The Colonel's Lady

by Laura Frantz

  Would that this traitorous talk could vanish as easily.

  Eyes fixed on the fire, he court-martialed each of his men in his mind. Micajah Hale, though cross-grained and vain, he trusted with his life. Patrick Stewart was too lazy to make much of an enemy—and too busy wenching to turn loyalist spy. As for Jehu and Joram—the Herkimer brothers, both captains—he’d safely turned his back to them more than once. They’d served as fellow Life Guards before reenlisting under him at Washington’s urging.

  His remaining officers seemed unswervingly loyal, intelligent, and refined, expert marksmen and swordsmen like himself. Not once had they given him pause. As for the rest, he kept them in order with verbal threats and frequent lashings. They were a rough, ragtag lot as regulars went, but he liked most of them and they in turn respected him.

  He opened the journal, recalling how Roxanna had done the same, only her hands had been shaking. He’d gladly take the blame for her trembling and her tears, racing down the line as he’d done and scaring her out of her usual composure. She hadn’t known it was his usual way of doing things—with a hint of danger to ease the boredom and keep the men sharp and on edge.

  August 18. Another courier missing. Cass down with malaria.

  August 23. Suspicions grow. A crucial document concerning the Ohio campaign is missing. Hesitant to tell Cass just yet.

  September 4. Rec’d letter from Roxie. God be praised—the westbound courier came through. Cass preparing for winter campaign.

  The terse words—and the scrivener who’d so carefully penned them—returned his grief to him tenfold. He read on with wet eyes, a swelling remorse in his chest. But ’twas more than this, truly. ’Twas a feeling of his own impending doom, born out of an Irish sixth sense that he couldn’t shake. He’d felt it shadow him since coming to Kentucke, and he felt it now, pressing down on him like a leaden weight.

  September 17. News out of Detroit troubling. The British are paying even larger bounties for settlement scalps and supplying tribes with weapons and munitions to drive the Kentuckians out.

  October 6. Official papers not as I left them. Documents seem to be disturbed. Feel a foreboding . . . must tell Cass.

  Cass read each entry through once, twice, three times, increasingly perplexed. Richard Rowan had not been a man whose suspicions were easily aroused. Meticulous, exacting, of excellent memory and sound judgment, Richard Rowan hadn’t the time or temperament to dream up danger.

  At the back of the journal, Cass noticed there were several missing pages and then a final entry almost eerie in its brevity. In the same fine hand was written:

  Psalm 140. Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man: preserve me from the violent man; which imagine mischiefs in their heart; continually are they gathered together for war.

  He shut the words away and stared into the hearth’s fire. The matter was imminently simple. If Richard Rowan thought there was an enemy within fort walls, then there was an enemy.

  14

  In the dank winter’s chill, Roxie knitted as Bella peered closer in the dim confines of the tiny cabin. “Them baby things for you or Dovie?”

  “Bella!”

  Bella chuckled, her dark face lit with amused mischief as her bony fingers caressed the tiny yellow cap and stockings. “No need to get uppity now. There’s just all kinds of talk swirlin’ since Colonel McLinn abandoned his men at maneuvers and come to yo’ cabin like he did. You know what folks are startin’ to call you, don’t you?” She darted a sly look her way. “ ‘The Colonel’s Lady.’ ”

  Roxanna returned to her knitting, trying to keep any surprise or pleasure from showing on her face. “He simply offered me an apology for frightening me.”

  “Some say he’s smitten and was offerin’ a proposal.”

  “So who are you going to believe, Bella?”

  “I believe,” she said with a smug smile, “that he was makin’ you an apology, but what he was wantin’ to do was offer you a proposal.”

  “I beg to differ,” she said, feigning disinterest. “He doesn’t seem the matrimonial sort.”

  “I ain’t talkin’ ’bout that kind of proposal.”

  Tying off the loose strings of the knitted cap, Roxanna refused to take the bait. “Since his apology, I’ve hardly seen him except for meals. That should shush any nonsense about his being smitten.”

