A Many-Splendoured Thing

by Margaret Pemberton

  Polly protested, her eyes seeking Dart’s. He gave an imperceptible nod of his dark head and her fear died. No harm would come to her now. No harm could possibly come to her when Dart was near.

  The adjoining tepee was full of giggling, mischievous squaws. All hostility had vanished. Water steamed in a large bowl. Her clothes were removed; her hair fingered and commented upon.

  How on earth had Dart managed it, Polly thought wonderingly as she was bathed and the pretty squaw, who she rightly assumed was the Chief’s favourite wife, stroked perfumed oil on her temples and wrists.

  He had spoken to her in English, but English was not the language he was speaking to the Indian Chief at his side. Did the Pawnees believe him Indian, or did they know he was in the army? Was his Indian mode of dress a sign of friendship or had he deceived them into thinking he was one of them?

  The Chief’s young wife gave her a pair of leggings like her own, lavishly fringed and tasselled, and an overdress with a beadwork sash and moccasins for her feet. Her hair was rubbed with oil and brushed sleekly, the squaws giggling as it sprang stubbornly back into curling ringlets. At last it was to their satisfaction, firmly smoothed and hanging glossily to her shoulders and down her back.

  When she was returned to the Chief’s tepee the air was sweet with the smoke of the calumet. The Chief’s wife sat, cross-legged, and Polly sat likewise, watching and wondering and waiting.

  Red-Cloud’s eyes held more than a flicker of interest as they rested briefly on her. Black-Feather had not been as foolish as he had thought, and his brother had been quite right in insisting on the return of such a wife.

  Long into the night the two brothers talked, knowing it would be for the last time. Polly could feel, but could not understand, the intense emotion that pervaded the tepee. By the time Dart rose and walked towards her, her back ached and her eyes smarted from the smoke of the fire.

  ‘Come, wife,’ he said and as Polly gasped, his glittering eyes silenced her protests.

  He wore only breeches and his powerful shoulder and chest muscles gleamed in the firelight. Outside was snow and ice. Where was his jacket? His cape? He had already passed her. Instinctively, as she had seen the Indian women do, she fell into step behind him. The Chief’s squaw smiled, her eyes dancing. What was amusing her? Where were they going without cloaks and in the middle of the night? By the light of the remaining campfires she could see the familiar outline of his horse, but Dart did not walk towards him. Instead, he entered a nearby tepee and held the flap back for her to follow. A fire had been lit for them. The skins and furs were more opulent than those in Black-Feather’s tepee. Clean straw covered the ground. They were alone.

  In the firelight he looked strangely forbidding, the coarse black hair hanging Indian-style, the high cheek-bones so like those of the Indian chief.

  ‘Why have we not left?’ she asked, and was ashamed of the tremor in her voice.

  ‘We will leave in the morning.’ His voice was curt. ‘To leave now would be discourteous when Red-Cloud has offered us his hospitality.’

  ‘But how …? Why …? I don’t understand.’

  His manner was so unexpected that she felt like crying. In her relief at seeing him, at being saved, she had forgotten the hideous scene at their last parting.

  ‘It is not for you to understand. It is for you to do as you are told.’

  Polly’s eyes widened. ‘Like a squaw?’ she asked indignantly.

  His eyes were mirthless. ‘Yes, Miss Kirkham. Like a squaw. My squaw.’

  ‘Never. I’d rather die first. I’d …’

  Lazily he opened the flap of the tepee so that the cold night air blew frostily into the dark warmth.

  ‘Then die, Miss Kirkham. Or return to Black-Feather. Whichever suits you best.’

  ‘You’re a fiend!’ she hissed, misery and fury fighting for mastery.

  ‘I’m a fool,’ he agreed carelessly. ‘Risking life and limb to save an empty-headed chit for an even emptier-headed young man who would stab me in the back given half a chance.’

  He was gazing at her with unconcealed contempt. There was not a trace of the love that had shone so briefly in his eyes in the copse of beech trees. It had been there. She knew it as surely as she knew the light that had kindled her own. And she, herself, had killed that love. She had allowed Jared’s hot-headedness to destroy her happiness, and she knew no way of rectifying it. The man in front of her was a cold, menacing stranger who would listen to no excuses or explanations. She had only her pride left and it found its outlet in anger.

