The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series)

by Shirl Henke

  “Chase has every right to be proud of his Cheyenne father,” she defended hotly.

  Josiah allowed himself one thin laugh, as if he rationed them. “Even if that makes him—to put it crudely—a bastard? Lots of gels' mamas wouldn't let a man like him near their daughters. I pointed that out to old Jeremiah, don't think I didn't. Of course, he knew the boy'd already caught your scent. The Remington name is prestigious and as the heir, the boy will be worth a fortune one day. As will you, since you're my only child. Now my question to you, Missy, is will you marry him?”

  Stephanie twisted her napkin until it was almost shredded in her lap while her father spoke his piece. “So you and Reverend Remington have decided to arrange our betrothal—without consulting Chase, I'm certain. I won't marry a man who won't speak up for himself. If Chase wants to marry me, he can ask me himself,” she said, throwing the napkin onto her plate and rushing from the room.

  Josiah called after her, then shook his head in vexation. Silly romantic dribble. Marriages in their class were made for sensible fiscal reasons, not on the whim of callow youths or flighty girls. It appeared she was smitten with the Remington boy, half-breed bastard that he was, not to mention his crazy mother. Well, if Stephanie threw up no vaporing objections to Chase Remington, the matter was settled as far as Josiah was concerned. He would tell Jeremiah that his grandson had better press his suit quickly so the serious business of a settlement could be worked out.

  * * * *

  That afternoon a note arrived from Chase requesting the pleasure of Stephanie's company to attend the opera the following evening. By the time he called to pick her up, she had changed her gown three times, nearly driving her little Irish maid to distraction. She finally settled on the gold silk with cream lace trim, deciding it was the most sophisticated thing she owned and would make her look more mature. Fussing with one errant strand of hair which kept slipping from the heavy knot atop her head, Stephanie gave herself one final inspection in the mirror.

  Do I look as frightened as I feel? What will happen? She gnawed her lips, afraid that he was only going to ask her to marry him because it was what his family wanted. No, Chase would not be swayed by the reverend. But he might propose because of some absurd notion about compromising her honor. It seemed they could not spend even a few moments alone without her ending up unclothed, letting him take appalling liberties. Was she so transparently in love with him? What if he pitied her? Stop it! she scolded, then forced herself to go and face him.

  He stood at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in black evening clothes. The snowy whiteness of his silk shirt contrasted with his swarthy skin and night-black hair. The blood-red satin lining of his opera cape added an almost savage aura as he waited, so tall and handsome. She could not read anything in his face.

  Lord above, she was stunning, his Stevie! Chase held his breath as she floated down the stairs, a glittering vision, spun of soft golden sunbeams. The faint scent of apple blossoms filled his nostrils as she approached. At once he could detect a wariness to her that had not been there before. She was always so impulsive, spontaneous and honest.

  Old Josiah's told her. He swore to himself, knowing how much tact the sour old merchant had probably used. About as much as Jeremiah had. He should have thrown the whole dynastic merger back in the old man's face just to spite him. But he could not do it.

  I want her, he admitted to himself now that he was face-to-face with her again. Oh, he'd told Jeremiah that he would consider the marriage just to rattle Burke. But even then he'd known saying that was only a sham. He desired her as he had desired no other woman, even though he knew it meant his dreams of returning home would end irrevocably the day he wed her. Am I crazy as Mother? At that moment he honestly didn't know.

  Chase reached for her hands, ensconced in elbow-length cream kid gloves. Taking both, he raised them to his lips for a chaste salute that somehow became something far more charged and erotic when he felt her pulse leap through the thin soft leather. “You're beautiful,” he said simply, then asked, “Where is our chaperone?”

  “Mrs. Wright is waiting for us in the study. Anthony was to ask you to wait there with her while he informed me of your arrival.”

  “He did, but I decided I'd rather watch you come down the stairs. Every head in the opera hall will turn when I enter the box with you.”

  She blushed with pleasure and murmured, “I wish we could leave Mrs. Wright behind.”

