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autumn leaves, a sensible color for a barbarian. Most Englishmen had earth-colored hair; Alex had told her so. So why did her Englishman have to be so outrageous? A man should have hair as black and glossy as a crow’s wing, hair like Matiassu’s or her own. A person could not take a man seriously if that man had sky eyes and yellow-gold hair.
    And now, those eyes and that sun-tinged hair had invaded her dreams. Dreams were nothing to scoff at; they were serious. Often one could see into the future by reading dreams. Was it possible that she and Brandon . . .
    “Ptahh!” Leah jumped up and brushed the cornmeal from her hands. Foolish thoughts! What had she come to, that she would imagine such a thing? If she wanted the embrace of a man, she had only to ask. There were many warriors in the camp who would be only too happy to oblige.
    She shook out her feathered blanket and rolled it neatly out of the way before settling cross-legged on her sleeping platform and beginning to comb out and braid her hair. “I never meant to keep him,” she murmured to herself. “It was only to hold Matiassu or some other man like him at bay.” From the first, she had known Brandon must return to his own people. But it would take time—months, or even years. If he tried to escape too soon, the warriors would recapture him. If they did, nothing she could say or do would save Brandon from death.
    The way out for both of them was to have patience. In time, Brandon would be accepted by the tribe and would be adopted into it. Even then, he would not be free to leave. But eventually the men would slacken their vigil. She could help her husband return to the coast, and she could still claim to be married. Matiassu would be forced to keep his distance, and she could continue her life as she pleased.
    She had accepted the fact that it would be easier to live together if she and Brandon were friends. She wasn’t certain if he wanted to be her friend, and she didn’t know how to go about forming a friendship with a barbarian. He had angered her when he’d suggested she was a loose woman by undressing before him, and he’d made it clear he disapproved of her wearing only a skirt as most Shawnee women did in the summer. She wasn’t certain what it was about her bare breasts that offended him, but she had taken pains to cover them as much as possible.
    Now she was troubled. She’d believed she was treating Brandon as she would have treated one of her cousins. Was it possible that she had been enticing him, sending silent signals that she was willing to share her body with him? Instead of decreasing the tension between them, had she only made things worse?
    Leah heard a rustle and turned toward the doorway. Brandon appeared with an overflowing pot of water and an armload of sticks. “I brought some more fuel for the fire,” he said. He glanced back toward the entranceway. “Only two guards this morning. They threatened to skin me with oyster shells and make a drum of my hide.” He grimaced. “I won’t repeat what I told them.”
    Leah rolled her single braid and secured it with a carved bone ornament. “Pay them no heed. Young men always say such things. Besides,”—she grinned—“the women cherish their oyster shells. They ha’ to coom many days fra’ the sea. They’d nay gi’ the men their shells for such a purpose.”
    “It’s a comforting thought.” He placed the water bowl in its accustomed spot along the far wall and covered it with a piece of hide. “And the word, Leah, is come as in drum, not coom as in boom . Don’t pucker up like a dried turnip. Your English is improving.” He began to stack the kindling beside the water pot.
    Her face flushed with anger. “Did ye ever think, me great Viscount Brandon, that it could be my Uncle Alex who is right and ye wrong aboot the way words are to be spoken? I’ve only your own say-so on the matter, and I’ve heard the English lie easier than they break wind.”
    “The Scots