Read Online Agnes and the Renegade (Men of Defiance) by Elaine Levine - Free Book Online Page B

the wear, the fringe that was present and the places it was missing. He wore moccasins that conformed to his feet, the leather simple and unadorned. When he didn’t move, she lifted her gaze, moving up his body. His leggings attached to the thong about his hips that held his breechcloth. He wore a leather vest that was open over his chest. In front of the vest was a bone breastplate with a leather strap in the middle that was beaded in vibrant colors of blue, white, red, brown, and orange, colors that matched his elaborate wrist cuffs. He wore several necklaces, the uppermost of which was a wide choker of long bone beads. A beaded strap around his chest supported his quiver of arrows. His black hair was loose, except for a long beaded braid on the right side of his head. Eagle feathers dangled from the back of his hair, another toward the top of his head.
    His cheekbones were high, his dark eyes judging her. His face paint was different today. He wore only two vertical stripes of black from his temple to his chin, over his eyes. His black gaze was on her, his expression utterly closed to her. And yet some things could never be hidden from the eyes of an artist trained to see the stories that no words could ever communicate. What she saw in his eyes was startling.
    He was as afraid of her as she was of him.
    Why, why she ached for him, she’d likely never know. But her eyes filled with tears, making his image waver in front of her. She made no attempt to hide the moisture that spilled over her eyes and trailed slowly down her cheeks. It didn’t matter anyway. She’d likely never speak to the renegade.  
    He looked at the markings she was sketching. She looked at him, studying him. He wore a brightly beaded, fringed sheath that housed a wide, long knife. Several pouches hung from his waist, others from his neck. His shoulders were broad, with lean, supple muscles in his arms. His waist was narrow. His hands and lower arms were heavily veined. His skin was a sun-kissed bronze.  
    She made a facile calculation of the pigments and tones she would need to paint his skin as it was now in the bright orange afternoon light. She bent her head to the right and shifted her weight so that she could see how the shadows touched his body.
    When she lifted her gaze, he was watching her. She returned his gaze, listening with her eyes to the sound of his soul. When she could no longer bear the pain she felt from him, she blinked. He looked away, staring into the far eastern horizon. She wondered what he saw there, perhaps across not just distance, but time.  
    Her mind captured that image of him. She closed her eyes, seeing how he would look on a canvas, feeling what visitors to the gallery would experience when they viewed the painting of him. When she opened her eyes again, he was gone. She set to work, sketching out exactly what she wanted to show in an oil work.  
    It was late evening when she returned home. She set about her chores—cleaning the horse corral and feeding the horse, making dinner. She ate, bathed, then tried to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes, she saw Chayton, standing on the hill in front of her. Deciding sleep was too elusive; she pulled her painting smock on over her nightgown and walked barefooted to her painting tent.
    She rolled out a four-foot length of white canvas, then walked to the end of the table to look at it in perspective, seeing her subject in the raw fabric. She considered doing a close-up of Chayton’s face, then thought how he would look full-bodied in the four-foot work. She wanted this piece to impart Chayton’s essence, the spirit of his people—his capacity for terrible violence, his preference for peace, and his sorrow, as aching and hollow as the wind.
    She pushed the roll of canvas longer, longer even than the six-foot table. She had to pull the second table over to support the overflow. She cut the canvas at eight feet—only because her longest stretchers were seven feet