The Colonel's Lady

by Laura Frantz

  The home she no longer had.

  When land taxes had come due and Papa’s soldier’s pay came late, the debts had mounted and the creditors had come . . . Shrugging the painful memory aside, Roxanna tried to dismiss her homesickness, but it made her nearly ill with longing. She’d loved every stone of that house, unassuming as it was. It had been the only home she’d ever known.

  In this dim, dismal fort, she couldn’t forget Old Orchard, as Papa called their former farm, its expansive windows gracing every wall and drawing the outdoors in, every room resplendent with light whatever the season. Here a loophole just big enough to ram a rifle barrel through had to suffice, the danger was so deep. Aye, this place was fraught with danger and a hint of mystery, the least of which was her father’s sudden death.

  9

  She couldn’t sleep a wink between missing Papa and considering the coming confrontation with the colonel. Sometime during the night she plucked her dulcimer from the mantel and sat as close to the fire as she dared, the flannel of her nightgown hardly warming her. Her hair was loose and hung like a mourning shawl about her slumped shoulders as she softly played, casting glances at Pa’s open Bible. If she kept her mind on both the Bible and the music, she’d be all right, even in the frigid darkness with soldiers and Indians right outside her door.

  Colonel McLinn’s fine house was too far away for comfort. Though it was less than a stone’s throw from the fort’s west wall, she felt they were a continent apart. She wished he was inside this fort with the rest of them, perhaps because she craved the security of Papa’s presence. There had always been something so solid and enduring about her father . . . The irony of it stopped her cold. Thus far there’d been no enduring men in her life—not her father, certainly not Ambrose—and no promise that there ever would be. Why would Colonel McLinn be any different?

  Forehead furrowing, she looked down at the polished walnut of her instrument, admiring the tiny cut leaf pattern fashioned by Papa’s own hand. His gift to her, he said, to while away the long winter hours. She stroked the strings as quietly as she could, mindful of the sleeping soldiers on all sides of her. “Barbara Allen” had been one of Papa’s favorite tunes, and she thumbed the notes, tears spilling onto the tops of her fingers. But this was a good grieving. Music, like Scripture, soothed one’s soul. She continued on, pouring her aching heart into the music, each note becoming a thing of beauty in the firelit cabin.

  Long before daylight, she secured a copper tub from Bella and heated bucket after bucket of water. The tiny cabin was soon as steamy as a midsummer’s day, and a cake of rose-geranium soap was taken from her trunk.

  Benumbed, she let Bella fuss with her, heating curling tongs so that her hair fell from the back of her head in ebony spirals to her shivering shoulders. She felt like she was going to a ball, but it was only Colonel McLinn she was to see. Bella removed her corded linen dress from the clothespress, and then, wearing French stays that seemed to stifle any remaining emotion and prop her up, Roxanna sat before the fire and waited for Bella to finish weaving a blue ribbon in her hair.

  “Law, Miz Roxanna, you look good enough to eat,” Bella exclaimed, clucking over her like a mother hen. “Reminds me o’ my days seein’ to fancy folk in Philadelphia before the war broke out.”

  “Were you a lady’s maid, Bella?”

  “Once upon a time I was, before I come down in the world to a mere washerwoman.”

  “Who did you work for?”

  “Well, I was turned out o’ the Eustaces’ mansion a few years ago. They rightly suspected me o’ bein’ a Patriot and were afraid they’d be accused o’ forsakin’ their Tory leanin’s. But they was good folks. They freed me after they got religion.”

  “How did you meet Hank?”

  A hint of a smile touched her lips. “I took up washin’ for General Washington’s troops the same time Hank joined the rebel army. He’d been with the British first and got his freedom, then saw servin’ with them was just another sort o’ slavery.” She set the curling tongs aside to cool and dug in her pocket, producing a small, cracked hand mirror. “I’m glad you don’t own a mournin’ dress. You’d look just awful in black.”

  Roxanna took the mirror reluctantly, eyes widening at the sight of her elaborately coiffed hair. “Maybe we shouldn’t take such pains—”

  “Now hush. Do you want to get out o’ these woods or don’t you?”

