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His silence caused her insides to run cold.
Chapter 20
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
They rode on through the hustle and bustle of the business area of Mattoon, then farther down Broadway. Lauralee felt as though her insides were being torn asunder when Dancing Cloud still refused to speak with her. He just sat there with an angry set jaw and narrowed eyes as he s
tared straight ahead, never casting her another glance since the last heated one that she had received just after they had left The Stables.
Still she did not question him as to why he was behaving so coldly toward her. Although she had done nothing but defend him, the mere fact that she had been forced to seemed to be the reason behind his behavior now.
He just might be thinking through marrying a white woman, perhaps thinking that down deep inside herself she had her own deep-seated bad feelings for Indians.
Lauralee did not see how she could convince him otherwise if he did not already know enough about her to realize that she was not a person of prejudice. She saw no one’s skin as cause to see them as different from herself.
If he did not understand that about her now, perhaps she, herself, had to reconsider marrying him.
Tears burned at the corners of her eyes but she willed herself not to cry. She just kept wondering what the next moments would bring.
Oh, but she had already battled so many tumultuous feelings over so many things. Could she bear to fight the worst battle of all? That of losing the man she would die for?
Her breath quickened when Dancing Cloud made a wide swing with the horse and buggy and traveled down a narrow road where corn stood shoulder tall on each side. Afraid to hear the answer, she did not ask him why he had taken a road that traveled away from the Peterson House. Was he going to leave for his home in the mountains now?
But no. That couldn’t be it. He was going north instead of south. And there was his horse and belongings at the Peterson House. He would not leave without them.
They left the cornfield behind and now traveled beside a thick stand of oak, elm, and maple trees. Lauralee grabbed for the seat and steadied herself when Dancing Cloud swung left into a narrow road that took them beneath the sheltering of trees and to a small, winding creek.
Lauralee questioned Dancing Cloud with her eyes when he finally came to an abrupt halt. The horse whinnied and shimmied as it steadied itself and got a more solid footing.
Dancing Cloud jumped from the buggy and secured the reins on a tree limb, then went in wide, determined steps to Lauralee. He momentarily peered up at her with his midnight-dark eyes, then placed his hands at her waist and lifted her from the seat.
Lauralee clung to her straw bonnet as Dancing Cloud set her to the ground, his fingers still at her waist. Her breath was stolen away when he yanked her against his muscled body and kissed her long and hard.
Her head spun with questions when he released her. Her eyes were wide as he grabbed her up into his arms and carried her through the trees until they reached the banks of the creek.
Holding her steady, he pressed her down with his weight onto the ground, then knelt over her, his hands gently on each side of her face.
“How could you ever question my love for you?” he said thickly. “My anger that you have witnessed these past minutes? It was more toward you than the crass white man. You questioned my love for you so easily. Do you not know that nothing anyone says or does to me, red or white, could make me love you less?”
“But you looked at me as though you hated me,” Lauralee said, her eyes wavering into his. “And when I tried to get you to talk to me, you wouldn’t.”
“That is because of what you chose to say to me,” he said, brushing a soft kiss across her lips. “My o-ge-ye, it was your doubts voiced in your question that lay hurt upon hurt inside my heart. Do you truly doubt my love for you? Is one angry look that I gave you enough for you to doubt me?”
“I’m sorry, oh, so sorry,” Lauralee said, twining her arms around his neck. “All that I can say is that in my life I have never had much to hope for. And to have your love seems so very impossible. You are everything I would ever want in a man. How could I, someone who has never had anything to call my own, or to cling to, have you? So you see, my darling, how I could doubt so easily?”
“How can I make you know never to doubt my love for you again?” he said thickly. “I thought I already had.”
“You have, oh, but you have, but because of my insecurities, I forget so easily,” she murmured. “I shall try to place those insecurities behind me. I vow to you that I shall try my very hardest.”
“I shall help you do this, always,” Dancing Cloud said. “I should have known the cause. I should never forget those long years you were forced to live in an orphanage away from family and the security that family brings into a child’s life.”
“I am no longer a child,” Lauralee whispered, her hands at his fringed shirt, smoothing it upward, across his hairless chest. “Let me prove to you once again that I am a woman.”
They slowly undressed each other.
