Embrace the Day

by Susan Wiggs

  Unlike his parents, Luke knew why Hance had left Dancer's Meadow the spring before. Almost immediately after setting the town on its ear by forsaking Janie Carstairs when all the world expected them to marry, Hance had taken up with Miss Wingfield. He was discreet about it, going on foot so his horse wouldn't be recognized outside her house, but Luke shared a room with Hance. Night after night he'd awakened to the smell of whiskey and sharp, floral perfume. And the sound of Hance murmuring his lover's name as he slept off the drink and the passion.

  And then Hance had left. Luke guessed that at last, Hance hadn't been able to abide a liaison with a woman old enough to be his mother.

  Luke didn't like Nell Wingfield. Didn't like her strangely accented voice or the cloud of too-yellow frizz that framed her painted face or the unexplained animosity between her and his mother or the way she used to look at Hance.

  "What can I do for you, ma'am?" he asked warily. Miss Wingfield didn't make social calls. She only appeared, with her false red smile and her husky voice, when she wanted something.

  "I'd hoped your father could help me. One of my Negroes ran off two months ago, and three of my hands are laid up with the ague. I've a load of corn that needs to be brought down to the docks."

  "Papa's away," Rebecca said, pressing her lips together in disapproval. Miss Wingfield's corn became whiskey—the highest quality, some said, but whiskey nonetheless. Nervously, Rebecca took out the little bear her father had carved her and began toying with it.

  Nell sighed. "I don't know what I'll do, then." She eyed Luke keenly, as if just seeing him for the first time. Her gaze took in his green eyes, bright as sun-shot leaves, and the burnished red color of his hair.

  "You favor your father," she said, her frank stare lingering on his freckled face. She gave Rebecca a slight nod. "You've your father's coloring but your mother's face."

  Rebecca dipped slightly. 'Thank you, ma'am." She knew full well Miss Wingfield hadn't meant it as a compliment. The woman hated Mama.

  "Come along, then," Nell said briskly, turning away. "There's work to be done."

  "Sorry, ma'am," Luke said mildly. "But we've work to do here."

  Miss Wingfield drew herself up, eyes narrowed in anger. She looked about, down at the reed-fringed river bank and then at the rise of meadow land that obscured the house. "You've your parents' bad manners as well," she snapped, reaching out and gripping Rebecca by the arm.

  "Let go of her," Luke said, his voice trembling with a quiet warning. "Let my sister go."

  The reeds parted slightly as an angular, copper-hued face stared out at the three people above. Thin lips curled into a grin as the brave looked back at his companion.

  "Thirteen summers, Meseka," he whispered. "Thirteen summers it's taken me. At last I've found him."

  The other brave shook his head; the feathers that adorned his braids brushed against the reeds. "That is not your soldier, Black Bear."

  "I know that. But we have found his woman and children. Hair like the flames of the council fire—I've seen it only one other time." The brave narrowed his good eye at his quarry and growled low in his throat. "It is even better than I'd hoped. I swore revenge on Roarke Adair for killing my father and brother. They were your people, too, Meseka."

  He watched the small group above the river bank. The woman was berating the youngsters, who faced her with belligerence. "The white man prizes his family above his own life. Our payment shall come from Roarke Adair's family." He nodded at the woman, who was speaking irritably to the children. "She will be difficult. So will the boy. We'll kill him and take the woman and girl."

  "Let us be quick about this, Black Bear," Meseka warned. "Our kind no longer strays so deep into the white man's territory."

  "It is well, then. We shall have no trouble surprising them."

  In stealthy silence they prepared themselves, extracting several lengths of rawhide from their canoe and looping it into their breechclouts. Then, gripping finely honed tomahawks and knives of vicious steel, they leaped from the reeds, screaming with vengeful fury.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Roarke trudged up to the house, his mind far more weary than his legs, which had been hugging horseflesh for too many days. He wondered how he would tell Genevieve about Hance. There was no kind way to put it, no way to disguise what Hance had become.

  God, he didn't even know the boy anymore. The dandified townsman was a stranger to him, all brash talk and freewheeling ways, living a life Roarke didn't even want to understand.

