by Laura Frantz
He felt a twist of something he couldn’t name and didn’t care for. When she approached his desk, he tried to fight the feeling that she nearly always elicited of late and he could no longer shove aside—a wave of pure, unadulterated delight. Her presence seemed to settle his blistering mood, and the intensity of moments before ebbed.
He motioned for an orderly to help her with her cape while another rested her desk on the edge of his own. A whole week he’d been away from her, drilling his men, while she’d sought refuge in the kitchen, turning out one mouth-watering meal after another despite the lack of provisions. Not only this, but it was reported she had been visiting the sick in the infirmary, remembered the names of the least of his men, and had started some sort of a sock distribution campaign.
“Good morning, Colonel McLinn.” The soft slur of her words, coupled with her winsome, warm smile, nearly made him forget where he was.
For a few stunned seconds he groped about for a rationale to explain away her effect on him. He guessed his sympathy for her was simply coloring his judgment. That and the fact he’d been without feminine company for too long. The plain truth was he could never let his feelings go forward, because the sight of her would always remind him that he’d shot her father.
“I’m sorry to call you out of the kitchen.” Back to Bella’s unimaginative rations, he thought wryly.
“I’m ready to transcribe,” she told him, eyes falling to the center of his desk where her father’s journal lay. A flash of something inexplicable crossed her pale face, then skittered away like mist.
Reaching out, he moved a sheaf of papers and buried the book. “I have to interview the Indian prisoners this morning, and I’m in need of an official transcript. But I realize this might be asking too much of you. Major Herkimer could serve in your stead. He sometimes worked with your father.”
“Nay . . . I’ll stay.”
He simply stared at her in relief, expecting more than a simple nay. After Micajah’s unending petition, he could have leaned across the desk and kissed her. Still, he wondered if she might change her mind in the face of the two intimidating captives. Turning to an orderly, he said, “Bring in the two Shawnee.”
“Where would you like me to sit?” she asked, expressive blue eyes sweeping the room with its assortment of benches and chairs.
“Well behind me,” he replied, removing a long, colorful belt from a desk drawer. Seeing her interest, he draped the wide swath of beads over his coat sleeves for her to admire. “It’s wampum.”
“What does it mean?”
“It’s a sort of historical record, keeping account of treaties and battles and the like. This was taken from one of the burned Shawnee villages.”
She reached out a hand to touch the shiny, mysterious pattern of blues and reds and blacks, a bit awed, he thought. “’Tis sacred,” he told her, “and highly prized.”
The door groaned open and they both looked up. A lanky man in buckskins entered, dark hair plaited and clubbed and tied with whang leather, hazel eyes swinging from Cass to Roxanna.
“Miss Rowan, this is Ben Simmons, my principal scout—and translator.”
They exchanged a greeting, and Roxanna seemed surprised when Simmons said, “I was real sorry to hear about your pa. He was a good man—the best.”
Their eyes met briefly in wordless understanding while Cass looked on. Recalling that deadly day nearly locked his voice in his throat. He said with difficulty, “Ben’s the best scout in the Kentucke territory. Only he’s too humble to admit it.”
Simmons flashed him an appreciative look. “That’s some compliment, considering it’s from the finest commanding officer on the frontier.”
“The only one, anyway,” Cass murmured, eyes on the door swinging open again.
Wary, he realized something was amiss even before the orderly took him aside. The older Shawnee—the one who liked to talk—was ill and refusing to leave his pallet, asking for a medicine man. But this perplexing turn of events seemed less significant than watching the interaction of Roxanna Rowan and his favorite scout as they continued their conversation in low tones. He knew Ben Simmons as well as any man, and he sensed his friend had more than a passing interest in the woman who stood before him.
The orderly said tentatively, “Colonel, sir . . . do you still want the other Shawnee brought in?”
“Aye, I do,” he replied absently, his mind churning along with his emotions, neither having to do with the matter at hand.
He crossed to his desk and lay the wampum aside, recalling what he knew about Simmons and his tragic past. Bits and pieces came back to him, gleaned over their two-year acquaintance.
