by Untamed
But it was the group in civilian dress waiting at the landing that drew Barbara’s intent gaze. Her fingers dug into Harry’s sleeve.
“There they are.”
His glance swept the small group. “Well, well,” he murmured. “So those are the Morgans of Indian Country.”
They were all there. Every member of the family had turned out in response to Zach’s letter advising them he’d been injured and was coming home. Daniel Morgan standing as tall and rigid as an oak. Louise Chartier Morgan, her skin stretched taut across her high cheekbones. Zach’s sisters and young Theo, looking nervous and excited. And Hattie. Even Hattie had turned out to greet her wounded hero.
Fighting the cowardly urge to turn around and dash back up the gangplank, Barbara loosened her hold on Harry’s arm. She’d come this far. She’d not turn tail and run now. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she stepped forward.
Louise disdained any words of greeting. “Where is my son?”
“They’ll bring him down after the rest of the passengers disembark.”
Her narrowed gaze burned into Barbara. “There is a legend, one the old people still sing of. It speaks of a blue-eyed maiden who brings calamities on her people. The first time I see you, I think of this legend and my heart tells me disaster walks with you.”
“Your heart didn’t lie to you.”
“As you did.”
“As I did.”
Louise’s gaze dropped to the swell of Barbara’s belly, barely visible beneath her coat.
“Is that, too, a lie?”
“The child is Zach’s. Whether you…or anyone else…choose to believe so matters not to me.”
They might have been alone amid the bustle that came with a steamboat docking. Passengers streamed past. Mules hitched to the drays waiting to haul military supplies and cargo shifted in their harnesses. Neither woman paid the slightest heed to the milling crowd.
“You say it matters not what we believe. Why have you come back to Indian Country, then?”
“I made a promise to your son.”
“Pah!” Scorn flashed in the older woman’s eyes. “Promises from one such as you are written on the wind.”
Scowling, Harry stepped forward. “I must ask you to watch how you speak to my sister, Madam Chartier.”
“The name’s Morgan,” Daniel drawled, laying a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “And I would advise you to have a care how you speak to her, sir.”
The two men sized each other up. Harry had regained weight in the past three months. He’d also purchased an entire wardrobe from the funds Zach had provided Barbara that last fateful morning in Bermuda. A beaver top hat now crowned his shining gold locks, and snowy linen circled his throat. With his gleaming boots and malacca cane, he looked every bit the English gentleman.
How strange, Barbara thought. Harry carried a title and an air of sophisticated assurance, yet Daniel Morgan seemed so much more the man. His confidence came from someplace deep inside him, and his chiseled features were stamped with the mark of this vast, rugged land. So like his son’s, she thought with a little ache.
“I should like to make my brother known to you,” she said quietly. “Harry, this is Zach’s father, Daniel Morgan, and his mother, Louise Chartier Morgan. They were kind enough to—”
“There he is! There’s Zach.”
Vera’s cry wrenched them all around. A vise tightened around Barbara’s heart as a uniformed figure shuffled out of the shadows cast by the upper deck. Leaning heavily on a knobby oak cane, Zach approached the gangplank. Two burly crewmen stepped forward and gripped each other’s wrists. With the cautious movements of an old man, her husband lowered himself into the cradle of their arms.
Louise’s breath rattled. Daniel’s jaw worked. Barbara understood their anguish.
“The bullet lodged in his spine,” she explained softly.
Zach had informed them by letter that he’d taken a ball in the back, but had been purposely vague as to the circumstances. He could hardly put into writing the fact that he’d assisted a convicted felon to escape.
Nor would Barbara or Harry allude to the circumstances. It served them best, after all, to let the world believe Zach had negotiated Harry’s release and suffered an unfortunate accident in the process.
“He doesn’t like to have a fuss made over him,” she told the Morgans. “It’s best to let him get his feet under him before you…”
Louise whirled on her. “Do not dare to tell me what is best for my son.”
