by Shirl Henke
“What about the army?” she asked hesitantly, half-afraid to dare hope his words indicated what she prayed they did.
“The war’s over. I’ve read the dispatches from Jemmy. It’s only a matter of time until the negotiations in Ghent are worked out—if they haven’t been already. I’m resigning my commission as soon as I make a final report personally to the president.”
She took a sip of wine to fortify her courage, then said, “I didn’t tell you how afraid I was when I first learned you were in New Orleans, afraid you’d come to take David away from me.”
Her words stung him. “I can understand why you’d feel that way, Livy, but I would never have done that even if I’d known about him.”
“Now you do and I know you love him.” Do you still love me, Samuel?
He set down his glass on the Pembroke table and took hers, placing it beside his. “Yes, I love him. Thank you for our son, Livy,” he said gravely, then hesitated, combing his fingers through his shaggy hair, searching for the right words. “I’ve done you grievous wrong, Livy, over and over. You’ve never done anything but good to me in return. I’m no bargain, just an ex-soldier with a modest income, living in a frontier town that’s rough and small compared to all of this. I have no right to ask—”
“Damn you, Samuel Sheridan Shelby! I’ve had enough of your guilt and your stiff-necked Virginia pride to boot! If you don’t love me enough to marry me, then I’ll just take David upriver to his Grandpa Micajah to raise. And damn the Durand fortune, too! It can rot for all I care. I’ve scarce spent a sou of it in the past three years and I don’t plan to start now.”
She was spitting mad. Her green eyes blazed darkly and that small pink mouth...oh lord, that mouth. Smiling tenderly, he cupped her face with his hands and centered his own over it, murmuring against her lips as he brushed them with his, “What I’ve been trying to work up to, Madam Obregón, is a clumsy proposal of marriage. But you, with your usual fiery temper, have beaten me to it. Yes, I will marry you. Of course, I will! I love you more than life.”
Olivia threw her arms around him with a cry of pure joy. “I’ve waited so many years to hear that! We can go to the cathedral in the morning. Father DuBourg can interrupt his work on the great Te Deum he’s planning long enough to perform a simple marriage.”
He pulled her closer to his body, holding her tightly as he murmured, “Tomorrow we get married, but tonight...I’ve waited three years for this, Livy.”
She held tight as he swung her up into his arms and carried her from the sitting room into the bedroom beyond, placing her on the high tester bed, then sitting down beside her. When she started to slip her gown off, he stopped her with gentle hands.
“Let me be your ladies maid.” With that he reached down and slipped her dainty kid shoes from her feet, then peeled her silk stockings from those deliciously long slender legs. Raining soft kisses on her shoulders and throat as he pulled her up, he attacked the gown next. “It’s been years since I’ve worked these accursed things,” he murmured, unfastening the stubborn hooks holding together the frothy concoction of dark green muslin.
When he slid it off her and reached for the lacy camisole, her arms came up, covering her breasts. “Samuel...I...I don’t want you to be disappointed,” she said softly.
He groaned. “If you want to wait until we’re married, I’ll understand, Livy.” It damn well may kill me, but I’ll understand.
She shook her head. “No, I don’t want to wait. It’s just…”
“What, love?” He tipped up her chin and gazed into those liquid emerald eyes, dark mysterious gypsy eyes.
“I gained weight when I was carrying David. My body isn’t the same.”
He smiled, letting his fingertips graze along the edge of the lace covering her breasts. “So I can see.” Then he cupped the heavy globes as his lips brushed the tops, searching for the hard nubby points of her nipples through the sheer lace. “You’re perfect to me, no matter what,” he said hoarsely, peeling the camisole down to suckle one breast, then the other.
Olivia moaned and dug her fingers into his heavy black hair, pressing him closer. She accommodated him as he finished stripping her of the rest of her lacy undergarments. When he lay her back and sat up to study her from head to toe, she felt a flush of shyness. Did he find her thicker? Stretched? Less attractive?