  He'd found Hance at Eagle Tavern, wearing a suit of clothes that would, years ago, have done Dandy Dunmore proud. Lace at his throat and wrists, a silk handkerchief protruding from the pocket of his embroidered frock coat. Roarke couldn't blame the ladies of the tavern for flirting with Hance, but the sight of Horace Rathford, so fawning in the attention he gave the young man, had given Roarke an unpleasant jolt. The middle-aged assemblyman commanded more respect and affection from Hance than Roarke ever had.

  Roarke pulled the front door open to an odd absence of noise. The mantel clock's ticking sounded like thunder in the silence. Ordinarily, the children would hurl themselves at him, begging to know what he'd brought them and fighting to be the first to tell jumbled stories of a just-born calf, a newly lost tooth, a particularly brave injury.

  Roarke went into the keeping room. It was dusk, and they would be sitting together after supper, Rebecca and Israel taking turns reading from the big Asbury family Bible.

  Rebecca was nowhere in sight. Israel was reading in a faltering voice. " 'Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man, preserve me from the violent man; which imagine mischiefs in their heart…'"

  "There's my family," Roarke boomed good-naturedly. "Come, who has a hug for Papa?" Israel set down the book and flung himself into Roarke's arms. But he said nothing. He was more serious than usual; somber, even.

  Roarke looked over the boy's tousled head at Genevieve, suddenly seized by a dark feeling of dread.

  "Gennie, where's Rebecca? What—"

  She took Israel by the shoulders and propelled him from the room. "Go help Mimi in the kitchen," she said. Israel obeyed with uncharacteristic muteness. Then Genevieve turned to Luke, who toyed absently with the dancing bear Roarke had given Rebecca, looking slightly dazed. His head was wrapped with a white bandage.

  "Go with your brother, Luke," Genevieve said.

  He tilted his chin to a mutinous angle, clutching the toy to his chest. "I'm staying. Papa'll hear it from me, since I'm the one responsible."

  "Good God, lad," Roarke said. "Don't keep me wait-ing."

  The boy's face was a mask of dreadful calm as he struggled to keep his voice even. "Two weeks ago, Becky and I were mending the fence down by the river. Miss Wingfield came by wanting something or other…" Luke took a long, shuddering breath and absently fingered Rebecca's toy.

  "Two redskins jumped out of the bushes. I tried to stop them, honest, Pa! But they clubbed me good. Tried to scalp me, too, but Becky set to screaming so loud I guess they got scared." Luke's hand crept to a fading bluish bruise that peeped out from beneath the bandage. 'They knocked me out cold, Pa. And—" finally his voice broke, and a huge tear crept down his pale, freckled cheek "—they took Becky and Miss Wingfield, Pa. Took them clean away while I was lying there."

  Panic rocketed through Roarke. He looked helplessly from Genevieve to Luke. A dreadful pounding began in his ears. It was too much to comprehend. His Rebecca—his shy, pious little girl who'd never harmed a soul in her life—was gone, kidnapped by redskins. It was inconceivable. But he heard the truth in Genevieve's quiet, desperate crying and Luke's ragged, tortured sobs.

  Roarke strained against the impulse to go charging up the river after her. He would do so, of course, but not before he had time to prepare himself.

  "What's been done so far?" he asked tightly.

  "I wanted to go after them, Pa," Luke said. "But Mama wouldn't let me."

  "Luther Quaid went," Genevieve explained.
<
br />   "And?"

  "He returned two days ago, to report that they'd killed Elkanah Harper's wife, Fannie. She'd been gathering sage in the hills… Elk and his boys are searching now, too. Luther managed to follow the Indians up into the Blue Ridge, but they discovered him. They nearly killed him, Roarke. He was shot in the shoulder. Lord knows how he managed to find his way back."

  The thunder in Roarke's ears pounded even more furiously. "The Indians—tell me about them."

  Luke shivered and shifted his gaze to the hearth, where a small pile of coals glowed dully in the grate. "Shawnee," he said, wiping his nose with his sleeve. "Mr. Quaid said so. Faces painted red and black. One of them had an eye put out. It was all sort of grown over and scarred like."

