by Shirl Henke
Only when Stephanie accepted her first social invitation to a cotillion given for Addie Lake by her doting parents, did she realize that her association with Chase had done more than break her heart. Her finishing school roommate Addie greeted her with a coo of delight when Stephanie walked into the big ballroom on her father's arm.
“Ooh, Stephanie, you've come out of seclusion at last! I was positively delighted when you accepted the invitation. What a luscious gown.”
Josiah snorted in disgust. “Dress ought to look good on her. Cost me enough.” Then seeing August Lake talking to several bankers by the punch bowl, he quickly excused himself from the frivolous female company and headed off to talk business, the real reason he had come.
“Most girls could never wear that color successfully, Stephanie,” Addie added, eyeing the pale shade of green which would have made her sallow complexion look utterly jaundiced.
Embarrassed by her father's brisk dismissal, Stephanie smoothed the delicate embroidered sprigs of leaves on her skirt. “I'm pleased you like the gown, Addie. Your own is quite lovely, as is the party. Thank you for inviting us.”
“Why, you poor dear, of course I wouldn't have dreamed of excluding you, no matter what those vile-tongued old harridans say. I never listen to gossip,” she added with a self-righteous lift of her plump double chin.
Stephanie paled. “Gossip?”
“Why about you and that wicked Chase Remington, silly. Oh dear, don't tell me you didn't know?” She placed four chubby fingers on her powdered cheek in mock regret. “But of course you didn't. You've been hiding away like a virtual hermit since he jilted you.”
Stephanie stiffened her spine and her eyes darkened with indignation. “Mr. Remington and I were never engaged, so he could not have jilted me. I merely went on a few social outings in his company.”
“Whatever you say, my dear,” Addie said in a sweetly patronizing tone. Then her eyes took on an avid glow as she asked, “Did you keep company with him because of your old childhood friendship? You never did explain how you knew him at the Cabot’s' ball last winter.”
Stephanie had never really liked Addie, even though they had been thrust together by necessity in school. The girl always had been catty and backbiting in spite of the loving indulgence of both parents. “No, I never did explain since there's really nothing more to it than a brief acquaintance when I was a little girl.”
Before Addie could launch into another line of questioning, Tom Bennington and George Gordon sauntered over and asked the ladies to dance. Prior to approaching the young women, the two young gentlemen had tossed a coin to determine their prospective partners. Tom lost and bowed over Addie's hand while the winner George swept Stephanie into the strains of the waltz.
She was used to the succession of self-important and shallow sons of the city's elite fawning over her and expected the evening to be like many others had been since her debut. But as she traded partners through mazurkas, schottisches, polkas and waltzes, she detected a subtle difference. Instead of the compliments and braggadocio, there were odd assessing looks and stilted conversations about the weather. A few of the bolder ones had held her too tightly or issued invitations to stroll in the Lake's English garden out back. One man possessed the audacity to ask her to slip out for a carriage ride! She indignantly declined every one.
What sort of gossip had Addie been hinting at? Even if Chase had broken an engagement—which he had not—why would anyone blame her? After all, she was the aggrieved party! Surely no one had learned about that disastrous night spent with Chase in the snowstorm. Would Oliver Standish have been cad enough to disclose it after all this time?
When the late supper was announced, Stephanie had no appetite and wanted only to leave, but as usual, Josiah was closeted away with his cronies, discussing stocks and bonds. She went in search of him with no success. In route back to the ballroom she heard Addie's thin titter amid the giggles of several other debutantes. When they mentioned her name, she froze.
“What do you suppose it feels like? Ooh, I wish I could ask Stephanie.”
“I dare you!”
“Just imagine, doing that with a half-wild red Indian.”
“Half-wild, my aunt Fanny's bloomers—Chase Remington is a Harvard man, after all. And so wickedly handsome he would be hard to resist.”
“I heard poor Stephanie was hiding because she was in a family way, but after seeing her tonight, I suppose that's not true.”
“Maybe not but if she kept company with that awful half-breed, she must've let him bed her. He never bothers with any woman who won't.”
“She must've been a disappointment. After all, he did leave town!”
Gales of laughter followed the last sally. Stephanie felt nauseated. Balling her hands into fists she prepared to wade into the midst of the vicious little cabal of “ladies” who were supposedly her friends and tell them precisely what she thought of them.
Suddenly a musical tenor voice with just the hint of a Southern drawl said, “I don't believe a word of it. No one with any sensibility—not to mention a grain of common sense—would.”
Stephanie gasped and turned to face a handsome stranger in the blue and gold of a cavalry officer's dress uniform. He was tall and very slender with wavy light brown hair and warm brown eyes that were sympathetic without a trace of pity. “Please accept my apologies for startling you. I didn't intend to cause you further undeserved discomfort.”
Stephanie warmed to his smile, which seemed honest and kind. “Your apology is duly noted, Lieutenant—?”
“Phillips. Hugh Phillips, but since I'm only a second lieutenant, technically I should be addressed as a mere mister, Miss Summerfield.”
“Have we met before? Surely I'd remember so chivalrous a gentleman,” she added, returning his smile.
