The Colonel's Lady (19 page)

She leaned into the window, the crude bulk of the shutter creaking as she sagged against it. She felt like she was five years old, sitting on the lofty branch of that old oak, secure one minute then slipping the next. Down, down, down she’d fallen, legs folding under her like broken sticks, left foot shattering. Then, and now, all the breath flew out of her, and she couldn’t speak or cry or do anything at all. Mere bones had broken then. ’Twas nothing like her heart, which, though she’d forbidden it, had fastened itself to Cass.

She watched in silent agony as he turned to the Indian woman and held out his hand. Without a moment’s hesitation, she entwined her fingers in his. The intimate gesture was done with such a touching familiarity that fresh pain sliced through Roxanna’s heart.

Oh, Cecily, to be in Ireland, unable to see your beloved like this . . .

He was walking toward the sally port now as he did every evening, the guard flanking him, leaving the fetid fort far behind. Everyone—to a man—was watching them go, all those remaining lost in a cloud of bewilderment or blatant envy.

Up the greening hill to the stone house they went. Hank was not there but here, standing with Bella near the flagpole, the new American flag with its stars and stripes outstretched in a stiff early evening wind. At the entrance to the stone house, Cass opened the door and let the Shawnee woman in before shutting it firmly behind them.

Roxanna leaned her head against the shutter, a great emptiness rushing in to rival her hurt. What would they say when alone with one another? How would they make themselves understood? The innocent questions pushed her pain deeper still, and then the wisdom of her twenty-eight years took root. Some things needed no interpretation.

Lovemaking was the same in any language.

19

Wrapping the fragile thistle teacup and saucer in a piece of linen cloth, Roxanna buried it in her trunk alongside her other treasured things. It was nearly midnight now, and her righteous indignation of hours before had eroded into a childish desire to run away. After shunning supper, she’d drawn in the latchstring to avoid visitors, praying for solitude. Sometimes Dovie or Nancy would stop by—and always Bella. But tonight, strangely, Bella had not come. Nor had Abby, up and around again, free of the fever. If Roxanna had any regrets, they concerned leaving Abby.

Her whole world felt upended and queer. Habit pulled her to the window as it did night after night, and she gave in to the impulse a final time. Saying good night to the stone house had become her bedtime ritual. She loved the way the moon, when it shone, turned the stone a pearly white, noble as a castle wall, and how a solitary candle, star-bright, always flickered from a second-story oriole window. His window, she guessed. And now . . . hers.

Tonight she couldn’t bring herself to open the shutter and look. If she had, she would have stared into utter blackness. The moon was hidden behind a bank of clouds, its light snuffed like a candle. No longer was the stone house a thing of beauty and grace and peace. When Cass had taken the Shawnee woman inside, it had become a place of dishonor.

In the ensuing hours, her hurt had hardened to anger. All the admiration she’d had for him as an officer and a gentleman had turned to ashes. Oh, she wasn’t so naive that she didn’t know officers sometimes relieved their loneliness in discreet ways. Even Bella had hinted he was in need of a mistress. But a commander, especially one assigned by General Washington himself, whose reputation extended to every tribe and settler from east to west, had an example to maintain. And in the space of one afternoon, he’d thrown it all to the wind.

Stomach careening, she recalled the eve he’d recently shared with her. When they’d danced and he’d taken the liberty to touch her, brushing her cheek with his fingers before twining them in her hair, she’d sensed his deep loneliness—and her own. Fearing both, she’d told him she didn’t want to fall in love with him. And his response had been a barely tamped-down fury.

Pressing cold fingers to her aching temples, she tried to make sense of it all. Oh, but she had so little knowledge about men—or how war was waged on the frontier. But why bother? It only mattered that she get away as soon as possible.

She lay down, but sleep would not come. The parade ground outside her walls had assumed a ghostly quiet, and her prayers seemed to reach the ceiling and go no further. In the wee hours, she finally found her only solace—repacking her trunk. But even this brewed a fierce battle inside her. Twice she took out the gifts he’d given her—the thistle teacup and saucer, the silver strainer, his heartfelt letter telling her of Papa’s death, his black queue ribbon—intent on leaving them behind, only to return them to the trunk again.

She slammed the lid, buckled the leather straps, and waited for the sound of Hank’s wagon as he readied for his weekly trip to Smitty’s Fort. He went for supplies at the sutler’s there, Cass said, and to gather reports from militia leaders as to what was happening at the various frontier stations in regards to the Indian trouble. Roxanna thought him quite brave to make these forays, sometimes with a few regulars but mostly alone. Bella reassured her that the Indians had a fearsome superstition about Negroes and usually gave them wide berth. Remembering it made her feel slightly less skittish about accompanying him today.

Finally hearing him, she hurried out, but only after she’d penned a terse letter. Never again would he be simply Cass to her, but Colonel.

C
olonel McLinn,

C
ircumstances forbid me to continue in your service.
I
am on my way back to
V
irginia, beginning today.
Y
ou are henceforth relieved of any and all responsibility for me.

S
incerely,

R
oxanna
R
owan

Leaving the letter on the trestle table, she rushed onto the parade ground, straight into the path of the oncoming wagon. Seeing her in the chilly dawn mist, Hank slowed the team to a stop and applied the hand brake, his dark face full of questions.

“I need a ride to Smitty’s Fort. My lap desk and trunk are just inside.”