Rushing by, the older woman made for the gangplank. Her husband followed, and the rest of his family flocked after him. Hattie cast a look brimming with hate at Barbara and went with them.
The Chamberlains stood alone. As they always had.
They remained apart while the family crowded around Zach. Barbara could share vicariously in their joy and tears. And hold her breath, as they did, when he pushed unsteadily to his feet. But only she knew the agony it caused him to bring his shoulders back and straighten his spine. She admired his courage even as she cursed his soldier’s stubbornness.
Chewing on the inside of her cheek, she said nothing when little Sarah threw herself at Zach and wrapped her chubby arms around his left leg. Nor did she comment when Theo rebuked his sister and yanked her roughly away. When she saw sweat begin to bead on Zach’s temple, however, she knew it was time to speak out.
“Have you all quite finished?” She made a show of fluffing up her coat collar. “I should like to get out of the chill.”
The relief that flitted across Zach’s face more than made up for Louise’s furious sputter and Hattie’s malevolent glare.
“Shall we take this homecoming celebration inside?” Zach suggested. “I don’t want to keep my wife standing about in the cold.”
“Wife!”
Louise spit the word as if it were venom, but Daniel intervened before she could voice her obvious opinion of the union between her son and the woman who’d betrayed him time and again. He hadn’t missed the worry Barbara tried to disguise behind her cool facade. His keen eyes had noted as well the relief buried in his son’s response. Whatever else Daniel might think of this unlikely match, it was now Zach’s business.
“Barbara is breeding,” he reminded his wife. “It won’t do to keep her on her feet too long.”
“Ha! You say this, yet you trekked through the wilderness beside me right up to the moment of Zach’s birth.”
“As I recall, you gave me no choice. You were determined your son would draw his first breath here, in Indian Country.”
Louise had no argument for that. Scowling, she yielded the ground to her husband. Daniel accepted her acquiescence with a nod and turned to his son.
“I know you can’t ride…”
“Yet.”
“I know you can’t ride yet, so I padded the wagon bed with straw and blankets. I’ll try not to jostle you too much on the way home.”
Leaning heavily on his cane, Zach shook his head. “I’m not going back to Morgan’s Falls.”
“What’s this?”
“I’ve used up all my furlough time and then some. I’m reporting back to duty.”
“I’m sure Colonel Arbuckle will grant you sick leave.”
“I’m sure he would, sir, but the long and the short of it is that I promised President Jackson I’d help train the new regiment of dragoons.”
“Did you now?”
“I spoke with him about it in Washington. He promised me a captaincy.” A smile worked its way through the lines of pain grooving Zach’s mouth. “I’m thinking the new regiment will also need mounts. Mounts bearing the Morgan brand.”
“I’m thinking the same thing,” Daniel replied.
Louise threw up her hands. “This is beyond anything foolish! Zach can barely stand, yet already the two of you speak of horses and drilling a troop of soldiers.”
“I may not be able to ride—yet—but I can certainly scribble out training manuals and equipment requirements for t
he new regiment.”
“Pah!” Louise took out her frustration on her husband. “He is as pigheaded as you, this one.”
“Do you think so? Seems to me he takes after his dam in that regard.”
Barbara couldn’t imagine a more reluctant ally, but Zach’s mother managed to swallow her enmity long enough to appeal to her.
“Tell him he must not do this.”
“I’m afraid you fit the peg in the right hole. He is, indeed, pigheaded. He refuses to listen to me on this matter, either.”
Hattie had been standing mute to this point. Tugging on a strand of her brown hair, she astonished everyone by voicing an opinion.
“I think Zach has the right of it. He should remain here at Fort Gibson. President Jackson’s done named Colonel Henry Dodge commander of the new regiment. The colonel could be making his way to Fort Gibson any day now.”
Zach’s eyebrows soared. “Where did you hear that?”
“At John Stallworth’s taproom. I hired on there after I got back to Fort Gibson.”