  A hard lump settled in Roarke's gut. Black Bear. He'd known it when Luke had first mentioned redskins. At last, just when Roarke's memories of the frontier campaigns were growing hazy and dimmed by time, the old enmity had resurfaced.

  He ground a fist into his hand. How had Black Bear found him? He must have been searching for years, haunting every little hamlet and outpost in Virginia with a Shawnee's single-minded determination. His warrior's guile and cunning had served him well; he'd gone straight for the heart.

  In the privacy of their room that night, Roarke was about to tell Genevieve about Hance. He changed his mind when she turned to him, eyes brimming with tears.

  "I've no daughters left," she whispered, trembling in the crook of his arm. "No one to pick flowers with…"

  "Gennie…"

  She laid her hand alongside his cheek, shaking her head with heartaching sadness. "In a way, it's worse than Matilda. At least with Mattie we knew, Roarke, as awful as it was."

  "Becky lives," he told her firmly, steadying her shuddering shoulders with a gentle squeeze. "She lives, and I'll find her, Gennie. I know Kentucky; I know Black Bear. I won't rest until his blood drenches my hands and I can feel my arms around Rebecca and smell her hair and hear her sweet voice again."

  Genevieve shivered at the vow. She'd never known Roarke to be vengeful, to desire another's death.

  Roarke agreed to wait until morning before he set out for the frontier. He held Genevieve against him, running his hand over the soft mound of her belly, where the baby was already in evidence.

  "Gennie, will you be all right?"

  He felt her nod against his shoulder. "I'll manage. Joshua will help with the farm." She propped herself up on one elbow and traced the side of his face with a finger. "But there won't be a minute, Roarke Adair, that I won't be missing you and my Becky." She clasped him fiercely to her and gave him a kiss of tenderness and need.

  Their loving was sadly sweet, tinged with desperation. Neither would admit to the chilling possibility that they might never touch again.

  Kentucky had changed. In the years since the birth of the new nation, its population had burgeoned to well over seventy thousand, if the figures Roarke had heard could be credited. Families from every part of the union were flooding to the fertile valleys and rippling grasslands that graced Kentucky, which had achieved statehood in 1792.

  Roarke rode into Lexington, his supplies nearly gone, his horse hanging its head in exhaustion. But even through his fatigue and worry, he was able to appreciate how the town had grown. Once it had been a tottering collection of blockhouses in the middle of a canebrake; now it boasted cleared streets and solid buildings and a population of settled townsfolk. He sought lodging at a tavern called the Sheaf of Wheat, on Broadway, settling back to sip whiskey and plan his next move. Other men milled about the taproom, laughing raucously, joking among themselves.

  "Well, lookee there, Beelzebub," drawled a voice. " 'Tis our old friend Roarke Adair."

  Roarke came to his feet and clasped Will Coomes's calloused hand.

  "And I mean old," Coomes continued, his sharp eyes roving over his friend. "By Job, Roarke, you look like the years've been pressing upon your shoulders."

  "Sit down, Will," Roarke said. "What the devil are you doing here, anyway? I thought you'd be settled down with your girl from Pennsylvania."

  Coomes shook his head. "All through the war, I thought Livvie was in my blood. But 'twasn't her at all; it was this dad-blamed fine wilderness. Commands me like no mistress ever could. I couldn't stay away." He sipped his whiskey and studied Roarke, eyeing the fans of fatigue about his eyes and the look of utter bleakness that tugged down the corners of his mouth.

  "What of you, my friend?" Coomes asked quietly.

  Roarke's fist clenched around his clay cup. "I'm back because of Black Bear. He took my little girl."

  Will said nothing but caught his breath with a hiss of fury.

  Roarke's knuckles whitened, and the cup shattered in his hand, the liquid bleeding across the wooden table. "God almighty," he swore, "I showed that devil mercy back at Vincennes. I let him live, so he could do this to me."

  "You knew better than to expect gratitude," Coomes reminded him. "You robbed him of an honorable death. A death he probably craved." Then he stood up.

  "Give me an hour, Roarke," he said.

  Roarke frowned. "An hour?"

  Coomes gave him a crooked grin. "That's how long it'll take for me and Beelzebub to gear up for this hunt."

  "You don't have to do this, Will."

