Chapter 2
By the time the next day had spent itself, Alicia despaired of her foolish obstinacy. No one would recommend a boat ride downriver, particularly for an unaccompanied woman. Perhaps in the spring when the flatboats carrying settlers and their families arrived she might find safe transportation. But spring would be much too late. She would not be able to travel in the spring.
Fighting the tears pricking behind her tired eyes, she stopped at a small general mercantile close to the river. The proprietor watched her with interest as she stared at the bewildering array of rifles and shotguns upon the wall.
“Might I help you, miss?” he inquired.
Alicia shook her head. “I’ll not ever be able to hold one of those. Don’t they make small ones?”
“Small ones ain’t much use for nothin’ but hittin’ somethin’ close up. Ain’t any animal fool enough to get that close—exceptin’ man, of course,” he added wisely.
“Of course.” Alicia turned from the wall, wondering which wild animal she feared more, man or the ones in the woods.
Shoving that conjecture aside, she trotted out her well-worn question. “Do you know of any guide who might take me downriver? I wish to reach St. Louis while the weather holds.”
The genial storekeeper studied her. Her mirror this morning had revealed tired circles ringing her eyes. Though she was of above average height, she wouldn’t appear strong, and some days she was certain that she might shatter upon contact. So she understood when he shook his head with doubt.
“Ain’t no one going to take a lady out on that river this time of year. Water’s lower than I’ve ever seen it. You’d have to portage around the falls and more. A good keelboatman might do it if it were worth his while, but you don’t look to have a cargo you want hauled.”
Alicia nodded at the expected response. “If you know a good keelboatman, I’m prepared to make it worth his while. Surely there’s somebody in this town willing to take a risk.”
He frowned. “Only one crazy enough to try is Lonetree. Makes the best damn keelboat on the river. Doubt if he’s got a crew ready this time of year, though. If you were a man, he could pirogue you downstream, but that ain’t no trip for a woman.”
Remembering the frail little shells she had seen bouncing on the river’s waters, Alicia had to agree with that insight. Drowning might be favorable to scalping, but the name Lonetree piqued her interest. Surely there could not be two of such a name.
“Lonetree?” she inquired.
“Half-breed lives down by the river. Can’t hardly miss him. Big brute with a gold earring. Best guide on the river, but a savage, nonetheless. Bit a fellow’s ear off once. Nearly got hanged another time when he carved a white man’s face like it was one of those pieces he’s always whittling. His friends got him out in time, but most of the places in town are closed to him now. Take my word for it, you don’t want to mess with that one.”
“No, of course not,” she murmured, strolling toward the door. “I thank you for your time, sir.”
She swept out, her long skirts swishing along the dusty road as she hurried toward the river. Savage brute he might be, but no less savage than this entire town she found herself in. The Indian at least had acted instead of talking.
Stripped to just his tight buckskin breeches as he labored on the cabin roof in the late afternoon heat, Lonetree glanced up in surprise at her approach. She held her hand to shield her eyes and called to him. “Mr. Lonetree, might I speak with you a minute?”
With a wicked grin, the half-naked boatman slid from the low roof of the keelboat to land in front of her. Confronted with his rather awesome state of undress, she stepped backward, and his black eyes danced with laughter.
Alicia had to swallow before she spoke. The boatmen on the way down here had occasionally stripped to the waist, but she had been able to look away. Though this man’s tall frame was more wiry than broad, the muscles of his shoulders bulged with the labors of his occupation. A tattooed band of blue about his arm accented his fierce appearance. The proof of the rumors did not dispel the distress of Alicia’s stomach.
“Mr. Lonetree, I’ve been told you build the best boats on the river. How long would it take for you to build one for me?”
The insistence on calling him “mister” made Lonetree smile. A burnished curl dangling beneath her bonnet distracted him. He liked tall women. They were a hell of a lot easier to kiss.
Dragging his thoughts back to the subject, he stopped smiling. “What do you want with a boat?”
Deep sea-blue eyes glared at him. “What does one normally do with a boat? I intend to make St. Louis before winter, and a boat would seem much faster than walking.”
“You planning on rowing it yourself?”
“Of course not. I’ll hire a crew to take me. How many men would it take to handle a boat like that one you’re working on?” She walked over to study his current project.
“More than you can handle at one time. What you need is a flatboat and some nice family to travel with.”
The lady spun on her heel and glared at him. “If I hear that one more time, I’ll scream. I want to go to St. Louis. I want to go now. What do I have to do to get there?”
She spoke in simple terms, as if to a particularly dense child, but Lonetree had the sense not to take it personally. Indeed, he admired the fierce light in her eyes as her irritation grew, and he bit back a grin while she insulted him.
“I can think of any number of interesting answers to that question, Miss, but as I am in no humor to be slapped by a lady, I’ll answer honestly. You can buy my keelboat and hire me and my crew for a princely sum, or you can hope old Daniels will come off his drunk to pirogue you downriver, or you can see if you can pry LaRouche from his wife and family long enough to maneuver a flatboat to the Mississippi. You’d have to take horses upland from there.”
