The Bearwalker's Daughter (2 page)

“Do you remember her well?”

His eyes answered for him. “You’re very like my dear sister.”

Karin’s mind swelled with questions. He rarely mentioned her mother. None of the family did. Only Aunt Neeley sometimes spoke of the beautiful Mary McNeal. Karin treasured each word and thought her mother an angel, but Neeley never spoke of her father. No one did, as if they feared it might conjure up a demon from the shadows.

“There, now.” Uncle Thomas smoothed her cheek with fingers rough from work and hours out hunting. “We want nothing but happiness for our wee Karin. Not so wee now and far too bonnie for my peace of mind.”

The smile struck her as forced and she’d glimpsed the fierce glint of nostalgia in his eyes. Maybe the time had come at last. She swallowed the rest of her cider and summoned her courage. Speaking as softly as she could and still make herself heard, she said, “I’m grateful for all you’ve done. But what of my father?”

Struggle hinted in his earnest stare then he cast his gaze around the room. She followed his quick study. No one paid them any mind. All danced and drank as if their lives hinged on every step, each drop. Joseph knocked back a tankard of brandy with a friend. Wearing a guarded look, Uncle Thomas bent nearer to Karin and spoke with such reluctance she strained to hear. “All I can say is it’s him you got that black hair and olive skin from.”

Again, the tantalizing secret hovered just out of reach. Karin gazed across the crowd at the burly man with gray streaking his red hair. Grandpa could quell any man with a glance and still had the strength of a rampaging bull. She lacked the nerve to confront him.

Her step-grandmother, Sarah, the petite, middle-aged woman circling in the dance with him spotted Karin. A smile lit Sarah’s pretty face, pink under the white cap, and she beckoned to Karin. “Come on, lass.”

A grin warmed Grandpa’s weathered features. “Kick up your heels. Show us what you’re made of.”

Uncle Thomas offered her his arm. “What say I partner the bonniest girl here?”

Karin dashed with him into the throng. It was time to rejoice, not dwell on the murky past. As if in opposition of her resolve, a hammering on the door accompanied by a hoarse cry broke into their celebration.

“Whisht!” Grandpa hushed the startled assembly. He held up a silencing hand. “Listen.”

Musicians ceased to play, their bows poised above the strings. Dancers halted in mid-step and every head turned toward the front of the house. Karin joined her eyes with dozens of others boring into the wood resounding under someone’s urgent fist.

“For God’s sake—let me in—” a man rasped out.

Grandpa strode to the door, slid the bolt, and flung it wide. Leaves swirled through the blackened doorway and a young man staggered inside, his face partly hidden under a wide-brimmed hat, chestnut hair pulled back. He wore the rugged clothes of a frontiersman, a brown, green-fringed hunting shirt, wool leggings, and deerskin moccasins well up his calves.

Wet through from the recent rain, he fell forward. Blood streamed down his sleeve from a wound to his shoulder. Grandpa reached out to him. “What on earth?”

The newcomer collapsed in his arms. “I’m shot.” His musket slid from the woven strap over his other shoulder and thudded to the floor.

Eyes riveted on the stranger, Karin gasped, “Who in the world?”

“I’ve no notion. Wait here.” Uncle Thomas pushed through the onlookers to his father.

Grandpa upheld the sagging man. He greeted Thomas with a scowl. “Who fired that shot? Most everyone in the settlement’s right here.”

“Not the Tates. Horace Tate will shoot any man he takes for a Tory. So will Jeb.”

“Don’t that old fool and his boy know the war’s over? Give me a hand with this fellow, Thomas. His arm’s a right mess. Let’s take him to the back room.”

Uncle Thomas braced the man on one side and Grandpa supported him on the other. The newcomer equaled them in height and appeared solidly built, but the McNeal men weren’t the least bit daunted.

Neeley rose stiffly from her chair and shuffled forward, her stooped figure a head shorter than Karin’s. “Fetch the woundwort, Karin. Sarah, steep comfrey in hot water and bring fresh linens. Joseph, the poor fellow could do with a spot of brandy,” the tiny woman rapped out like a hammer driving nails. Old, she might be, and as wizened as a dried apple, but Neeley took charge in a medical emergency whether folks liked it or not.

Sarah dashed to the cupboard to take down the brown bowl. Karin flew beside her and grabbed the crock reeking of salve. Sarah snatched a towel and they spun toward the hearth as the men made their way past the gaping crowd. The stranger lifted his head and looked dazedly at both women.

Karin met vivid green eyes in a sun-bronzed face stubbled with dark whiskers. A fiery sensation shot through her, and not just because he was devastatingly handsome.

An echoing gasp traveled the room. Sarah’s rosy skin blanched white. The bowl slid from her fingers and cracked on the floor. “I can scarcely believe it’s you.”

Karin feared the overcome woman might faint, but she wasn’t feeling a great deal steadier herself. That strange awareness inside her grew like a summons urging her to an untamed place.

The man called Jack ran fast fading eyes over Karin. “
Paca
tamseh
,” he said, and sagged more heavily against Grandpa.

Jaws fell open on every side of them. “Indian words,” someone hissed. “I heard ’em, plain enough.”

