first.

Grey shifted about under the sheet that covered them. Taylor lay at his side, an arm and a leg thrown over him. She draped her hand around his neck and held him possessively … but she never said a word. Not about caring for him, not about hurting because of her family, none of that. Instead, she showed her feelings in her lovemaking. She was an exquisite lover. Wild. Sensual. Exhausting. But again, it went back to her giving physically of herself when in reality he wanted more from her … her innermost thoughts, her wishes, her hurts. He wanted her to confide in him. He wanted, in short, for her to let him inside her heart and mind, the two aspects of herself that she guarded most tenaciously.

Still, that wasn’t to say he wasn’t happy about this particular interlude they’d just shared. But perhaps it could be a start, now that he reflected on how their being here in bed had come about. They’d come upstairs to change clothes into proper riding attire. But then and suddenly, she’d appeared in his doorway, the one that led to the common dressing room, half-dressed, her heart in her eyes. Her look had said she wanted him and that she needed him to hold her. Grey smiled, thinking it wasn’t much, but it was something to build on. Now, if only he could get her to admit to herself and to him that she needed him, all would be well.

Except with her family and their secrets. Grey quirked his mouth in disgust. He wouldn’t have blamed Taylor if she had left earlier. Her treatment here by them all—him, her family, his family—at one time or another had been deplorable. Not a one of them deserved as much as the most cursory of regard from her. She was a much finer creature, more honest and straightforward than anyone else he had ever met—with the notable exception of Amanda, who seemed to share many traits with Taylor. Indeed, Amanda also appeared to be as innocent and misused as Taylor herself was. But she was no shrinking violet of a girl—she would pursue her questions with her mother; Grey didn’t doubt that. Certainly, at her end, Amanda would see this through to her own satisfaction. And no doubt would share with Taylor what she found out.

“Why are you smiling? What are you thinking about?”

Pulled back to the moment and to the woman in his arms, Grey settled her more comfortably against him and smiled down at her, planting a kiss on her forehead. “I was thinking of your cousin Amanda.”

“My cousin?” Taylor rose, supporting herself on an elbow. Her motion dislodged the sheet, which slipped down her arm to settle at the curve of her slim waist. Exposed to Grey’s eyes was an expanse of pink and tanned skin that covered the most wonderfully erotic curves and peaks and valleys of her body. “I am lying here naked in your arms and we have done the things together that give us much pleasure—and you are thinking of my cousin?”

Holding his hands up as if he were being robbed, Grey chuckled at the note of feminine outrage in her voice. “In only the purest of contexts, I assure you.”

Taylor narrowed her eyes at him and poked a finger at his bared chest. “Name one … con-text, that word.”

“Context? Hmm. OK. I was thinking of Amanda being such a good and brave girl and how she reminds me of you. And how we can depend on her to help us and tell us anything she finds out. Now, how’s that for pure?”

Taylor eyed him, her gaze painstakingly inching across his every feature, as if she searched for a joke or a trick in his manner. Apparently not finding any, she glared at him and again lay down next to him, resting her head against his shoulder. “It is pure, this con-text.”

Thoroughly delighted with her, Grey squeezed her in an abrupt hug born of an unexpected surge of deep emotion for her. She squawked her protest and cursed him—no doubt—in loud Cherokee.

“Taylor, you are an absolute delight.” The words bubbled out of him.

Her answer, though, was in irritable tones. “And I am now a flattened one. Loosen me, yo-hna.”

Grey crooked a finger under her chin and raised her face to his. “What did you just call me? White man?”

“No. A bear. You squeeze me like one would. I should be glad you are not my tso-tsi-da-na-wa … my enemy.”

The word was long and harsh-sounding, more dangerous in its tonality than the English word, which was as it should be, Grey decided, sobering. “I would never want to be your enemy, Taylor. Never.”

She tightened her grip on him. It had the effect of an affectionate gesture. Moved, Grey stroked her cheek and smoothed her long hair back from her face. Looking into the liquid depths of her sky blue eyes, he felt dangerously close to declaring himself to her. He recalled their last discussion in bed and how it had ended badly, but even knowing that, he couldn’t stop the words. “Taylor, I know this is sudden. But I’ve come to realize over the past few days just how I feel about you. I really believe I—”

She popped a hand over his mouth, shutting him up. She moved to lie atop him, her blue eyes sparking with anger. “Do not say another word. I am not of your people, your white people. They do not want me here. And I do not wish to remain here. You will say nothing that will stop me when that day comes when I will go. And that day will come. So there can be no words between us.”

