And One Rode West (26 page)

Christa frowned. “Another—?” she began, but Captain Clark was sitting back, tilting his head curiously. “I hail from an area that’s now West Virginia, and I would swear, Mrs. McCauley, that your accent is a Virginian one. But I remember distinctly your husband telling me years ago he was marrying a girl from Mississippi.”

Christa’s gaze shot quickly to Jeremy. She’d never seen him appear quite so tense or pale. His jaw was tense as if he were in great pain.

“I’m from Virginia, Captain Clark. Right from the heart of the Old Dominion.” She sat back, still staring at Jeremy. “Darling, do you have another wife from Mississippi?” she asked lightly.

Captain Clark evidently—and far too late—realized the error of his ways. “Oh, I am so sorry. I beg you both, forgive me. It’s just that—”

“It’s all right, Emory!” Jeremy said, exasperated. He carefully controlled his annoyance, determined to make his visitor at ease once again. “I was to have married a girl from Mississippi. The fall of Vicksburg changed that. Christa is the queen of Virginia, Captain, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Perhaps you knew some of the same families?”

Jeremy was the one to start them comparing notes, Christa would remind him later.

At that moment though, he was hard put to curb his temper as the two of them leaned forward, talking a blue streak. Yes, they knew several of the same families. He had known the Millers, frequent guests at Cameron Hall. Kiernan had been married to Anthony Miller before he had died at Manassas, his younger sister and brother were still her charges. Emory talked about the dances, the estate, the sad shape of Harpers
Ferry now that the war was over. Christa reminded him that at least the new state of West Virginia, established in 1862, didn’t have a Yankee sent down by President Johnson to be governor of the state, and Emory laughed and told her that any governor would be a Yankee governor.

His Yankee jokes made her laugh.

They began talking earnestly about Reconstruction. “Of course, Lincoln meant to be far more magnanimous!” Emory declared. “Numerous members of Congress were furious when he so arbitrarily declared his will on the southern states. But dear Christa, you must remember! Many northern mothers lost their sons; wives lost their husbands. Some are very bitter, and yes, they do want the South to pay. What if the South had won, Christa?”

She sighed. “Don’t you see? It was a cause! A bid for freedom—no different from the American Revolution! Had we won, we wouldn’t have caused any hardship to the North. We’d have merely gone our separate way.”

“It wasn’t meant to be,” he told her. “I don’t even know why. There is something special, something grand, about this Union.”

“You sound like my brother, Jesse,” she said.

Weland was sitting back, watching the whole thing.

“Her brother fought for the Union,” Jeremy explained, smiling over his grating teeth.

“One of them did, one of them didn’t.”

“They both came home?”

“Yes.”

“You were very lucky.”

“I know!” she said fervently.

Jeremy had had enough. He stood. “Well, we’re riding hard tomorrow, and Emory will have a very long ride back to Fort Smith. We’d best call it a night.”

Christa rose, wondering at the tone of his voice
when he was the one who had so much explaining to do. Emory Clark leapt quickly to his feet, and Weland followed them all, rubbing his chin. Emory took her hand and kissed it, and told her what a pleasure it had been. He turned to Jeremy, saluting him and telling him he was glad to have him in the West, and very glad to be serving in a messenger capacity beneath him again.

Outside, Emory went on to his assigned quarters for the night. Weland tipped his hat, smiled curiously, and headed for his bed in the medical tent.

Jeremy took hold of Christa’s arm and steered her toward their own quarters.

“It’s amazing just how much you can like Yankees when you choose, Christa!” he told her. His escorting of her through the tent flap was much more like a thrust.

A lantern had been lit for them. Nathaniel, always seeing to their welfare, Christa thought.

She spun around, facing Jeremy. “Me? You have a problem stomaching Rebels, but apparently you were very fond of one in Mississippi. Why didn’t you marry her? Did you change your mind?
Do
you have another child? What is it, Jeremy, a girl or a boy? Do you at least send the poor woman some sort of—”

She broke off with a gasp because he was striding toward her looking murderous. He paused just before he reached her, his eyes closed tight, his teeth nearly bared. She heard them grating. “Don’t you ever question me about my past again!” he hissed, turning away from her, unbuckling his sword belt.

A trembling shot through her. She moistened her lips as he stared at her again. He had started this, not she. She just wanted the truth, even if she was going about it the wrong way.

“Then perhaps you should refrain from commenting on me!” she whispered fiercely.

He spun around to face her. “I wouldn’t comment on your past. It’s the present I couldn’t quite help but notice! You might have been sitting on the lawn at Cameron Hall tonight, the queen-of-all-she-surveyed, the damned belle of the ball, flirting as if every swain in twelve counties was after her.”

“How dare you!” Christa began, her voice low and throaty and dangerous. “When you’ve been running all over the South procreating!”

She cried out because he held her shoulders in an awful vice. “I have no children, madam. None. The lady is dead, the child with her. And I don’t care to hear about it from you again, are we understood?”

“Yes!” she cried out. “Just let me go!”

He loosened his hold, and she wrenched herself away, turning her back to him. Angry, hurt, frightened, she found words flowing from her. Words that would hurt.

“I was trying to be pleasant to your friend!” she said. “And he was very much a gentleman. He might have been a Yankee, but he reminded me of—”

“Jesse?”

“No …”

“Who, dammit?”

“Liam!”

