by Susan Wiggs
Roarke nodded. Lust for vengeance showed in the faces lining the path, in the fists clenched around the weapons.
"I don't wonder that they're eager to lay into us," Roarke said. "How many of them have lost a loved one to the white man?"
"Doesn't matter that it wasn't our doing," Coomes added glumly. "We'll pay the price. What'll it be, Roarke, me first, or you?"
"I'll go," Roarke said, straightening his shoulders. Privately, he hoped the Indians would spend their fury on his hide, sparing Will some of the pain. A look of determination hardened his face, and the Indians fell silent, watching him, tensing in anticipation.
The cry of a catbird rose up, and the wind hissed through the trees beside the river. Roarke flung his head back and stepped to the head of the double row of Indians. They stayed quiet, watching him, studying the play of sunlight across the breadth of his bare chest, the shafts of light that burnished his hair to a fiery crown of red and gold.
Roarke fastened his eyes on the council house, trying to empty his mind of the torture to come. He conjured up images of Rebecca: her sweet, earnest face, her voice lifted in pious song. Gathering the image about him like steel armor, Roarke plunged down the path.
Cries filled the air. Leather and green wood bit into the flesh of his back, his shoulders, his neck, stinging, laying open livid weals. Stones grazed his head and face, almost stunning him. Roarke stumbled but wove his way relentlessly to the council house. To fall would be to capitulate, to admit weakness.
And that Roarke would never do.
He reached the council house without having tasted the dust of the path in his mouth. Dripping with sweat and gore, he turned to face his tormentors.
Their disappointment at not having broken him was a fleeting thing. The Shawnee were great admirers of physical strength and stamina; that he'd weathered their torture meant he was worthy. They yelled approval to him.
As Roarke had hoped, the fury had lessened somewhat when Coomes ran the gauntlet. He endured it bravely, only staggering when he reached the council house.
Their wounds were cleaned with mineral-rich spring water, salved by bethroot poultices, and bound with cloth.
They were given a meal of venison and hominy mush sweetened with maple sugar, served in geode bowls.
Only when sparks rose from the council fires to the darkening sky above were the new adoptees allowed to rest.
Hours later a slight shuffling roused Roarke. He propped himself up on one elbow, blinking at the yellow brilliance of a late-morning sun.
A child of perhaps five stood in front of him, gnawing shyly on one finger and gazing at him with huge eyes.
Roarke blinked again. Those eyes… He'd never seen the like on an Indian before. They were a startling color of blue, so light and clear that they reminded him of a piece of the summer sky. He sat up and studied the child more closely.
Beneath a good covering of grime and bear grease, she was beautiful, a tiny, delicate woodsprite who had no business living the rough and tumble life of the Shawnee. A little turned-up nose, lovely pink lips pressed into a somber line, dainty hands and feet.
Roarke chanced a smile. It must have looked as bad as it hurt, his lips split and swollen by the previous day's rain of stones and whips.
But the child didn't flinch. She merely continued to stare until someone called out.
"Mariah! Where've you gotten to, girl?"
Roarke was startled to hear the King's English. Then a memory, dimmed by nearly fifteen years and a thousand miles, rushed back to him, and he staggered to his feet.
"Amy Parker," he said. "By God, Amy, it's you."
But he was looking at a stranger. A woman who was neither Indian nor white, but a strange mixture of the two; a combination that wasn't attractive. The years had streaked her hair gray and added sagging flesh to her doeskin-clad figure. A bulge in her midsection hinted that yet another birth would further mar her shape. The little girl sought refuge in Amy's ash-smudged skirts.
"I was wondering about those blue eyes," Roarke ventured.
"This is my daughter, Mariah."
"My father calls me Gimewane—Whispering Rain," the girl said quickly.
"Go and play, Gimewane." Amy chased her off with a pat. The child ran straight into the midst of a group of cavorting youngsters who were playing a game with a hoop fashioned from a wild grapevine. Almost immediately, Mariah was knocked on her backside by a tall boy.
"She seems a bit small for that," Roarke said.
