by Jodi Thomas
He waited, encouraging her with a nod.
“I placed my pin money in the parish poor box.” She paused, uncertain if she could confess it all. But his smile—his first real smile—encouraged her. “And, at twelve, I rejected the comfort of my bedroom to sleep in the barn . . . until one of the grooms discovered me there, and my guardian called me to his study.”
“He told you that nice young women of good family do not sleep in barns.”
“No. He told me that I changed nothing for those in need by sleeping in a barn, and if I wanted to help others, I should do something useful. I’d never been useful, so I asked my great-aunt Judith to help me.” She smiled at the memory. “Judith led me to the library. ‘If you wish to do good, Genie, you must first understand the problem, what has caused it and what solutions others have tried. Only then can you find a path that effects real change.’ And she created a shelf of books for me to read.”
“She called you Jeannie.” Her nickname in his voice sounded like a caress.
“She did.” Eugenie smiled. “And over Lilly’s quite strong objection.” She wiped away unexpected tears. “Forgive me: I’m sometimes still caught off guard by her loss.”
“Grief does that: lets you go months enjoying happy memories, then stabs you in the heart and belly when you least expect it.” His hand found hers, squeezed it, then withdrew.
“I learned everything from her . . . everything important at least.”
“And she gave you books.” He led the conversation to a less tender subject.
“And I read.” She caught her breath. “And I asked questions, and eventually I found ways to be useful.”
“Why did your family wait so long to teach you about the political conditions of England?”
“Politics, in the home of a duke, was in the very air. But Lilly didn’t send me to live in England until I was eight or so.” Suddenly she felt shy, on display, as if she had said far too much. “You must excuse me: I’ve made an intellectual game something entirely too personal.”
“Being stranded”—he winked again—“in the rain on a deserted road encourages confidences. It feels too easily like you’re in another world, and that’s fine, as long as you don’t forget to keep watch.”
At that moment, thunder and lightning boomed and flashed together.
“Ah, it’s upon us now.” Asher brushed the fog from the window. Suddenly the rain changed to a torrent, falling in sheets down the glass and beating heavy against the roof of the carriage. The carriage swayed under the wind and rain.
To regain some emotional distance, Eugenie picked up the newspaper from Dallas, dated the previous week. The headline read INDIAN DEPREDATIONS! Disturbed, she read the first notice—“ Patrick Murphy of Young County is offering a $1000 reward for the recovery and restoration of his Sister, recently carried into captivity by the Indians”—then the second, “In Cameron County, the Cortinas band swear to hang every American, man, woman, or child.”
“It’s only rain; it should pass us soon.” Asher stared out the window, then reached for the packet of pound cake.
“Buchanan and Cameron Counties. How far are they from Dallas?” Eugenie asked.
“Buchanan is four, maybe five, days by coach; Cameron, though, is past San Antone, at the tip-end of Texas. Getting there would take the better part of two months. Why?” He spread butter then jam on the cake.
She held out the paper, pointing at the stories with her finger. “Are these cause for concern?”
He read carefully, shaking his head. “Most newsmen just want to sell a paper. They entertain a little, frighten a little. But in everyday life, newspapers are little good against a prairie fire, or a snakebite, or a herd of cattle spooked and stompeding.”
“Unless they also inform you how to stop a prairie fire, how to treat a snakebite, and how to survive a stampede.” She was disappointed. After their earlier conversation about books, she’d expected a more appreciative response. Even so, his slow half smile caught her breath.
“I suppose that English cattle stampede in pretty English accents.” He tossed a bit of cake into the air and caught it in his mouth. “But spook a couple hundred head of Texas cattle, and them critters will stomp all the way to Kansas City.” Something about his manner—his drop into a chummy Texas slang—rankled. Pretty English accent, my foot.
“Mr. Graham.” She infused her voice with Judith-taught steel. “While spook, critters, and stompedes offer me a delightful glimpse into a Texas vernacular, I am not some sweet young thing unable to bear hard truths. As far as I can tell, we are stranded miles from any city, without ready help against Indian depredations or Cortinas. Do I have cause for concern?”