  “What would people say?” he asked with mock indignation, always caught off balance by her combination of pristine innocence and free-spirited lack of concern for convention.

  “What indeed?” she echoed.

  “Do you like Salieri?”

  “No,” she replied honestly. “Do you?”

  “No. He's a boring composer but the opera was an excuse to ask you out for a late dinner.”

  “I have an idea. Father won't return until around midnight. He spends every Thursday evening at his club and it never varies. If I know Mrs. Wright, she's already been tippling his sherry.”

  He raised one dark eyebrow speculatively, unable to stop the grin spreading across his lips. “What do you have in mind, vixen?”

  “An earlier dinner without Signor Salieri's pompous arias—unless you must hear the divine Sara sing?” she couldn't resist adding.

  Unbelievably, Chase felt himself blush beneath his swarthy skin. “Sara and I parted ways some weeks ago.” After I found you again. “How did a sheltered miss like you hear about such a thing?”

  “Society misses gossip worse than fishwives,” she said dismissively, unwilling to let him know how much the rumor had pained her when first she heard it. “Now let me introduce you to Mrs. Wright. We'll take a few moments for sherry. I guarantee you by the time our carriage reaches the opera, she'll be snoring fit to frighten the horses!”

  They entered the study and Stephanie very properly introduced Mrs. Wright to Chase. The chaperone was delighted to join them in a bit more sherry.

  The older woman was a distant cousin of Josiah's father, paid to fulfill the duty of chaperoning his headstrong daughter. While Stephanie hated having no real family to rely on for social occasions, Mrs. Wright's fondness for sherry could be useful. The day of her disastrous sled ride with Oliver Standish, the chaperone had been left behind at the last moment due to an “indisposition.” Josiah had not been present to say her nay, so Stephanie had done what Paulina would have let her do—left without benefit of a chaperone. She prayed her plan to “indispose” the old harridan tonight worked.

  When it was time to leave, Chase offered an arm to each lady and they walked through the open walnut door and out into the cool spring evening. Once they were securely ensconced inside the coach, the fumes of sherry on the plump old woman's breath were almost as noticeable as had been her stiff reaction to Chase.

  She's worried I might scalp her charge, he thought in grim amusement, then ignored her as she stared out the carriage window at the gaslit streets, making no pretense at being anything other than a paid employee. He was desperate to speak with Stephanie alone, but all they could do was make polite small talk in route.

  As predicted, Mrs. Wright was soon snoring noisily. Slipping the driver a large banknote, Chase instructed the man to take them to the Remington mansion so they could pick up his phaeton. The coachman was to drive Mrs. Wright home, wait outside the incapacitated matron's house until she awakened, then escort her to her door with the assurance that Miss Summerfield and Mr. Remington had enjoyed the opera and hoped she had, too. The befuddled woman might wonder about how she had sat through Cyrus und Astyages without remembering any of it, but she would be too embarrassed to dare question anything or breathe a word to anyone.

  Once they were alone in his spider phaeton, Chase slowed the horses to a leisurely walk and turned to her. All the earlier conspiratorial amusement had fled. “It's time to discuss serious matters, isn't it, Stevie?”

  “You make it sound funereal,” she said, striving fo
r a light tone as her heart seized with dread.

  “I take it your father told you about the esteemed reverend's proposition.”

  As he spoke he guided the matched team effortlessly around the corner of a narrow street. Stephanie did not know where he was taking her and did not care. She studied his hands on the reins, encased in immaculate pearl-gray gloves, those long-fingered dark hands so devastatingly skillful, so masterfully gentle. “Yes, Chase, he's spoken to me. I told him I would not be party to a dynastic arrangement made by two old men.”

  She waited a beat but he said nothing, forcing her to look up and meet his eyes. They glowed like live coals in the moonlight yet revealed nothing. Swallowing for courage, she continued. “I told you before, I won't trap you, Chase. I don't want it that way between us. If you want to marry me, you'll have to ask me yourself...and mean it.”

