Savage Flames Read online

  CASSIE EDWARDS

  SAVAGE FLAMES

  I recently received the very sad news of the passing of Beverly Stevenson, a special person, friend, and very proud bookstore owner.

  It was at Bev’s bookstore at the Village Square Mall in Effingham, Illinois, that I did one of my very first autographings as a new author. Bev made me feel welcomed and relaxed on a day that became very special to me as I autographed books for so many of my readers who were as new to reading my first books as I was to writing them.

  It is with much thanks, warmth, and love, that I dedicate my book Savage Flames in Bev’s memory.

  Always,

  Cassie Edwards

  CASSIE EDWARDS, AUTHOR

  OF THE SAVAGE SERIES

  Winner of the Romantic Times Lifetime

  Achievement Award for Best Indian Series!

  “Cassie Edwards writes action-packed, sexy reads! Romance fans will be more than satisfied!”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

  A CHIEF’S GREAT SECRET

  “I feel such a connection with you and your people and we have only recently become aware of each other’s existence,” Lavinia murmured. “That first time, when I saw you in the tree, I was not afraid, but instantly drawn to you.”

  “You have also seen the white panther,” he said, searching her eyes for her reaction. He could see that she was surprised he would speak of it, confirming the existence of the mystical creature.

  “The white panther is something that everyone has learned to avoid,” he went on, now wanting to change the subject.

  This was not the time to share the magic that he held within his heart. It was something that might frighten her away from him.

  And he could not chance that.

  He needed and wanted her too much!

  Animal spirit

  What are you to me?

  Are you that powerful being within me?

  Are you there where even my eyes cannot see?

  Show yourself to me, I plead,

  Come to me when you know that I am in need.

  Are your eyes so like mine

  That I have seen you in my lifetime?

  Animal spirit,

  To you I am bound,

  As the sky to the ground.

  I call to you, yet I hear not a sound.

  Is it me that you surround?

  Animal spirit,

  Forever, together, are we truly bound?

  Animal spirit,

  What part of me have you truly found?

  —Mordestia M. York,

  Poet and friend

  CONTENTS

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Excerpt

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Ninteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Other Books by Cassie Edwards

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, Unless they win along with it the utmost Passion of her heart.

  —Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Florida…1851

  The magnolia trees were abloom.

  White herons and pelicans shadowed the bright blue sky as they soared from one tree to another.

  Spanish moss, resembling fancy lace, festooned the cypress forest and nearby swamp, cloaking the trees. Lavinia Price stood outside her huge, pillared white mansion in her flower garden. She was delicately formed, with golden hair and violet eyes, her white skin slightly freckled from the sun.

  Although her flower garden was already vast and colorful, Lavinia was on her knees, planting new seeds, which would one day grow into more beautiful flowers.

  Tired, her face flushed from the late-morning heat, she rose slowly to her feet.

  She removed her straw hat and fanned her face with it. She groaned when she looked down and saw the dirt smudges on the skirt of her dress. The morning had been so beautiful, without a cloud in the sky, and she had been so anxious to get outside to work in her garden, she hadn’t changed from her pretty dress into one of those she usually wore to garden.

  Now dirt was smeared across the front of the full-skirted pink dress with the delicate white flowers embroidered on it.

  She swatted at the worst smudges with her hand but only succeeded in spraying dust up into her nose, making her sneeze fitfully.

  When the sneezing finally subsided, she caught sight of her eight-year-old daughter, Dorey, who was romping and playing with her best friend Twila, an eight-year-old African girl, the daughter of slaves at the Price Plantation.

  Twenty-four years of age, Lavinia had been blessed with only one child, her sweet Dorey, but she still hoped for more children. Her daughter gave her so much joy and peace.

  Lavinia smiled when Dorey squealed happily as she ran across the green yard. She and Twila were playing tag.

  Lavinia always enjoyed seeing the girls together. She hated slavery with a passion and regretted that her husband kept slaves on the plantation he had recently purchased with his brother Hiram. Virgil was willing to free their slaves, but Hiram refused to allow it, saying they would never find anyone to work their tobacco fields.

  Lavinia sighed heavily as she thought about how her husband and Hiram, his older brother by oneyear, didn’t approve of Dorey’s association with Twila and the other slave children.

  But when both men were away, Lavinia gave her daughter permission to play with whomever she pleased. Lavinia had even bought the same dolls for Dorey and Twila last Christmas.

  It had warmed her heart to see them playing with their toys together when her husband and his brother were away on business, as they were today.

  She turned and looked at the Bone River, which ran alongside the vast plantation. Sunlight poured over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and water, shining and slow-moving.