“You’re even more beautiful than before. I left a girl. I came back to a woman.” He worshipped her with his eyes and his hands, caressing and kissing her. Then he reached down to pull off his boots.
“Now you must let me be your valet,” she said, sliding to the edge of the bed and slipping to the floor. When she turned her rounded buttocks to him, straddling his leg to tug off a boot, she could hear his strangled gasp of desire.
“Hurry,” was all he could choke out as his hands caressed the smoothness of her bottom and skimmed inside her pale thighs.
Olivia turned to find he’d already pulled his tunic off while she was finishing his boots and hose. When he stood up, she knelt to unbutton his fly. He fisted his hands to hold himself under control when she freed his aching staff and tugged his breeches down his legs.
Kicking them away, he reached for her and brought her up into his arms. “I...will...try to go slow, Livy...to make it good for you...but it’s been so long...I don’t know if I can.”
Her heart turned over. “How long?”
He looked into her eyes and was lost. “A moonlit night on the Mississippi in December of 1811,” he confessed.
She wet her lips. “Samuel, a certain Spaniard’s wife described your...your body in great detail...she said it made her swoon with delight.”
Shelby looked puzzled, but then chuckled bitterly. “Swoon, huh. Well, she must have had strange tastes. When the British caught me, they turned me over to the Spanish who decided to have a little sport with me...to humiliate me, soften me up. Hell, they stripped me and put me on public display in a cage...along with two monkeys. We drew some very large crowds.”
Olivia was torn by guilt and horror. “My darling, I’m so very, very sorry. Please forgive—”
“So, my little cat was jealous,” Samuel interrupted, grinning. “I like that...very much...but you have no cause. In all those accursed three long years, no cause at all. But I must admit after several days in that cage one of the monkeys was beginning to look somewhat attractive.”
“Samuel! You wretch!”
“Oh, I’ve been very, very wretched for a long time.”
Olivia laughed in joyous relief. There had been no other woman for him since he left her. “No wonder you were furious to hear about Rafael Obregón,’’ she said with a low wicked chuckle that ended on a sob. “Oh, Samuel, we’ve lost three years but now we have everything back and all the rest of our lives together.”
He pulled her onto the bed beside him, then rolled on top of her. Looking down into her eyes, he slowly slid into the welcoming warmth of her body. “Let’s not waste another minute of it,” he whispered hoarsely as he struggled to remain still, willing himself not to spill his seed before he had brought her along with him.
Olivia held him buried deep within her, not moving, understanding his struggle, thrilled by how deeply he still desired her, how splendidly they still fit together after so long a separation. When he began to move in long slow strokes, she accommodated his gentle rhythm, tightening her legs around his hips, arching up to meet each thrust. She, too, had been without this since their last night together on the Mississippi.
Gradually as their hands caressed and their mouths tasted of each other and kissed, the pace of their mating began to increase until soon they were in a frenzy, bucking and rolling together. Sweat poured off them in the cool night air. Her choked gasps and sobs of pleasure mixed with his muttered endearments and curses, which were endearments, too. At last when she felt the crest shimmering over her like a crystal cloth, she cried out and arched high, her nails digging into his hard buttocks as he rammed into her fast and furio
us, crying out exultantly as he joined her in the long denied surfeit.
They trembled in the aftermath as he collapsed on top of her, cradling her in his arms while she clung to him. Then at last, he chuckled, nuzzling her ear. “That just might start another earthquake right here on the delta.”
“I thought I felt the earth move, didn’t you? Say, did you ever think, maybe we started the quake in 1811?” she murmured, then looked into his eyes and asked, “How long will it take us to travel upriver to St. Louis?”
He shrugged. “A week if we can get a berth on a steamer, a month by keelboat.”
“Let’s take the keelboat, Samuel,” she whispered conspiratorially.
“Then let’s pray we don’t start another earthquake,” Samuel whispered back.
Epilogue
She sure does cry a lot, Grandpa,” David said as Father Louie poured cool baptismal water on the forehead of Elizabeth Louise Shelby.