The lady stared in astonishment at his honest speech. But her reply was not what he expected. “How is it that you speak like an English professor to me, but grunt like an animal to that toad of an innkeeper?”
Lonetree’s grin grew cynical as he leaned over and swept up his discarded shirt from the boat’s deck. Shrugging it on without bothering to fasten it, he tucked the tails in his breeches, still leaving an expanse of chest exposed.
“How is it that a Mrs. Stanford travels without so much as a maid or a ring on her finger?” he asked. “We’re not all what we seem out here, and you’d do best not to question.”
“But you are an Indian,” she asserted.
“I am a Delaware,” he agreed. “A half-breed, I believe is the term most frequently used. Now, if you will excuse me, Mrs. Stanford . . .” he pointedly began walking toward the boat.
“Wait!” Alicia ran after him. “This LaRouche, with the wife and family. Where can I find him?”
He turned a skeptical eye on her. “He’ll not come cheap. It will take a fair sum to pry him from the comforts of home. Or are you thinking a family man is a safer bet?”
The lady stopped some distance from him and met his stare stubbornly. “Just tell me where I can find him.”
He hesitated, then nodded acceptance. In a few terse sentences he described the Frenchman’s location, then impolitely turned his back on her and returned to work.
Alicia found the house without difficulty, a neat cottage with a row of straggling late summer flowers along the planked wall. At her knock a short, plump woman of middle age appeared wearing a pleasant smile.
“Mrs. LaRouche?” Alicia had already decided she had come to the right place if the husband were anything like the wife. The Indian might be the best boat builder on the river, but she wouldn’t trust him past the front door. This woman she trusted instantly. “I’m Alicia Stanford. I’ve been told your husband sometimes guides boats downriver. Is he home?”
The woman’s smile never wavered, though she studied her through perceptive eyes. “I doubt that he can help you, but please do come in, Mrs. Stanford.”
“Jacques, Mrs. Stanford is inquiring after a guide. Do sit down, Mrs. Stanford. And you, too, Jacques,” the housewife chided. “You’ll hurt that foot again if you keep your weight on it like that.”
Now that her eyes had adapted to the room’s light, Alicia could see that the man’s foot was heavily bandaged, and he leaned on a cane for support. Hope that had risen just moments before dashed into pieces.
“Mr. Lonetree said you were one of the best guides around, and I had hoped . . .” she began, but a wave of disappointment prevented her from continuing.
The wiry man beamed. “Lonetree said that? Merde, but I never thought him a fool. You can’t find no better guide than that no-count half-breed, you can’t.” He used the terms with affection. “Me, I’m laid up with this leg, see, and I promised Martha, no more the wanderin’ for me. I do a bit of trappin’, a bit of tradin’, but it’s good to sleep in one’s own bed at night.” He winked at his pleased wife. “You got cargo you want hauled? Lonetree the one you see. He take care of it fine.”
Alicia perched at the edge of the chair she’d been offered, twisting the strings of her reticule as she fought tears. She never used to cry, but it seemed a constant state of affairs now. She hated it. She hated being helpless and she hated asking for help. But she just couldn’t do it all on her own.
“Is there no one else?” she asked. “I have no cargo. I need to reach my father in St. Louis. Lonetree mentioned a Mr. Daniels. Perhaps a pirogue . . .”
Sensing her visitor’s distress, Mrs. LaRouche came to the rescue with a cup of herbal tea, while shaking her head at mention of Daniels.
“St. Louis?” LaRouche asked. “That is a long way. It is dangerous. Daniels is an old man, a good one, a very good one, but old, you unnerstan’? You go talk to that rogue Travis. He take you fine enough.” The Frenchman grinned, as if he’d solved all her problems.
Alicia looked up with a glimmer of hope. “Travis? Where might I find him?”
LaRouche waved away this misunderstanding. “Lonetree. He make like an Indian, but he called Travis. Damned fine guide. You go tell him I said take you.”
If she had not held the cup, Alicia would have thrown up her hands in despair. “Please, I would rather speak with this Mr. Daniels. Is he in town? Could you direct me to him?”
A hint of a frown dimmed the Frenchman’s merry expression, but a gesture from his wife brightened it again. “Me find him for you. He traps and he wanders. Me find him. You come back here, say, day after tomorrow?”
Tentatively, Martha LaRouche offered, “Would you come to dinner that night? We have a daughter—she’d enjoy meeting you. Unless, of course—I mean, we can’t offer anything fancy . . .”
Alicia grasped the reason for the woman’s hesitancy. The house was neat and comfortable, but a far cry from the homes she had visited back East. Even her servants had lived better than this, and she didn’t know how to respond to this unexpected invitation. But it was time she accustomed herself to her new environment, and the warmth of this couple eased some of her loneliness.
Alicia’s smile of gratitude was genuine as she rose to depart. “Please, I would love to come, if I won’t be a nuisance. Just tell me the time—”
“I come get you. Lady like you don’t walk these streets at night. Babette, she love to see you. Maybe we ask some others, have a fete to welcome you.” Jacques leaped from his seat in excitement.
Overwhelmed by his enthusiasm, Alicia shook hands and returned to the street. She may not have found a guide, but she felt as if she had gained friends.