  “He’s been drillin’ his men nearly night and day and ain’t had no time for dictatin’ to you. Hank says come spring he’s goin’ to push hard into the middle ground against them Redcoats and redskins and is gettin’ in fightin’ shape to do it. Maybe even go as far as Detroit and scare ol’ Hair-Buyer Hamilton out o’ his lair.”

  “Sounds ambitious,” she said, thinking of all he’d confided right here in her cabin.

  Had he changed his mind about resigning his commission since she’d given him Papa’s journal? Or had he simply shared his plans with her to see what she’d say? She felt such a surge of curiosity, borne out of a week’s waiting, that she’d almost followed him out the sally port to the stone house but an hour ago. The fact that she’d yet to plead Dovie and Johnny’s case gave her a ready excuse. If she showed up on his doorstep in the winter dark, he’d have had little recourse but to let her in. But Bella had been her salvation, coming in just as she’d put on her cape.

  Restless, she watched Bella’s gnarled hands hitch the teakettle to the crane over the flames. Getting up, she set out the thistle cup and saucer and a plain pewter mug. “Sassafras or Bohea?”

  “Sass,” Bella replied. “I can’t stomach that Bohea without sweetenin’, and we just run out.”

  Roxanna poked around in a corner cupboard for some sugar of her own. “A supply convoy’s due any day, isn’t it?”

  “Overdue. We’ll be eatin’ powder and lead shortly.”

  “Not with all the game in the woods, surely.”

  “There ain’t nearly as much game as there used to be. That’s one of the reasons them savages are so fired up. We’re sittin’ on their sacred huntin’ grounds and drivin’ all their eats away.”

  Roxanna’s thoughts turned to the Shawnee in the guardhouse, encased in leg irons yet still able to raise the hair on the back of her neck. She wouldn’t ask Bella if she knew the colonel’s plans for them. It wasn’t any of her business, and she didn’t want to encourage Bella to gossip or relay anything Hank might have told her in confidence. Nor would she dare mention a spy. But she couldn’t stop herself from asking about something a bit more benign.

  Taking a seat, she said quietly, “Bella, tell me about the stone house.”

  “The stone house? If I tell you, mebbe you’ll want to be up there on the hill.” She paused, lips pursed in contemplation. “I been ponderin’ that. I heard all them rumors ’bout General Washington and Kitty Greene dancin’ the night away for hours on end back east. Here lately I been worryin’ mebbe the colonel will follow suit and try to make you his mistress.”

  Roxanna swallowed down a too-hot sip of tea as if to brace herself. “That’s utter nonsense about Colonel McLinn. And Kitty Greene and General Washington. He’s a happily married man who simply has a penchant for dancing. I believe we were talking about the stone house.”

  “All right, then,” Bella grunted. “What exactly do you want to know?”

  The question was tempting as treacle. The stone house had assumed such lofty proportions in Roxanna’s mind that she’d begun to think of it as McLinn’s castle. ’Twas so grand, so out of place in the wilderness. So reminiscent of home. “I was just . . . well, wondering what’s beyond that handsome front door.”

  “In the foyer, you mean?” At Roxanna’s nod, Bella got a rare glint in her eye and seemed to forget all about her tea. “Law, it’s like steppin’ into somebody’s dream. Don’t know if I can do it justice. First there’s a fine walnut floor runs all the way to double back doors. And a curved staircase as high as the heavens along one wall. On the third floor is a ballroom, long and fancy, with painted paper walls—sorta lavender an
d pale green flowers and leaves. But my favorite room’s the kitchen. It’s got runnin’ water piped from a spring beneath the house and lots of clean, white cupboards, pretty as you please.”

  Hearing it didn’t quell Roxanna’s curiosity as she’d hoped but stoked it into a still-sharper yearning. Her knitting needles stilled. “And the study or sitting room . . . does it have an abundance of books and wingback chairs?”

  The startled look on Bella’s face would have been amusing if Roxanna hadn’t been so serious. “Law, Miz Roxanna, did McLinn let you in? Or you been peekin’ in them winders?”

  “Of course not.”

  “The study’s the room the colonel spends the most time in, lest he’s sick in bed with the ague or down here at headquarters. It has all them books and chairs you’re talkin’ ’bout. How’d you know?”

