Free Banner O'Brien by Linda Lael Miller Page B

the one to summon the police, the one to accept their reward?
    Hearing the dreadful things he’d shouted, across the years, she trembled.
    Adam cast one quick look in her direction, but then he brought down the reins with a crisp motion of his hands and the buggy was moving.
    Instead of taking the road that would lead down to Port Hastings, Adam guided the animal around the stables and into a tree-lined clearing beyond.
    The snow was deep there and undisturbed, except for the tracks of an occasional deer, but the horse trudged through it without apparent difficulty, its breath forming scalloped cones in the air.
    “How far is it to the camp?” Banner asked, in an attempt to make sane conversation.
    “Six or seven miles, I guess,” replied Adam, without looking at her. The amusement was gone from his features, leaving behind a quiet puzzlement.
    They passed through the clearing and into a dense stand of Douglas fir. Skeletal blackberry vines clawed at the spokes of the wheels and the bonnet of the buggy itself.
    Spotting an oblong basket hanging in the boughs of a tall pine tree, Banner again broke the silence.
    “What is that?”
    Adam flung one look at the basket and scowled. “That,” he informed her flatly, “is the final resting place of an Indian child.”
    Banner shivered and drew her cloak more tightly around her. “But the animals might—”
    “No animal could reach it, O’Brien. Too high.”
    Banner swallowed, closed her eyes for a moment. “Do the Klallum dispose of adults that way, too?”
    Adam frowned. “Sometimes. Most often they put them adrift in canoes, on the sound. There is usually another canoe on top, upside down, of course, and they attach clam shells and things to that, hoping that the racket will scare away tamanous.”
    “An evil spirit?”
    He nodded. “In this case, yes. Actually, a tamanous can be a good spirit, too, or an indifferent one, for that matter. The term encompasses their whole religion.”
    Banner suddenly felt indignant. “Why can’t they just bury their dead, like everyone else?”
    Adam gave her a look that was not wholly friendly. “They consider that a barbaric custom,” he said. “Indians like to stay between the grass and the sky, and I can’t say I blame them.”
    Subdued, Banner looked down at her hands, which rested atop the furry lap rug. “We’re not so different, I guess—we Irish—with our banshee and our little people.”
    Adam startled her with an appreciative laugh. “So ye believe in the wee mischiefmakers, then?” he teased in a remarkably authentic brogue.
    The basket in the tree, the canoe-graves, the tamanous —all of it was instantly in perspective, and Banner was comforted, cheered. With this man beside her, she was safe from all specters, real or imagined, and there was peace in the knowledge.
    The laughter lingered in Adam’s eyes as he drew thebuggy to a stop beneath a storm-stirred, hidden sky and turned to face her. “O’Brien,” he said, and then he kissed her.
    Banner trembled under the sweet assault but was powerless to resist. Beneath the lap rug, Adam’s hand kneaded her waist, rose to slide along her rib cage and then caress the outer rounding of her breast.
    This time, there were no thoughts of Sean Malloy, no comparisons. There was only the wind and the cold and the fire within her that would not be cooled by any earthly element.
    But suddenly Adam drew back, swearing under his breath, and he did not meet Banner’s eyes as he took up the reins again and urged the horse forward, causing the buggy to lurch.
    Banner was too proud to ask what was wrong. What, after all, did one say under such circumstances? Pardon me, sir, but why didn’t you make love to me on the seat of your buggy?
    Feeling both dejected and wildly embarrassed, she took a new interest in the surrounding countryside.
    “I’m sorry,” Adam said after they’d traveled some distance.
    Banner still could not look at him. “For what?” she asked,