Simmons’s wife and child had been killed by a group of Shawnee raiders several years prior. Hardened as he was to the realities of war, Cass felt his insides twist at the gruesome memory. It had made his own forays into Indian territory all the easier, easing any guilt he felt about desolating the Shawnee. He merely burned their towns and crops, he reasoned. He hadn’t killed their women and children.
Within a few minutes, the sole Shawnee was ushered into the blockhouse, and a hush fell over the room. In the face of so many armed men, Cass asked that his leg irons be removed. Then, like the director of a stage play, he assembled all the players. Roxanna took a seat in back of him yet still near enough to clearly hear Simmons interpret from where he stood. Half a dozen regulars were interspersed about the room, and a guard was posted outside the door.
He glanced at Roxanna again and noticed that her features had leached to the hue of raw linen. Had she never seen an Indian up close, he wondered? Though captive more than two months, the younger Shawnee had lost none of his hauteur but retained an aura of undiminished vitality and extreme hostility. Though he’d grown thinner, he remained one of the finest Indians Fort Endeavor had ever seen.
Cass didn’t blame Roxanna for staring. No doubt the Indian had caught many a Shawnee maiden’s eye in the middle ground. If only he was as communicative as he was commanding. So far he’d not uttered a single meaningful word, save a few flawless English epithets aimed at the guard. This was why Cass had resorted to using wampum. Wampum for words. He had to know who among the British in Detroit was inciting the Shawnee and other tribes to raid the Kentucke settlements. Until he knew, he couldn’t cross the Ohio and quell the growing trouble.
After a tedious half hour, Ben Simmons took Cass aside and told him it was hopeless. It was then that Cass reached for the wampum on his desk. He draped it across one arm, the ends of the belt nearly touching the floor and shining in a kaleidoscope of color. At once the Shawnee stiffened. Cass could feel an unmistakable dislike thread the air between them.
“Tell him the belt will be returned to him when he tells me which Redcoat chiefs are sending the Shawnee south into the settlements to do their fighting for them.”
Simmons translated, and behind them Roxanna leaned over her lap desk. Cass could hear the persistent scratch of her quill as it met paper between the long, tedious silences. After more pointed questions and few answers, Cass called for a break and sent for the doctor downriver at Smitty’s Fort to attend to the older chief.
As the door opened and closed behind the courier, an orderly appeared bearing a cloth-draped wooden tray. ’Twas Bella’s not-so-subtle reminder that he tended to overwork everyone around him, Cass mused. Roxanna rose and took the tray, bringing him a cup of coffee. A cluster of apple tarts crowded a small pewter plate, and he eyed them appreciatively, wondering if she’d made them.
A feeling of wonder—and raw alarm—settled in his chest as he watched her take the second cup and cross the quiet room. Steam swirled around the pewter rim as she set the coffee down on the bench beside the uncommunicative Shawnee. Without a word she motioned that it was meant for him. The fiercely fixed stare that had been unbroken swiveled to take in the offering. For a moment Cass feared the warrior would overturn the bench, coffee and all, and the image of Roxanna’s terrified reaction made him tense. He set his
own untouched cup down on his desk, ready to intervene.
She was reaching into the folds of her dress, and the Shawnee’s ebony eyes followed her every move. Removing something from her pocket, she extended her hand and passed it to the chief, indicating he could put it in his coffee. Ever so slowly he took the small chunk of loaf sugar—perhaps the last in the fort—touched it to his tongue, then dropped it in the pewter cup.
Around the room the regulars were elbowing each other, but Cass didn’t share their amusement. There was something so inexplicably poignant about the scene it crowded out his irritation at her audacity. When she sat back down, Cass tried to pass her his cup. Smiling up at him, she simply shook her head and took an apple tart instead, passing the plate around the too-still room. The Shawnee sat and drank his coffee, his eyes returning to her again and again from some far-off place.
Watching, Cass felt a tingling wariness. He’d erred greatly having her present for the translation. Realizing he might have placed her in danger, he dismissed them all save Roxanna and an orderly. She had pocketed the pastry, he noticed, and was reading over the barren transcript, which he hoped would yield something more substantial tomorrow. He’d have better luck with the older Shawnee if his malady wasn’t serious.