  Bending over her basket, Roxanna took out a skein of yarn dyed a deep indigo. “I’ve a good imagination, is all. And the colonel’s house reminds me of our own back in Virginia, only ours wasn’t nearly so grand. ’Twas simple stone and had a sitting room with a few books and a fine fireplace.”

  “Did it have a gros point carpet and a sugar chest with a little key?”

  Roxanna cast a wistful look her way. “Nay, just some braided rugs and Windsor chairs.”

  There was a conspiratorial hush, and then Bella said in a near whisper, “I can sneak you in—show you around—when the colonel’s gone.”

  For a moment Roxanna almost gave in. Then she thought of coming face-to-face with Cass in the confines of his house, uninvited and speechless. The excruciating prospect nearly made her squirm. “Best wait till the master of the house invites me.”

  “McLinn don’t invite nobody! Well, maybe his officers now and again.”

  “What about those river travelers you’ve been telling me about?”

  “The ones without lice and the like? There’s just a few of them, mostly military men. He puts them up, and me and Hank dance attendance till they’re gone again.” With a quick grin she bent down and lifted the hem of her homespun skirt, removing something from her shoe. Taking it out, she flashed it in the candlelight. “A gold piece from General Hand. He give it to me just before he went back east awhile ago.”

  Her delight was so contagious Roxanna chuckled. “Then you’ll no doubt welcome him back again.”

  “Oh, he’ll be comin’ round again once the Injun trouble dies down. Hand and McLinn get on like a house afire. He and General Washington are the ones who sent the colonel out west in the first place. Word is they consider guardin’ the frontier a plum assignment even if the colonel don’t.”

  “I imagine he wishes he was back east fighting in the war—or still serving as a Life Guard.”

  “Better that than fightin’ redskins and Redcoats right here, that’s for sure.” Giving in to a wide yawn, Bella drained her cup. “Enough talk about McLinn. What are you goin’ to do?”

  The simple question seemed to weight the air between them. For a few seconds Roxanna was at a loss for words. How could she explain her changing heart to Bella without sounding smitten? “I don’t rightly know. And until I do, I need to keep busy. I’d like to help put in a garden.” Roxanna glanced at her trunk, recalling how hard it had been to get here in the first place. The memory of hovering at the mouth of the cave and looking down at the finely fletched arrow in the flatboat captain’s back returned with cold, crimson clarity. “I’m praying about it all.”

  Bella’s face twisted in a grimace. “Law, but it’ll take a heap of prayin’ to get out o’ this place. Mebbe you should start a weekly meetin’ with them Redstone women and pray us all out o’ here.”

  Roxanna sighed. “I’ve already tried, but they have, um, other matters to attend to.”

  “All them men, you mean,” Bella nearly growled. Giving the fire a final poke, she went out.

  The twin candles on the mantel flickered from an icy draft, returning Roxanna’s thoughts once again to the stone house. No doubt there were few drafts on the hill. With walls two feet thick, Colonel McLinn would be warm indeed sitting in his wingback chair before his own solitary fire.

  Pulling herself out of her chair, she crossed the room and peered through the shuttered window, glad Papa’s cabin had been so perfectly placed. From here she could easily see the stone house over the fort’s northwest pickets. Tiny pinpricks of golden light limned the two first-floor windows. The study, she guessed. Leaning her head against the cold casement, she gave in to the temptation to think about him again.

  Since Ambrose, she’d resigned herself to joining the family line of spinsters—those six Scottish sisters on her father’s side who had one broken betrothal after another, or none at all. Perhaps her growing attraction for Cass, as she’d begun to think of him, hinged on a sort of desperation. With him she felt girlish, attractive, alive. If only because she was one of the few eligible females within fort walls.

  Pushing away from the window, she tried to think of a Scripture—anything—to supplant the intense image of him burned into her brain. Clear blue eyes hard as marbles one minute, then without warning, thawing and turning tender. Hair so glossy it couldn’t be confined in a tidy queue but like red silk slipped through. Continental coattails flapping and calling attention to every heart-stopping detail of all the rest of him. Little wonder settlement women risked danger and hung about the gates in warmer weather, or so Bella said.

  At least she’d not be here to witness that spectacle, thank heavens. A telltale warmth crept into her cheeks.