A tangible wave of fear and loathing ran through the stunned multitude. Karin shrank back from the man, but Sarah clutched her arm and pulled her forward with a steely grip. “Can you blame him for knowing their speech after all these years?”

She jerked Karin down onto her knees and they knelt beside the newcomer. Loosening her grip on Karin, she wrapped her arms around his neck. “My dear boy.”

Heart racing, Karin hugged the pungent crock to her chest. She looked from Sarah to her grandfather in confusion. “I never knew she had an older son.”

“Jack was eight when Shawnee took him captive twenty years ago with nary a sign of him since. Any son of Sarah’s is welcome in my house and in this settlement,” Grandpa said with a look that dared any to object.

Jack fluttered his eyes and looked beyond his weeping mother to Karin. His gaze drew her almost against her will. She leaned toward him.

“Someone seeks for you,
Shequenor’s dahnaithah
,” he whispered.

The message rippled through her with a prickling shiver. And she knew—his was the inviting summons in the wind.

Chapter Two

Hard-won instinct warned Jack to stay awake, though lethargy weighed him down. That blast in the night came on the heels of a hellish journey through the mountains. He had a vague awareness of the astonished folk gathered around him, and caught himself fading in and out of consciousness.

He fought to remain alert. A bed made up before the hearth would have suited him just fine, but the two McNeal men half-carried him through the parting host and into one of the back rooms.

The pain in his shoulder roused him to greater awareness as they hoisted him onto a bedstead curtained in checked maroon cloth. Ages ago, he’d slept in a bed, but not one with feather ticking, sheets, and his head cushioned on a bolster with pillows. If it weren’t for the gnawing ache he might’ve thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

He closed heavy eyelids, opening them again to find the candle in the iron holder on the bedside stand alight. Another glowed from the top of the washstand. The dancing flames cast long shadows on the plastered log walls and the faces hovering above him.

This definitely wasn’t heaven.

His mother’s imposing husband, John McNeal, stood over him with grudging acceptance in his keen blue eyes. Mister McNeal’s strapping son, Thomas, appraised him with narrow-eyed skepticism. If Jack were able-bodied, there’d likely be a reckoning with these two formidable males—might still be. Reckonings were all too familiar in his world.

Joseph swam into Jack’s vision. Little brother regarded him as though not fully persuaded he wasn’t a spirit. Ah, but Joseph was the ghost, the image of their big auburn-haired father.

A pang knifed through Jack. He didn’t know exactly when his father had died, or his mother remarried. Not that he begrudged her bettering her lot with the McNeals, but his father had been a fine man. Jack faintly recalled his even temper and hearty laugh. He’d been a crack shot, a skill Jack had inherited but failed to use tonight. He hadn’t gotten off a single volley at his attacker, the sneaky bastard.

Joseph slipped Jack’s buckskin pouch and powder horn from his injured shoulder and laid them on the bedside stand along with his tomahawk. Sliding a strong arm beneath Jack’s neck, he tilted his head and held a mug to his lips. “Sip this.”

Jack gratefully swallowed sip after sip. The brandy warmed his raw throat and he prayed it would numb everything else.

“Thanks, little brother.” His voice was hoarse. He struggled to sit, wincing in pain, but he couldn’t just lie there. “I’ve a mount—needs tending.”

Peki meant far more than that. Jack chafed to think of such a valuable animal left to stand out in this foul weather for any length of time, then John McNeal drew a wicked looking knife and gave him something else to worry over. Jack could only hope the older man still retained full use of his sight as he sliced through his bloody sleeve, spoiling his favorite shirt—damn, his lucky shirt. Well he was alive, wasn’t he?

John’s gruff voice intruded on his mute protest. “Sarah, sit you down before you drop. Neeley’ll wash the wound.”

Head in her hands, Jack’s mother slumped on the stool at the end of the bed. The poor woman couldn’t cease to weep and seemed on the verge of collapse. His conscience goaded him, a rather unfamiliar, disagreeable prodding. Clearly, she’d held him dear to her heart all these years, while his memories of her were dim. Nor had he made any effort to return sooner.

Jack slid his eyes over the people hovered about him in search of the angel he’d seen earlier and spoken to briefly, but she was keeping her distance. Some females took time to grow on him before he found them pleasing. Not this fresh beauty. Her face and slender figure grabbed him the instant he’d spotted her. She wasn’t at all as he’d imagined.

It crossed his clouded mind that he’d frightened her and must make amends if he hoped to have another word, or anything else, with this rare creature. Of her heritage, there could be no doubt. It was stamped in her face and coloring, but the bewilderment in her blue-gray eyes betrayed her ignorance.

She didn’t know
. How was that possible?

Before he had the opportunity to conjecture, the matriarch called Neeley bustled into the room with a steaming basin of what Jack supposed, from the herbal scent wafting in the mist, was a medicinal wash.

“Thomas, see Sarah gets to bed and brew her a cup of betony. That’ll calm her,” Neeley directed.

“Come on, Sarah. You’ll do better with a rest and some tea.” Thomas helped his stepmother to her feet and guided the unsteady woman from the room and through the assembly clustered beyond the door. Murmurs of sympathy accompanied her departure.