  A sad smile touched his face as he reached up and brushed the side of her cheek with one hand. “I never thought I'd marry a white woman...until you came along.”

  Her heart raced as the implication sunk in, but there was more. He seemed almost reluctant to admit that he would consider courting her. “You always planned to return to your father's people and marry a Cheyenne woman.”

  His eyes took on a faraway depth as he stared out into the darkness. “Ever since the old man had me brought back in chains I've dreamed of nothing but escaping the Remingtons.”

  “They brought you back in chains?” Her voice was appalled. “Why did you stay?”

  “Because of my mother.”

  Of course. Now she was beginning to understand a great many things about the brooding and rebellious Chase Remington. “Your mother needed you.”

  “She speaks nothing but Cheyenne...when she speaks at all. I should never have left her alone in that house, never have run away.”

  “You were only fourteen, Chase,” she replied gently.

  His expression hardened. “I made a deal with the old man. I'd behave, learn to dress like a veho, eat with the right fork, even go back to school if he'd keep his son from having her committed to an asylum.”

  “What will happen when—” She stopped short. “Oh, I'm sorry, Chase. I had no right—”

  “Yes, Stevie, you have every right. When she's dead, I'd always planned to leave forever and never look back.” After I killed Burke.

  “And now...” If there was hope in her heart that he loved her enough to stay, there was also fear, which she voiced. “She held you here all these years, unintentionally, but against your will. I won't take her place, Chase. Not that way.”

  He smiled sadly. “Always so forthright. More so than I've been, rehashing the past. I think it's time to put it behind me. I've never been certain if I could go back—if the Cheyenne would even have me after all the veho have done to them. I may not be socially acceptable in many Boston homes, but I have learned to survive here. If you married me, you'd be shunned in some quarters, too, Stevie.”

  “Do you think I'd care?”

  “No, not now.”

  “Not ever, Chase.” She held her breath, waiting for him to say the rest, to tell her he loved her, ask her to marry him.

  “You're so young, so idealistic and untouched by life's ugliness. There are things so evil you could never begin to imagine them. The Remington money's been my passport to respectability but the Remington name is a sham. To borrow a phrase from the old man, 'a whited sepulcher.' I'll always despise it.”

  She could see in his face the naked pain of a little boy trying to be brave in the face of the Reverend Jeremiah Remington's blistering denunciations. “I understand why you hate the Remingtons.”

  His eyes flashed with a sudden savage fire. “No, you could not possibly,” he replied in a clipped, cold voice, at odds with the momentary lapse he had revealed to her.

  Stephanie placed one small hand on his arm, feeling the terrible icy fury he was masking. “I can imagine a great many things. I was there when your grandfather caught us in the water, remember? And I was there when your uncle paid a man to kill you for your inheritance.” She shivered.

  He placed his hand over hers. “And you'd still marry into the Remington family, knowing all that?”

  “No, not the Remington family. Prestigious names and money don't mean anything to me. I would marry you if...”

  He felt her hand tremble. She had been honest about her feelings. He owed her the same—if only he knew clearly what his feelings were! “Stevie...” he began uncertainly, “I've never felt this way about any other woman. I admire you, I desire you, I want to be with you and I'm happy when we're together...”

  ‘‘But your heart's still out west...with the Cheyenne,” she said softly as tears gathered, stinging her eyes, trapped beneath thick sable lashes. She refused to let them fall. I won 't cry and humiliate myself any farther in front of him.

  The phaeton neared the restaurant which had a discreet, private back door for wealthy men entering to keep assignations. Knowing he had bungled the whole thing badly, Chase reined in the horses as the doorman approached. With a silent oath, he tossed Harry a generous tip as the old man took the lead horse's bridle, saying, “Evening, Mr. Remington.”