“Ah, yes! The wondrous Liam!” Jeremy said. He sat down on the foot of the bed and wrenched off his boots. “Well, that is one thing I can promise you. I will do my best never, never to remind you of Liam!”

He was usually so meticulous with his clothing, but tonight he nearly ripped every button from his cavalry shirt as he stripped it off. Christa moved away from him, unnerved by the depths of his temper.

She recalled the timbre in his voice when he told her that the Mississippi girl was dead. He loved her still, she thought.

“What the hell are you doing!” he snapped out suddenly.
He was up, shedding his trousers, then standing naked in the lamplight, his hands on his hips.

Again, in the midst of all this anger, she thought of Celia’s words about him. She swallowed, trying not to allow her eyes to roam down the hard-muscled length of his body.

“I’m keeping my distance,” she murmured.

“Get in bed.”

“I am not getting in bed with you when you’re in this mood!”

Two long strides brought him across the tent before she could retreat further. “You’re getting in bed with me no matter what my mood!” he informed her. He swung her around, undoing the buttons on her dress. She felt a trembling begin in her and she started to move away.

“I’ll rip it into shreds,” he warned, and she stood still.

“If you think—”

“I think I’m getting some sleep!” he announced.

He spun her around again, shimmying the dress from her body, then picking her up in chemise and pantalets and setting her down on the bed. He blew out the lamp on his desk and joined her.

She waited.

Waited for the touch of his fingers, for the heat of his desire.

They did not come.

An hour later when she knew that he slept while she was still lying there awake, she wondered if he dreamed of a dead girl.

And if he compared Christa with the sweet Mississippian of his past.

And if he didn’t find Christa to be lacking in comparison.

* * *

He had been up some time before she rose the next morning. Nathaniel called her from outside the tent to warn her that they were nearly ready; the tent needed to be broken down, she needed to be ready to ride herself.

She started to rise, then stared down the bedding at her blanket.

There was a creature on it. A spider. Not just any spider. A huge, massive, hairy spider. Step by step it came crawling up her blanket.

She felt a scream rising in her throat. She fought it. The spider was moving slowly enough.

“Nat—Nathaniel!” she cried. It should have been loud. It came out like a whisper.

“Mrs. McCauley? What is it?” She could sense his confusion. He couldn’t come bursting in on her. Then she heard him calling to someone, saying that something was wrong.

She was staring at the thing when the flap flew open. Jeremy burst back into the tent.

“Just stay still,” he told her. He slipped a glove from his hand and slapped the thing from her blanket to the ground. He crushed it with his boot. She heard a strange crackling and popping sound and felt ill for the first time in ages.

She moistened her lips. “Was it—lethal?”

He shook his head. “It was a tarantula,” he told her. “The bite can make you very sick, but it’s seldom lethal. Are you all right?”

No! She wasn’t all right! She hated spiders, especially big brown ugly spiders like that! She hated polecats in her bed, and most of all she hated feeling alone, the way that she had felt last night.

“Yes, I’m all right,” she told him.

For a moment, she thought that he would come to her. Hold her. But he didn’t. “Come on, then. Get up. We’ve got to move,” he said softly.

Then he was gone.

She dressed quickly, fervently shaking out her clothes. Nathaniel brought her coffee. He tried to tell her that she might well have scared the spider more than the spider scared her. “They’re really mighty curious creatures, Mrs. McCauley. They can build little trap doors for their nests that open when they leave and close tight when they come back. They spin webs finer than any silk cocoon you can imagine!”

“That’s wonderful,” she told him.

“I’ll look things over real good tonight, I promise, Mrs. McCauley.”

She smiled, then gave his arm a quick squeeze. “You’re a godsend, Nathaniel. Thank you.”

He managed to cheer her up, being so considerate and in a very good mood himself.

“We’re out on the prairie today, Mrs. McCauley. Beautiful country with high plains and deep ridges. Wild things as far as the eye can see! We might even see a buffalo or two today.”

“You think so?”

“I think so. If the critters haven’t headed too far north by now!” he said.

Robert Black Paw came riding by. “Are you riding in the ambulance, Mrs. McCauley?”

“I think I’ll take Tilly this morning,” she told him, her hand over her eyes, shielding them from the rising sun.

He nodded. “I’ll bring her up.”

Robert was as good as his word. She had just finished packing the last of the overnight gear when he returned with Tilly, saddled and ready to ride. She didn’t see Jeremy when they started out, but two hours into the day he rode back to her at last, tipping his hat to her.

“You’ve survived?”

“Yes, so it seems.”

“If we don’t come upon a buffalo we can take today, we’ll take out a hunting party tonight. We’ll stay close to camp, but we’ll find fresh meat.”

She nodded politely.

“If you’re frightened because of the spider—”

“I’m not frightened,” she said irritably, “and you needn’t strain yourself to be nice because of a spider!”

She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. She bit her lower lip, but it was too late. He tipped his hat to her. “If you’ll excuse me, then …”

He galloped on ahead, moving to the front of the ranks.

It wasn’t much after that that Nathaniel rode back to her. “There’s been a buffalo spotted up ahead!”

“Really?”

She started to ride forward with him, but then she suddenly felt a curious shifting in the ground.

It came again and again.

She saw Nathaniel’s dark eyes widen. “God above us!” he whispered.

Then someone else shouted out. “It ain’t a buffalo! It’s hundreds of buffalo!”

“Jesu!” came a cry. “Jesu—stampede!”

Twelve