While she waited for Zach to return, Barbara guessed. She didn’t know what he’d told the maid when he’d bundled her aboard a stage in Washington, but two things were now painfully obvious. Hattie’s feelings for the man who’d rescued her from her brutish master had progressed far beyond hero worship. Her feelings for her former mistress, on the other hand, now bordered on hate. Hattie blamed Barbara for the bullet now lodged in Zach’s spine, as did his family.
They couldn’t blame her more than she blamed herself.
With a disgusted shake of her head, Louise gave up hope of dissuading her son. “You’re set on staying at Fort Gibson, then?”
“I am.”
Lips pursed, she turned to Barbara. “What of you and your brother? Do you return to Morgan’s Falls with us?”
Harry replied with a short bow. “I thank you, but I’m heading back to New Orleans on the next steamboat.”
His mocking eyes met Barbara’s. She’d made Harry swear he wouldn’t use either her marriage or her child to extort money from the Morgans. They’d paid for his freedom. Zach had nearly died achieving it. That was enough. More than enough.
With great reluctance, Harry had agreed. It went against his grain to let such plump pockets go unpicked, but he’d used their brief stopover in New Orleans to scout out that bustling city. He’d already set his sights on larger, more lucrative marks.
“What of you?” Louise asked Barbara, her blue eyes cool. “Will you stay at Morgan’s Falls while Zach goes about these duties?”
That was the agreement. He had held to his promise. She would hold to hers.
“I should like to, if it wouldn’t discommode you.”
Zach tried to ignore the note of forced politeness in his wife’s voice. She’d be better off at Morgan’s Falls, with his mother to watch over her and servants to tend to her every need.
The only problem was, he wanted her here. Like a shadow he couldn’t seem to escape, she’d become part of him.
He knew damn well Harry Chamberlain would have abandoned him in Bermuda. Throckmorton, too. He’d had the tale from the one-eyed rumrunner himself. The captain had also told Zach about Barbara’s refusal to leave his bedside for so much as an hour during the voyage back to the States.
In his dogged determination to get back on his feet during those weeks in Charleston, Zach had used her as nurse, crutch and ranting board. Looking back, he was surprised she hadn’t tossed a chamber pot at his head in the same manner she’d tossed the brandy bottle at it in Bermuda.
They’d come this far together, Zach decided, in an abrupt about-face. They should finish things together. Telling himself he was just responding to the desolation in her eyes at the thought of being under his mother’s thumb, he offered her a choice.
“If you want to stay at Fort Gibson until the summer heat gets too intense, I could arrange quarters here on post. They’re nowhere near as comfortable as my parents’ home,” he warned. “Only two rooms.”
Relief flooded her face. From the smile that came into her eyes, Zach might have given her a diamond necklace.
“Two rooms will be more than sufficient.”
Swinging wildly between despair and bitter loathing, Hattie made her way back to John Stallworth’s tavern. Zach had told her back in Washington City that he intended to bring Barbara back to Indian Country to birth the child.
He didn’t care about the cow. Hattie knew he didn’t. He’d only married her to keep his child from being called bastard. Hattie had heard Louise Morgan mutter those exact words to her husband while they waited for the Memphis Wheeler to lower its gangplank.
She’d been prepared to quit her job at the taproom and return to Morgan’s Falls to help nurse Zach. Her few belongings were packed and ready.
She’d been prepared, too, to endure Barbara’s presence at the Falls until the bitch whelped. After that the Englishwoman would disappear from Zach’s life.
The fact that both Zach and his wife had decided to remain at Fort Gibson made matters easier. It was a busy post. Frontiersmen, Indians, whiskey runners, mule skinners and mountain men all came and went daily. Who could say what sort of ruffian the blonde might meet up with? Who knew what might happen to her while Zach was busy with his duties?
Briefly, Hattie considered asking Barbara to take her into service again. She’d be close to Zach that way, but too close to his wife. She was damned if she’d curtsy or kowtow to the woman.