But Amy only smiled. "Mariah will hold her own; she always does. The children tease her because of her white blood. Sometimes I think that's what drives her to run faster, jump higher, and yell more loudly than the rest of them."
Roarke wondered at the idea that white blood was considered a source of shame. "What about you, Amy?"
"I am the wife of Coonahaw. They treat me as a sister."
"Did you know I was here yesterday?"
"Of course. We all knew, Roarke."
Pain bit into his shoulder as he spun to face her. "By the Eternal, Amy, and you didn't try to stop it?"
She gave him a wistful smile. "No, Roarke. It is the way of my people."
"Your people?" he asked harshly.
She took his hands, that sad smile still tugging at her mouth. "You don't understand, Roarke. There is nothing about your world that calls to me. This is my home now. And these are my people."
"You're right. I don't understand. But there's something calling to me, Amy." He turned his eyes westward. "My daughter Rebecca."
Hance swept his arm in an arc across the green baize surface of the gaming table, scooping a pile of copper and silver toward him.
"That ends it for me," he said with a rakish grin, pouring the coins into his pocket. "Finest game of old sledge I ever played, gentlemen." He looked around the table at his companions and adjusted his stock. "I'll be going now."
"So soon?" pouted Maybelle, the barmaid. She leaned both hands on the table, artfully granting Hance a generous view of her considerable charms.
Hance flipped her a coin and stood up. "Sorry, love, but the assembly meets in the morning. Mr. Rathford will be needing my services."
"In the assembly," Artis Judd sneered, "or elsewhere?" Judd was peevish because Hance had just won his last two bits. Adair was a cheat; everyone had known it since the brash youth had moved to Richmond four years earlier. But he was too damned smooth to be caught.
Hance's head snapped up. "What the hell is that supposed to mean, Artis?" he demanded.
"Nary a thing, my friend," Judd said with a smile of unabashed insincerity. "Still…" He studied his fingernails intently. "Folks have been saying the old coot's gotten mighty tight with his pretty boy." Nervous laughter rippled among the listeners gathered around the table. It was the first time anyone had ever dared to give voice to something that had only been whispered about.
Tension coiled within Hance like an iron spring. He suspected there was more to the taunts than Arris's dislike for Horace Rathford, a man who held tenaciously to an unpopular antislavery stance in the assembly.
Hance thought about what Judd would not say in front of his cronies. Judd's wife, Carmen, was far too refined for a lout like Artis, something she had often told Hance at their trysting place, an abandoned mill a few miles above the Falls of the James.
But the attack on Horace Rathford's character filled Hance with fury. It was true the assemblyman had certain mannerisms that uncouth brawlers like Judd enjoyed making sport of. Truer still that Horace was too much of a gentleman to defend himself against gossip. Hance's eyes glittered dangerously at Artis, who rose to his feet.
"Take it back," Hance said. There was a disconcerting mildness to the request.
Judd's grin faltered a little. "There now, nothing's been said, pretty boy. Or maybe it's the grain of truth that's got your dander up…"
Hance lunged at him, hooking his left arm toward Judd's jaw with lightning speed. Knuckle met flesh with a jarring crunch.
"You damned infernal little bastard," Judd snarled, working his jaw with a grimace. He planted his feet and clenched his fists in readiness to counter the attack.
The barkeep gave a nod, and the two men were restrained by others nearby.
Cursing, Hance twisted in the grip of a local planter and his burly black manservant, who started dragging him toward the door.
"I'll go," he told them in a low whisper of fury. They dropped their hands.
Having regained his composure, Hance began putting on his chicken-skin gloves. He hesitated and looked back at Judd. Peeling off one of the gloves, he flung it at Judd's feet.
"Tomorrow at sunrise," he growled. "At Schwab's Green, on the Chesterfield side of the James."
Judd stooped and picked up the glove, his merry eyes sweeping the taproom. "Gentlemen," he said with a chuckle, "I do believe this young pup has just called me out." He turned the glove over in his hands with a bemused expression.
"And I do believe I'll oblige the bastard."
