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“Why?” she blurted. “Why did you wait so long to tell me?”
“At first I did not look on it as a marriage,” he said, his eyes wavering as he saw her hurt expression. “As you will recall, I was wrestling with many feelings within my heart. I had experienced many losses. I did not want to allow myself to love you. You were white. Those who had caused my heartaches were white. I feared loving you, a white woman.”
“I understand all of that,” Mariah said, her reserves melting, in truth ecstatic to know that without a formal ceremony she was already his wife! The mother of the children they planned to have! “But why did you take so long to tell me? After you realized that your fears were invalid, you could have told me everything. That would have lifted much guilt from my heart, Echohawk. In the white people’s eyes, I would be considered a wanton whore for having shared a bed with you before vows were spoken. I fought against such feelings, knowing that you had more than a marriage to me to worry about. Always there were interferences.”
“My woman, that is why I did not take the time to tell you,” Echohawk said glumly. “So many things kept clouding my mind. Yet now I see that I was wrong to place other things before you.” He drew her close, her legs straddling his waist. He kissed her, then embraced her sweetly. “You will never be second in my heart again. Forgiven, No-din?”
“Always, my love,” Mariah said, easing from his arms so that she could brush his lips with a kiss. Then she held away from him and smiled mischievously into his dark eyes. “I, too, have kept a secret from you,” she said.
“But not for as long as you,” she quickly added.
His eyes gleamed into hers. “This secret,” he said, cocking an eyebrow. “Is it the sort that will make my heart soar even more than it already has today?”
“I believe so,” Mariah said, moving closer to him, twining her hands around his neck. “Echohawk, darling, you have spoken often of children. Of sons. Have you not?”
Echohawk’s heart began to race, knowing that she would not bring up the subject of children between them unless . . .
“Ay-uh,” he said, “and you have spoken of having many children, like the Snellings.”
Mariah nodded, her eyes twinkling into his. “Ay-uh,” she murmured. She pressed a soft kiss to his lips, then whispered against them, “My darling, handsome Chippewa chief, we are going to have a baby!”
A sudden joy leapt through Echohawk. He lifted Mariah into his arms and rose quickly to his feet. He swung her around as she clung to him, laughing. “A child!” he shouted. “A child!”
“Ay-uh,” Mariah giggled. “And, like Nee-kah, my firstborn will be a son.”
Echohawk stopped and eased Mariah from his arms, then gazed at her abdomen. Almost reverently he placed a hand there. “A child grows there, yet it is too early to see the growth in your body,” he said, nodding. Then his gaze moved to her breasts. He placed a hand under each, cupping them. A slow smile tugged at his lips.
“I should have known before you even told me that you held this secret,” he said, smiling down at her. “My woman, your breasts lie much heavier within my hands than that first time I touched them. Already, No-din, they are filling with our child’s milk.”
Mariah relished his hands on her breasts, and his admiration of them. “In time our child will be suckling from my breasts. Surely nothing can compare with that.” She snuggled into his embrace. “Except, my love, for being with you.”
Echohawk held her for a moment, and then she stepped away, looking up at him without a smile. “My breasts have already changed,” she said warily. “Soon my whole body will look different. Will you still be able to look at me with favor, Echohawk?”
“No-din, you will look radiant while heavy with child,” he said, flashes of his Fawn there before his mind’s eye, unable to cast the thought away as quickly as he wanted. He was recalling how beautiful she had been while carrying their child. He was recalling how he had enjoyed placing his hand to her abdomen, feeling the child kicking against it from deep within her womb. It had been a miracle of miracles, until . . .
Deep shadows fell upon Echohawk’s face, the memories so painful—memories that he thought he had left behind.
He turned from Mariah, the pain gripping his heart, as though he had only yesterday witnessed Fawn’s death, having lost more than her on the day of the raid.
His child.
His unborn child!
Mariah grew numb inside when she saw the sudden change in Echohawk. It did not take much to realize what had come over him at the mention of children. He had come so close to having a child, until Tanner McCloud had devastated Echohawk’s village.
Trying to understand Echohawk’s grief at this moment, when he should be so happy, Mariah stepped around and looked up at him, his eyes soon locking with hers.
“Darling, I understand,” she murmured, leaning up on tiptoe, giving him a soft kiss on the lips. “It is only natural that you would be taken back in time, remembering another wife . . . another child. And I do not resent this, Echohawk. It only proves how devoted a husband you were. And how devoted a father you would have been to the child that was denied you.”
She eased into his arms and pressed her cheek against his smooth broad chest. “Let me help you, darling,” she whispered. “I am always here to help you.”
Guilt swam through Echohawk’s consciousness, guilt for having brought this sadness to his No-din, when she had only moments ago given him the world.
He placed his arms around her waist and drew her closer, molding her naked body into his. “No-din, my No-din,” he whispered, then kissed her with a gentle passion and laid her back on the mats beside the fire.
With skillful hands and lips, and a body aroused anew, he showed her all over again how much he loved her.
Only her.
