Lord of the Wolves

by S. K. McClafferty

  Among the residents of the religious community was Hergus Samp, who had somehow fallen in with Angel the night of Jean’s death, and travelled with them to the Shining City in the days that followed. The crone’s work-worn hands had brought little Caroline Angelica into the world, and the old woman, who had since decided to stay, shared Kingston’s apparent lack of concern about the presence of the great felines. “If them cats was here to eat somebody,” Hergus had said a few moments ago, “they’d have supped on that rogue de Angelheart, the Frenchified dandy! Beggin’ yer pardon, Monsieur Sauvage.”

  “Think nothing of it, Madame Samp,” Kingston replied, then, with a conspiratorial wink, he’d placed the swaddled babe in his wife’s arms and taking a firm hold on her elbow and made for the door.

  Sarah was properly shocked. “Kingston Sauvage!” she said now, as they made their unhurried way across the dooryard. “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Taking my wife and child for a stroll in the moonlight,” he answered evenly. “The night is beguiling, and I think it’s time our daughter comes face to face with her legacy.”

  “Is that wise?”

  He bent a dark and knowing look upon her. “You want them to leave, do you not?”

  “Yes, but—-”

  “This is the only way,” he assured her. “They have come to pay homage to the child.” The fingers that gripped her arm were strong, so competent, and Sarah noted that his expression held no fear, not the slightest trace of doubt or hesitation. “Sarah, my only love, my angel, trust me. I know about these things.”

  Sarah did trust him, though as they neared the huge cats, she could not help pressing closer to his side. At a little distance, he halted and, taking the babe from her arms, carefully unwrapped the blankets and held her sleeping form aloft.

  Behold,” he said in his mother’s tongue, “here is the child that you will serve and protect. Caroline Angelica Sauvage. Guard her well all of her days, for her like will not come again!”

  To Sarah’s amazement, the cats rose in unison, creeping near to roll on their backs in the new grass close to Kingston’s feet.

  Unlike Sarah, who was filled with awe at her husband’s strange and mystical powers, little Caroline seemed unimpressed. She yawned widely, briefly opening her sapphire eyes to contemplate the star-studded heavens above her small raven head, then went to sleep again, secure in Kingston’s big hands.

  One by one, the catamounts rose, slinking soundlessly off into the shadowed wood. Within moments, they were gone.

  Strangely, Sarah felt a twinge of regret. “Will we see them again?” she asked as he handed the child into her arms.

  “From time to time,” he said. “Our daughter, Madame, has the gift.”

  Sarah frowned. “From whence does this gift come?”

  “Why from the Creator, of course. The giver of all life. His knowledge and wisdom far surpasses our own, and so we must be glad in our hearts for what we have been given. For everything He does, there is a good reason.”

  “You have become very wise, husband.”

  “It is wisdom that comes from experience,” he told her. “After all, He saw that I was lonely, and so He gave me you. Gil told me just the other day that one good work begets another. And since the Creator has smiled upon me, I, in turn, will never question His motives again.”

  His words warmed her. She had all that she had ever dreamed of having. A home among her friends, a loving husband, a child, and Gil had welcomed her and Kingston with open arms. Even Brother John Liebermann had forgiven her for breaking their troth, and since had married Bethany Williamson, a woman from New York.

  Angel had come for a prolonged visit, staying to welcome little Caroline into the world. Then, growing restless again, he’d departed for Montreal, but not before he’d surprised Kingston with a package from a solicitor in Quebec. Combined within were all the complex details of his inheritance. Never caring much for money, Kingston had promptly signed over half of everything to Gil Marsters, to benefit the community of which he was now a part. The other half would be placed in trust for little Caroline and overseen by Angel, who had a better head for monetary matters than Sauvage.

  Sarah’s mood was oddly reflective, and as they turned and began the short walk back to their home, flashes of scenes from another more desperate time came to mind. “Kingston?”

  “Yes, my love?”

  “There is something I have been meaning to ask you, about that day, on the bluffs above the river.”

  “Yes, my love?”

  “When you leapt at Tall Trees, I could have sworn that I saw—-that you—-there was a brush of silken fur and—-”

  “And?” he said, with the same secretive, all knowing smile he’d worn so often since the birth of their child and the arrival of the lions.

  “I know it must sound silly, but I could have sworn that you had changed somehow—-become a wolf. The Indians present seemed to think so too, and Angel said—-”

  “Angel talks too much.”

  “Then it is not true?”

  He turned to her then, with the huge silver disk of the full moon smiling at them overhead, and brought her close to him, their babe nestled securely between them so that their three hearts beat as one. “Sarah, my sweet. Would it truly make a difference if it were true? Would you love me any less if I said that I possessed such mystical powers?”

  Sarah stood on tiptoes to kiss his mouth. “You have absolute power over my heart,” she said, “and you always will. But what about the child?” She looked nervously back to the riverbank, where for weeks the big cats had prowled. “Will she?”

  “Sarah,” Sauvage chided. “She’s but a babe in swaddling! My love, you must learn to relax.”

  “I suppose you are right,” she said. Yet, as they walked back to the house, little Caroline Angelica wriggled in her blankets, and made a sound that sounded suspiciously like the mewl of a kitten.

  Sarah gasped, and looked with wondering eyes at Sauvage, but Sauvage only smiled.

  THE FORTUNE HUNTER

  PROLOGUE

  Morgan’s Landing, the Mohawk Valley, New York

  December 1, 1762

  James White Hawk Morgan leaned over the smaller man crouched at the makeshift desk in the trading post proper and watched as the quill’s tip glided over the sheet of ivory foolscap. A flowing black line followed in its wake, a long succession of incomprehensible dips and curls, dots, and short intersecting lines.