He scratched his gray-whiskered chin. “Miz Roxanna, last I heard, Smitty’s Fort was full up.”

She clasped her gloved hands together pleadingly. “Perhaps there’s room today. I don’t mind sharing quarters—living temporarily with a family . . .”

His brown eyes reflected a wary resignation. “You tell the colonel ’bout this?”

The quiet rebuke ruffled the prim edges of her composure. “I doubt he cares about such mundane things this morning.” The hasty words brought a new wave of hurt, and she looked down at the mud thawing beneath her boots, fighting tears.

“Bella’s gonna be plenty put out wi’ me—and you.”

“Hank, please. I don’t want a scene. I have some shillings . . .” The words died out and revealed the depths of her desperation.

Looking over her head to the stone house, he tried a different tack. “It’s a mite dangerous outside them gates. You know how to use a gun?”

Feeling a small measure of success, she reached inside her cape pocket and produced her silver-mounted pistol. Eyeing it, he nodded and jumped down, heading toward the open cabin door. In moments her trunk and lap desk were hefted into the empty wagon bed, and he helped her up onto the rough seat. She noticed his own musket tucked beneath them as the wagon wheels groaned and lurched forward, past the sentries and through the front gates.

They followed the river on a rutted road that had been worn from woodcutting details and Hank’s frequent forays to the fort a few miles distant. As they rode, he was quieter than usual, remarking only about some sign of spring—the tightly furled buds of a passing dogwood or the throaty chant of tree frogs.

’Twas the first of March, Roxanna remembered. Benumbed, she didn’t look back. Time to be moving on, no matter the danger. Fort Endeavor had brought her nothing but heartache. And regret. She’d never even asked where Papa was buried. Somewhere in the wilderness was all she knew.

So this was Smitty’s Fort. Half the size of Fort Endeavor, it had no military presence aside from a small militia, not even a flagpole flying the familiar Virginia colors. The stench of too many people and animals trapped in too small a place, and not one house of necessity but two, added to the aura of dirt, dung, and despair.

While Hank did business with the sutler, Roxanna approached a woman smoking a clay pipe outside the blacksmith’s shop and learned that a cabin had just been vacated. “Old man Horner up and died two days ago. I ain’t poked around his place myself, but you’d best take it right quick if you’ve a mind to.”

Roxanna was afraid to ask just what he’d died of, saying simply, “I was hoping to join up with a party who might be going over the mountains to Virginia.”

The woman ran appreciative eyes over Roxanna’s fine cape. “Ain’t nobody been comin’ or goin’ with the Indian scare on. Best talk to Marcus Calloway. He heads up the local militia and might know when another party could head back that way.”

Half an hour later, Hank had deposited her trunk inside the deceased’s cabin and built a welcoming fire. Now he stood in the doorway looking decidedly grieved. Behind him the sun sent feeble spokes of light into the dark interior, exposing a dozen spiderwebs threading the rafters and a good quarter inch of dust below.

“It ain’t too late to come back wi’ me, Miz Roxanna,” he said for the fifth time, fur felt hat in his hands.

A barb of alarm, of feeling she’d run ahead of the Lord’s will for her once again, nearly made her reconsider. “Thank you, Hank, but I can’t. Please tell Bella and the others goodbye for me. And . . .” Tears sprang to her eyes and strained her voice. “And Abby.”

Nodding, he turned to go but left the door wide open. Spying a grease lamp on a small table, she snatched a piece of straw from the bottom of a broom and kindled it, lighting the grease-soaked wick. The feral smell of bear’s oil made her wrinkle her nose. Though the slant of the sun told her it wasn’t yet ten o’clock in the morning, she was midnight weary. Sleep would be a welcome escape.

Finding a bed wrench beneath the sagging rope springs, she tightened each one, eyeing the corn-husk tick with growing concern. An army of bed bugs scurried for cover as light settled on the soiled linen ticking. Unbidden, an image of her tidy cabin just a few miles distant seemed to mock her.

Taking her quilt from her trunk, she wrapped herself in its familiar folds and settled into the room’s only chair—a worn rocker—and tried not to think of the rat she’d just seen darting into a corner hole.

Lord, I didn’t mean to run away from You. Just him.

Cass angled the razor over the long, lean slope of his jaw, the basin of water on the scrolled stand beneath him offering up a plume of bayberry-scented steam. After shaving, he cleaned the blade and laid it aside, drying his face with a towel. With Hank away at Smitty’s Fort, the house was particularly quiet, the morning’s calm broken only by the throaty trill of a robin beyond the window.

Darting a glance in the shaving glass, he blinked bloodshot eyes that bespoke a near sleepless night—for all the wrong reasons. Only Ben Simmons was privy to the truth of the last hours. All the rest believed he was busy courting a chief’s daughter, albeit a very beautiful, informative one.

Opening a shutter, he peered past panes of glass that bubbled and streaked in the morning light and surveyed the stalwart lines of Fort Endeavor. A flash of red near the sally port caught his eye. Bella was mounting the hill, her calico kerchief bright as a beacon. He knew something was wrong simply by the cast of her features. Always dour and forbidding, they seemed even fiercer this morning. Surely the woman was descended from some Ethiopian warrior line. The guard could hardly keep up with her. She clutched a paper in one hand, and he realized she bore news. Bad news.