by Shirl Henke
As memories of Joss's appalled reaction to Muskogee life flashed through his mind, Alex replied, "Joss isn't like Mama." She certainly could not love him that much. .. could she?
"Oh, I think you're wrong. She's wonderful with the children according to your grandmother."
"The children?" Alex asked, puzzled.
"I assume you didn't have time to discuss much the night you came home," Devon said dryly.
Alex flushed, remembering their argument and the way it had ended...in passion.
"She came to your grandmother and asked if she could help with the school. After all, she was a teacher in London."
"She taught in Grandma Charity's school?" Alex asked as his throat tightened.
"Your mother says the children love her. She has a natural way with the little ones."
"She always did," Alex replied quietly. All the while he had brooded about her rejection of his mixed blood, his fears that she scorned the Muskogee...she was teaching in the school. Joss, Joss, I never gave you a chance.
With the first rays of light, Alex left with Poc, who seemed especially eager to reach the Alabama River, which lay ahead of them. The rest of the men followed behind them to check signs carefully to be certain they were on the right trail.
Alex rode like a man possessed and the dog, now considerably more wise to the dangers rife in swamplands, led the way. The little terrier was tough and tireless. Finally they broke through the dense foliage of scrub pines and hickory and reached the open marshlands of the delta. Alex's gaze swept across the vast flat plains of sedge. In the distance a thick curl of smoke rose ominously against the clear blue of the western horizon. Alex kicked his mount into a gallop as Poc took off racing.
When he reached the charred ruins of the fort, Poc circled the blackened timbers of the stockade, then crawled inside an opening created by the fire. The ashes were still quite warm but neither dog nor man noticed the heat. Poc whimpered piteously as he circled the compound where a number of small cabins had once stood. Now all of them were reduced to blackened piles of logs and stone.
After investigating three of the gutted buildings, the dog nosed inside the door of the last one, which was at the very back of the stockade that faced the river. Guts knotted, Alex shoved the scorched wooden door further open and followed. The interior was completely destroyed except for what looked like the remains of a table and a heavy old sea chest in one corner.
"What is it, Poc? Was she here?" He could not see in the smoky confines. His eyes stung and his lungs burned.
He'd seen the charred corpses of half a dozen defenders outside, almost unrecognizable but for the heavy metal jewelry and weapons that marked some of them as Muskogee males. Others were clad in the badly burned remains of buckskin shirts and trousers. Mixed bloods. He had seen no women, thank God.
Until now. His heart hammered in his chest and a great roaring filled his ears. In the corner of the room two figures lay huddled together, their bodies all but unrecognizable as female. One looked like a ten- to twelve-year-old girl, judging from her size. The other was a grown woman... a white woman? The absence of Indian jewelry suggested as much, although the clothing and hair were too badly burned to be certain. She held the child in her arms protectively.
Alex knelt beside Poc, who paced frantically back and forth around the corner where the bodies lay, sniffing the ground. Surely this was not Joss, his wife. Then the glint of something shiny flashed in the dim light streaming in through the door. Poc was already sniffing at it. The dog sat back on his haunches and let out a long, low, bone- chilling howl.
Alex's blood froze. He could scarcely move as the roaring in his ears reached a crescendo of unbearable intensity. He half walked, half crawled to the shiny object. It was gold, melted slightly yet still easily distinguishable. A man's timepiece. The Reverend Elijah Woodbridge's timepiece.
Joss was never without it. Barbara had told him she carried her personal belongings in a leather pouch and that it was missing along with her. From it she had left the trail of soap and combs. She would never have left her father's timepiece behind. Nor would her captors, had they been alive, have tossed away something of such value, he was certain.
He knelt beside the charred bones and laid his hands over them as if to protect them. And he cried. The dog licked his face and hands, whimpering in despair, trying in vain to offer comfort.
That was how Devon and the others found them.