Alone with her, he started to caution her, to reprimand her for a breach of prisoner protocol. But this time, before he could rebuke her, a spasm of guilt checked him. He was often so abrupt with her, upbraiding her nearly as much as he did his men. He made a mental note not to have her present when the Shawnee came again.
“Are we finished, sir, or do you have something else in mind for me to do?”
Her softly spoken question returned him to the present, and he stopped thumbing through a sheaf of papers to look at her again.
“Nothing more,” he said, “till tonight.” Her eyes widened slightly in question, and he added, “You are coming to the wedding, are you not?”
“Oh . . . that.”
“Aye, that,” he said, forcing a smile.
The matter of Dovie and Johnny had been such a simple one to resolve, yet she still seemed surprised by his swift agreement. It wouldn’t do, he’d agreed, to have an illegitimate child when a father was willing and waiting. And the couple did seem to care for one another. Word of the wedding had spread like wildfire about the fort, adding a festive feel. The Redstone women were elated. Dovie would be respectable at long last, Olympia crowed with a sort of envy, and the rest of them would get a fine frolic to boot.
Cass escorted Roxanna to the door and took her cape off a peg. The subtle scent of violets enveloped him as he settled the indigo wool about her shoulders and leaned forward to open the door. They said not a word to each other as they crossed the slippery common, his hand on her elbow to keep her upright. Around them the smithy, magazine, and quartermasters were seething with activity, but he hardly noticed. At some hazy point in the last twenty-four hours, Cecily O’Day had ceased to exist, and he no longer rued her passing.
16
Muted fiddle music could be heard from the east blockhouse, and Roxanna tapped one stocking-clad foot in time to the music. A jig, she guessed, wondering if Dovie was an anxious bride. Behind her, Bella put the finishing touches on her hair, softening the unrelieved black with a length of fragile ecru lace that made it seem snowflakes had fallen and lay frozen amidst her upswept crown of curls. She’d had a bath before the crackling hearth and now felt nearly woozy from its warmth. But for Bella’s chatter.
“It’ll be some miracle if Dovie can keep from losin’ her supper durin’ the ceremony,” she said, setting aside the brush. Turning to the table, she fussed with a sadiron and a petticoat’s stubborn wrinkle. “She’s been awful sick on account o’ that babe.”
“The midwife from Smitty’s Fort gave her some raspberry tea. Maybe she’ll remember to drink some beforehand.”
“I reckon my cherry bounce will do the trick if it don’t. Now close yo’ eyes.”
The excited trill of her tone alarmed more than delighted Roxanna, but she did as bid, squeezing her eyes shut and waiting for the familiar feel of her best linen dress.
“Hold up yo’ arms so I can get it o’er yo’ head without messin’ with yo’ hair.”
The rustle of silk slipping into place made Roxanna’s eyes fly open. Bella began hooking the snug bodice from behind, expression smug. Looking down, Roxanna found herself draped in pale lemon and lace, the luster of the gown catching the candlelight and revealing tiny embellishments of ribbon and rosettes, much like the cockades on the officers’ tricorn hats.
Speechless, she rested careful hands on the lace sash about her waist and took in the lush lines of the skirt, feeling she’d been caught in a delicious dream. But then practicality took over. “Bella, I’m not the bride. Dovie is.”
Clucking, Bella soothed, “I done took care of Dovie. Now turn around so I can see how it fits. I had a time takin’ in the waist, though the hem looks to be just right.”
As Bella bent to search for stray threads and smooth the flounced sleeves, Roxanna allowed herself a forbidden thought. I feel like a bride. After all, yellow was the preferred color for brides in the colonies. Even England. The winsome if wayward notion of a waiting groom—in a Dutch blue Continental coat with a light blue riband running across his chest and a honeymoon in the stone house—worked its spell, and she put a hand on a chair back to steady herself.
“Law, Miz Roxanna, you woolgatherin’ again?”
Again. Lately she’d gotten into the intoxicating habit of daydreaming, and Bella, astute as ever, was quick to call it what it was.
