“Come, Cap’n,” she called as she headed toward the door, pie in hand. “We have some apologizing to do.”
“I’m sorry.”
Annie’s soft voice behind Brock sent his heart bucking like an unbroken colt. His fingers halted in the midst of securing the bedroll to the back of his saddle.
He paused for a couple of heartbeats before giving the leather strap a final yank. Had she come to berate him further, or just to shoot him? He decidedly preferred the latter.
He’d reckoned if Annie forbade him to set foot on the land there would be little he could do to protect her. He might as well head to Newport Barracks and face whatever fate awaited him there.
Brock slowly turned toward her voice. She stood several feet away, near the door of the trapper’s cabin he’d called home for the past several weeks. He was almost disappointed to see she wasn’t carrying Jonah’s brown Bess. Instead, she held a little linen-swathed bundle in her hands.
Her gaze seemed fixed on the ground surrounding her dusty, bare toes. “Je regrette. I’m sorry,” she repeated in English. He’d noticed how, when emotional, her speech often reverted to her father’s native tongue. “I shouldn’t have said those things to you. The scriptures say, ‘Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.’ I was not acting at all like a Christian.”
Her gentle words smacked Brock’s conscience. How could she feel she’d done wrong by displaying a natural and honest reaction to his bumbling attempt to convince her to sell the land? Her apology was altogether as amazing as it was unnecessary.
He swallowed hard and shook his head. “It is I who should be begging your forgiveness for my own harsh words to you. And you were right. I am a coward.”
She smiled, and his insides melted. “Any man who chases away an angry bear cannot be a coward.” She lifted the cloth-wrapped object. “I brought you a peace offering—a dried-apple pie.”
For a split second, Brock wondered if Annie had chosen a means slower than a bullet to rid herself of him. At the merry twinkle in her eyes and the grin dimpling her cheek, he realized with horror that she must have read the wild thought skittering through his mind.
Her musical laughter, a sound he’d despaired of ever hearing again, rippled pleasantly from her. “It’s not poisoned, I promise. I’d baked it for Sunday dinner at the Dunbars’.”
Dried fruit this time of year must be scarce. Brock shook his head in wonder. How could he accept a gift—anything—from her? “Then that’s where you should take it. I don’t deserve a gift from you, certainly not one made from something as dear as apples in May. Not after the mean things I said.”
“In God’s eyes, there is nothing dearer than forgiveness.” Her narrow shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I forgive you. And a gift is a gift.”
Brock couldn’t help grinning. “What is it the Good Book says about heaping coals of fire on your enemy’s head by doing good to them? Well, my head’s feelin’ right warm about now.”
Her smile faded as she turned her focus toward his horse. “Where are you going?”
His gaze followed hers to the animal packed for travel.
“Newport Barracks in Kentucky, to stand trial for desertion and murder.”
Annie’s face blanched to near paper-white, and her jaw went slack.
Brock reached her in two quick strides, catching both her and the pie as her limbs went limp.
He called himself every kind of idiot for blurting it out. He should have remembered she’d been feeling poorly.
With one hand balancing the pie and his other arm around her waist, he propelled her inside the cabin. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shock you. I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
Inside, he set the pie on the hearth floor and helped her to the straw and buffalo robe pallet.
She raised a bewildered face to his. “What—how …”
Brock pulled a stool opposite her and sank to the seat. He blew out a long, deep breath, dragged off his slouch hat, and shoved his fingers through his hair. “I was on my way to tell you I was leaving … and why.”
Her amber eyes widened. “You—you murdered someone?” Her faint voice squeaked.
“No, but that’s what Colonel Stryker will surely charge me with.”
Annie’s chin lifted, and she folded her hands in her lap. “Tell me what happened. I will believe you.”
At her staunch support and belief in his innocence, hot tears stung the back of Brock’s nose. He swallowed them down hard. “We were on the march from Newport Barracks in Kentucky to reinforce Fort Wayne against attack by Tecumseh and his Shawnee. Colonel Stryker, our commanding officer, came down with an attack of ague in Ohio a few miles shy of Indiana Territory, so we set up camp there. I held the rank of sergeant.” It felt strange to say it in the past tense. Her attentive expression encouraged him to continue.