* * * *
In the vain hope that Joss had somehow been taken away by river, the men spent the next week scouring the low marshy banks of the Alabama for miles in either direction. Alex took Poc and walked the course of the river, up and down, on both sides, but Poc could find not the slightest trace of Joss.
The fort had indeed been held by mixed bloods who had tried to remain neutral in the brewing war between the various factions of the Creek Confederacy. Apparently they had been surprised by a large Red Stick war party, burned out without any chance to escape, barely able to fight back before they were massacred. An entire cache of burned canoes was found neatly banked beside the river door of the stockade, their frames standing like skeletons. Not one space on the tiny quay was unfilled.
Devon and Tall Crane reached the tragic conclusion that the woman in the ashes, whom they had buried beside the young girl, must have been Joss. But Alex refused to believe it, even when his wider and wider ranging searches yielded nothing. Pig Sticker led the other warriors from Coweta back to their town while Alex's father and uncle waited for his grief to spend itself enough so they could convince him to give up the useless quest.
Finally a messenger located them, sent from Benjamin Hawkins, another government trader to the Confederacy, asking that Devon and Tall Crane come at once to his agency on the Flint River. The Shawnee prophet Sickaboo had convinced several of the influential Lower Creek miccos to join Tecumseh's rebellion and become king's men. Golden Eagle and Tall Crane were the only men with enough influence to dissuade the chiefs.
Tall Crane set out at once to respond to Hawkins's summons. Devon went in search of his son. He found Alex that evening seated on a hollow log at a bend in the river, staring out at the swiftly flowing current, watching the sun set across the water. The bloodred ball cast a ruddy glow over his somber, gaunt features. Poc welcomed Devon with nervous whining, seeming to say, "Do something to help him."
"It's late, son. Time to build a fire and make camp for the night," Devon said when Alex continued staring at the river.
"She's gone, Papa. Gone forever. I never told her I loved her. Not once. What a cold-blooded bastard I was. I never deserved a warm, intelligent, good-hearted woman like her."
The raw, anguished words tore at Devon's heart. "I love this land of my birth but it's harsh and cruel at times. I wish there were something I could do to make it easier for you, Alex, but I know there isn't." He placed one hand on his son's shoulders and squeezed the tense muscles, then set to making a fire.
Watching his father perform the familiar task, Alex said at length, "I offered her an arrangement, did you know that?"
Dev nodded. "Your mother explained how things stood between you two...at least as much as she understood of it," he said, hoping to encourage his son to speak of his grief.
"We were friends. I convinced myself that a marriage in name only would be of mutual advantage."
"From what I saw, it was a great deal more than that," Dev replied. He had never understood what had set Alex against the institution of marriage, but he would not question, only listen.
Alex shook his head. "It could have been so much more, more than I ever deserved...but I... Ah, hell, I ruined it," he said, his voice thick with tears that he refused to shed. "I couldn't make up my mind to be a husband, to ask her to...to love me—to admit that I loved her."
"Women have a way of sensing those things, son. Joss knew that you loved her."
"If only I could believe that, Papa." He sat staring into the flames of the fire as Devon prepared
a simple meal of coffee, bread and cheese.
Offering him a plate, Dev said, "Hawkins has asked for help at the Flint Agency. Sickaboo's stirring up some trouble. I don't know if Kent's behind it or not. Tall Crane went to speak with the miccos. I still have to locate Weatherford." He left the rest unspoken, leaving it up to Alex to decide what he would do.
"Right now I don't care about any of it. I'm sorry, Papa. All I want to do is put this hellish war as far behind me as possible."
"What will you do?" Devon asked.
Alex shrugged. "I can't return to London with the war going on. Anyway, it would hold too many memories of Joss. For now I think I'll head back to Savannah."
Devon nodded. "Your Aunt Madelyne's all alone at the Hall while Quint's in Washington conferring about British attacks on coastal shipping. You might spend some time with her," he suggested.
"With four married children living on adjacent plantations, I doubt she's alone much," Alex replied. "I think I'll go to the city house for now. After that..." His voice faded as he envisioned the bleak, endless years ahead without Joss. How would he bear it?