“Yes,” she confessed, aware that the telling flush she saw in the mirror had nothing to do with the gown and everything to do with him.
“Mind tellin’ me who you thinkin’ ’bout?”
“Abby,” she said in a little rush, for there was some truth to it.
“Aw, I hear she’s sick with that fever goin’ round. She should be better come tomorrow. It lasts ’bout three days then goes.”
“I brought her some broth earlier. She took a few spoonfuls.”
“Now, never you mind about that child. She be fine. I’m goin’ to bring her a little weddin’ cake later on.” Bella studied her with a motherly eye. “You still rememberin’ that promise you made to yo’ ma? The one ’bout not marryin’ a soldier? She didn’t say nothin’ ’bout dancin’ with ’em, did she?”
“No,” Roxanna answered. “But I can’t dance, remember.”
Bella examined a flounce and acted like she hadn’t heard. “Now I wouldn’t let any o’ them regulars tromp on my toes. But any o’ them officers would do fine.” She glanced at the mantel clock and grimaced. “Best get on over to the kitchen and bring out my bounce.”
Roxanna watched her go, a tight feeling in her chest. Oh, Lord, it is a wedding I want. And I do feel like a bride tonight, albeit an old one.
Most of her friends in Virginia had been wed by the age of eighteen. And she’d stood up with one after another, soul-sick with longing, just like she was about to do with Dovie.
Going to the corner trunk, Roxanna rummaged for her best handkerchief, pushing aside a vial of violet water till she found one of fine linen bearing her mother’s initials. Before she straightened, a decisive knock sounded on the door, and another knot ripened in her already tense stomach. Remembering the last time she’d been surprised with not Bella but Colonel McLinn, she opened the door carefully to find his towering frame filling it completely.
All the air went out of her as he cleared the lintel log and stepped inside. “I’ve come to escort you to the wedding, if you’re ready.”
If . . . If you only knew.
Their eyes met for a fleeting instant, in which she tried to take in as much of him as possible, thinking it might stem her perennial need to look again. She’d already made up her mind to leave the festivities early if she could, as soon after the ceremony as possible. She needed some solitude to right her wayward heart with a cold dose of
reason. Since Papa’s passing, she sensed she was trying to fill the great void in her life with a man, any man—even Cass. And he, feeling intensely responsible for her, was determined to do his duty. Like escorting her tonight.
He reached for her cape hanging by the door with an endearing familiarity, and they went out into a night of wind and snow without another word. And there, waiting in the blockhouse before the blazing hearth, stood an entirely altered Dovie in royal purple brocade, her hair pinned up like Roxanna’s, looking happy if wan.
Casting a glance about, Roxanna realized McLinn was to stand up with Johnny just as she stood with Dovie, but they were all standing—a hundred fifty or more soldiers and the Redstone women, even Bella and Hank—as there weren’t nearly enough chairs.
She searched for a pastor or magistrate, but there was only a newly enlisted regular by the name of Graham Greer making his way through the throng, bearing a small black Bible. With a start she realized he was the official.
The ceremony was as short as decency allowed, and she felt benumbed by its familiarity. Dearly beloved, indeed. She’d heard it a dozen times or better. Her favorite part came when Graham Greer intoned, “You may kiss the bride.” Johnny did, long and lusty, to the rousing “huzzahs” of every man present save Colonel McLinn. She was a bit taken aback by the couple’s show of passion, but the colonel grinned broadly, a hint of extra color showing beneath his winter tan.
At last the dancing and cherry bounce could begin in earnest. An ear-splitting reel complete with fiddles, fife, and drum rocked the large room, and immediately Micajah Hale stood before her. She smiled and shook her head in polite refusal, unable to make herself heard above the music and foot stomping. Bowing, he left her alone and commandeered Mariah. Seeing another officer heading her way, she began backing up toward the kitchen.
She waited till the colonel led the second set with Dovie before making her escape. Out the back door she went, wishing she’d brought her dulcimer. As it was, she had no excuse to stay on. She couldn’t dance, yet the dress she wore seemed a vivid calling card to do just that, and she didn’t like all the attention.