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Eyes wide, she swallowed hard and nodded. “No, I won’t,” she promised.
They hurried into the rest of their clothes, ran outside beneath the lightening sky, saddled their horses and rode away into the dawning of morning.
“We may have waited too long as it is,” White Fire said, looking heavenward. “It will not be long now until the sun rises along the horizon.”
The birds were awakening in their nests. Some, especially the red-breasted robins, were warbling and singing their morning songs. Some were fluttering and leaving their nests for early prey.
A lone wolf howled on a distant bluff.
Chapter 24
Ah! Who to sober measurement
Time’s happy swiftness brings,
When birds of paradise have lent
Their plumage to his wings?
—Robert William Spence
The howling of a wolf awakened Colonel Russell. He cringed when he looked around and remembered where he had slept the night. In White Fire’s bed in his cabin.
His nose twitched at the smell of coffee brewing over the coals of the fireplace, having given instructions to Lieutenant Green to wake him at daybreak so the search for Flame could continue.
The search had led him far and wide last night, after he realized that Flame was not going to come home. The search had ended at White Fire’s cabin.
When Colonel Russell had found White Fire gone and there were still no signs of Flame anywhere, he had concluded that they had left together—that they had more than likely eloped.
Well, Colonel Russell had thought angrily to himself, they had to return. He would be there waiting for them when they arrived at the cabin. Then pity them both!
Grumbling beneath his breath, Colonel Russell eased his legs over the side of the bed. He sat there for a moment and looked slowly around him. The glow of the fire in the fireplace reached just inside the door enough for him to see things. He cringed. He found it hard to understand how Flame, whom had been raised in luxury, could choose this rattrap over what he offered her!
“I have even more than that to offer her,” he whispered to himself. His eyes took on a devilish gleam and his lips fluttered into a slow smile.
When he had gone back to St. Louis for the burial of his wife, he had seen Flame for the first time in years. He had been shocked at how ravishingly beautiful she was. She had grown up into a lady who drew the eyes of every man who came near her.
He hung his head in his hands as he, at this very moment, could not help but envision her in his arms. He had tried to shake such thoughts from his mind, for they seemed so indecent, even though he was no true-blood kin to her.
He knew now that it had been wrong for her mother to lie to Flame all those years, pretending he was her father, when now, he wanted more than that from her. He wanted her all to himself.
He thought back to when he had met her mother. He had not known until after their marriage that she was pregnant with another man’s child. He had tried not to hate her for lying to him.
He had never been able to truly love her. They had seldom shared a bed once he knew the truth about her. He had scarcely taken any woman to bed since then.
Now the hunger that had lain dormant for so long had awakened inside him. And only Flame could feed such a hunger!
His jaw tight, and with determination etched on his face, he rushed from the bed and hurried into his clothes.
Fastening a gun belt around his waist, he stamped into the living room. “Out!” he shouted, pointing toward the door as he glared at Lieutenant Green. “We’re not waiting here any longer. We are going to search every inch of that forest until we find my daughter.”
He felt it wrong now to refer to Flame as his daughter when he knew that if he ever did find her, he would, in time, marry her. When he did finally find her, he first would send her to St. Louis. He would send her to a convent until she begged for release and would agree to anything he asked of her.
He would then ask the government to assign him to another fort far from St. Louis and the Minnesota Territory, where no one knew either of them—where it would not look unnatural for them to live as man and wife together.
“And to hell with what some might say about the age difference,” he thought to himself. He would look past the stares and close his ears to nasty gossip about him being old enough to be her father.
He chuckled as his thoughts still ran wild on how it would be once he found Flame. Yes, she would have a new husband, but it would not be the ’breed!