Ah, Joss, if only we had it to do over again, I'd not be such a fool.
Neither man paid any attention to Poc, who sat quietly, staring down the river.
* * * *
Joss sat in the bottom of the canoe clutching her spectacles in one hand while she concentrated with all her strength on not being sick again. Each morning for the past two weeks—about midway through the hellish trek to the fort—she had been unable to hold down anything solid save dry biscuits. She was uncertain whether it was caused by the stress of her captivity or a reaction to the vile diet Kent gave her.
In truth, she was too weary to think straight after the hairsbreadth escape from the burning stockade. Shuddering, she could still smell the acrid scent of smoke and hear the hideous shrieks of war cries blended with the screams of the dying. After she and Kent had parted company with McQueen and his warriors, the American had taken her into the fort. He'd locked her in a cramped, filthy room with two other female captives, then began drinking through the night.
The attack had come just after sunrise. Kent had raced into the room where she lay. In the confusion she had struggled to reach the pack with her father's timepiece, but Kent cursed her and dragged her away. All she had been able to save was the pair of spectacles that were in her pocket. She could still see the woman and her daughter, cowering in their bed as Kent seized hold of her, yelling that their passage south had arrived in the nick of time.
Two white men, dressed in buckskins, had paddled up to the rickety little dock as gunshots flashed and flames leaped higher around the stockade. By the time they boarded the canoe and reached midstream, the fort had been taken. Unaware that the very man who had given them their muskets was in the canoe, the Red Sticks fired at the little craft, killing one of the paddlers. Bullets flew into the river all about them, splashing water into the canoe as Kent and the other man paddled furiously to get out of range.
The days blurred together on the water just as they had on her overland ordeal. All she knew was that Kent was a traitor to his country, in the pay of the British. He and his companion were renegades of some sort. Joss still had no idea what Kent or those who employed him planned to do with her. She was only relieved that he had made no sexual overtures.
Kent and his companion feared her illness was some sort of plague she had contracted from living among the Indians. "If not for my plan, which requires a Blackthorne woman, I'd kill you now and have done," he had snarled at one point when she sat retching near the fire while the other man broke camp.
The surge of nausea passed and Joss looked out across the river plain, ignoring him. The landscape had been subtly changing for the past day. The dense, wild overgrowth of woodlands was giving way to open flat delta lands crossed by a lacework of narrow, twisting channels that Kent referred to as bayous.
Alligators swam silently, looking like sunken logs until a canoe was almost too close to avoid snapping teeth and deadly tails. Tall white cranes stood on stalk-thin legs in the shallows, sunning themselves, while brightly colored small birds sang in the lacy canopy of trees scattered here and there in the exotic landscape.
The body of water they were on had grown sluggish and wide, muddy brown as it emptied into a vast bay. Joss knew Kent was taking her to Mobile, which was on the gulf in Spanish Territory. Then she saw the fort in the distance, a hulking stone monolith of Moorish style architecture. It sat perched on a high embankment at the edge of the bay. Beyond it a small but obviously European-looking settlement stretched inland. The narrow streets and overhung galleries spoke of its Franco-Spanish origins. It looked alien and slightly menacing to Joss.
"Welcome to Mobile, Mistress Blackthorne," Kent said mockingly.
As they neared the fortification, Joss saw the sentries' bright scarlet uniforms. Englishmen! She felt a swift surge of exhilaration as the gates swung open. They climbed to the top of the high fortress wall, then entered a long narrow corridor and walked to a set of double doors guarded by two sentries standing at rigid attention. At Kent's signal, they were admitted to a large conference room.
Several men clustered about a massive, ornately carved oak table, pouring over the maps and papers spread all over its surface. One wore scarlet and the others white. Her heart hammered in her chest as she mentally prepared her speech while Kent was announced.
"I've brought a captive I believe may be useful to you," he said without preamble, raising the end of the rawhide cord binding her so that her raw wrists were jerked roughly.
