by Jamie Carie
* * *
HENRY YAWNED FOR the third time, looked over to Samuel and nodded, his eyes watering. “Yes, well, dawn comes early.”
Samuel grasped for some topic to keep the man from bed, to keep himself from having to climb those attic stairs.
Julian rose and stretched, giving Samuel a stern look. Then he took a couple of steps toward their host and stretched out his hand. “Thank you, sir. For the dinner and a bed for the night. I know I will sleep well not being in the open as we’ve been.” He turned, gave Samuel one last long disapproving look, and made for the bedroom assigned to him.
Samuel heaved a sigh and stood. Maybe he should go to the outhouse and hang out there for a bit. Heaven knew after drinking so much tea he likely would be climbing up and down that rickety ladder all night. But no. Time to face the music of a lie that had sounded so sweet when he’d told it. He had no one to blame but himself and his own foolishness. He nodded good-night toward Henry, then took hold of the ladder.
The loft was dark, which was good. He could just make out Isabelle’s form under the blanket, the small rise and fall of her chest. Now, if he could just get into the bed without waking her. What had he been thinking to suggest they were married? It hadn’t been one of his better ideas. He would be lucky to get any sleep at all this night, with her right next to him.
Calling on all of his training, he silently shrugged out of his jacket and moccasins. Next, he slipped out of his shirt but left the buckskin leggings on.
Slipping in between the blankets, he eased his body onto the mattress, careful not to touch her. She turned to her side with a quick jerk, facing him, but still breathing steadily in sleep. Samuel lay on his back and slowly, by careful degrees, relaxed his tired body and closed his eyes.
They just might make it through this unscathed.
He had no sooner thought this than her hand flopped down onto his belly. She huffed in her sleep and rolled closer, into his side, her hand curled against the bare skin of his stomach.
Every muscle in his body tensed. He felt the blood roar into his ears and barely breathed. He hadn’t been with a woman since Sara died nearly two years ago. But Isabelle … her hand, her soft breast pressing against his arm, her leg looped over his. She made him want to run from the room or, worse, give in to his desire and gather her up in his arms. He imagined burying his face in her hair.
Stop it! Think of something else and, for mercy’s sake, get her to turn back over.
Taking her hand by the wrist, he slowly lifted it and moved it to her side. She smiled then and plopped it back down and began caressing him, running her hand back and forth across his stomach.
“You’ve been awake this entire time, haven’t you, you little minx?” Samuel growled. He turned abruptly, loudly, over onto his side, facing away from her, and hugged the edge of the mattress.
Next thing he knew, she was up, propped on an elbow and leaning over him, a dark curtain of her hair teasing his shoulder. “You have finally come to bed,” she whispered. “I must have fallen asleep.”
Looking back at her, over his shoulder, he commanded, “Go to sleep, Isabelle.”
She smiled, and as his eyes adjusted to the light, he could now see the dark blue pools of her irises glowing at him, the creamy white of her shoulders revealing the lace of her undergarments.
“I’m not sleepy,” she said softly.
Samuel bit off a curse and flopped unto his back, looking up at her. “Is that what you want? To truly pretend to be married?” He thought to scare her, to call her bluff. Of all the brazen, wanton acts …
She nodded and leaned toward him, her lips parted, anticipating a kiss.
He stopped her with the flat of his palm, a mistake as his hand grasped roundness instead of the throat he had been going for. “No. You don’t know what you are asking for.”
“How do you know what I know? Maybe I know exactly what I am asking for.”
Samuel inhaled. “There have been others? You have done this before?”
Isabelle had the decency to flush and look away, uncertainty lighting her gaze.
Samuel breathed a sigh of relief. “Go to sleep, Isabelle.”
She looked back at him, stricken, like a child whose toy had been snatched away. Samuel tried not to smile, seeing a glimpse of her as a little girl: round cheeks with dimples, dark eyes flashing with emotion, darker curls haloing a cherubic face. Had she always managed to get what she wanted?
Isabelle turned on her side, away from him, and Samuel found his desire turning to compassion. Turning toward her, he pulled her into his chest and wrapped an arm around her middle, his chin in her hair, just as he’d imagined. Sighing into her hair, he closed his eyes, feeling her lithe body relax against his, the two of them curled together, fitting perfectly, feeling her breath go in and out, his nose buried in her sweet hair.
It felt like heaven.
It felt like home.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING Julian was edgy and brooding in the kitchen as Isabelle followed Samuel down from the ladder. He was staring at the two of them, his lips a thin line as Isabelle blushed and stuttered, “G–Good morning.” Hands on his hips, he glared at Samuel.
Samuel looked away to where Missy worked on a large pile of flapjacks. Then, deciding to meet the subject head on, he swung back around. “Let’s go outside, take a look around.” He looked Julian square in the eyes.
The younger man nodded briefly and reached for his hat.
Isabelle rose to go with them, but Samuel shook his head. “Stay here and help Missy with the breakfast, Isabelle.”
She started to protest, her face a comical mix of outrage and shock and then, as she looked at Julian, as understanding dawned on her face, she nodded. “Oh, of course. Here, Missy, let me hold the baby and set the table while you work on those flapjacks. Mmm, that bacon smells heavenly.”