“No, but I inquired about the identity of the beautiful woman whirling across the dance floor when I came into the room. Would you do me the honor of allowing me to escort you to supper?’'
She nodded in assent, taking the arm he gallantly offered, and they began to stroll toward the groaning buffet tables in the Lakes' immense dining room.
“I was late for the ball, I'm afraid. A hazard of duty when one is a soldier.”
“Are you stationed here in Boston then?”
“No, I was only sent here from Washington to deliver dispatches to Colonel Breckenridge. My permanent assignment will be with the Seventh Cavalry, in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. My family is from Baltimore but I have a married aunt living here in Boston. Marybelle Kenyon. I'll be staying with her for a while. You see, I have a month's leave coming. I'd be honored if you would consent to spend a brief bit of it in my company, Miss Summerfield.”
Hugh Phillips was balm for her wounded soul. She quietly relished the look of amazed jealousy on the other debutantes' faces when she passed the buffet table in the company of the dashing young officer. Their plates heaping, they found a quiet bench in an alcove where they could dine privately.
After a few moments more of polite conversation, Stephanie laid down her fork and looked at Hugh. “How do you know the gossip about me is not true?”
“I could not be more certain. You are a lady. Just watching the way you conducted yourself on the dance floor convinced me. There is an air of innocence, of honor about you that is inviolable. If your father saw fit to agree to a betrothal with the Remington heir, it would have been an honorable marriage. The man was a bounder to leave you—not to mention an utter fool.”
“Most people in Boston would not agree with your assessment...of me, at least,” she replied darkly.
“Most people in Boston are stuffed shirts with nothing better to do than polish their own tarnished halos by attempting to tear them off the real angels.”
Stephanie felt a small burble of laughter well up at his earnest assertion. “I'm not guilty of having an affair with Chase Remington, but that scarcely makes me an angel.”
“When you smile, you are. I have a feeling yo
u haven't done nearly enough smiling in your young life and I propose to remedy that. Will you take tea with Aunt Marybelle and me tomorrow afternoon?”
Stephanie smiled again. “Yes, I believe I'd enjoy that.”
In the weeks that followed, Hugh Phillips became Stephanie's constant escort. They attended ice-cream socials and dances, went on picnics, and horseback rides. His aunt Marybelle was a kindly older matron with the same innate Southern gentility as Hugh. Although Marybelle was nothing like Aunt Paulina, Stephanie grew fond of the lady. And of her nephew. He was charming but never slavish like Oliver Standish. He was warm, but never forward like Rayburn Lawrence. Hugh made her feel safe, something she had never felt with Chase.
Hugh talked a great deal about his lifelong love of the army and high hopes for serving his country. He came from a fine old Baltimore family who lived in genteel poverty after the war. Winning an appointment to West Point had been the dream of a lifetime. He had graduated third in his class back in 1868, then was sent immediately to join Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer on his summer campaign against the Plains Indians.
If he adored the army, he idolized his commander, General Custer. Hugh explained to her the general's rank was only brevetted to the great man for heroic exploits during the war, but his star was definitely on the rise. And Hugh Phillips's star would ascend right with it and the Seventh Cavalry.
“You should have seen the general at Washita,” Hugh said with his eyes aglow as they sat around his aunt's dinner table one evening. “He split his command into four forces and they rode into old Black Kettle's camp at dawn, cutting off every hope of escape for the savages.”
“Now, Hugh,” Marybelle admonished gently, setting aside the Waterford wine goblet she had been sipping from. “You mustn't frighten us womenfolk with such bloodthirsty tales of red Indians.”
“What do you think of the Cheyenne, Hugh?” Stephanie knew Chase had been captured during that raid, nothing more. He had not wished to speak of it. Understanding his pain and resentment at being dragged back to Boston in chains, she had not pried. But now she wondered if Hugh had seen Chase as a seventeen-year-old prisoner. If so, he gave no indication of it. She dared not reopen old wounds by asking. She would not want Hugh to think her crazy—or still in love with Chase—if she mentioned what Chase had told her of his people. But was what he had described true? Or were the Cheyenne really the savages everyone thought?
Hugh considered her question thoughtfully, as he did every one Stephanie posed to him, a trait he knew pleased her. “They are primitive, of course, but not without their own code of honor. They make dangerous adversaries on the battlefield. Beyond that, I've had no personal dealings with them. The best thing would be for the army to contain the Cheyenne and their Arapaho and Sioux allies far away from miners and settlers.”
“But they held the lands in the West for centuries. Have we the right to just take it from them?”
Before Hugh could answer, her father interjected, “Don't be a ninny, girl. What can an ignorant savage do with fertile soil or gold? He doesn't farm and he doesn't mine. White civilization—good old American enterprise—has the God-given right to use that land. And with the army's help, we'll do it.” He gave her a quelling look that might have indicated he was angry with her defense of Chase Remington's people...or more likely meant that he simply found her romantic altruism bad for business. She had subsided and the topic of conversation changed.
* * * *
“I'm to report to the general in Kentucky next Monday,” Hugh announced the following week as they rode through the park, the Summerfield groom following at a discreet distance.