  ‘Am I to understand that I owe my safety entirely to the fact that you told the Indian Chief I am your wife?’ she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

  ‘I imagined that was clearly obvious to you when we were in Red-Cloud’s presence. I did not see you object then.’

  Her eyes flashed. ‘To have done so would have been to have lost my life!’

  ‘I’m glad your grasp of the situation is so acute,’ he said dryly. ‘As it is, no doubt you realise that unless you lower your voice and behave more in the manner of a rescued and loying wife, Red-Cloud may well become suspicious.’

  Her cheeks flushed as he gave her a cool look of appraisal.

  ‘Indian dress suits you.’ His smile mocked her. ‘… wife.’

  She drew back her hand to deliver a stinging blow to his cheek, but he caught her wrist in a steel-like grip. ‘One word of protest from you, Miss Kirkham, and you go back to Black-Feather’s arms and not your Mormon’s.’

  His face was only inches away from hers. She could feel his breath on her cheek and she was helpless, her whole body responding to him. He felt her tremble, saw the heat at the back of her eyes and, unable to stop himself, he seized hold of her, kissing her with barely suppressed violence. She resisted furiously, and then, as his mouth crushed hers, gave a sob of capitulation and yielded willingly as he lowered her beneath him to the soft richness of the skins.

  She was helpless, murmuring his name, clinging to him in desperate need. Her breasts in their thin covering were pressed flat beneath his naked chest. The warmth of his touch spread through her like a fire. Her body strained against the weight of his and as his hands gripped the waistband of her leggings, pulling them down till the slim, white outline of her hips showed, she moaned in eagerness to be free of her clothes, to feel his flesh against hers. Suddenly he became perfectly still, staring down at her, the abrasively masculine lines of his face accentuated by the firelight.

  ‘Whore,’ he said softly, imprisoning her wrists above her head, kneeling astride her.

  ‘No …’ she whispered dazedly, ‘it’s not true.’

  ‘It is true.’ His voice was cruel. ‘I saw with my own eyes. The moment Jared Marriot entered camp I was forgotten, wasn’t I? And in case I was foolish enough to betray you, you lied to young Marriot and said I had forced my attentions upon you. I‘ve met women before like you, Polly Kirkham. Women who like to see men fighting over them. Women who make love in dark corners and ignore the objects of their desire in the light of day.’

  ‘No!’ her voice was anguished.

  A bitter smile twisted his mouth. ‘I understand perfectly,’ he said. ‘When you lay in my arms in the beech wood you were betrothed to Jared Marriot, as you still are.’

  ‘No! You don’t understand.’

  He laughed softly and the sound sent chills of fear down her spine. ‘There’s no one to see now, Polly Kirkham. No Latter-day Saints; no Jared Marriot. Only I will know the unfaithfulness of your heart.’ His hands tightened their hold so that she cried out in pain.

  ‘Whore,’ he repeated, as his mouth came down hard on hers.

  She tried to push him away, but he was too strong for her. His lips seared hers and even as she struggled she could feel desire surging through her. She fought it as she fought him—desperately and vainly. Her shift had been ripped from her back. In the firelight his hands were olive-dark on the rose-tipped whiteness of her breasts. She moaned, begging
to be free, knowing that resistance was no longer possible. His tongue inflamed and tormented her. She was his to do with as he pleased and the knowledge brought shameful tears. She was everything he said she was. All the ugly words he had called her were true.

  Abruptly he raised his head, gazing down at her anguished face, at the tears that flowed unrestrainedly. Then, with a groan and an oath, he rolled his weight away from her and lay silently, staring up to where the first pale light of dawn filtered into the tepee. She turned her face into the furs, her hands pressed close to her mouth so that he should not hear the sobs that wracked her body.