  Coomes grinned and hefted his rifle. "Hear that, Beelzebub? The man's tryin' to do us out of a fine adventure." He looked back at Roarke. "One hour. And then we head north, into Indian country."

  Kentucky was still a place of majestic forests and rushing blue rivers shadowed by high, cave-dotted shelves. But now there was evidence of settlement; every so often they passed a centerless small community huddled against the threatening wilderness, locked around a narrow valley of hills and hollows. Even in the deepest woods they spied a big chestnut oak that had been skinned for its tanbark and left to die.

  Traveling as they had in their campaigning days, Roarke and Will crossed the flatlands and climbed northward, to the wind-swept region of the Blue Licks, where salt bubbled up from the springs. They crossed the Ohio, wending their way along an old trace to the upper reaches of the Scioto.

  They knew better than to attempt secrecy. This was the heart of Shawnee territory. Indian scouts were on intimate terms with every crook of the river, every patch of ground that was amenable to making a campfire.

  The village was a cluster of wooden shelters. Children and dogs played in the dust beneath budding locust trees.

  Women worked at their cooking and weaving chores, while the men sat in clustered groups, talking among themselves.

  "What do you think?" Coomes whispered to Roarke. They had dismounted and were leading their horses up an overgrown deer trace, shielded by a midsummer canopy of murky green woods.

  "I've been searching for six months," Roarke said darkly. "I aim to go in there and get my girl back."

  "Just like that, eh?"

  Roarke shrugged. "I've brought enough whiskey to gag a buffalo, and plenty of trinkets, too."

  They approached the village openly in the full noontide sun of a balmy July day. The Indians were waiting for them; they'd probably been spotted days ago. People in Indian and Western dress gathered about the council house, looking more curious than hostile. There was a time when a lone white man had been an immediate target. But now the enemy was different. The unending tide of land-hungry settlers threatened the Indians, not the wandering frontier hunters.

  Roarke held up his hand and spoke, retrieving the few words of Shawnee he'd picked up during the war years.

  "Black Bear," he said. "Is he here?"

  An aging chief wearing a headdress of fur stepped forward. A network of time-worn lines crept across his ancient face.

  "Who are you?" His words whistled from the many gaps in his teeth.

  "I am Roarke Adair. I seek the brave called Black Bear."

  "Roarke Adair," the chief repeated, loudly so that all could hear. Then he spoke in English. "You killed Black Bear's father and brother
. You dishonored him."

  "His quarrel is with me. Not with my daughter and the woman he took."

  The chief contemplated this for a moment. "You make bold to come here."

  "I mean to settle things with Black Bear. Where is he?"

  The chief gestured to the west. "Our people disperse like seeds to the wind. There is no room to share the bounty of the land, not when the white man stakes out claims as if trying to own a piece of the sky."

  Roarke gave him some tobacco and a warm Dutch blanket along with several pieces of silver. The chief walked with him to the edge of the village. They stood on a grassy knoll, looking down at an endless expanse of green hills and dark forests. It was as wild a land as Roarke had ever seen, alive with birdsong and the soughing of the wind.

  "She is out there," he said.

  The chief nodded. "You will have to kill Black Bear to get her."

  Roarke adjusted the brim of his hat. "I know. I should have finished our quarrel when we last met."

  The chief turned and looked at the knot of braves behind him, who were arguing and gesturing.

  Sadness pulled the lines of the old chief's face downward. "There are others who would quarrel with you, Roarke Adair. You and your friend both."

  Roarke frowned at the braves, who had begun calling orders to the villagers. People lined the path to the council house, arming themselves with thorn-spiked sticks and whips of willow and wild grapevine.

  Will Coomes swallowed hard and addressed the chief. "See here now, we're just passin' through. We've brought gifts—"

  The old man shook his head. "You have intruded upon our lives. For that you must run the gauntlet."

  "And if we refuse… ?" Roarke questioned.

  Before the chief could answer, Roarke and Will were seized from behind, divested of all but their breeches, and brought to the head of the path. There was no question of a struggle.

  "This is one thing I hoped I'd never be called on to do," Will said faintly. "Jesus, they're like a pack of baited dogs."