He sighed. “Depends on which group captures you. This land first belonged to the Native peoples, then the Spanish came, then the French, and now the English. So, it’s a constant tug-of-war. Drawn by the promise of rich land, settlers encroach into Indian territory, and the Native peoples push back with various levels of hostility.”
“Show me.” She held Kent’s book open. Its frontispiece was a lithographed map of Texas. As she’d read, she’d penciled in the names of more than twenty Native peoples over the places associated with them. “Which should I be wary of?”
Asher, putting down his cake, took the book from her hands, turning the cover over so he could read the spine. “ ‘Texas: Her Land, Her Peoples,’” he read aloud. “Another greenhorn visitor, telling all sorts of questionable stories, I bet.”
“No, the author is one of your native sons, a Texian, he calls himself. I find his work enthralling.”
“A Texian? Not likely.” Asher examined the book more closely. “Only those of us who lived under both Mexico and the Republic can call themselves that. My family came soon after the Old Three Hundred, the original settlers under Stephen F. Austen. And I’ve never heard of any Garrand Kent, though there was a Garrand and a Kent at the Alamo.”
“We can debate later whether Mr. Kent is or isn’t a Texian. For now, I wish to know what sort of danger we might be in.”
“If I say you are in no more danger than you would be walking the streets of London at night, you won’t be satisfied, will you?” His voice mirrored the firmness of her own.
“Already you understand me quite well.” She tried to ignore the way his fingers caressed the leather binding of Kent’s book. “I had trusted that Mr. Kent’s assessment of the state of Texas was a good one. But if he isn’t a reputable guide, I have only you . . . or the newspapers.”
He sighed and pointed to a spot on the map. “Buchanan County is here, west and north of Dallas. Until six months ago, four peaceable tribes—the Caddo, Anadarko, Waco, and Tonkawa—farmed there on the Brazos reservation.”
“What happened six months ago?” She was grateful that he had agreed to answer. It signaled that in a way he respected her and her concerns.
“Settlers farther west were being attacked by the Comanche and Kiowa.” His finger traced a circle around the western territories of those groups. “But to the Anglo settlers, one Indian is pretty much the same as another. They demanded that the Brazos reservation be closed, and its inhabitants moved to the Oklahoma Indian Territory here. But the Comanche refuse to move from their hereditary lands, and they are fierce warriors, feared even by the other Native peoples. You wouldn’t want to be captured by them.”
“What about the Cortinas?”
He laughed, though his voice quickly turned serious again. “Cortinas isn’t a people, it’s a man. Juan Cortina. But whatever that newspaper says, many in Brownsville call him a hero for fighting to protect those who have been falsely accused.” He pointed to the tip-end of Texas by the Gulf of Mexico. “And he has the loyalty of a small army, all men who believe the Treaty of Hidalgo gave the land south of the Nueces to Mexico. Rip Ford’s men are heading there now to keep the peace.” His face grew pensive.
“Rip Ford. Mr. Jones said you were joining his Rangers later this month.” She wanted him to say it wasn
’t true. Already she hated the thought of him dead or wounded.
“I haven’t decided.” He started to hand Kent’s book back to her, then stopped. “Books like this one underestimate the dangers, while the newspapers overblow them. The truth is this: men may be dangerous, but so is this land. We have wild spaces with so few people, that if you needed help to survive, you’d likely die before you found it. Predators of all kinds, both animal and man. Weather that changes four times between sunrise and sunset.” Asher studied her face. “It’s a land for the brave and the reckless, not for the faint of heart.”
She felt her cheeks warm. “I have never been accused of being reckless or faint of heart, though I’ve never been called brave either.”
“A fearful woman doesn’t leap from a coach to free unfamiliar horses. She doesn’t leave her home to travel alone to a new land.”
