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Clutching the blanket about his nude body, White Fire smiled down at Flame as she held the front door open for him. “The whole nightmare is over. All of it,” he said. “Now we can truly begin the rest of our lives without interferences from men like your father.”
“Yes, he can no longer cause either of us any trouble,” she murmured, fighting the sadness that crept into her heart whenever she thought of him.
She wanted to hate her father. But the part of her that had loved him when she was a small child would not allow her to totally loathe him.
“I am so tired,” White Fire said. He stumbled as he moved into the dim light of the foyer, the candles almost having burned out in their sconces along the walls. He licked his lips. “God, I am so thirsty. I’m so hungry.”
A middle-aged lady came down the stairs in a wool robe, her hair bundled up beneath a sleeping cap. Flame looked up at her. “Lorraine, hurry and prepare a bath in my room for White Fire,” she said. “Please hurry.”
Lorraine reached the floor. She stopped to place a gentle hand on Flame’s cheek. “I prayed that you would be all right,” she said, a sob lodging in her throat. “My prayers were answered.”
She gazed past Flame and through the open door, then looked again at Flame. “I watched through the window as your father was taken away,” she said, her voice drawn. “Why, Flame? Why was he taken away by soldiers from another fort? It looked as though he was arrested.”
“He was,” Flame said flatly. “Lorraine, please go and wake the others of the household. Ask them to help you. Have my copper tub brought to my room. Heat the bathwater and prepare the bath. I shall tell you everything later.”
Lorraine dropped her hand to her side, nodded, then shuffled away in her heavy slippers across the oak hardwood flooring.
“Come with me,” Flame said, steadying White Fire with her arm around his waist. “I know it might be hard to take the steps. But once you are upstairs and in my room, everything else will come easy enough for you.”
He placed a trembling hand on the staircase railing. He pulled himself up one step at a time. Finally they reached Flame’s bedroom.
She helped him down onto the bed and sat beside him as the tub was brought into the room. Soon steaming water filled it to the brim.
Once alone, Flame helped White Fire up from the bed. She was near tears, finding it so hard to accept how her father’s treatment had so weakened White Fire. Flame slid the blanket from around his shoulders.
When she got a look at his wrists and ankles, and saw the bloody, dried wounds left there by the chains, she paled. “Lord,” she gasped, running a slow hand along one of his wrists, “I find it so hard that my father is capable of such . . . such . . . cruelty.” She placed a hand to his cheek and gazed into his eyes, her own wavering. “Does it hurt so badly?” she whispered.
“Nothing hurts now that I am with you,” he said, sliding his arms around her waist, drawing her into his embrace.
She lifted her lips to his. Their kiss was lingering, soft, and sweet.
Then she felt his body give somewhat and his knees almost buckle beneath him. She stepped away from him and held him by an elbow as she led him to the water.
White Fire stepped into the tub and sank into the warm water.
Flame kneeled down beside the tub and picked up a piece of soap and began lathering him across his shoulders, and chest. He slid farther down into the water and rested the back of his head against the tub.
As he closed his eyes, she studied him more closely. Her heart ached to see his gauntness and his parched lips. She dropped the soap into the water and rushed to her nightstand, where she grabbed a pitcher and poured water into a glass.
She took this to White Fire. He took the glass and swallowed the cool, refreshing liquid in fast gulps.
Then remembering him speaking of being hungry, and dying of hunger, herself, Flame sat the glass down on the floor. She bent low and brushed a kiss across White Fire’s lips.
“I won’t be gone long,” she said. “When I return, I shall have brought us a feast from the kitchen.”
As she rushed down the stairs, something came to her like someone had hit her in the abdomen with a fist. “Dancing Star,” she whispered, her eyes wide as she stopped on a step. “Oh, Lord, I have absolutely forgotten about Dancing Star.”
She turned and looked up the stairs. She realized that no one had yet told White Fire the news about Song Sparrow, nor did he know that he had another child to father.
She realized that they couldn’t spend much time at the mansion. Once White Fire was dressed and fed, they had to return to his cabin.
“I won’t tell him about the child until we get there,” she whispered, rushing on again to the kitchen.
After getting a large platter of cheese, cold roasted chicken, and slabs of beef, and also grapes, bananas, and apples, Flame hurried back up the stairs.
When she arrived at her room, she found White Fire finished with his bath and dressed. She stopped with a start when she saw the clothes he wore.
“I went to your father’s room and borrowed a pair of his breeches and a shirt,” White Fire said. He raised up a pant leg high enough for her to see the black-leather dress boots. He chuckled. “A tight fit, nevertheless a pair of shoes until I go home to get into my moccasins.”