Julian pulled his hat over his dark brown hair, his eyes grim. Samuel motioned him outside and shut the door behind them.
The sun was bright, promising a beautiful day. They walked to the calls of the morning birds, not saying anything until they had gone some distance away from the house, toward the river. At the bank Julian turned suddenly, facing Samuel. “What are your intentions toward my sister, sir?”
Samuel put a hand on his hip, shaking his head and looking down at the thick, green grass. “I don’t really know. It was stupid of me to pretend we are married.”
Julian did not respond.
“At the time, I thought it would look like less of a threat… . Folks are skittish as wild horses these days, with all the Indian attacks. But I didn’t think through the sleeping arrangements.”
A long, dead silence reigned.
Samuel knew the full force of his mistake in that silence.
“What if word gets out?” Julian finally said. “It usually does. Another man around these parts won’t look at her, not for a wife anyway.”
“Nothing happened.” Samuel didn’t mention that the sister Julian was trying to defend had made that most difficult for him.
Julian kicked at a dandelion, sending white fluff floating into the breeze. “It won’t matter. Isabelle has always stirred up gossip. One time some men came upon her dancing in her chemise in the forest.” He paused and took a deep breath. “It was lucky she had her rifle with her that day. One man lost an earlobe, and the one really going after her … well, let’s just say he won’t be fathering any children. Then there are the clothes she sometimes wears … to church.” He pressed his lips together and stared at Samuel. “This will be the icing on the cake, lying the night through with a man.”
“No one will know.”
“Do you think the Coffmans won’t talk about this in Kaskaskia? We’re going to have to continue this story in town, or they will know it for the fabrication that it is, and Isabelle’s reputation will be … My father will kill you for this.” He stopped and looked sad. “And my mother. You’ve never met a better woman.” He shook hi
s head. “She will forgive you and pray for you, and believe me, that will feel worse than a good thrashing from my father. I should thrash you myself.”
But they both knew he couldn’t.
Samuel stared at Julian, weighing his next words carefully. “In a few days the citizens of Kaskaskia will have something much more pressing on their minds.” His mouth turned up into a grim half smile. “And my deception will make more sense to everyone.”
Julian stared, eyes squinting. “Who are you, really?”
“I have little reason to trust you with such knowledge. Beyond my gut instinct.”
A thoughtful look entered Julian’s eyes, and he said quietly, “You can trust me.”
Samuel nodded, looked from Julian’s intense face off into the distant sunrise, all yellow and orange and hopeful. With a short nod, he agreed. “I’m here with an army. An American army. We plan to take Kaskaskia in a few days.”
“You are a spy?” Excitement laced Julian’s youthful voice.
“A scout, yes.”
Julian looked behind them, toward the east from where they had come. “They’re behind us now?”
Samuel nodded. “A few days. I have to report back later today, after scouting the fort.”
“Why do the Americans want Kaskaskia? It’s such a little, out-of-the-way place. There are not even any British there to speak of.”
Samuel’s eyes locked with the young man’s. “We are securing the land west of the Appalachians for the American government. We’re all going to be Americans soon, Julian. No longer British citizens, or even French. We are becoming our own nation. You understand that, don’t you?”
Julian looked excited, the familiar fire of independence heating his eyes. “Yes, but—”
“That’s all I’m going to tell you, so don’t ask any more questions. And don’t tell Isabelle. I am trusting you with the lives of many men, with dreams of glory and freedom. Don’t disappoint me.”
* * *
HE SENT JULIAN inside and stared at the dark forms that were moving in the village across the river. He sincerely hoped he hadn’t made a mistake, but he didn’t think so. Julian was much the same as young men anywhere, straining for a cause to believe in, for something worthy to stand up and fight for. He thought of Isabelle and felt his blood go hot inside him.
Isabelle made every emotion he felt deepen in intensity. There were no grays with this woman, only color—the deep blues and greens of their rightness together, a deeper place of peace and connectedness; the oranges and reds of their passion, unrequited and pulsing; the purples, from lavender to deep violet, of her dance worship that left him breathless in awe. Most unsettling was the deep black he felt at moments, tiny snatches of time that stunned him with their intensity, leaving him grasping as to what his instincts were trying to tell him about him and her and their future together.
And they did have a future together. Since first laying eyes on her he had known. She had even said it aloud. They were meant to be together.
But what was that to look like in such a time and place as they found themselves? He was in the middle of a campaign, a war, and there was a good chance he would die in the fighting of it. The risk was easier to consider without anyone waiting for him to come back on the other side of it. He had no home, no place to rest his own head, much less a wife’s.
He thought of the wife he had lost. Sara. It had been four years since her death, a death that had shocked him after only ten months of marriage. He tried to remember her face now and felt a gripping fear that it was fading. He looked up at the dawn sky, trying to call to mind the pale gray of her eyes, the sound of her voice, and hearing only the throaty trill of a mockingbird nearby.