Micajah Johnstone chuckled at the boy perched on his shoulder. “Wal now,” he whispered, “she’s jist a leetle mite, not all growed up like yew. Yew’ll have ta learn her.”
“Like you did me?” the boy asked, receiving an affectionate nod.
They both looked down on the scene around them from the vantage point of Micajah’s considerable height. The giant frontiersman towered over David’s father as well as the other tall men in the assembly, the baby’s godfather, Santiago Quinn, and his dark and mysterious half-caste brother, Joaquín. During the ceremony little Liza Shelby’s godmothers, Elise Quinn and Louise Freul had taken turns holding her while Olivia and Samuel beamed their approval.
Father Louie completed the prayers and the group in the small chapel at Fort St. Francoise filed out into the bright autumn sunshine, laughing and talking. Louise Freul reluctantly handed the now quieted baby back to Elise, whose daughter, Orlena, and niece, Aurelia, hovered near, eager for a chance to hold the newest member of their family.
“Never fret, my dear, you’ll have plenty of chances to spoil your namesake,” Albert Freul said to his sister as she watched little Elizabeth Louise adoringly.
“So many children in your husband’s family,” Louise said to Olivia, watching as Elise bent down to lace her six-year-old son Samuel’s boot, which had come untied while the three tall dark sons of Orlena and Joaquín Quinn talked with their father and Uncle Santiago, who was holding his two-year-old son, Elkhanah.
“I was delighted that Elise and Santiago were able to convince his brother Joaquín’s family to come all the way from Santa Fe,” Olivia said. “It’s so good to have all the cousins together. Samuel and I visited with Joaquín and his family when we were in New Mexico last winter. Then I understood why Elise named her daughter after Orlena—just as I named mine after you and her. It means a great deal to me that you and Albert made the long journey from New Orleans all the way up the Missouri to attend the christening,” she said, fondly squeezing the elderly doctor and his sister’s hands.
“We would not have missed it for anything,” Louise replied, smiling as Micajah Johnstone approached them. “I see Mr. Johnstone has his handsome grandson in tow,” she said, admiring Micajah, who had cleaned up remarkably for the occasion, even having his shaggy hair barbered and his beard neatly trimmed.
“Micajah had to explain to David what Father Louie was doing. After all, he is David’s godfather as well as his grandpa and he takes both roles very seriously,” Olivia replied, noting her older friend’s interest in the giant frontiersman. “Have all of you been formally introduced?” she inquired of Dr. Freul and his sister. What a striking couple they’d make, she thought as she presented her beloved mentor to Louise Freul.
Micajah startled her by making a courtly bow over Louise’s hand as the doctor stood by, amused. David turned up his nose in the manner peculiar to small boys. “Mushy stuff,” he said, grimacing at Dr. Freul, who laughed.
“Yew shore are a rare sight, mad’mozel,” Johnstone said, looking into Louise’s dark eyes. “Hit ain’t often a feller my size meets up with a female he kin look in th’ eyes without gettin’ a crick in his neck. Yore a right handsome lady.”
Louise’s face pinkened as if she were a schoolgirl, but her Gallic common sense remained in place as she replied, “In Creole society I have always been considered a bit over long, Mr. Johnstone.”
“Why, thet’s jist ‘cause them Cree-ols ‘er sech leetle-bitty fellers. Thet heavy air down south plumb stunts thar growth. Yore a Missouri-sized woman, an’ from whut my Sparky tells me, yew got a heart as big as all Loosiana.”
Olivia and Dr. Freul beamed in approval as the tall couple strolled across the compound, headed for the open gate of the fort.
Samuel approached his wife and whispered, “I couldn’t help noticing the, er, interest Micajah and Louise seem to have in each other.”
“It looks as if Father Louie might have another marriage to perform,” she replied, her lips bowed into a mischievous smile.
He squeezed her hand affectionately and brought it to his lips. “Micajah will be a lucky man if it works out as well as ours.”
“Aw, more mushy stuff,” David said with a sigh, looking from his father to his mother.