  Why did she suddenly wish she would be?

  15

  Cass eyed Richard Rowan’s journal where it lay on the middle of his desk, surrounded by such a stack of papers it was barely visible. Across from him stood Micajah Hale, tricorn hat twirling in his gloved hands in a rare moment of tension. Try as he might, Cass couldn’t keep his mind on the major’s attempts at conversation. Hale was hemming and hawing in such an infuriating way Cass was tempted to bring his fist down atop the polished wood to startle him into coherency. But he was little better this morning, he mused, his mind taking myriad rabbit trails yet always returning to the half-buried journal and its cryptic entries.

  Finally he could stand it no longer. Leaning forward slightly, he leveled his senior officer with a less than gracious gaze. “Blast it, Micajah! Come to the point!”

  Micajah’s composure crumpled like a spent cartridge. “With all due respect, Colonel, you don’t make it easy for a man to state his case.”

  “Seems you could have stated it a quarter of an hour ago when you first walked in. Miss Rowan will be here soon, so I advise you to start talking.”

  A tide of red inflamed Micajah’s fair face as he sat down hard in the nearest chair. “Miss Rowan is the very reason I’m standing here making a fool of myself.”

  At this, Cass came to full attention. The furious fire that hardly seemed to thaw the blockhouse’s chill now seemed to burn his backside. Reaching up, he ran a cold finger around the overly warm linen folds of his stock. Tight as a noose it felt.

  Breath pluming in the bitter air, Micajah finally said, “I’ve come to ask your permission to court Miss Rowan.”

  Cass leveled him with another hard look. “You’ve been drinking.”

  The petulant jaw tightened. “I’m stone sober and dead serious.”

  “I commend you for coming to me about the matter—but why would you?”

  Standing, Micajah jammed his hat on his head, only to take it off again. “Why? Because your former adjutant, her father, made you her guardian of sorts.”

  Aye, guardian indeed. Cass rued he’d ever shared Richard Rowan’s dying request—with Micajah or even Roxanna. Guilt drove a typically closemouthed man to stupid confidences. Yet here his second-in-command stood, offering a sensible solution to his dilemma. Micajah could well woo and wed her, thus relieving him of his own responsibility to both her and her father. And in so doing, Cass could resign his commission and return to Virginia now or Irela
nd at war’s end, without so much as another guilty pang.

  Yet he heard himself saying quietly and with conviction, “You’re not the man for her, Micajah.”

  Stiffening, the major resumed sitting, his expression an unattractive mix of defiance and disbelief. “I say, sir, you’re making this harder than it ought to be. Why not let Miss Rowan decide?”

  “Why? Because she’s grieving and not likely to make a wise decision where you’re concerned.”

  “But—”

  “If that’s not reason enough, let’s look at the facts. You’ve two broken betrothals and a wandering eye. Although your enlistment is about to end, you have few prospects and a mountain of debt.”

  Twisting in his chair, Micajah seemed about to have an apoplectic fit. “With all due respect, Cass, you’d do well to look to your own situation before maligning mine.”

  Ignoring this, Cass continued, his Irish lilt intensifying in his irritation. “Miss Rowan is pure, intelligent, sensitive, and extremely religious.”

  Everything you’re not, he didn’t add.

  A satisfied smile slid over the major’s flushed face as if they’d reached some sort of agreement. “Aye, she is indeed—all the qualifications for a fine wife. I’ve often thought the right match would improve my lot in life . . . yet you’d interfere.”

  There was a peevishness to his plea that Cass didn’t like, and it only hardened his resolve. Standing, he looked over the major’s head to a sole window, catching a glimpse of Roxanna crossing the frozen common.

  He said with sudden finality, “I’m assigning you to a woodcutting detail till you can clear your head of her.”

  The air was so taut with tension it seemed to snap. From the look on Micajah’s face, Cass might as well have said he was court-martialing him. The major spun away without a word, nearly colliding with the orderlies and the object of their heated exchange as she came in. Cass noticed the look that passed between them and searched for something that might indicate Roxanna’s attraction for him. He found her greeting merely polite, and Micajah’s a bit too hearty.