Читать книгу Cherokee Storm - Janelle Taylor - Страница 11

A week passed, and then two, as Shannon eased into the daily routine of her father’s trading post. She became accustomed to the luxury of sleeping in a bed and having a room all to herself without being awakened by someone snoring or the stench and tinkle of another woman using a chamber pot inches from her head. If she heated water at night, she was free to drag the big copper washtub into her private space and bathe from head to toe with real soap.

A handful of beeswax candles hung in a leather case on the wall near her window. Shannon could read by candlelight with ease instead of squinting until her eyes ached, as she had for so many years. At the tavern, where she’d been apprenticed since she was thirteen, the only light after dark was a fireplace or tallow burning in a smoky Betty Lamp. And, to her delight, Flynn had given her the silver-backed antique hand mirror that her mother—afraid it would break—had carried from Baltimore every step of the way over the mountains from the coast when they’d first come to Cherokee territory. Shannon could gaze into the precious mirror as often as she liked, squint her eyes and imagine she could see her mother’s beloved reflection staring back at her.

Shannon felt like a princess in one of her father’s old tales. Each morning, Oona prepared a hot breakfast for the three of them, and Shannon was encouraged to eat as much as she wanted. She could put honey on her hot-cakes and stir fresh berries into her porridge. No one tossed leftover scraps retrieved from tavern customers’ plates into a pot of soup for her to share with the other serving girls, and no one watched to see that she didn’t take a second helping of bread. And after she and Flynn and Oona had eaten, he would take her to the store to teach her the art of trading.

Soon she’d realized that the post’s account book was a mess. Flynn was repeatedly making errors in his arithmetic, and his handwriting was so bad that often he couldn’t read it. Was that “8 trade mirrors” or “no trade mirrors”? Zero pairs of French scissors remaining or nine?

And the picture darkened once Shannon began taking inventory of glass beads and trinkets, clay pipes, cheap cloth, men’s hats, and bottled medicinals. It was obvious that the store had far too many boxes of those frivolous items gathering dust on the shelves, while the trade goods the Cherokee seemed to desire most, such as steel knives, hatchets, needles, powder and shot, were in short supply.

Worst of all, Shannon found lists of customers who bought supplies on ticket and never paid with the promised furs or gold nuggets. Some debts went back a decade, and others were simply written off. Shannon had even discovered sales of gunpowder or knives that were marked “no charge.”

In theory, the isolated trading post was a solid business. No other store existed for days in every direction, and her father had enjoyed the friendship of the prosperous Cherokee nation for many years. But the account books proved that Da had made less profit every season for the past five years. And the money he’d paid to buy her indenture and pay her passage west had cost him most of his savings.

When Shannon questioned him about the problems, he laughed off her concerns, saying that she was like her mother, thinking she could teach a rooster how to crow. He knew the Cherokee, he insisted, and he knew his trade. Some customers might be slow to make good on their promises, but in the end, most would honor their obligations. As for the items he’d given away, the recipients were on hard times and needed assistance rather than a debt. That was the Cherokee way, and to live among the people, he was expected to adopt some of their ways.

In those two weeks, while Shannon struggled to understand her father’s business sense, they had no visitors. And although Storm Dancer continued to invade her dreams and her pulse became erratic every time she went to the spring to fetch water, she saw no sign of him in the flesh. Neither she nor Oona told her father about Storm Dancer’s visit that first morning. At least, Shannon assumed that Oona had kept her secret, because Da said nothing to her about it.

And as for her lustful dreams, they were most disturbing…so lascivious, that an unwed maid should be ashamed of knowing such behavior between a man and woman existed, let alone being party to it in her mind. If her bedroom door hadn’t been barred from the inside and her window too small to admit a grown man, she would swear that Storm Dancer had been with her in her bed every night. She would swear that Storm Dancer had licked and nibbled and kissed every inch of her body from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes, and that she had eagerly done as much to him.

She wondered if she were bewitched. Was she too weak to resist the temptation of her nightly fantasy orgies? If she couldn’t banish the dreams, decency should have compelled her to try to stay awake, to sit late by the kitchen fire, refuse to lay her head on her pillow and give herself over to her wicked imagination. Instead, to her shame, she welcomed them…seeking her bed early and savoring the licentious memories the following day.

And worse, after she’d gone to bed, in the moments before she fell asleep, she would touch herself…rubbing her nipples until they tingled…massaging the mound where her nether curls sprang…sliding her fingers into her woman’s cleft until she shuddered with pleasure.

Usually, her dream lover came to her in her soft featherbed within the four posters, but sometimes the two of them sought out secret places in the mountains. There, they would swim naked in the creeks or race hand in hand into an enchanted hollow where wild strawberries and violets grew thick and the air smelled of perfume.

There, with trees for walls, sky for a roof, and thick moss for their bed, Storm Dancer would sprawl on his back and she would fling herself on top of him. They would kiss and fondle, tease and play until desire would not be denied. Then, wet and eager for his love, she would spread her legs for him and he would enter her.