  Roxanna looked at her in surprise. She hadn’t said a word about her situation, but Papa always vowed her every feeling was written on her face. Did Bella suspect she hadn’t a shilling to her name? And no relatives to turn to?

  “You won’t have to plead yo’ cause long before Colonel McLinn, bein’ a lady and all. Hatin’ this place like he does, he might just take you east himself.”

  This startling thought did little to ease her. Indeed, her angst seemed to double at Bella’s words as she pondered her predicament. Here she sat in the middle of Indian-infested wilderness, with the river she’d just come down frozen hard as a brick, and she must now go begging. Mortification seeped into her very soul as she anticipated pleading her case before the proud colonel.

  Bella eyed her with grim sympathy. “You want me to go wi’ you, Miz Roxanna? Or just announce you?”

  She stood breathless in her too-tight stays. “Neither.” Making a fool of herself in front of McLinn was bad enough. She’d not beg before Bella too.

  Father in heaven, please prop me up.

  Cass pored over the papers on his desk by the light of a dozen candles situated just so against the early morning gloom. But his mind wasn’t on the stack of missives from Richmond, important though they were. Some had sat waiting the six weeks he’d been on the winter campaign against the Shawnee and British. Nay, even longer, since the malaria had struck and his second-in-command had seen to things in his stead.

  He didn’t like to let correspondence linger any more than he liked his own to sit on Virginia’s end as it so often did. But he had more important matters to attend to just now. Like the fifty prisoners in ball and chain just beyond the blockhouse door.

  And Roxanna Rowan.

  Running a hand over his jaw, he rued his lack of rest. She—nay, the locket—had kept him up long past midnight. And then, when he did sleep, he’d awakened to see it lying on his bedside table, the firelight playing off of it so that it glinted and tempted him to take another look. He’d resisted the urge to study that unfamiliar face, not liking what happened to him when he did.

  He should have returned the locket to her in the kitchen when he’d found her after breakfast yesterday morning. But the timing hadn’t been right, and timing was everything, at least where she was concerned. He was out of his ken dealing with a grief-stricken daughter, composed as she was. There was something about her that made him want to tread as lightly as a skittish colt on cracked river ice—mostly because he was to blame for her fragile state.

  Leaning back in his chair, he chewed his cheek as the clock struck seven. Bella was likely in the kitchen making an abomination of breakfast by now. He tried not to recall the fine coffee, feather-light pancakes, crisp bacon, and subsequent spike in morale among his men yesterday after a good meal—or the fact that Roxanna Rowan had looked at home in that kitchen. He hated to take it away from her, but he had no choice. He’d not rest till he’d put her out of this wretched place.

  “Colonel, sir?” The door opened and the orderly appeared, a willowy shadow behind him. Cass stood as Roxanna entered, struck by the lush lines of her pressed gown and the gloss of her hair as it cascaded over her shoulders in three faultless curls. Bella’s work, surely.

  He gestured to a chair. “Please, have a seat.”

  Taking the chair he offered, she sat on the edge of it, her downcast eyes sweeping the enormous desk strewn with maps and spyglass and papers. In the candlelight, he could see faint shadows beneath her eyes that suggested a night bereft of rest, much like his own.

  She looked up just then and gave him a tim
orous smile, her eyes a flash of ocean blue behind their fringe of black lashes. The effect was so winsome yet so artless he felt the heat rise from his neck to his temples. Time to take command of this tenuous situation, he reminded himself. But how to begin?

  He sat down and leaned back in his chair, wishing Roxanna Rowan was a soldier and he merely had to issue an order and she’d disappear to do his bidding. Marking time, he began slowly and carefully, inviting her to jump in. “I want to talk about your future plans . . .”

  She squared her shoulders, hands folded in her lap. “Yes, of course.”

  “Bella tells me you are doing better.”

  “Bella is very kind.” She swallowed and looked past him to the elaborate clock across the room with its silver-plated hands and bold numerals. “I must leave this place, of course. But with the Ohio River frozen . . .”