  Incomprehensible. That was the perfect word for it, because James could not make head nor tail of it,

  and the harder he tried the more befuddled his brain became, and the closer he came to looming over the scribe’s shoulder... until for the tenth time that evening Mr. Sean Finn paused in his labors to look at him with red-veined blue eyes. “Mr. Morgan, sir, I beg of ye,” Finn said shakily. “If ye’re goin’ to hover over my shoulder in such a fashion, then I must have a wee dram of whiskey to steady my hand.”

  “You’ll have your pint when you’ve completed the letter to my satisfaction,” James replied. “And not a moment sooner.”

  Finn swallowed hard as he dipped the quill into the India ink. “Very well, then. But, if I am to continue to labor, I must ask that ye step back a pace and give me room to draw breath. Ye’re making me deuced nervous, sir!”

  “Your pardon,” James said, stepping back a half-pace. “‘Twas not my intention to unsettle you. I was merely trying to ascertain that all was progressing accordingly. I should like very much to please the young lady in question—-the recipient of this correspondence. Indeed, it is of the utmost importance that I do so.”

  He left off hanging over the little man’s shoulder and moved around to the front of the desk, flinging his lean frame onto a bench. “Perhaps if you read aloud what has been written thus far?”

  Finn blanched visibly. He was most uncomfortable in James’s presence, but James did not care a whit for the former schoolmaster’s discomfort. His concern lay with his trad
ing business, first and foremost—-a business that was not doing as well as he’d hoped—-and with a certain young Englishwoman whose dainty hand he was striving to win.

  Her name was Elizabeth Gardener and, aside from possessing the most remarkable blue eyes he had ever seen, she had wealth, connections, and a sister-in-law who despised her and nagged Elizabeth’s brother Benjamin incessantly to dislodge her from their household.

  Elizabeth, it seemed, was a freethinking woman who defied convention and had thus far had few offers of marriage, a fact which continued to mystify James. Fortune hunters like himself were seldom so choosy about the women they wooed and wed. And Elizabeth Gardener was more comely than most.

  Of course, there was always the possibility that Benjamin Gardener, Elizabeth’s brother and guardian, was holding back information—-like a mulish laugh, an unruly temperament, or a snore which would rattle the rafters—in the hopes of ridding his household of his sister and seeing her comfortably settled elsewhere.

  Not that the possibility of Elizabeth’s possessing a small imperfection or two was enough to frighten James off. He was made of much sturdier stuff than that. Besides, both Elizabeth and her brother had refrained from asking potentially embarrassing questions about his own background, so he rather considered that they were on even ground, and he was most willing to take his chances with the young lady in question.

  James had felt Elizabeth’s gaze upon him the moment he’d entered Samuel Sayer’s London parlor the previous February, and had felt the immediate stab of a mutual attraction. When he had taken her hand, bowing gallantly over it, he’d felt something powerful and electric spark between them.

  Samuel had called upon James the following afternoon, with Benjamin Gardener in tow. Gardener, in typically crass English fashion, had put it to him bluntly that James’s suit would be enthusiastically welcomed should he choose to court Elizabeth, despite his less than desirable bloodline, and hinted broadly at the depth and breadth of her dowry.

  Despite the slight against his Mohawk heritage, James had leapt at the bait. With Gardener’s permission he called upon the young lady in question that same afternoon, and was pleased to discover that she harbored none of her brother’s prejudice.

  Matters might have proceeded swiftly and smoothly had he not received word that his mother had been stricken with smallpox.

  Voicing his regrets, and his wish that matters had come to a different conclusion, he left London, the lovely Elizabeth, and her dowry behind, and headed home to the Mohawk Valley.

  A fortnight after his arrival at Morgan’s Landing, James received a package containing a leather glove he’d apparently left behind in the Gardeners’ parlor, accompanied by his first communication from Elizabeth. Delivered by a long hunter headed west, the missive was wrinkled and well worn, but an alluring perfume rose from the wax-sealed pages, bringing to mind Elizabeth’s maidenly blush and posing a definite dilemma.

  James had never learned to read or write.

  He’d carried the letter in his breast pocket—-close to his heart—-for nearly a week before finally conquering his pride sufficiently to approach Finn, the only person in Morgan’s Landing learned enough to decipher it and form a suitable reply.

  “Ah, Elizabeth, my lovely,” James said on a sigh.

  “Yer pardon, Mr. Morgan?” the Irishman said, dragging James from his musings. “Is there something else ye wish to add?”

  James bent close, pretending to scan the text. The correspondence, while hardly a satisfying method of courtship for a man with red blood in his veins, had provided him with the opportunity he’d been seeking.

  And that was where Mr. Finn came in. Finn had an elegant hand, and for a price had agreed to put James’s unorthodox courtship to paper.

  James straightened his leather doublet with an impatient jerk. “It looks well enough to me, Mr. Finn. “Now, if you please, I should like to hear what you have written. If you will proceed, I’ll pour the whiskey.”

  Finn sighed, pushing his spectacles higher on the bridge of his long, thin nose, and began.

  “My dearest Elizabeth. I pray that this letter finds you in good health, as well as good spirits, and prepared to undertake the journey which will bring you to my side....”

  About the Author

  S. K. McClafferty is the author of 14 novels, and numerous articles and short stories. She lives on the banks of Sauvage’s beautiful river, not far from the town of Kittanning, once known as Kit-han-ee, largest Delaware village on the East Coast during the mid-eighteen century. Ms. McClafferty, once known as Selina MacPherson, and also as Sue McKay, continues to write about love, loss, and the triumph of the human spirit over deep tragedy.