Author’s Note
There is something mystical about big rivers. Perhaps I feel this way because I grew up at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi in St. Louis. After a twenty-five-year exile, I returned home and knew I had to set the final book of the Santa Fe Trilogy on the rivers.
I had a great deal of assistance on this book, which became the most sweeping saga I’ve yet written. I would like to express my appreciation to the Public Libraries of St. Louis City and County for getting me started, and to the Mercantile Library and its tireless reference director, Charles Brown, master of arcane information on old St. Louis and New Orleans. For arming my protagonists and their foes, I am once more indebted to Dr. Carmine V. DelliQuadri, Jr., D. O., weapons expert extraordinaire, and to my husband, Jim, who gave “Sparky” her shooting lessons, as well as devoting countless hours to copyediting the text.
The Trans-Mississippi West at the opening of the nineteenth century was a microcosm for the American mythos. All the players shaping modern American history were in the great river basin in that pregnant year of 1811: dispossessed Native Americans, fighting to retain their culture and their land; intrepid French voyageurs, fearlessly braving the far reaches of the Upper Missouri in search of beaver and riches; Spanish soldiers, manning their isolated outposts against the American deluge; British agents provocateur, promising friendship and providing weapons to the restive tribes along the rivers; and squirrel-tough Appalachian frontiersmen, bringing their families and their plows to new and fertile soil.
Nature itself reflected the cataclysmic winds of change. Eighteen-eleven was the year of the great earthquake at New Madrid, Missouri, the most violent quake in recorded history on the North American continent. The Mississippi’s channel was completely redrawn and the topography of half a dozen states significantly altered. Miraculously, little life was lost owing to the sparcity of population. Although there is some disagreement among geologists, diarists at the scene said the river ran backward for a brief period of time as I described in this story. The best single compendium of eyewitness accounts I found was by James Lal Penick, Jr., The New Madrid Earthquake.
At the opening of the nineteenth century, the Napoleonic wars eventually embroiled the fledgling American republic in its first genuinely international conflict. Both England and her Spanish allies wanted to halt the steady westward expansion of the United States. They made common cause with Native Americans, supplying them with weapons and recruiting them to serve under European commanders. My secret agents Samuel Shelby and Stuart Pardee are fictitious, but in real life such men did exist on both sides. The Osage, gatekeepers of the Great Plains, were the pivotal tribe in the Trans-Mississippi West. The most numerous and powerful group, they were firmly in the American camp. A successful British bid to undermine this alliance
could have materially changed the outcome of the war. Ironically, the men most responsible for holding Osage loyal to the United States were a descendant of New Orleans Creoles, Pierre Chouteau, and a renegade Spaniard, Manual Lisa. Both these early St. Louisans had become American by default when Thomas Jefferson made the greatest real estate deal in history, the Louisiana Purchase.
The real losers in the War of 1812 were not European but Native American. Tecumseh’s dream of an independent Indian state free from white encroachment was doomed to failure. In spite of Osage loyalty to the United States, they suffered the same fate as all the other tribes. In researching Native American life and politics during this critical era, I used John Joseph Mathews’s, The Osages; William T. Hagen’s, The Sac and Fox Indians; and Patrick Brophy’s Osage Autumn. The seminal reference work remains The Imperial Osage by Gilbert C. Din and Abraham P. Nasatir.
Micajah Johnstone was a joy to create. Although fictional, he epitomized the American trailblazer, a hearty frontiersman who braved everything from grizzlies to geysers in pursuit of his dream. Wilderness, a poetic epic about Hugh Glass and John Colter, written by Roger Zelazny and Gerald Hausman, provided the inspiration for his character, as well as some of the improbable but true adventures which Samuel and Olivia experience. Other splendid resources that helped me weave the rich tapestry of frontier life were Thomas James’s Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans; Stanley Vestal’s The Missouri; Hiram Martin Chittenden’s American Fur Trade of the Far West; and the superb pictorial, The Trailblazers in the Time-Life Old West Series, text by Bil Gilbert. As Micajah might have said, “Yew fellers is sharp as a Osage plantin’ stick in early spring.”