  They left an hour later, their only well-wisher Chief Red-Cloud himself. The two men embraced and in the cold of dawn the Chief undid his cloak of mink skins and fastened it around Dart’s shoulders. Numbly Polly accepted Dart’s hand and allowed herself to be seated behind him on his stallion. As they left the last of the tepees, he turned. Red-Cloud stood alone in the early light, a soft breeze ruffling the feathers on his magnificent head-dress. The brothers raised their arms in a last gesture of farewell and then the horse broke into a gallop. Polly had no alternative but to circle Dart’s waist with her arms. As she did so she felt his body stiffen in tense hostility and the knife in her heart went deeper, inflicting even more anguish. He thought her a whore and she had no way of proving otherwise.

  At the point where he had hidden his saddle and clothing, he reined in and dismounted. Polly stood and shivered as he saddled his horse and then removed his cloak and headband and replaced his jacket and cape. With his fingers he brushed back his hair and put back on the blue, wide-brimmed hat with its gold tassels. The transformation was nearly complete. Only the ripped braid from his breeches prevented him from looking as immaculate and commanding as ever. Silently he put the cloak around her shoulders and silently she accepted it. For a second he paused, as if about to speak, and then the moment was gone. It was too late.

  They rode until the sun was high in the sky and Polly tried hard not to feel hungry and harder still not to feel thirsty.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she ventured at last.

  ‘To the Chariton and your Mormon friends,’ he replied curtly.

  At last, just when she was beginning to think she could hold on no longer, he reined in beside a stream.

  ‘The water is clean,’ he said, bending down on the bank and scooping up handfuls to drink. She did likewise, though the cold nearly numbed her fingers.

  He walked back towards his horse, but she remained standing, biting her bottom lip, summoning courage.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ he said tersely.

  She swung around, looking strangely royal in the ankle-length fur, her gold hair shining like a crown in the sunlight. Her voice trembled as she said bravely,

  ‘I was never betrothed to Jared Marriot. I never told him that you forced your attentions on me. I tried to tell him that I was in love with you and he would not let me finish.’

  She walked back towards the horse and he made no move to help her mount.

  ‘And I,’ he said slowly, ‘did not pick the fight with Marriot. I would never have knocked him unconscious except that he had a knife in his belt and intended to use it.’

  They stared at each other and the water rushed by, filling the silence.

  ‘I am not a whore,’ she said after a few minutes, and there was defiance in her voice.

  ‘I am not a savage,’ he said, and there was the merest hint of amusement in his.

  She gave a tremulous smile and asked tentatively: ‘Then may I ride with you as I did before, and may we be friends?’

  His hands reached down and she was drawn into his arms and lifted in front of him.

  ‘We may not be friends,’ he said, and she felt a plunging sensation near her heart.

  ‘But why? I have explained …’

  ‘Because I do not wish to marry my friends,’ he said huskily, and then he was kissing her, his mouth hot and demanding. Beneath them the horse moved impatiently. Dart raised his head, his eyes full of unsatisfied desire.

  ‘Why does making love to you always have to be so damned difficult? We’re either in a snowdrift with a wagon train of hymn-singing Mormons rumbling towards us, or astride a horse, or …’

  ‘… in a bed of furs and skins and calling each other names,’ Polly finished, her cheeks flushed, her eyes glowing.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind about heading for the Chariton,’ he said, his hands tightening on her waist. ‘We’ll ride straight for the Fort instead.’

  ‘Why?’ She laid her head against his broad chest as the stallion once more began to canter steadily forward.

  ‘Because there is a preacher at the Fort,’ he said.

  Polly smiled, thinking of the Latter-day Saints. ‘There are hundreds at the Chariton.’

  ‘A marrying preacher,’ Dart said, his voice deep and tender and loving.

  ‘If you were a Mormon then Nephi or Josiah or any of the elders could marry us.’

  ‘If you were an Indian, then Red-Cloud could have married us.’

  She sighed contentedly. ‘Then as you are not a Mormon and I am not an Indian, a preacher at the Fort it will have to be.’

  He smiled his devastating smile. Wrapped from head to foot in skins of wild mink, held securely in the arms of the man she loved, Polly put away for ever all memories of Black-Feather and Corrington. The past was past. Only the future mattered. The future and Dart.