Stephanie could sense the regret in his voice. “After all you've told me about the general's exploits, I'd think you would be thrilled to finally rejoin him.”
“It will mean leaving you behind. As much as I want to return to active duty, I don't relish being without that smile.” He reached over and touched her cheek gently, bringing forth the desired effect.
When they dismounted by the fountain and let the groom cool their horses, Hugh took her hand in his and said earnestly, “Soon we'll be leaving Kentucky. Bound for the High Plains. Stephanie, the West is incredible. Vast, wild, magnificent!” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, then stopped himself self-consciously. “You must think me an incurable romantic...or a fool.”
“Never a fool, Hugh. As to being incurably romantic, I don't think that's such an awful thing.”
He squeezed her hand gently. “I'd hoped in the past month that you'd come to regard me fondly, Stephanie. I know that I'm not a rich man but my lineage is good and your father has approved of me. I would like to pay you court, with your permission.”
The hesitancy tugged at her heart. Hugh was the polar opposite of Chase, who took whatever he wanted without an instant's hesitation. Blazes! Why did she keep making comparisons between them? Chase was gone and Hugh was here. Chase had deserted her for his savage red brethren. Hugh was steadfast and decent and, she was certain, quite desperately in love with her. But was she in love with him? Or was her heart so bruised and battered that she could never truly love again?
Grow up, young lady. Stephanie could still hear aunt Paulina's sensible admonition. It's a dreadful thing not to become a woman when one ceases to be a girl. She must possess the courage to live again.
“I would like that very much,” she replied to Hugh.
Over the next several months, they exchanged letters regularly. He wrote of the boring routine of camp life in backwater Kentucky. When they were given a special assignment in the Dakota Territory, he painted a vivid picture of the vast herds of buffalo blackening the great plains and even described the imperious yet jovial charm of the Russian Grand Duke Alexis, whom Custer had the honor of squiring on a hunt.
His letters were utterly wonderful. Stephanie read them and pictured in her mind's eye the vastness of a cloudless bowl of blue, which the Cheyenne called the Endless Sky. She saw plains filled with huge shaggy bison, snow-capped mountains and icy clear rivers, all beneath a brilliant beaming sun. The images were her solace through the bleakness of another Boston winter.
When Hugh received leave the following spring, he rushed straight to Boston and asked her to marry him.
Stephanie accepted.
They were wed in a grand Episcopal Church in Baltimore, for Hugh's family was High Church and asked that the ceremony be held in the cathedral. Oddly during the elaborate nuptial mass, Stephanie caught herself fleetingly wondering what the Reverend Jeremiah Remington, stern Congregationalist that he was, would have thought of it. Any memories of his grandson, she forced from her mind, vowing to be a good wife to the handsome man who beamed down at her with a look of complete adoration on his pale handsome face.
Chapter Six
Bighorn Mountains, 1872
Chase stared down at the teeming village below, stretched in a horseshoe configuration with the opening facing east, as was the custom of the People. Every camp he had visited looked the same from a distance, young men practicing with their bows, girls hauling buckets of water, women scraping buffalo hides while old men smoked and prayed and small children laughed and played with toys. Perhaps this time he would find them. Hopefully, he guided his big stallion down the ridge toward the village.
The Elk Society sentries scrutinized him suspiciously but let him ride past. They know I’m a breed, he thought to himself. Dressed in old buckskins and a pair of worn moccasins he had bought from an Arapaho trader, he rode without a saddle in the manner of all horse Indians. Outside of a locket from his mother and Thunderbolt, he had kept little from his old life in Boston, only a small amount of money, which was almost gone now. He had been searching for months. What if they were all dead?
But no. In every camp he had visited they remembered Stands Tall and Red Bead, brother and aunt to Vanishing Grass whose half-blooded son had been taken prisoner by the White Eyes. From all accounts, his family had returned to the mountains from wher
e their Northern Cheyenne relatives had first come south. Tracking down the survivors of the Washita Massacre had not been easy, for Black Kettle's band had scattered to various camps ranging from the Nations to the Yellowstone country.
And so he had gone from one camp to another, not certain of the welcome his white blood would bring. The People's hearts had been hardened against all veho since Sand Creek and Washita. The White Father had broken the Medicine Lodge Treaty and sent his Blue Coats to attack peaceful hunters and burn more villages filled with women and children. Quickly he had learned he must disavow all traces of the white world. He could not look completely Cheyenne, but he could at least abandon hard-soled boots, hats and haircuts. Most camps received him warily but hospitably, offering food and shelter, telling him what they knew of his uncle and great-aunt to aid in his search.
The task was not a simple one for the hunting grounds of the Plains Tribes stretched fifteen hundred miles from the Canadian border to the Staked Plains of Texas. His search was further complicated because the main bodies of Northern and Southern Cheyenne left their large summer encampments every fall, scattering into small bands.
Sooner or later he would find his remaining family. Then what? The question had nagged him when he slept alone beneath the vast canopy of stars. He felt a kinship with the land but could he reestablish his ties with the People?