  Not far downriver the Everglades began. There, huge swamps were connected by a maze of narrow waterways, and the few small islands of dark trees were inhabited by poisonous snakes.

  It was certain that when Lavinia went canoeing, eager to explore her new home, she avoided those more dangerous places deep in the swamp.

  Instead, she went downriver only a short distance, enjoying the exotic sight of blossoming flowers, as well as forests with an endless variety of green foliage and cool shadows, where the trees were hung beautifully with Spanish moss.

  Lavinia had taught Dorey to be alert to danger when in the swamps, and she now trusted her daughter to know which places to avoid. Recently she had begun allowing Dorey to make short trips in the canoe by herself.

  But Lavinia would feel much better if her daughter didn’t have such a love of adventure and exploring. She was afraid that one day she might regret having given her daughter such freedom.


  But Lavinia had always been the adventurous sort herself, and had vowed long ago that she would not stifle that part of her daughter’s character. Lavinia believed she would not have grown up to be as strong an individual as she was had her parents not allowed her such freedom.

  Having rested enough, Lavinia started to put her hat back on, but as she turned, she was startled by something in a massive live oak tree that stood near the house with lovely Spanish moss hanging from its limbs.

  She paled and clutched her throat, dropping her hat as she found herself gazing directly into the green eyes of a snow-white panther. It was resting on a thick limb, halfway up the tree.

  It didn’t seem at all threatened by her presence nearby. On the contrary, it continued to sit there calmly, its beautiful white coat contrasting dramatically with the dark green leaves of the tree.

  Lavinia had heard about a lone white panther that stalked the Everglades, but never had she seen the creature.

  Then she blinked her eyes and saw something equally startling in that same tree, on that exact spot where she had seen the panther only seconds ago.

  Was it true?

  Was it real?

  Was she now seeing a magnificently handsome Indian resting there instead of the panther, his greeneyes gazing back at Lavinia with the same interest as she felt seeing him?

  He had long, flowing black hair, and his muscles bulged under his deerskin breeches and a tunic which looked as though it were made from Spanish moss.

  His face was strong, with a dignified aquiline nose, and if he were standing on the ground, she knew he would be tall.

  Her wonder at what she had just experienced was cast aside when she heard Hiram, her brother-in-law, frantically shouting her name.

  She turned quickly and everything within her went cold when she saw Hiram running toward her. Her husband Virgil lay limp in his brother’s arms, with an arrow protruding from his chest.

  When Hiram shouted that Virgil was dead, it was too much for Lavinia. Her knees buckled and she fell to the ground in a dead faint.

  As small, round-faced Twila stood quietly by, Dorey ran to her father and stopped, staring at his lifeless form.

  Tears quickly flooding her eyes, she looked up at her Uncle Hiram. “Is…Papa…truly…dead?” she asked weakly.

  “Yes, Dorey, he’s dead,” Hiram said thickly. “An Indian did it. I didn’t actually see the attack, but the arrow in your daddy’s chest is proof enough.”

  Sobbing frantically, Dorey looked away from both her papa and Uncle Hiram.

  Twila ran to Dorey and put her tiny arms around her in a comforting hug, although she knew that such personal contact was forbidden by Massa Hiram.

  Still holding Dorey in her tiny arms, Twila dared to look up directly at Hiram.

  She had always been afraid of the one-eyed man with his flaming red hair and mean temper. “What ’bout my own pappy?” she gulped out. But she always smiled inwardly every time she recalled how he had lost his eye. She had seen it happen one day while he was whipping another slave. Hiram had momentarily lost control of the whip, and the end of the lash had coiled clumsily around and slapped him in the left eye, instantly blinding it.

  “How dare you speak to me!” Hiram spat out. “Don’t you know your place yet?”

  Then he shrugged. “Yep, your pappy died, too,” he said, enjoying seeing the misery his words brought to the child’s eyes.

  “But…where is my pappy?” she managed to ask between heart-wrenching sobs. “I don’t see him nowhere.”

  “And you never will,” Hiram said. He smiled wickedly. “The river took his body away, deep into the Everglades. More’n likely he’s already been eaten by an alligator.”

  Twila gasped.

  Her eyes widened with fear.

  Then she turned and ran toward her mother, who was working in the fields.

  Chapter Two

  We may affirm absolutely that nothing

  Great int he world has been accomplished

  Without passion.

  —Georg Hegel

  As the sun spiraled down through the leaves of the beautiful cypress trees that stood on both sides of the narrow channel of Bone River, Chief Wolf Dancer made his way through the water in his canoe.

  He was on his way back to the home he had established amid the swamps, in a place he had named Mystic Island.