“You needed the help, and I didn’t travel alone.” Eugenie folded her hands in her lap. “The maid who accompanied me from England to Boston took one look at your new land and demanded to be sent back to London. In Boston I hired the one who refused to leave Jefferson today.”
“Yet you didn’t turn back. Why?” he quizzed her. But he’d answered her questions. It was only fair to answer his.
“Since my mother isn’t well enough to travel on her own, I have come to retrieve her from her latest scrape and return her to her family.” Eugenie kept her voice matter-of-fact, refusing to let him hear any hint of resentment or annoyance.
“Your mother isn’t well?” Asher sounded surprised. “What scrape?”
“My mother believes herself a revolutionary, but in truth she’s an enthusiast, chasing cause after cause. This time, she fell in with a colony of Swiss, Belgian, and French socialists. They wished to enact the ideals of the French Revolution, starting with full equality of the sexes in every realm, political, social, and even sexual.” The moment she said the word sexual, she wished she hadn’t, not with Asher sitting so close by. She hurried on, hoping he wouldn’t notice the word. “But their colony has failed, and now that she’s hurt, she wants a companion to carry her back to our family.”
“Hurt,” Asher repeated, searching Eugenie’s eyes. He turned his attention somewhat abruptly to repacking the food basket. “The La Réunion colony’s ideals were less at fault than the weather.”
“The weather?” Eugenie paused, trying to determine if he was teasing her again. But he seemed perfectly serious.
“The last year that the La Réunion colony tried to grow crops, a long winter delayed planting until late spring, then a devastatingly hot summer burned everything to the ground.” He shrugged. “They came here as craftsmen, but they needed to be ranchers and farmers. Perhaps, given better weather, they could have learned to be both.”
“I can’t imagine Lilly as a farmer,” Eugenie said, almost to herself.
“She makes delicious jams.” Asher offered her another jar of tea, seeming to wish to change the subject. But Eugenie waved it away.
“Makes? Jams?” Eugenie closed her eyes. She had agreed to travel with this man—this handsome Ranger—largely on her mother’s recommendation—and he clearly didn’t know her mother at all. Her fingers moved to her lips—and she’d kissed him.
“I like her prickly pear jam best.”
Eugenie opened one eye, stared at him, then closed it. A prickly pear. Of course Asher-of-the-almost-smile would like prickly pears. She opened both eyes and stared into his. “What exactly is a prickly pear?”
“The fruit of a cactus. In the spring, I’ll bring you one.” Asher finished packing the basket. “Lilly’s just one of the colonists who moved across the river to Dallas, bringing their professions with them. Scientists and architects, coach- and watchmakers, jewelers, milliners, lithographers, and even dancing instructors, Dallas needs them all if it ever hopes to rival Galveston or San Antonio.”
“And my mother’s profession is jam-making,” she said flatly, still not quite believing it.
“Jams, and she teaches art. Her studio is quite popular, and one afternoon a week, she teaches those who can’t afford lessons.”
“I’m lost in a world gone utterly mad.” Eugenie couldn’t decide whether laughter was an appropriate response. “Lilly has become a jam-making, art-teaching doyenne.”
“You always call your mother Lilly,” Asher observed.
“She prefers it. ‘No society of true equals can allow titles,’ she says. Of course, the family suspects she merely wishes to conceal that she has a daughter as old as I am.”
“She did lead me to believe you were . . . somewhat younger.”
Eugenie felt her stomach drop. She knew she wasn’t the sweet young thing that most men looked for in a wife. Certainly, Jeremy’s new heiress-bride was barely out of the schoolroom. And she’d long ago given up the idea that a man might find her attractive for anything other than her fortune. But something in her interactions with Asher—their kisses, his glances that warmed her skin, their shared appreciation of Sonnet 43—had allowed her for a moment to forget her age.
“You said we would decide to wait or walk after we ate. Should we decide now?” She knew her voice sounded cold, but she couldn’t help it.
Asher rubbed the fog from the window glass and looked out. “I’d hoped by now someone would have come by. But at this point, we should walk to the next town, hire some horses, and come back for the coach.”