“One evening, I was securing the perimeter. When I came to the picket line where the horses were tethered, I spied the colonel’s nephew, Lieutenant Hamilton Driscoll, sword-whipping a raw recruit for falling asleep at his post.” Even now, the name left a bad taste in Brock’s mouth. “In my seven years of service to the army I’d dealt with some nasty officers, but none more insufferable than Colonel Horace Stryker and his pompous a—, his pompous nephew.”
Annie’s grin at his amendment made his heart buck. He forged on.
“I couldn’t watch it happen and not do something, so I tried to intervene, talk some sense into the man, but he wouldn’t have it. Next thing I knew, he turned the sword on me, and I found myself defending my very life with only my sheath dagger.” His throat dried. What happened next still felt like a dream, and he shook his head. “Driscoll had me backed up. My heel hit something—a tree root, I think—and I fell on my backside.” He had to swallow hard before he could finish recounting the tragic events.
Annie gasped. She stared at him as if transfixed, her eyes looking glazed. “But surely the colonel would understand it was an accident. What about the soldier you protected, would he not speak in your defense?”
Brock couldn’t help snorting. “Stryker despised me. He knew I didn’t like the way he played favorites. When he learned I’d killed his precious nephew, I have no doubt he raised from his sickbed to lynch me himself. And the recruit took off like a scared rabbit the moment Driscoll laid into me, so he never saw the end of it. The only witness was the private who heard the ruckus and found me standing over Driscoll’s body with his blood dripping from my dagger.”
Feeling drained, he finished in a quiet voice. “I knew my army career had died with Driscoll beside that picket line, so I mounted the closest horse and hightailed it out. I remembered Pa saying Jonah had connections with men in high places, in both the army and the government, so I came here hoping Uncle Jonah could help me.”
Annie gave a confirming nod. “I know up until a few years ago he kept a correspondence with General Clark, when the general lived down on the Falls of the Ohio.”
Brock sighed. “Unfortunately, from what I’ve heard, the great general is now infirm, having suffered several strokes and lost a leg.” His mouth tugged up in a sad smile. “Even if I thought he could help me, which I doubt, I would not lay such a burden on the man in what is surely his final years.”
Annie held out her hands, palms up. “Que faire? What is to be done?”
Brock’s gaze drifted toward the open cabin door before swinging back to Annie’s face. “When I learned Uncle Jonah had included me in his will, I came to the conclusion that my only hope was to sell the land and use my portion of the profit to hire a good lawyer.”
A tear slipped down Annie’s cheek, but her chin lifted and her voice sounded strong. “Then that is what must be done.”
Her sacrificial offer touched a deep, sweet place in Brock’s heart, and he swallowed hard. He reached out, took her hand into his, and gently squeezed her fingers. “No. You were right. Uncle Jonah included me in his will to help ensure the land would be a heritage
for his descendants, not for me to sell to save my sorry skin. I must return and face the charges like a man.”
A look of panic animated her features. She gripped his hands. “But you cannot go back! They will kill you.” The tears welling in her eyes thrilled Brock even as they tortured his heart.
He marveled at her spunk when she squared her shoulders and leveled an accusatory glare at him. “This land is your responsibility, too. You cannot leave me alone with it.”
“Annie, my dear Annie.” Brock caressed the tops of her hands with his thumbs. “Gray Feather is right. You are not safe there. Move in with the Dunbars … or marry young Buxton.” His throat tightened with his chest on the last suggestion. “But don’t stay on the farm alone.”
“Non!” The word exploded from her mouth like a thunderclap, and her features turned stormy. A great sigh heaved her shoulders, and her voice calmed as she visibly struggled to control her emotions. “Obadiah and Bess have more than enough people under their roof, and Ezra has no interest in the land.”