  Even though she had never been to the exclusive restaurant, Stephanie understood the significance of the back door entry—and the fact that Chase was a regular customer used to bringing women here who could not afford to be seen in public with him—women like Agatha Lodge. She was a foolish young virgin who was behaving just as scandalously with a man she really did not know or understand at all. A man whose heart belonged to no one...if he even had a heart.

  “They have private dining rooms upstairs where we can talk,” he said softly, reaching for her hand.

  “Perhaps it would be better if you just took me home, Chase,” she said stiffly, pulling her hand away from his. “I seem to have lost my appetite.” She stared straight ahead into the darkness.

  Chase felt the tension in her body. She sat ramrod straight on the softly upholstered seat as if it were a bed of nails. She was desperately fighting back tears and he could not blame her. She had let down every barrier and told him she would marry him if he asked her. A bold and forward thing for a properly raised Boston bluestocking to do, especially one scarcely out of the schoolroom. Caught up with his own private demons, he had humiliated her without ever intending it. If he asked her now she would probably tell him to go to hell!

  Better to let her regain her dignity and indulge in a good private cry. Tomorrow he would send flowers with a carefully composed note. Perhaps once he sorted out his thoughts, he could put in writing what he had not said in person.

  * * * *

  Anthea Remington walked out of her tower cell for the first time in seven years. She had to learn if what Dr. Walters said was true. The old physician had come for her monthly checkup that afternoon. As he had examined her, she had listened to his conversation with the nurse.

  Like everyone else, they spoke as if she could not understand them. Since she only spoke Cheyenne, when she spoke at all, it was a reasonable assumption. But sometimes she understood. Today when she heard the words savage and Chase's name, she had willed herself to listen. They discussed the railroad and how that New York millionaire Jay Cooke was going to build it westward through the hunting grounds of the Sioux and Cheyenne. The Northern Pacific would destroy the last of those “filthy red savages” who had driven her out of her mind and saddled her with the shame of Chase, an “illegitimate half-breed.”

  Anthea had seethed at the lie but said nothing, for she had grown cunning in the ways of madness. Let them say what they would as long as the doctor did not sedate her or have her tied to her bed again.

  When the house grew quiet she had slipped past her dozing maid, Verity, and wended her way through her childhood home, a soulless cold mansion in which she had always felt a stranger. She had no way to judge the time, only that it was late. She prayed they were both asleep by now, especially him. Anthea was not certain if she
could hold onto this thin thread of sanity if she came face-to-face with him.

  Her destination was the library where all the issues of the newspaper were kept until her father finished reading them on Saturday night when they were thrown out. She must read for herself if the railroad was coming to destroy her people—Chase's people.

  He must help them. He must leave me, she thought. Could she bear it? To be alone in this house without her son's protection? I am Freedom Woman, she reminded herself with a single-minded intensity which left no room for fear or doubts.

  Then she heard his voice and the old terror seized her. Her heart hammered and a sour brackish taste filled her mouth. The room spun crazily and she knew she was going to scream and scream...but no, she would not. I am Freedom Woman, mother of Chase the Wind, she repeated like a mantra. Her nails dug into her palms until they drew blood in spite of being carefully pared short by the maid. She stood in the hallway for a moment as another voice rumbled deeply.

  She forced each leaden footstep nearer, flattening herself against the wall outside the slightly ajar door, shivering in the darkness like a wild creature.

  “Chase's marriage is all arranged whether you like it or not. I've settled everything with old Josiah.”

  “What makes you so certain he'll go through with it?” Burke asked. “You know how defiant the damned savage is.”

  Jeremiah chortled, self-satisfied. “Oh, he'll marry her all right. He's been squiring her about for several weeks—first eligible female he's kept company with since he was out of knee britches.”

  “And into breechclouts,” Burke interjected with sarcasm.

  “None of that matters anymore. He's in Boston to stay now. I'd always feared when Anthea died that he'd up and run off to those benighted savages again. I know she's the only reason he's remained here. But once he's tied to the Summerfield heiress by marriage, there will be children. Then he'll have to face up to his responsibilities as the Remington heir.”