“And my trunks?”
“You could drag them behind you. But I’d leave them here until we return.”
Eugenie imagined herself, hunched over, pulling one of her trunks down the road by a rope over her shoulder. “I’ll need to collect some things before we go. But what of your supplies and your other cargo, will you drag or leave them?”
“It’s cold now, but in a couple of hours, when the sun sets, it’ll fall well below freezing.” He loaded two revolvers. “We’ll simply have to hope we return before someone happens on the carriage.”
“How far is it to the next town?”
“It’s a piece.” Asher tucked the guns in his belt.
“Is a piece a measure of distance?” She’d enjoyed their earlier teasing over words, but somehow she’d lost her heart for it. Now she merely wanted to get to Dallas, whatever it took.
“I think of a piece as a distance somewhat more than a mile, but less than five.”
“What do you call a distance five miles or more?”
“Well, that’s a fer piece. But those are just my own estimates. I can’t say they hold true for anyone else.”
“If it’s just a piece to the next town, we could walk there in an hour or two, rent a team, then be back here before sunset.” She gathered her reticule, her book, and the apple he’d left out of the basket.
“Let’s hope they have enough horses to rent us a team. Knowing Trudy, she’s already run halfway to the Oklahoma territories.”
“You named a horse Trudy?” She almost laughed. “Not something strong and masculine?”
“It seemed apt. When I was young, Mrs. Trudy ran the closest school; she was quiet and easygoing, until you crossed her, then terrifying. Rain’s stopped.” Asher opened the carriage door and climbed out. A gust of frigid air blew through the cabin. “Do you want anything from your trunks? A heavy cloak, perhaps?”
She nodded yes, following him out of the carriage and pointing out which trunk to untie.
He climbed up on the coach, but somehow the joy had gone out of watching him. They were clearly close to the same age, but as single men aged, they preferred to court girls younger and younger still. Even with her fortune, she’d garnered less and less attention as she’d matured . . . until Jeremy. She shook off the memory.
She walked down the road, hoping someone—some wagon or coach—would come by and offer to carry them to the next town, but the world was silent.
A hint of movement in a stand of trees some fifty feet away caught her attention. She could barely make out the figure of a tall man wearing a tur
ban, then the light shifted, and he disappeared.
Pretending she hadn’t seen anything—had she?—she returned to the carriage, walking slowly and stopping to look at things along the way. If a man was in the woods, she didn’t want him to know he’d been seen.
“Asher?” she asked softly when she’d reached the side of the carriage.
“Yes.” His head was down as he worked the rope loose. “There!” He dropped Eugenie’s small valise to the ground.
“What sorts of clothes would a Comanche warrior wear?”
“This time of year, a hide coat, hide boots, and hair in two long braids with a single feather.” Asher looked up, surveying the woods and the fields around them.
She looked with him, but saw nothing.
Had all their talk of Native peoples simply caused her to create one out of light and shadow? She looked around again, this time more anxiously. If someone intended them no harm, why wouldn’t he come forward?
“What of colorful beaded cloth?”
“Get back in the carriage, Miss Charpentier . . . slowly.”
Chapter 3
Her full name, more than his instruction, formed a cold, hard lump in the pit of her stomach. She moved to the door of the carriage, her heart suddenly beating hard.
If she were taken captive, would her mother offer a ransom? Would anyone ever know what had happened to her? First a tornado, and now Indian depredations. She’d come so far not to reach the dusty village of Dallas.
At the door of the carriage, she pulled the stairs out to climb in.
Asher leaned down, appearing to struggle with part of the rigging. When she looked up, she realized his revolver sat next to his hand. Pitching his voice low, he asked, “What did you see?”
“I’m not certain. It could have merely been an illusion. He seemed to be wearing a turban.”
“Turban? You’re sure?” Asher’s whole body relaxed.
“I’m not certain of anything.”
He climbed down from the coach to stand beside her. “John? I know it’s you. Come out!”