Her gaze captured Brock’s, sending his heart into a wild gallop. “Besides, I married one man not of my choosing. I’ll not do it a second time.”
Brock felt as if a white-hot poker had been rammed into his gut and twisted. Was she trying to tell him she cared for him as he cared for her? What did it matter? Annie needed a live husband, not one with a death sentence hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles.
Annie’s gaze dropped to her lap and her face pinked. “Besides the vow I made to Papa and Jonah, I have another reason to keep the land. If Bess is right about my symptoms—and I’ve never known Bess to be wrong—I am with child—Jonah’s child—your kin. So, as eager as you are to be put out of your misery, Brock Martin, it would be dishonorable of you to leave your kin unprotected.” In her satisfied grin, he could almost read the silent pronouncement of Checkmate!
Brock stared at her, dumbfounded. For the second time in six weeks, his perspective had changed in the space of a breath. If what she told him was true, Brock knew Annie would fight to the death to keep the land for Jonah’s child. And she was right. Brock couldn’t let her face that prospect alone. The boys in the firing squad would just have to hold their powder a mite longer.
Annie ignored Cap’n Brody’s whimpers as she loosely tied the dog to a front corner post of the cowshed. “Oh, don’t whine! If I didn’t tie you, you’d just follow me. I need you here to protect Sal and Persimmon.”
In the past week, three families had lost livestock to marauding Indians. Just yesterday Brock told her Pritch Callahan had left his saddle horse drinking at the creek while he planted corn. When he returned, the horse was nowhere to be found.
Annie picked up the two buckets and headed for the creek. She didn’t intend to become the next victim. From now on, she would need to carry the cow and mule’s evening supply of water from the creek instead of driving them down to the stream and back.
She squinted westward where the red ball of the setting sun had begun to sink into the horizon. With regret, she realized she’d spent far too long planting beans and pumpkins amid the newly emerging corn and had allowed the evening to creep up on her.
Already, the chirping of crickets and the calls of hoot owls filled the gloaming, and the flickering lights of myriad lightning bugs decorated the gathering dusk. The sweet scents of wet grass and honeysuckle hung heavily on the evening air. Brock would scold her for sure if he knew she’d left the cabin so close to nightfall, especially without the musket. But she needed to finish the chore before dark, and two hands carrying water meant fewer trips.
As she rounded the cabin, thoughts of Brock and all he had revealed two weeks ago brought the familiar stabs of fear. More than once, Annie had jerked awake in the middle of the night gripped by nightmares of a phantomlike Colonel Stryker dragging Brock away to a firing squad. Now she understood why Brock avoided Fort Deux Fleuves whenever the occasional company of soldiers garrisoned there.
Her bare feet found the dirt path that sloped to the creek, barely visible amid the knee-high, dew-drenched Indian grass. As she carefully made her way down the embankment, slippery after yesterday’s rain, she considered again the awful prospects facing the man who’d become so dear to her. But no amount of torturous pondering brought her any closer to a solution that might save him.
When Brock confessed his plan to sell the land, she’d berated him and ordered him off her place. Now, amazingly, it was she who daily begged him to embrace again his original notion. But he resolutely refused, saying he must cede his claim to the land to Jonah’s direct heir.
Although she hadn’t planned to tell Brock about the baby, she’d grasped at the one thing she knew would appeal to his sense of duty—keeping him here in Deux Fleuves and safely away from Newport Barracks and the vengeful Colonel Stryker. But at the same time, the revelation had killed any hope of him accepting her offer. So she did all that was left to her. She prayed that God in His infinite mercy would keep Brock safe and provide a way out of his perilous predicament.
At the edge of the water, Annie hiked her skirt to her knees, bent, and dipped one of the buckets into the swift stream.
Rising, she spied a tiny patch of red amid a tangle of nearby brambles. Hoping she’d discovered a berry bush, she poked into the thicket to investigate. When she shoved the brush aside, her heart froze in her chest. An Indian canoe—Shawnee by the vermilion markings—lay nestled in the thicket not fifty feet from the back door of her cabin.