Even at dawn the high heat of August pulsated over the fine blades of grass on Schwab's Green. In a closed black coach sprung with stout leather straps, Horace Rathford mopped his brow distractedly.
"Don't do this, Hance," he said. "I have to, Horace. I called the man out." Horace laughed dryly. "That happens every day in the capital; we're all such a feisty bunch. But no one will look askance at you if you withdraw the challenge. I'll see that Artis Judd is ridden out of town, tarred and feathered if you like."
Hance gripped the door handle. "Damn it, Horace, I'm sick of you always doing for me, smoothing things over, tidying up after my mistakes. It's about time I did something for myself."
"But this? Think about it, Hance. You're a young man. Your promise will never be fulfilled if you duel with Judd today. If he doesn't kill you outright, you'll live your life as an outlaw. You'll never be able to show your face in Richmond—in Virginia—again."
"Virginia won't feel the lack," Hance said darkly. He picked up an inlaid iron-maple box, feeling the weight of the loaded pistols inside.
Horace put a hand on his arm. "For God's sake, Hance, doesn't our friendship mean anything to you?"
Hance eyed him keenly, wondering what aspect of that friendship Horace was referring to. The endless hours they'd spent together, reading the laws of the land, creating new ones? Or was it the other, the almost suffocating power Horace had held over him for the past three years? Hance had never made a move that Horace didn't know about; he couldn't even enjoy his mistresses anymore…
For the past few months, Hance had been growing restless, another fact of which his benefactor was keenly aware.
He peeled Horace's fingers from his arm, one by one. It was time to stop denying what he'd become. It was time to leave.
"You choose death blithely, my friend," Horace said.
Hance sent him a brash grin. He opened the door and stepped down into the sunlight.
"Goodbye, Horace."
He strode out to the green, taking deep gulps of the sultry air. A mockingbird trilled in the trees that fringed the meadow, and a light breeze rustled the leaves. The idea that Artis Judd might put a ball through him today didn't disconcert Hance. One day was as likely as the next when it came to dying.
He looked down at the pistol case in his hands. He wasn't going to die. He'd been shooting since the day he'd turned seven years old, when his father had knelt behind him, supporting a long rifle while Hance squeezed the trigger. The turkey's head had been blown clean off. Hance had missed very few of his targets since then.
Artis Judd arrived on horseback. Three of his cronies were with him, joking raucously as they approached Hance.
"What do you say, pup?" Judd demanded. "It's not too late to beg off."
Hance threw him a scathing look but said nothing. He stooped and placed his pistol case on the grass, extracting one slowly, assuring himself that it was loaded and primed.
The seconds receded to the edge of the green. Hance paced off the distance, and Judd did likewise. Slowly. Neither was in a hurry to reach the end of the green.
Hance stopped walking and swung about. He'd half decided to vindicate Horace's honor by spending his bullets harmlessly in the air. But by the time he faced his opponent, Judd was a blur, his face drawn into a snarl as he brought his pistol up and fired with deadly aim. Hance felt a ball furrow its way into the flesh of his upper left arm, tearing muscle and shattering bone.
Even more blinding than the pain was the rage that roared through him. Ever the cheat, Judd had taken aim well before Hance had turned around. As blood warmed his sleeve, Hance gritted his teeth and fired, forgetting his idea of shooting skyward. A dot of red appeared on Judd's forehead, square in the center. He fell backward, dead before his body hit the grass.
Hance's ears roared, and he felt suddenly cold. He steeled himself against the trembling that threatened to shake him to his knees. Moving slowly, holding himself steady with a monumental effort, he replaced his pistol in its case and walked away, leaving the elegant weapons behind in the grass.
Hance didn't want them. He'd taken a man's life.
Judd's friends rushed to his body, stunned. One of the men looked up and shook his fist at Hance. "You'll hang for murder, Adair!" he shouted.
Horace's coach pulled up. The older man leaped out, his face ashen and damp with perspiration.
"Hance—"
"I'm leaving, Horace." He began untying his horse from the back of the coach.
"But your arm—good God, Hance, you'll bleed to death."
"I'll make it." Hance felt no joy at the prospect.