She had never known a man, yet in her dreams she was wanton. In her dreams she cried out with passion and urged him to plunge deeper ever deeper inside her. In her dreams, she not only touched his sex but fondled…even kissed it as it swelled and lengthened. It was her shame and her glory, and she had to accept her bold nature or believe herself to be a wicked and sinful creature.

Did other decent women have such dreams? Never had she longed so much for her friend Anna from the orphanage. She could have asked Anna anything, told her any secret, knowing that Anna would never judge her, never mock or reproach her. But Anna, dearer than any sister, was lost to her, and she was alone. There was no one to ask, least of all her father’s disapproving woman.

Oona might not have told Shannon’s father about seeing Storm Dancer with her at the spring, but that was her only kindness. No matter how Shannon tried to fit in, the woman remained as distant and disapproving as she had been the first night they’d met. She rarely spoke, rarely smiled, and almost never sat still. Even after supper, when Flynn would stretch out in his chair before the fire and smoke his pipe, Oona sewed or ground corn kernels into flour, or worked on her baskets.

Shannon had never seen a woman work so hard. After a full day of cleaning, cooking, washing, and tanning hides or smoking meat or fish, Oona would weave intricate reed baskets to sell at the store. The dyes she brewed herself from forest plants and minerals, and she decorated the containers with beautiful geometric designs, beads, and feathers. So tightly woven were the seams of Oona’s baskets, that some would hold water. Shannon had offered to help one evening and been firmly rebuffed.

Oona’s eyes had widened in shock at the suggestion. “Never. Two people cannot make a basket,” she said, making a hand sign that Shannon had come to understand would ward off evil. “Each basket has a spirit,” Oona whispered. “If two women try to weave the same one, the basket spirit will wither and die.”

“I could learn,” Shannon suggested. “You could teach me, and I could weave my own basket.”

“You are too old,” the Indian woman dismissed. “My mother taught me when I was a child.”

“I’m hardly in my dotage. Two of us could make twice as many baskets, and—”

Flynn stood up, frowned first at her and then at Oona, and walked out of the cabin without saying a word. All three dogs trailed after him. Oona uttered a sound of amusement and bent over the basket in her lap.

Shannon threw down her book, followed her father outside, and found him leaning against a porch post, tamping down the tobacco in his pipe. “Da, I mean Flynn, I—”

“Settle it between you. I won’t take sides between my womenfolk.”

“She hates me!”

“She doesn’t.”

“I’m not welcome here.”

“I don’t believe that.” He drew on the pipe until the tobacco glowed red. “Oona’s got her funny ways, certain. She won’t even let me touch her baskets until they’re done. Superstitious as a Galway Bay sailor.”

“I just want to be of help.”

“Aren’t you putting my accounts to right? And didn’t you find those playing cards I’ve been missing for over a year? I’ve had three customers wanting a deck, and couldn’t find them.”

“Cherokee play cards?” One of the hounds nosed her ankle, but she paid the bitch no heed.

He chuckled. “No, not them. Great gamblers are the Cherokee, but they prefer their own games of chance. I’m meanin’ His Majesty’s finest from Fort Hood. Only three days away by horseback. I get soldiers every couple months, pockets heavy with shillings. And they’ll pay dearly for fresh cards.”

“Da, when I was young,” she replied, “I remember you saying that a trader had to be fair, and he had to be friendly. But most of all, he had to be a good businessman. If you give away your profits to the Indians, the sale of ten decks of playing cards won’t save you.”

He sat down on the porch, let the dog curl around his ankles, and dug a piece of smoked meat from his pocket. He fed the treat to the hound and stroked the animal’s head. “Maybe I did say that,” he agreed. “I thought that way then, but after you and your mother left, I realized there was more to life than turning a coin. Family, and conscience, and friendship matter more to me now. Knowing I might be a better father to the babe comin’ than I was to you, that’s important.”

“You could end up old and poor, Flynn.” She sat down beside him.

“I’ve been poor before, and there’s worse things.”

“Worse than going to bed hungry? Worse than seeing your mother go into a pauper’s grave because there’s no money for a church funeral?”

“That too?” He sighed. “I didn’t know that useless uncle of yours denied her a proper burial. I’m sorry.”

“She wasn’t buried in holy ground, just a weedy field near the river.”

“Oh, child. How did you bear it and you only a little lass of nine?”

Shannon’s throat constricted. “She had a priest, Da. I ran to the church and brought one back when she was dying. Uncle whipped me for it later. Said I cost him money to pay the Father, but it eased her, I think—to have the last rites.”

Flynn stroked her hair with a rough hand. “She was a lady, your mother. She married me because…”

“Go on,” she urged, certain he would say they fell in love despite their differences.

“It’s no tale for you, darlin’. They were hard times.”

Not harder than the orphanage, she thought, but couldn’t say so. Better for her father not to know that she’d awakened one morning when she was eleven to find the girl next to her dead, her body frozen stiff and eyes staring. Better that no one knew that a rat had chewed her friend’s fingers to the bone.

“Your mother never went without food or a place to lay her head, after we married,” her father continued, unaware of her own dark memories. “You see, darlin’, the man she’d wanted had died before they could be wed and she thought she was with child.”