Suddenly aware of Cap’n Brody’s frantic barking in the distance, she spun around at a gentle rustling sound behind her.
She gasped to see two Shawnee braves advancing toward her. They wore only breechclouts and deerskin leggings. Their faces and bare torsos were smeared with dark creek mud. Eagle feathers hung from their blue-black hair, which brushed their coppery shoulders.
Annie remembered her father’s admonition to show Indians no fear and fought to ignore the men’s frightful appearance. She knew that many of the Indians spoke at least a smattering of French, so she began making apologies in that language.
They continued to advance, showing no sign that her words fazed them. The shorter and fiercer looking of the two grabbed her arm, pulled a war club from his belt, and raised it menacingly above her head.
Annie faced her death calmly as unspeakable terror melted into a sense of peace. Dropping to her knees, she committed her soul into God’s hands.
But before the Indian could smash the club into her skull, the taller, more comely man grasped her would-be killer by the shoulder. “Mat-tah!” he said, shaking his head, and Annie recognized the Shawnee word for no. He reached down offering her his hand. She took it, and somehow managed to rise on wobbly legs.
After a brief argument between the two men in Shawnee—which Annie couldn’t follow—the man with the war club reluctantly lowered his weapon.
Suddenly, a low growl drew Annie’s and the Indians’ attention to the embankment’s summit. Amazingly, Cap’n Brody stood above them—muscles tensed, head down, and teeth bared.
Before she had a chance to decide if this was a good or bad development the dog leaped toward the Indian with the war club.
In a lightning-fast move, the Shawnee brave swung the weapon toward Cap’n Brody’s head.
Annie heard a sickening thunk as the war club’s stone head connected with the dog’s skull.
Cap’n Brody yelped, then fell to the ground with a dull thud.
“Cap’n Brody!” The dog’s name tore from Annie’s throat in a strangled cry. Blinded by tears, she turned toward her wounded pet. But the taller Indian pulled her away and bound her hands behind her with a thin strip of leather.
Without another word, he picked her up and dropped her into the canoe.
The Indians shoved the canoe into the stream, then stepped into the little craft, one at each end with Annie between them.
Chapter 9
The midmorning sun warmed Brock’s back as he guided Valor
across the stretch of Piney Branch Creek bordering Jonah’s farm. Oddly, he still thought of the land as belonging to Uncle Jonah.
He reined his horse to a stop and gazed at the acres of infant corn he’d come to tend. Pride welled up inside him at the sight of the rows of emerging green plants. It didn’t matter that he would never reap any monetary benefits from the harvest. The land, and what it produced, belonged to Annie and his unborn cousin. Until the crop was safely harvested and Annie had delivered her child—or an army posse found him and took him away in chains—Brock would see to it that Jonah’s heritage was preserved.
Thinking of the day he must leave, Brock’s heart throbbed with the ache of loss. He no longer dreaded whatever sentence a court-martial might mete out. All other punishments paled when compared to his inevitable separation from Annie.
Annie.
The ache inside him deepened. Never before had a woman so completely captured his heart. Her beauty, courage, and sweet heart far surpassed that of any other woman he’d met. He still marveled at her willingness to forgive him.
The corner of his mouth drew up in a wry grin. He would have wagered that she’d find him despicable the instant she learned of his desertion. Instead, she’d offered to sacrifice the land she so desperately wanted to keep in an attempt to save his life.
He’d never before seriously considered marriage. So it seemed an excruciatingly cruel twist of fate that he should now—while living on borrowed time—find a woman who, with one flash of her dimpled smile, could entice him to the domestic life. What tortured his heart without mercy was his impression that, were he free to offer them, Annie would not rebuff his attentions.
In his frustration, he kicked his mount’s sides harder than necessary, causing the horse to neigh his displeasure.
As he neared Annie’s cabin, a building sense of unease gripped Brock. The absence of Cap’n Brody’s eager welcome triggered alarm bells inside him. Something was amiss.
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