  The muscles of his arms flexed with each pull of the paddle through the hazy green water, his mind on the vision he had just seen.

  The beautiful white woman with golden hair.

  He would still be gazing upon her except for the interruption of a white man carrying another white man in his arms. He had seen an arrow lodged in one man’s chest, yet knew that none of his warriors were responsible.

  He had taught his people not to do anything that would annoy whites and bring the white man’s soldiers to the Everglade waters.

  His Seminole people had learned long ago to of white men, especially those who carried white flags with them, which the whites called “flags of truce.”

  All Seminole now knew to call them “flags of deceit,” for most of the Seminole people had been forced off their homeland and sent to what were known as “reservations,” where his people’s pride was stolen from them, as well as their freedom.

  His Wind Clan of Seminole had successfully eluded capture and the reservation.

  Some white soldiers had tried to reach his island, but none had ever succeeded. As long as he was chief, they would not come and interfere in his people’s lives.

  He would think no further about the downed white man, or who he might be.

  That was only one more white man who could never do his clan an injustice like so many whites had done to other clans.

  He was proud that he had established his clan in a remote, inaccessible portion of the Everglades, where there were fields of corn and other foods that his people had planted for their cook pots. The land of the Everglades also provided much game, as well as food taken from the water that surrounded their island.

  Turtle meat was one of the best-loved foods, as well as alligator meat; the tails of the smaller, younger alligators were the most valued and tender.

  He smiled as he remembered the many times he had wrestled a large alligator to get to the smaller ones. After killing the big one, he would proudly takehome its skin, which was used for making clothes and household products, while the meat from the smaller one would go to the cook pots.

  No, neither he nor his clan would ever give up their home or their freedom to whites.

  It made him angry all over again when he recalled how some of the Seminole had been enticed to give up their homeland for eight hundred dollars to each warrior and four hundred to each woman and child.

  He was proud to say that his forefathers had not been among those who were tricked by the Spaniards, or by the Americans.

  The only white person he would like to know was the woman with the long and flowing golden hair and eyes the color of violets.

  Only recently had he dared to travel this close to the tall white house that was called a mansion. On three sides of it were fields of tobacco, and on the fourth, the river that he was now traveling on to return to his home and his duties as chief.

  Although he had vowed to himself only moments ago not to think about the murdered white man, he could not help wondering what he was to the golden-haired woman. For when she had discovered that he was dead, she had collapsed into a faint.

  Could that man have been her husband?

  Wolf Dancer had seen her loving manner toward the white child and wondered if this child was her daughter.

  He chided himself for his curiosity about the golden-haired woman, yet she had captured hisheart in the brief moments he’d observed her. He could not erase her from his mind any more than he could deny his own identity as a Seminole!

  But he knew that she was forbidden to him; to care for a white woman might bring trouble into his people’s lives, and he ha
d protected them from the moment he had become chief upon the death of his father seven moons ago.

  Suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by the sight of something unexpected a short distance away in the river.

  It was a canoe floating aimlessly about, and from his vantage point, he could only conclude that it was empty, for he saw no one in it.

  He was curious as to whom the canoe might belong to; it had been made in the same way his people made their canoes, from a hollowed cypress tree; such boats were called pirogues by his people. He went onward, then stopped when he had his own pirogue alongside the other one. As he looked down, he saw how wrong he had been to think no one occupied the canoe.

  A black man lay there on his back, unconscious, an arrow in his upper right shoulder, with blood dripping onto the floor of the pirogue.

  Wolf Dancer knew about the slaves that worked the fields for whites and could only assume that this man was an escaped slave.

  Yet who had shot him?

  He studied the design of the arrow. It was of his own Seminole people’s design.

  But as he had concluded when he’d seen thatother arrow lodged in the white man’s chest, none of his people were responsible.

  No one in his clan was foolish enough to do anything to bring harm to the women and children of their village.

  So who could be responsible?

  Who was trying to cast blame on his people?

  This was not the time to reason the mystery out in his mind.

  The black man had suffered the loss of much blood.

  He might even be near death.

  Determined to do what he could to save the wounded man, Wolf Dancer climbed from his canoe into the other, gently lifted the man into his arms, and transferred him to his own pirogue.

  Allowing the other pirogue to float away, Wolf Dancer arranged the man on bottom of his canoe. As carefully as he could, he broke off the portion of the arrow that protruded from the man’s shoulder.

  He had no choice but to leave the other half embedded in the man’s flesh until he could get him back to Mystic Island, where his people’s shaman could then take over.

  Suddenly the black man’s eyes slowly opened and looked directly into Wolf Dancer’s. He grabbed Wolf Dancer by the arm, his hand trembling.