Now Grey was angry. He pulled her hand away and shrugged out from under her weight. Sitting up, propping himself against the piled pillows and pulling the sheet over his lap, he crossed his arms and aired his frustration. “No words between us? Words are all you’re worried about? Taylor, look where you are. You are in my bed. We have been intimate together. More than intimate. Extremely intimate. I cannot believe the loving acts we performed together would mean less to you than shared words of caring. How can that be?”

Taylor sat up, innocently unconcerned as always regarding her nudity. Grey found it hard to listen to her. Her firm and full breasts bobbed seductively as she illustrated her story as much with elegant gestures as she did with words. “What two people say to each other is binding. It is heard. The words reach to the sky. Because words are sacred. They are like magic. They are ropes that can tie us together, never to be broken.”

As moved as he was by her nakedness and her exotic mannerisms, Grey exhaled his exasperation and ran a hand through his hair. “So is what we do in this bed. It is more than magic. And it can bind us together, too. What we do here can also, uh, cause a baby to be.”

“No. I have taken care of this. There will be no child between you and me.”

Her expression was infuriatingly blank, stoic, impassive, and impenetrable. Cocksure, undoubting, and certain—and horrifying for being so. Not if his life depended on it was Grey going to ask her just how she’d seen to that detail. As it was, all he could do was sit and stare at her. They were miles apart here. Would they ever find common ground?

She was such a heartwarming and hair-raising mix of contradictions that kept him off-balance. Downstairs and in public she gave him barely a glance and a show of cool reserve. But up here in private she was a tigress and a wanton, yet warm and loving. Although, in an instant, at the wrong word, she could be the noble and stoic savage—a glaring warrior armed with a long-bladed knife. And then she could turn right around and act the prim lady to the last degree. She was a child. She was a woman. She was ancient and wise, yet young and innocent. No wonder his world was atilt, just as was his heart.

“I don’t know what to make of you, Taylor.”

She frowned. “Make of me? You need not make anything of me. You must only remember that I am Indian, as your people call me, and that I am an escaped murderer. I have killed three men. I have stolen horses. I have lived in a log cabin among the trees. I have lived in a cave, bathed in streams, eaten only the food I gathered or killed myself. I am not of your cities and your white ways and laws. I came here only to please my mother. And when I have done my duty by her, I will go. And I will again wear buckskins and carry a gun. I will go my own way in this world.”

He meant nothing to her. Grey felt his heart breaking. He leaned his head back, closing his eyes as he rested against the carved wood headboard behind him. His strength seemed to ebb out of him. After a quiet moment in which she neither touched him nor spoke to him, Grey lowered his head, opened his eyes, and looked into hers. Impassive blue, if that could be said to be a color. He considered her, roving his gaze over her. He then met her gaze.… It locked with his. He took a deep breath, exhaled, ran the tip of his tongue over his lips. Then he nodded. “All right. There will be no words between us. No words of caring. But neither can we do this again, Taylor. Making love, I mean. It obviously is nothing more to you than taking a bath or riding your horse. But to me it is so much more. A loving expression of my—I’m sorry. I said no words of caring, didn’t I?”

With a flick of his wrist, he threw the sheet back and swung his legs over the side of the bed. With his hands to either side of him and gripping the mattress, Grey stared down at his feet and directed his words to them. “We’ll do this your way, Taylor. I’ll help you find your answers. I’ll stick by you and protect you as best I can. I offer you my house, my food, and a bed of your own. But nothing more, meaning my bed. When it is time for you to go … you will go.”

Behind him, he felt a shifting of her weight on the bed. For a moment, Grey believed—hoped, prayed—Taylor was reaching out to him, that she would take him in her arms and hold him and protest his words and call his bluff, although he really wasn’t bluffing. He meant what he’d said. He could no longer hold her and love her and not have it mean something beyond a toss on the sheets. She meant so much more to him than that.

After a moment, he heard her whisper something in Cherokee.

For some reason, her soft voice … perhaps its low pitch, its heartfelt tone … froze him in place. He waited. But nothing … only stillness and silence. Finally, and gathering his courage, Grey turned around, looking. His heart sank. He was alone. Across the way, the door that led from his bedroom to hers was open … but was slowly closing from the other side.

*   *   *

An hour later, and from her bedroom window, Taylor observed Grey leaving. He was alone, and he rode that big black horse of his. Taylor flew downstairs and found Bentley. But gained no satisfaction there. Not only could he not tell her where Grey had gone, but he still urged caution and waiting on her. With a sound of disgust, Taylor had then left Greyson Talbott’s home herself.

With her hair hanging in a long braid down her back, and clad in a pair of loose britches and an oversize shirt she’d cajoled Mrs. Scott to find for her, she now stalked toward the horse barn. The coach yard was empty of men. This was good. Not that she thought they would try to stop her. They were smarter than that. She simply didn’t wish to deal with them. So, with her knife tucked into her knee-high boot and with her gun again riding in its holster—she’d found it in a desk drawer in the library—Taylor allowed anger to guide her steps. She pulled her floppy-brimmed felt hat low over her brow, shading her eyes from the late-afternoon sun.

