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“Yes, a picnic,” Lauralee said, smiling shyly over at him as she sat down opposite him. She scooted a plate in front of him, and also a napkin and silverware.
She hesitated placing a tall-stemmed wineglass beside his plate, thinking that might be going just a mite too far.
She even doubted that he drank alcoholic beverages. She had heard that most Indians turned their eyes away from such drinks, except for those whose disappointments in life led them into drinking.
“If you’d rather not have this picnic, I’d understand,” Lauralee then blurted out, clasping her hands together on her lap. “It is a bit presumptuous of me to think that you’d want to sit with me like this with such fanciness.”
“After you have gone to such trouble?” Dancing Cloud said, reaching to the center of the cloth to get some cheese and bread. “I would not think to turn my back to this which you offer me.”
“Then you do like it?” Lauralee asked, her eyes brightening. “You don’t think I’m being childish?”
“I find you, and everything you do, anything but childish,” Dancing Cloud replied, his dark eyes imploring her as their eyes locked and held.
Instead of placing the food that he had chosen on his own plate, he reached over and placed it on Lauralee’s. He also placed several slices of apple on her plate, then took it upon himself to remove the cork from the wine bottle and poured her a glass.
Smiling, feeling a sweet bliss flowing through her veins, Lauralee, in turn, readied his plate with food. She took the bottle of wine and poured him a glass.
They ate in silence, their eyes smiling into each other’s. Dancing Cloud had developed a fondness for wine while in Boyd’s company, yet he drank it sparingly because it could quickly send his head into a crazy spinning.
But tonight the wine was not the cause for him to feel giddy. The air was charged with feelings being exchanged between himself and Lauralee, and he felt that just perhaps she was getting beyond her fears of being close to him.
Still, he would not chance upsetting her again. Tonight was a perfect time for them to become more acquainted in a less sensual way. After all, they did not know that much about each other.
Through the years, when Boyd had talked about Lauralee, Dancing Cloud had grown to know her as only a small child.
This adult Lauralee was something much more than Boyd’s remembrances of the child Lauralee, or of his descriptions of her.
Lauralee, as an adult, was someone fascinating, beautiful, and wonderfully gentle.
She was everything Dancing Cloud wanted in a wife—except for that dark side of her that he had yet to penetrate, and perhaps never would.
This was why he must go slowly with her. Just perhaps that side of her that she kept hidden might open up to him like the bud of a flower unfolds itself to the warming rays of the sun, and at the same time relieve herself of her burden.
“Lauralee, tell me about yourself, why you chose to enter the nursing profession,” he said, breaking the silence that had fallen between them.
“For many reasons,” Lauralee said, taking a sip of wine as she gazed into the fire. “I wanted to find a way to help the unfortunate. The hospital was on the grounds of the orphanage. That gave me the opportunity to work after school, and on weekends.”
She looked over at him. “I never actually went to nursing school and became a registered nurse,” she murmured. “That was in my plans but I just never got around to it. I knew enough about nursing to be able to help out at the hospital. I was content with what I knew, and seemed to be able to use my skills well enough to get me by. The important thing was that I was helping someone. I needed that—to feel that I was worth something. That I was not just a forgotten person.”
“Your father never forgot you,” Dancing Cloud quickly corrected. “I traveled with him many times while he searched for you. He thought that someone had taken you in, to raise as their own. He did not ever mention an orphanage. I believe perhaps because he did not ever want to think of you as an orphan. The word ‘orphan’ means ‘a child deprived.’ He never wanted to think of you as deprived, or alone without family.”
“And I was both,” Lauralee said, her voice breaking. “It will be wonderful to be a part of a family again. The Petersons in Mattoon are generous to offer me this opportunity.”
“I also offer you this opportunity,” Dancing Cloud blurted out before he could stop himself. “You could be my wife. We could be a family.”
Lauralee’s eyes wavered. She looked away from him. She had
intense feelings for him. Yet until she knew that she could perform duties of a wife, in which intimacy was shared between a man and a woman, she would not torture herself into even considering marrying Dancing Cloud.
“That would not be the same,” she said, her heart sinking as she spoke the words that she did not mean. She wanted him with all of her heart and soul.
Yet not only did she fear that intimate side of a relationship, she felt that she must follow through with her promise to her father, as well as fulfill that promise to the Petersons.
They had been without a child forever.
She was going to fill that space in their lives left there from being childless.
Dancing Cloud’s insides stiffened. He had never asked a woman to marry him. And now that he had the same as said the words to Lauralee and she had turned him down, it was as though a part of his heart had been cut away.