In her room that night, she listened to the revelry in the tavern below, and wondered once again if she had made the right choice. Perhaps she should turn back now, throw herself on Teddy’s mercy, and become the fashionable young matron she had been raised to be.
But the idea of even being in the same room with Edward Beauchamp III sent an icy chill down her spine. The stress of these past weeks caught up with her, and she fought shudders of despair.
God in heaven, if she could only kill him . . . Her fists curled in balls of rage as she beat upon the bed and tears of frustration rolled down her cheeks. She had thought this stage past, that she had learned control, but she wanted to scream and cry and raise an uproar that would be heard all the way to St. Louis. She wanted a knife and a gun and the strength to wield them.
Furious with her weakness, Alicia promised herself that she would never, never descend to the level of these knife-wielding, gun-toting, violent strangers. She was a Stanford, and she was a lady. No matter what the circumstances, she would behave as one, even if her heart cried acid tears that corroded her soul. She would not let him destroy the lady she had been raised to be.
In a less-than respectable tavern by the river, Travis lounged against a wall, his arm draped over his propped knee as he contemplated his raucous surroundings. Taking a swig of ale from his mug, he smiled cynically.
In another ten, fifteen years, that could be him over at the bar chugging a jug of cider on a dare from one of his boatmen. Or brandishing a knife over a game of bones like those two at the table. Or more likely, the keelboat captain over there, tickling one of the barmaids and running a hand up under her skirts while she bounced on his knee. That was the future in store for him if he did not carve out a niche where he could belong. He could wander the river until the Indians or the outlaws or syphilis or his own pure meanness did for him. And wouldn’t that be a fitting end to a fine old family tradition.
Grimacing, Travis dropped his mug on the table. Before he could elbow his way to the door, the strong aroma of sweat and cheap perfume encompassed him, and a full figure in garish undress blocked his path.
Wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her bounteous beauty against his chest, she leered at him. “So early, lover? You weren’t going to leave without kissing me good-bye, were you?”
Travis grinned down at her painted face and red-dyed hair, and pinched a plump buttock beneath the thin material of her cheap gown. Molly was about as honest a woman as he’d ever hope to find, but she wasn’t what he had in mind. He had his sights set on a lady, and he knew where he could find one.
“Molly, my little chickadee, you can kiss me good-bye and weep little crocodile tears when I’m gone, for it’s off to distant shores I’m bound.”
She appeared on the verge of protest, but he planted a kiss on her rouged lips, that would have to hold him for now.
Chapter 3
Alicia debated her choice of gowns for her first invitation to dinner since leaving Philadelphia. The stagecoach and keelboat down here had not given occasion for formal dress, and she longed to don something feminine and flattering, but she hesitated. She had worn only black since her mother’s death, and her choices were limited, but the decision to dress formally caused the greatest dilemma. Did these people dress for dinner? Or would the other guests be wearing deerskin and calico?
She drew out the slender black silk with interwoven metallic threads of silver. She had ordered it before her journey and knew it to be of a daring fashion even for Philadelphia. The Empire waist and low neckline emphasized her high breasts and slender hips, and the fit was so revealing, chances were good that she might not be able to wear it again any time soon. She would wear it this once, just for herself.
Alicia had grown accustomed to doing without the services of a maid these last weeks, but she wished for the nicety of a large mirror this evening. Fastening the gown, she tried to judge its effect by the tiny wash-stand mirror, to no avail. She ran her hands over the straight fall of the skirt, praying her figure had not changed too much since the last fitting. The ruffle of black lace at the neck provided respectable coverage, if also presentin
g a tempting invitation. She wondered if she ought to wear pearls or silver to accent the black.
Finally deciding on a simple silver locket, she checked the myriad pins holding her heavy hair in its old-fashioned upsweep. Small curls dangled at her ears, but all else remained secure. Alicia smiled in satisfaction as the knock at the door notified her of the arrival of her escort.
Jacques LaRouche grinned in masculine delight as she appeared on the stairs with a crocheted silk shawl over the delicate gown. Behind him the tavern’s occupants hooted their appreciation, but the Frenchman ignored them, gallantly bowing and offering Alicia his arm.
She stood half a head taller than he, but Alicia was grateful for his protection. Never had anyone hooted at her when she made her entrance before. Averting her pink cheeks from the men at the bar, she hurried outside with her escort. Next time she would wear her opera cape.
“You honor us, Mrs. Stanford,” Jacques said as he helped her into his wagon. “Martha, she love to cook and to have the fetes, but she think we too poor, nobody come. For her, I thank you.”
Embarrassed by this gratitude for her own selfishness, Alicia shook her head. “If you knew how much I appreciate this chance to be with friendly faces, you would realize I should be the one thanking you. I never knew how much it was possible to miss friends and family.”
He nodded sagely. “I too once was alone. For a man it is not always good. For a woman . . .”He shrugged with eloquence. “A beautiful lady like you will not lonesome be for long. You see.”
Alicia had to smile at his Gallic assurance, and she arrived at the LaRouche cottage with more confidence than she had expected. These were good people, and she was determined to enjoy herself.
Lord Rogue Page 2