  “There are other ways to travel, Miss Rowan.”

  She darted a look at him. “Through the wilderness, you mean?”

  “Aye, I could assign a contingent of soldiers to escort you to Virginia.”

  “But the weather . . . and the Indians,” she began, knotting her hands in her lap and looking down at them. “Truly, ’tis more than this. You see, when the Indians raided the flatboat, I lost my indispensable—”

  “Your . . . indispensable?”

  She flushed. “My handbag—it fell into the river. I have no funds to travel.”

  He leaned forward. “You have your father’s pay, which I gladly give you today. And the journey would be of no expense. But,” he admitted, pushing a paperweight atop a pile of correspondence, “it would be . . . complicated.”

  “Fraught with danger, you mean.” When she met his eyes again, he realized they were even bluer than his own.

  “Aye,” he said.

  “With the warring Shawnee.”

  “Don’t forget the British.”

  Her shoulders sagged a bit, and one curl spiraled down over the rich fabric of her bodice when she tilted her head. “Did you know my father well, Colonel?”

  The unexpected question seemed sharp as a saber tip. He fixed his eyes on the buffalo fur hanging on the wall across the room and said, “Your father spent nearly every waking hour sitting in that chair, taking down all I told him. I suppose I did.”

  “Then you must know he lost his wife—my mother—last year?”

  “Aye.”

  “I only mention it because I have no near relatives.”

  “Not one?”

  “Some distant relations in Scotland. But with the war on, the sea is hardly safe for travel.” She lowered her eyes again, and he sensed her profound dismay at all the doors slamming shut before her.

  He made himself look away from her tense face. Hadn’t there been some business about a man—a betrothal? Like a dream slowly remembered at daylight, he recalled her father’s displeasure. Richard hadn’t liked the man who’d pursued her. Liked him so little, in fact, that he’d shared his reservations with Cass himself. What was the scoundrel’s name? Abe? Amos? Adam?

  Ambrose.

  The clock struck eight o’clock so loud and long it prevented him from speaking for several moments. Finally he asked quietly, “You have no sweetheart? No intended?”

  Immediately he regretted the question. She flushed and seemed to flounder under his scrutiny, her translucent skin turning scarlet. “I—I did. But the betrothal was broken. I meant to tell my father when I came here . . .”

  The sudden silence turned excruciating.

  “Say no more, Miss Rowan.” He got up and went to a corner table where a portable writing desk rested. Lifting it off its stand, he came to her and placed it in her lap.

  “Your father’s lap desk,” he said, yet knew he didn’t need to.

  The telling emotion on her pale face reassured him she’d not forgotten. She wrapped her hands around it almost lovingly. Steeling himself against his own grief, he leaned against his desk, crossed his arms, and looked down at the planks in the floor, affording her some privacy.

  Her voice was a whisper. “You’re giving it to me?”

  Aye, he nearly said, sympathy gaining the upper hand. As quick as the thought came, he said instead, “It comes with a proposition.”

  She looked up warily, luminous eyes assessing him so intently it seemed she could peer clear to his soul. He wanted to squirm like a schoolboy but managed to say, “I am, as you know, in need of a scrivener.”

  “You are more in need of a cook, I should think,” she returned softly.

  He raised an eyebrow and continued on, weighing the wisdom of her words. “’Twill be difficult to function without your father. There are endless dispatches, treaties, and correspondence to see to, and most of my men are common soldiers, unable to read or write. My officers, though lettered, are needed elsewhere. What say ye, Miss Rowan?”

  She looked down at the lap desk, her hands caressing the mahogany tambour top as if she was toying with the temptation of lifting the lid and peeking inside. “Sir, I cannot possibly replace my father.”

  He worked hard to keep his impatience down. “No one can replace him, Miss Rowan. But he once told me that he taught you all he knew and your writing hand is as fine as his own.”

  She nodded thoughtfully and rested her hands atop the waxed wood. “He considered it part of my schooling—before sending me away to Miss Pringle’s Academy, that is. But a female scrivener in a fort full of men—”

  “There is Bella, don’t forget.” And the Redstone women, he didn’t say—who would soon be on their way.