Horace gave him a wistful smile. "I dare say you will. That is, until the law catches up with you." His brow furrowed in distress as he watched Hance mount unsteadily. "You'll have to leave Virginia, Hance. Go away, lose yourself on the frontier. You won't be the first man to start clean in Kentucky."
Hance touched the horse's flanks with his heels. He rode westward until the woodlands swallowed him up. When he was a safe distance from Richmond, he stopped by a creek and dismounted. Taking out his knife, he sat at the base of an oak tree. Gingerly, he unbound the crude bandage he'd made from several handkerchiefs and took a bracing swig of whiskey from a flask, pouring some of the liquid on the bullet wound.
Then, with more fortitude than he'd know he possessed, Hance used his knife to remove the bullet. The operation took a long time, the bullet sliding deeper into damaged flesh each time Hance tried to grasp it.
Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to think of other things, anything but the deathly agony of steel probing for lead in his shattered arm. Horace Rathford's advice swirled like an eddying stream through his pounding head: the frontier… Kentucky…
The corners of Hance's mouth turned upward. He couldn't quite seem to focus his eyes, which were flooded by cold sweat from his brow.
"You know, Horace," he rasped, "I just might do that." He keeled forward. The last thing he felt before blacking out was the ticklish brush of grass against his face.
Chapter Nineteen
Roarke's back was turned, taut and hunched-looking as he worked on a new grain bin for the livestock. He wielded his hammer with inborn expertise, his arm rising and falling in a natural motion.
Genevieve watched him sadly. A different Roarke worked the land now; there was none of the quiet joy that used to color his every task, no pauses to laugh and joke with the children. Roarke's heart hadn't been in the work of the farm since he'd returned, empty-handed and dispirited, from his two-year odyssey into Shawnee territory.
The fruitless journey had cost Roarke more than his high spirits; Will Coomes had been captured by a band of renegade Miami braves, and by the time Roarke caught up with them, the only evidence of his friend was a bloody scalp. Genevieve shook her head. Although Roarke hadn't elaborated on that tale, she was sure he'd exacted a harsh payment from the renegades.
The hammering stopped, and Roarke wiped a sleeve across his brow. As
he so often did these days, he paused to gaze westward at the Blue Ridge in heartaching contemplation of what lay beyond.
Genevieve went to him and wrapped her arms around his middle, laying her cheek against his sweat-dampened back.
His big, freckled hand tightened around the hammer he was holding.
"Hello, Gennie love," he said softly.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Ah, Gennie, what am I always thinking about?"
She felt a familiar ache in her throat. "We all miss her, Roarke."
He shook his head and turned to face her with troubled eyes. "It's not so much the missing," he said. "It's the wondering and not knowing that's so hard to bear. Becky might have died months, years, ago, or she might still be with Black Bear, being treated like, like—" He clenched his jaw and looked away.
"Roarke, don't," Genevieve said quickly, tightening her grip on him. "We've tortured ourselves over this for four years. You did everything a man could possibly do. More than that."
Pain tore across his face. "Did I, Gennie? 'Tis a question I keep asking myself. Perhaps I should have gone ten more miles, twenty…"
She placed a finger on his lips, silencing him. "There are just too many places for Black Bear to go. If you'd searched ten years, you'd not have found him."
The tortured look hadn't left his face. "That's just what Will Coomes said. One of the last things he said."
Tears prickled in Genevieve's eyes. Roarke was too good a man to be so laden with guilt. His shoulders, though strong and broad, were hard put to support Will's loss and Rebecca's capture as well.
"We just have to go on, Roarke," she told him firmly.
He rested his chin on her head. Sarah toddled toward them, grinning, arms outstretched. "Papa," she said, clinging to his leg.
Sarah's touch seemed to jar Roarke out of his desolate mood. The child, born during his absence, was a spark of brightness in his life, with hair the color of sunshine and cheeks blooming with health and good humor. Though only three, Sarah had learned that her father was a fathomless source of indulgence, and she exploited that knowledge shamelessly. Roarke scooped her up and balanced her on his hip, tickling her under the chin until she chortled with glee.