“I can’t see her face anymore,” he whispered. When he closed his eyes, all he could see were Isabelle’s gypsy features, so strong, so fierce in comparison to Sara’s. Sara had been a faded beauty even at nineteen. He thought back to their wedding day, seeing only a pale visage, knowing that her hair had been blonde, her mouth small and bow-like, her eyes a dove’s gray. On that day she had been full of a young woman’s fear, reflecting the feelings in his heart, that they were being pushed into this thing by parents who wanted them joined for the land, for their dream of building an empire.
But he had loved her in a sudden, unmastered way. He’d thought her lovely, had anticipated the night to come with a young man’s blood.
Their wedding night, though, had only bewildered him. He knew he had been clumsy and she, so still and stiff in his arms. He hadn’t known what to do, falling asleep, feeling like a boy instead of a man. He remembered her in the sitting room with his mother and sisters the next day, bent over her sewing, smiling with them at some silly joke that had her turning pink and him feeling like an elephant in the room. She’d never, not once in the months to follow, crossed to the other side of the room to stand beside him. She hadn’t understood him, his restless energy, his occasional attempts at teasing her that only led to a doe-eyed confusion. But how easily she had melded into that woman-life that ran its own course during the day.
She was a terrifying mystery causing him to feel that his wanting of her, his thinking of her during the day and wanting to reach for her every night, was some dark spot on her happiness. So he’d begun to make up excuses to be away, afraid of the overwhelming passion that was bursting inside him. Afraid he would somehow destroy her … and he had. He must have gotten her pregnant that first time. There had been little other opportunity.
Sara had been his family’s choice of a wife, fitting so well in that life of Virginia plantation living, a place that left him feeling anchored, unchallenged, a square peg surrounded by round holes. And then she had died after a ghastly battle to birth his daughter. It was all a cloudy memory. But he would never forget her last words … her last word. Isabelle.
He thought she meant to name the child Isabelle. So he had done so, not knowing what to do with the squalling infant. The way she moved in his trembling hands, the way she turned her head toward the sound of his voice and opened dark eyes, the way she looked at him like she had come from a place with all of the answers. As he held the newborn at arm’s length, his eyes blurred over, and he found himself shaking his head. His wife’s lifeless body was just feet away! Why had they thrust this infant into his hands as if he would rejoice and find solace in this small bit of flesh? He turned, stricken and sick, to the midwife, knowing that if he held the child any longer he would drop her. The woman reached for the babe, but there was great unease in her eyes.
He couldn’t bear it. Not the bed where his wife lay so still and pale. Not the infant, unknown flesh of his flesh. Not the midwife’s eyes that said he should be more. So he left the infant in the woman’s capable hands … and fled.
He walked away after the funeral service, turned his back on the grave site, his home, then finally, his entire inheritance. He joined the Virginia militia, rising quickly in the ranks with each bloody battle, becoming their finest sharpshooter and an unsurpassed tracker. It was here that he discovered a talent deep within that at first had terrified him. Something that left him leagues ahead of the other soldiers and, soon, commander of his own force. It was little but a sixth sense, a gut instinct for what was coming up ahead, around the next bend, through an open valley or wooded copse, some prophetic vision of things to come. He didn’t know how or why he possessed this gift. But he learned how to use it, and it never failed him.
And now there was another Isabelle. A small part of him, that gut instinct, rose up to ask the question: Had Sara known something of the future? Had she known he would meet and love another woman? A woman called Isabelle?
7
Broad sunbeams filtered down through the smoke over the little village of Kaskaskia. Tents and smoldering campfires lined the bank of the Kaskaskia River where coureurs de bois, runners of the woods, stood talking to one another and gesturing toward two canoes filled with trade goods. A tall, grizzled man with a walking stick nodded to Samuel, cur
iosity sparking his hooded eyes, as the frontiersman passed by with Julian and Isabelle in tow. Samuel looked into his eyes briefly, felt a shock of the familiar as they nodded once to each other, and looked away. This man would support their cause. The feeling that it was true flowed through him. Samuel found it was like that sometimes with a stranger, as though they had known one another in some other place and time.
He studied the village with instincts long honed during years of gathering intelligence. While traders camped on the riverbanks, the citizens, in their French-style peasant dresses and pilfered Indian garb, traveled along the main road in their various pursuits, so domestic, so quiet, so not expecting the army that was coming.
Kaskaskia was inhabited by the French, with what appeared to be a small British regiment holding down the fort. Not much in the way of artillery was visible. The commandant, Philippe de Rocheblave, a French nobleman, held a British commission to rule. It was rumored that de Rocheblave enjoyed little support from either the British or the French. One of the hunters Clark captured off Corn Island had reported that the British had not sent men or supplies for months and that de Rocheblave was running the office out of his own pocket.
Clark had grinned at that and said to Samuel, “That can’t be making him too happy.”
“Nope.” A disgruntled commander was all the easier to defeat.
The church, a humble log building with a belfry, was easy to spot in the center of the town. Samuel stopped and waited for Isabelle to catch up. “Father Gibault has the books?” he asked, seeing her hot face and handing over his canteen.
Isabelle took it, turned slightly away from him, and nodded. She drank, then wiped the sweat from her face with her sleeve. “Yes, we should hurry to the church. I want to be sure that they are truly, safely arrived.”