  The blast of the bugle startled her from sleep.

  ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Dart said with barely concealed annoyance. ‘Only my brother officers and half the United States army.’

  Polly was acutely aware of her fringed leggings and exotic cloak.

  ‘God’s teeth!’ he uttered furiously. ‘There’s half a division of Mormons with them!’

  Polly looked and her heart sank. Jared’s fair hair was unmistakable.

  ‘I think they’ve come to rescue us,’ she said unhappily.

  Dart’s face was grim. ‘Then the sooner we tell them they’re not needed, the better,’ he said and dug his spurs in, riding hard to meet them.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Polly! Polly!’ Disobeying the strict orders of the Captain, Jared broke ranks and rode at breakneck speed towards them.

  ‘You’re safe!’ His face was so boyishly joyful that Polly had not the heart to do anything but smile and say, ‘Yes, Jared. I’m safe.’

  ‘Your clothes!’ His grey eyes registered her bizarre clothing and were instantly concerned.

  ‘Petticoats and cambric gowns are not very suitable in an Indian encampment,’ Polly answered lightly, showing no intention of removing herself from the blue-jacketed arms that surrounded her.

  It was obvious from her demeanour that she had suffered no harm. Jared steeled himself to face the silent Major and said uncertainly,

  ‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart, sir.’

  Dart merely nodded. The boy’s very presence annoyed him. He turned his attention instead to the approaching Captain.

  The Captain had halted his perfectly-drilled men some little way distant. Instinct told him that Major Richards might not want details of his chivalrous rescue of the Mormon girl made public. His riding into the Pawnee camp would only renew gossip as to his background—and his loyalties. It was a delicate subject and one the Captain intended handling tactfully.

  He saluted respectfully. ‘I was informed by this young man and others that one of their party had been taken prisoner by marauding Indians. I had heard that the Pawnees were at present at their old camping ground and was on my way there.’

  Dart’s face showed none of the relief he felt. A contingent the size the Captain was leading could never have entered Red-Cloud’s presence peacefully. There would have been deaths on both sides and a further rift between the Indians and the army.

  ‘Very commendable of you, Captain. But you would have done better to have approached with a smaller party.
The girl was unharmed and treated respectfully.’

  Polly grimaced. She was sure Dart knew what he was doing, but being manacled to a pole, like a dog, was not her idea of being treated with respect. Neither was the rape Black-Feather had so obviously intended.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Order your men back to the Fort.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ and then hesitantly, ‘The Mormons, sir. Some of them are pretty distraught.’

  ‘Leave the Mormons to me, Captain. I’ll rejoin you later.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The Captain saluted again, stole a curious look at the fur-clad, blonde-haired girl sitting so complacently against his Major’s chest, and did as he was bid.

  Nephi and Josiah and Tom Marriot rode up to them, their faces wreathed in smiles.

  ‘I thought you were dead, child,’ Tom Marriot said as he dismounted and held out his arms.

  Polly slid from the horse’s back and hugged him tightly.

  ‘I am quite safe, as you can see.’

  ‘But the Indians …’

  Behind her, Dart cleared his throat. She smiled wryly.

  ‘The Indians were perfectly respectful to me, as the Major has just informed the Captain.’

  She could almost feel Dart exude a sigh of relief.

  Jared wanted to hug her too, but she no longer looked like the Polly he knew. Her hair still gleamed with aromatic oils and hung sleekly down her back. If some of the Latter-day Saints had thought her ringlets sinful, they would surely have thought the sight of her long flying hair pagan. The rich skins, clasped at her throat by an amulet depicting a wolf, clothed her as though she were a fairytale princess—or an Indian princess. He felt strangely ill at ease with her.

  ‘We rode on to the Fort,’ Josiah was saying to Dart. ‘By the time we had persuaded the Captain to act, Tom and some of the others from Richardson and Chariton had joined us. The Adams brothers had spread the news of Polly’s capture and everyone that could be spared rode with us.’

  ‘So I can see,’ Dart said drily, surveying the motley array that clustered on horseback around them.