But Nancy shook her head violently. "I feel safer with you." Her eyes glistened with tears.
Ever since Redbird had encouraged Nancy to seek his bed, White Bear had feared that when the time came for their parting, it would hurt her badly.
And him as well. In the moon just past he and Nancy had joined bodies and hearts many times. Now it seared his throat to speak aloud his decision that Nancy must leave the British Band.
He sat down on a fallen tree trunk and reached out to her. Nancy came over and took his hands and sat beside him.
"With the band going in two different directions, this is your best chance to get away. You and I have loved each other, but you are still a white woman, and my people murdered your father. Why should you share our fate? And what about Woodrow? If you and he go together, you have a better chance of reaching safety."
She bent over, her shoulders shaking with sobs. "If you're going to die, I want to die with you."
A moon ago, he thought, she had desperately wanted to escape from the British Band. Now her own heart was holding her captive.
Eve's words to Adam as they left Paradise rose unbidden in his mind: With thee to go, is to stay here; without thee here to stay, is to go hence unwilling.
"But no one wants to die," he said gently. "For you to stay now when you can escape would be madness."
It was a madness he felt himself. There was a part of him that wanted to keep her with him, to let her stay, however all this might end. He had to force himself to keep to his plan to help her get away.