  “Yes, Bella,” she echoed, and then her lovely face turned entreating. “But you can’t be serious.”

  “Deadly serious,” he replied, then nearly winced at his wording.

  She looked so perplexed he nearly backed down. But what else was he going to do with her? Send her packing? Hold a frolic so some settlement yahoo could woo and wed her? Move her downriver to Smitty’s Fort?

  He expelled a ragged breath. “Say you will, Miss Rowan. At least until I can send for a replacement scrivener in spring.”

  When she didn’t respond, he circled her chair and sat back down, the desk between them. Her nearness was nearly as unnerving as his offer. For a moment he forgot just what he’d asked her, distracted by her alluring scent. Clean linen . . . talc . . . violets. It nearly made him groan. Cecily had been all satin and spice. He cleared his throat.

  Her head came up. “Just till spring?”

  “Aye, spring,” he answered, sensing she was thawing. “By then the Ohio River will be navigable and the war might be won, leaving you free to sail to Scotland. Or seek a position in the colonies.” Or marry, he mused.

  She leaned forward slightly, the backdrop of firelight casting them in an intimate circle. Her fingers skimmed the desktop. She seemed to be lost in the treasure on her lap.

  “I promised your father . . .” he began. At this, she seemed to almost flinch, but he continued slowly, his every word like a vow. “I promised him I would take care of you. And I take any and all promises I make very seriously.”

  She looked down at the lap desk again, perhaps imagining doing the same work her father had done, he guessed. He willed her to open it and examine the writing implements inside, the side drawers for paper, the containers of ink and sand.

  Instead she asked, “When would I begin?”

  He smiled for the first time, hope rising and crowding out the tightness in his chest. “Tomorrow. January 3.”

  “Nay,” she said quietly, looking away.

  The shadow crept back into his soul. “’Tis too soon.”

  Reaching her arms around the lap desk, she hugged it closer. “I need sufficient time to think—pray about things first.”

  He merely nodded, remembering the locket. Should he return it to her now? He began to reach inside his coat pocket then stopped. Would a woman want a likeness of herself? Aye, a vain woman. Vain she was not. Perhaps the lap desk was enough for now.

  “There’s
another cabin available should you decide you want to move there,” he told her. Away from the memory of your father, he thought.

  If only he could do the same.

  Even now he felt the chill of the woods, the snow on his boots, and relived the fatal moment he’d fired his musket and Richard Rowan had crumpled in the clearing. A thousand times he’d fired that shot in memory, both asleep and awake, as if attempting to change what he’d done.

  How long before one of his rum-soaked men spilled his terrible secret? How long before he could bear to tell her himself?

  The Irish lilt of his voice thickened slightly when he said, “And how much time might you—and the Almighty—need?”

  “I shall ask Him,” she said softly, rising gracefully despite the bulk of the desk in her arms. “And then I will tell you my decision.”

  He might have been amused if the situation hadn’t been so serious. Taking the desk from her, he walked her to the door. “Then I shall anxiously await your heavenly answer.”

  An orderly helped carry the lap desk to the cabin that was solely hers, if she wanted it to be. As they walked across the parade ground, she glanced at the empty structure by the officer’s barracks that Colonel McLinn had mentioned and weighed the wisdom of moving. The garrison hummed with activity this morning, men with muskets guarding the herd of prisoners behind a rail fence that was attached to some half-face shelters at the far west end. More soldiers were tending fires and stirring huge kettles of mush as they prepared to serve breakfast to the captives.

  Roxanna walked slowly, eyes on the men trapped behind that fence, still in ball and chain. How did they sleep or do anything at all? The Indians still looked as proud as when they’d marched past her Christmas Eve—seeming impervious to the cold, buried in buffalo robes, while the British soldiers shivered in their scarlet uniforms, pale faces pinched.

  “What will happen to these men?” she asked the orderly who hefted her desk.

  “They’ll soon be marched to Virginny,” he replied around a mouthful of tobacco. “All but two of them redskins.”