Her thoughts whirling about in her head, she entered the rowdy establishment just off post that catered to soldiers and civilians alike.
She was serving tankards of ale to a boisterous gaggle of soldiers when Barbara’s brother strolled in later that same evening. She half expected his aristocratic nose to wrinkle at the stench of unwashed bodies, rough-cured buckskins and soot-blackened beams, then remembered the gaol-bird had spent the past months wallowing about in prison muck.
She slanted him a narrow glance as he made his way to the long plank set atop two barrels that served as a bar and ordered a tankard of ale. Eyeing him thoughtfully, she slapped at the hand that reached out to fondle her backside.
“Keep your hams to yourself,” she told the grinning, half-drunk soldier.
“Aw, Hattie. When are you going to let me court you proper?”
“When you sprout horns, O’Shaunessy.”
“I’ve already sprouted one for you, darlin’. It’s a real boner, too.”
His companions hooted and thumped the boards. It had become a game to them, trying to gain her affections, or at least attention. And no wonder. There were only three unattached white females at the fort. One was the widow Sallie Nicks, whose wealth and vivacious charm put her well above these men’s touch. The other sported a face eaten half away by the pox. Hattie could have had her pick of any single man on post if she’d wanted anyone but Zach.
Wondering if she could use the Englishman to somehow further her campaign to free Zach from his sister, she sidled up to the bar.
“I saw you at the riverboat landing. You’re Barbara’s brother, Sir Harry Chamberlain.”
His blue eyes swept over her. “I saw you, too. You have the advantage of me, though. I don’t know your name.”
“I’m Hattie Goodson. I was maid to your sister when she first arrived in Indian Country.”
“Indeed?” His arched eyebrow indicated surprise that his sister would hire a tavern wench to attend to her. “How did that come about?”
“I was indentured to a squatter who got taken in by a false quit-claim deed. Zach—Lieutenant Morgan—shot the bastard square between the eyes and brought me back to Fort Gibson. That’s when your sister took me into service.”
The Englishman raised his tankard and took a leisurely swallow. She thought he might comment on his sister’s impulsive offer to employ a stranger, or perhaps Zach’s keen marksmanship.
His interest took a different direction. Setting the tankard on the bar, he swiped the foam on his
upper lip with a casual hand.
“Enlighten me, if you would. What, precisely, is a quit-claim deed?”
22
Less than a week after her return to Fort Gibson, Barbara said goodbye to her brother. She did so with decidedly mixed emotions. He was her family, the only person who’d ever really mattered to her until recently. She hated to see him step aboard the steamer that would take him back to New Orleans, but the sad truth was that her husband and her brother rubbed each other exactly the wrong way.
One was a sophisticated schemer, the other a blunt-spoken soldier. Neither held the other in any particular esteem. Zach had no use for a man who would involve his sister in fraudulent activities. Harry had even less for a man who professed himself content with the plodding routine of life at a remote military outpost. The tension between them had mounted daily. For the first time in her life, Barbara was relieved to see her brother disappear.
“I’ll come back for you in July,” he promised, “after the baby’s born.”
She nodded but didn’t speak. He was already looking toward a future she wasn’t ready to contemplate.
“We’ll decide in July where we’ll go from here,” he told her. “We might stay in America for a while. From the little I saw of it, New Orleans offers definite possibilities for an enterprising pair with our talents. I’ll know better after I spend some time there.”
“Be careful, Harry. Please! Let’s have no more fraudulent railroad schemes.”
“No, no more railroad schemes.” Winking, he twirled his malacca cane. “I’ve something else in mind.”
Alarm feathered through her. “What?”
“Just an idea. It may not pan out. I’ll look into it while I’m in New Orleans.”
Before Barbara could demand more detail, the shrill scream of the steamboat whistle pierced the air. Harry dropped a kiss on her cheek, promised again to come for her in July and sauntered up the gangplank.