“My mother?” Shannon was shocked. How could that be true? No more modest woman ever lived. Could she have been intimate with a man out of wedlock? A man other than her father?

“It didn’t matter to me.”

“You mean…” Shannon’s breath caught in her throat. Was he going to tell her that he wasn’t her father? “What happened to the baby?”

He knocked out the remaining tobacco in his pipe and rubbed out the coals with the heel of one moccasin. “She got her courses the week after we were wed. She hadn’t been in the family way after all.”

Relief made her knees feel weak. “So there was no child?”

“No, and none for us for years. It was a mistake between us,” he said. “She never forgave me for not being him—the man she’d loved and lost.”

“She never loved you?”

“I like to think she did, after a fashion, after we wore smooth the burrs. She loved you, though. Never think for a minute she didn’t.”

“She shouldn’t have taken me away from you.”

“Ah, no, you can say that. But how can you tell a mother not to cling to her only chick? We made a mess of things, but you’re the best of us both.”

“And you care for Oona, don’t you?”

“God help me, I do. It’s been my fortune to have two women both better than me.”

She leaned close and hugged him. “I’ll try harder to get along with her.”

“Good girl. She’ll need you with the wee one comin’. She’s like a walnut, my Oona. Hard on the outside, sweet and soft on the in.”

It was on the tip of Shannon’s tongue to say what a good job the Indian woman did of hiding her sweeter side, but she didn’t. She sat there beside him and watched as the moon rose higher and the stars blinked on, one after another until the sky was adorned with glittering diamonds and most of her resentment at Oona had drained away.

That night, the three of them stayed up longer than usual. Da was cleaning his rifle, and Oona’s head was bent low over a tiny pair of moccasins she was sewing for the baby. When Shannon finally went to bed, the hands on the mantel clock showed quarter past ten. And when she went to her window to close and lock the shutters, she found a life-sized wooden bird lying on the wide sill.

“Storm Dancer? Are you out there?” she called softly. The little bird was beautiful, each feather and curve perfect. It was a wren, carved of cedar and sweet smelling. It was so lifelike, she almost expected it to take wing and fly out of her hands. “Storm Dancer?” she called again as she peered into the darkness.

From somewhere she could just make out the faint melody of a flute. She shivered. She knew that sound from childhood, remembered her father telling her that it was a courting song. She drew in a deep breath. Oona was right; they were playing with fire.

He was out there—she knew it. She cradled the little wren in her hands as memories of another gift enveloped her. She hid the wooden wren under her pillow and padded barefoot into the kitchen. The fire had died to coals, but she didn’t need light. One stone on the hearth was always loose.

Shannon knelt and eased the stone free of its rocky bed. Beneath, wrapped in oiled cloth, she’d kept her treasures when she was a child: a blue stone that she’d been certain had been magic, a crumbling bit of red silk ribbon, a silver penny, and a carved cedar wolf so small it could fit into the palm of her hand.

Moisture blurred her vision. She raised the wolf to her nose and sniffed. Could she still smell the cedar? She was certain she could. So long ago…She’d been seven, and it was her birthday. Her mother had promised her a cake and new ribbons for her hair for her Saint’s name day, but when the day had finally arrived, there had been important guests, a British officer and so many soldiers that they’d filled the compound. Her parents were busy, and when she’d tried to remind her mother that it was her special day, Mam had scolded her. Instead of presents, her mother had told her that she was too old for such nonsense. Couldn’t she see that the water pail needed refilling?

Shannon had told herself she wouldn’t cry, not then, not now. She’d taken the bucket and trudged, barefoot as she was now, down the path to the spring, her heart so heavy with self-pity that it was a wonder it didn’t burst through her chest. Her special day that she’d waited for had come, but no one had time for her, and no one cared.

No one but her friend Otter.

He was waiting for her at the spring, sitting on his spotted pony and smiling that slow, sweet smile of his. He’d remembered her birthday, and he’d carved the little wolf for her. She held up Otter’s gift and her throat constricted. It was a boy’s gift, crudely made. The animal’s head was too big for the body, the tail too short, and the eyes too large, but she loved it all the same. He’d made it for her, and she cherished it.

Storm Dancer hadn’t forgotten her. Today wasn’t her birthday, but she’d been feeling low…struggling to rebuild a bond with her father…trying to fit in to his new family. Storm Dancer had remembered the wolf he carved for her and he’d made the little wren to lift her spirits. He might not be the sweet boy she’d known years ago, but he would never harm her. For the rest of it, the way she dreamed of the man Otter had become or her own wanton feelings…she had no answer. She had only herself to blame.

She only knew she wanted to see him now…to press her body to his, and feel his warm breath on her face. No, not wanted. Wanted was wrong. She had to touch him, had to know that he was real and not just something she had conjured out of the depths of her being.

She wrapped her precious treasures and put them back in their secret spot. She settled the stone in place and scattered ashes over the top so no one would notice that the stone had been removed. Then, she crossed the worn board floor and slipped out into the cool night.

She had to still this restless yearning that swelled inside of her. And if it meant her downfall…her shame…nothing mattered but pressing her mouth to his, breathing in his breath, and feeling the throb of his heart against hers.