Joss started to speak but the words froze on her tongue when the English officer turned to face her. Cold yellow eyes swept from her head to her feet and back with mocking contempt. She would never in her life forget that haughty, aristocratic face with its cruelly perfect features marred only by the saber slash across his eyebrow.
Colonel Sir Rupert Chamberlain studied the tall, slim woman standing before him. He smiled chillingly as he walked closer, circling her as if inspecting a blooded horse. He remembered the ghastly eyeglasses but there was a far different aura about her now. She had quickly gathered her wits and stood coolly self-possessed under his gaze in spite of her ragged, filthy clothing and sunburned skin. Odd, he thought, he'd never before noticed that her body was so well molded or that she had such a splendid mane of hair, now bleached tawny gold by the hellish tropical sun.
"Alex Blackthorne's wife," he murmured, almost to himself.
"Sir Rupert," she replied as formally as if they were in a London drawing room. "I'm surprised you remember me." A chill of foreboding washed over her as he dismissed the Spanish officers, leaving them alone with only Kent.
"Oh, I remember that mongrel's peculiar bluestocking bride. You were the talk of the ton, m'dear. Everyone wondered whyever a young rogue such as he saddled himself with a homely Methody miss. Must've been true love, hmm?"
When she did not reply, Chamberlain turned to Kent. "I must confess when I received your communication I was intrigued, but it was the Caruthers bitch, not this one, you'd set out to capture."
"McQueen took the wrong Englishwoman, but I decided it really did not matter as long as she's a Blackthorne. As soon as that pair of vipers learns that we have her we can lure them into a trap," Kent said with a cunning smirk.
"No!" Joss cried before she could stop herself. Kent brought her up sharply with a hard yank on her bound hands.
Chamberlain tsked mockingly at him, then said, "Do act civilized, Willie, even if you are a colonial. Untie the lady's hands."
Kent's eyes narrowed with barely leashed anger, but after a moment's hesitation he slipped a blade from his belt and slashed the rawhide cords, freeing her. "How soon can a message be dispatched to the Blackthornes?"
Joss stood flexing her fingers, trying to restore circulation in her hands as Kent waited impatiently for the colonel's reply.
Chamberlain sauntered lazily back to the table and glance
d at the maps and the latest communiques from his superiors in the Bahamas. "It would do little good to worry about trouble from the Blackthornes now. I do not believe I shall send any word that we have her," he drawled. "Perhaps if you had brought the mother-in-law, I would have considered your plan, but now I find another comes to mind."
"Are you mad? This is our perfect opportunity to stop the Blackthornes from holding the Creeks in the American camp," Kent said with incredulous anger. "I risked my life to get her to you and now—"
"And now," Chamberlain turned to Kent and said in his clipped voice of command, "you are dismissed, Mr.Kent.... Oh, yes," he added silkily, "I do believe there is a small matter of payment, your thirty pieces of silver as it were."
Kent accepted the curt dismissal with glowering bad grace, quitting the room in stiff, furious strides.
When they were left alone, Joss asked, "What do you plan to do with me?"
"What indeed," he said, his cold yellow eyes suddenly turning almost orange with fury as he raised his right arm, which he had until now concealed at his side. Joss could not prevent the gasp of revulsion that escaped her lips as he stretched forth the hideously deformed hand. He pulled off the glove from the withered limb, which was grotesquely blackened from damaged circulation and resembled a claw more than a human appendage.
"Well you should cringe, madam. This is what your husband did to me, consigning me to this wretched backwater filled with rabble and redskins. Unimpaired I'd have been on the front lines with Wellington, defeating the Corsican. But I'm nothing if not determined. I practiced with my left hand until I could use it with the same skill as I had my right. A year spent in utter misery, fumbling and failing, struggling and finally succeeding inch by bloody inch! Blackthorne should have killed me when he had the chance."
An icy dread swept her, leaving her faint and nauseated. She remained upright and met his eyes by sheer force of will. "I repeat, sir, what do you plan to do with me?"