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“Perhaps it was also meant to happen that on the very day you were brought into the camp where my other grandson is subchief, this one happened to be there, and knew who you were. He brought you here first, as I would have wanted him to.”
First? They were all talking in riddles, Lucas and his brother Ramon—now this old man. I had not been told what was expected of me. Why it was necessary for me to be brought here under such humiliating conditions!
Etiquette or no, it was impossible for me to sit silently for a moment longer. I cast an angry glance at Lucas Cord, and I thought one eyebrow lifted a fraction, as though he warned me to silence, or challenged me to speak. Well, I would speak out, whether he liked it or not.
“You have something to say, and the words are bursting from your throat.” Perhaps the shaman practiced mind reading.
“Yes!” I burst out, trying to keep some of the anger I had suppressed for so long out of my voice. “I would like to know why I was brought here, and where I am being take
n. He,” and I poured all the contempt I could muster into my voice, “would tell me nothing at all, except that I could choose being his mother’s guest or her servant! And what is more, he’s used me despicably, threatened me, made me slave for him—just as if I’d done him some injury, or my father hadn’t saved his miserable life! You have just said my father was like a brother to you, and you’ve spoken to me as if I was a guest, but he…”
“That’s enough!” Lucas Cord’s bitter, angry voice slashed through my speech like a knife. “If you’d have tried guardin’ your tongue in the first place…”
“And I say peace! You will both be silent.”
The shaman’s voice was soft and papery, the rustling voice of an old man. But the stern note of authority underlying it brought the silence he had requested. His eyes studied us both, and when he spoke again his voice was gentler. “I was thinking, as you two spoke angry words to each other, that there must be a reason for the hate that is between you. It is a pity, for your father would not have wished it to be so.”
He had chosen to address me, and my lips tightened mutinously.
“Perhaps my father did not know him very well!”
“And you do?”
“I know, and have experienced all that I care to!”
“She’s a stubborn, ill-natured female!”
I glared at Lucas. “And you are a cold-blooded murderer and a violator of women!”
The shaman raised his hand again, and I could almost imagine that he frowned.
“Is this true? You know our customs, and that I consider this woman as my daughter. You are also aware…”
“I’m aware of what Guy Dangerfield wanted, but she is not. And I swear to you that I did not touch her.”
How could he lie so flatly, and in my presence?
Sheer fury made me bold. “Ask him if he did not tear the clothes from my body on that very first night, after reminding me crudely that as he had bought me I was now his property, to do with as he pleased! He threatened to beat me.”
“And she deserved it. She was hungry and I brought her food. She threw it at me in a rage.”
“How cleverly you twist things about! The things you said to put me in a rage—have you forgotten?”
Our eyes clashed, and even in the firelight I could see those dangerous, greenish glints in his, like tiny flames.
“You are like children who throw angry words at each other in a fit of rage. My daughter, did he violate you?”
Trapped by his question, I bit my lip. “He—he lay beside me every night. No doubt so that his friends would think he hadn’t wasted such a wonderful rifle for nothing! But no, he did not do more than that.”
The old man nodded. “You are honest. And I think you understand how the mind of a man will work.”
“This man’s mind, perhaps! He is…”
“You’re repeating yourself now, Lady Rowena. Can’t you think of anythin’ new to say?”
I gave him an icy look and turned my head away. If he wanted to act like an angry, thwarted child, then let him.
Again it seemed as if the old shaman had read my mind. “You are still confused, are you not? You wonder why you are here, and why I have spoken of your father’s wishes. Will you hear me now, until I have finished speaking?”