She’d had all she could stand in this city of white people. She would now do things on her own and for herself. Hadn’t she always? Taylor felt as if everything were happening, but nothing was being done. Everything was being said, but nothing was being explained. The answers didn’t go with the questions. And the questions were not the correct ones. To her, it seemed as if everyone were talking around her but not to her. As if they whispered behind their hands and stared in her direction but said nothing to her. She felt like a towering wind-devil was fast bearing down on her—only she couldn’t see it for clear skies.

It was unbearable. She’d wasted enough time. She’d only been here days, but it felt like weeks. And the nights seemed an entire season of moons.

Intense frustration ate at her. But wasn’t that her own fault? she asked herself. Because it didn’t have to be this way. She knew where her father lived, and she knew where Amanda and Aunt Camilla lived. And they now knew she was alive and here. Beyond that—it had been obvious this afternoon—they knew. Knew what? Taylor couldn’t even articulate it for herself. But they knew. And Aunt Camilla had wanted to tell her, but without Amanda being present. Then she would go to Aunt Camilla’s and talk to her in private. It was that simple. Or maybe she would go to her father. He would know. He did know. These elders of hers had lived the lies that had kept Taylor away from them all, but especially away from Amanda, a girl she loved as a sister.

Taylor paused for a moment, on the apron of ground out front of the barn. Maybe she should go get Amanda and the two of them would leave this place of the whites. Taylor grinned … but then her next thought slumped her, killing that grandiose scheme. Amanda would not go. She was white, too. This was her home and she would soon marry a white man. Grey’s brother.

It occurred to Taylor again that despite how close she and her cousin had been as children, they no longer were. They were both grown women who had grown apart. But still, Taylor loved her and what they had been to each other. She recalled now how she had always secretly wished she could be more like Amanda. More genteel and loving, more open and trusting. But her life in the Nation had not allowed her to be those things. Or maybe it was more that she, because of choices she had made, hadn’t allowed it.

Taylor shook her head, arguing with herself as she entered the barn and called out to Red Sky, who instantly answered with a loud whinny. A few heads popped up over the stalls—men’s and horses’. Once the hands recognized her, they didn’t challenge her but went quickly back to their jobs. And that was good. Taylor headed in the direction of Red Sky’s whinny. The sound told her he was still in the same stall. As she turned to her left and worked her way through the barn, it struck Taylor that she was as locked away in Greyson Talbott’s house as Red Sky was in the barn. Her horse was not used to such restrictions. Neither was she.

It seemed, then, that she still made bad choices. She had certainly made a mistake in giving her body to Grey. Not that she hadn’t enjoyed him. She had. Even now she could feel the play of his warm, hard muscles under her hands. Even now she could taste his kiss, could feel the heat of his body as he came into her and made them one. Such thrusts and power, such skill. Thinking about it now, Taylor all but whistled out her breath. Greyson Talbott knew his way around her woman’s body. His touch alone shivered her in her most private places. His kiss melted her heart. And his mouth … oh, his mouth. He was wickedly good.

Taylor shivered, forcing herself out of the bed and the tangle of naked bodies she saw in her mind. She should never have told him she loved him. At least her parting words earlier had been in her language and he would not know what they meant. She hadn’t even known she meant them, or felt them, herself until they’d slipped past her lips. So it was just as well that they’d been spoken in Cherokee. Still, she was surprised at herself. She’d never before told anyone—not even that yellow-belly dog Monroe Hammer—that she loved him. And now, after knowing this white man for no more than three days … she loved him? No. It wasn’t true. She’d just been overcome for a moment, seized by a shard of need, one she wouldn’t give in to again.

Taylor approached Red Sky and abandoned her thoughts of love. The horse greeted her excitedly, nodding his great head and stamping a hoof. Taylor whispered words of endearment in Cherokee to the great animal. Then she entered his stall, quickly saddled him, and led him outside. There, with the sun sitting low in the western sky, with the heavens streaked red and pink, Taylor mounted up and turned Red Sky toward the open coach yard gate. Digging her heels into Red Sky’s sides, she urged him into a trot. They turned out of the gate and went to the left, toward the homes of her white family. She still had no idea which one she would approach first. Her father. Or her aunt.

But either way, and today, she would have answers. She was especially interested in learning why Aunt Camilla had called Taylor’s mother her Indian mother. Why would this woman who had lived with The People for such a long and loving time say such a demeaning thing about her sister of the heart?