The Colonel's Lady (23 page)

From somewhere—the foyer downstairs?—came the enchanting chime of a grandfather clock. Oh, but this house, Bella’s flattering words—they worked quite a spell. Her infatuation was soaring. Being here only added to Cass’s appeal and chipped away at her resolve to simply regard him as a friend.

She groped for sure footing, saying the first thing that came to mind. “Would you like to say a bedtime prayer with me, Abby?”

The child nodded solemnly as Bella removed her party dress. Stripped to her shift, she climbed onto Roxanna’s lap. Taking Abby’s small hands between her own, Roxanna gave in to the wild wish that this was her little girl and the stone house was home. If so, which prayer might she teach her?

“By day, by night, at home, abroad, still are we guided by our God. By His incessant bounty fed, by His unerring counsel led. God bless Abby and Bella and Hank, and Colonel McLinn and all his men. Olympia, Dovie, Mariah, and Nancy too . . .”

Within minutes, Abby was asleep in her arms, and Bella helped settle the child onto the trundle bed.

Finally divested of stays, chemise, and all else, Roxanna donned a thin linen nightgown and climbed the polished bed steps to the high feather tick. Feeling suddenly at sea in such a grand, unfamiliar house, she whispered, “Bella, where will you be?”

“Me and Hank have a cozy nook in back of the kitchen fireplace below.” With that, she went out, as if knowing Roxanna wouldn’t need a thing.

Settling back against the headboard on the bank of pillows—six to be exact—Roxanna pulled the finely worked coverlet up to her chin. The blue room was lovely and inviting, but it was the side door that drew her, the one adjoining her room to . . . his?

The temptation to turn the knob and peer further into his world left her nearly breathless. She looked down at Abby sound asleep. With Cass at the fort and Hank and Bella below, who would know?

Climbing out of the just-warmed bed, she crossed the carpet, her hand—and her heart—aching to enter in. Torn, she leaned her head against a painted panel, the knob cold and forbidding beneath her hand. What if it was the room in her dream? The one with the immense canopy bed and the clock mounted over the door? Such whimsy made her almost smile, and her hand moved from the knob to her slim waist. Nay, it was no more the room in her dream any more than she was carrying a child.

Such foolishness sent her back to bed, though sleep was a long time in coming. The feverish night swirled through her mind with such intensity it seemed she’d never left the fort. Her dances with Cass seemed the only ones she remembered. But it was Micajah’s words that punctured all the high feeling in her heart with the finality of an Indian arrow.

I was there when it happened. But I doubt you’d leap to his defense had you been.

What exactly had he meant? ’Twas wrong to speak disparagingly of one’s commanding officer. He almost sounded like a turncoat . . . a spy. She tried to push the ominous words away, but they were quickly supplanted by other unwelcome things—the striking earnestness in Cass’s face when he’d asked her to go to the stone house, the seemingly insignificant way he’d touched her sleeve in parting, communicating a dozen heartfelt messages.

To her hungry heart, anyway.

Turning over, she laid her aching head on a cool pillowslip and tried to sleep, but the tumult of her feelings blazed like a firestorm inside her. Adding fuel to the fire were Bella’s convicting words.
Ain’t you ever seen a man in love before?
Had she? Nay. And deep down in the depths of her being, she believed she never would.

22

The blockhouse window was open, and at dawn the pure, unadulterated trill of a cardinal roused Cass from what little sleep he’d had. Running a hand over his whiskery jaw, he abandoned the coffin-hard cot, wondering if Bella was in the kitchen making coffee. Coffee was likely all the two hundred or so inhabitants of Fort Endeavor could stomach after their rum-infested feast the night before.

For the first time in his military career, he felt a spasm of guilt for overseeing such debauchery, if only because he was still stone sober this morning. He pushed open the blockhouse door, and the chilly spring air assaulted him, reeking of rum and blatant excess. Buffalo bones, clothing, and pewter tankards littered the parade ground and deepened his discontent.

He leaned against the door frame, crossed his arms, and tried to reconcile who he’d been with who he was becoming and why he had any qualms at all. Cold logic told him it was madness to keep men under such tight rein without giving them their head now and again, as he’d done last night. Any less meant mutiny, and he’d already court-martialed thirteen soldiers for desertion since coming to Kentucke.

Yet in the ugly aftermath this morning, he was troubled enough that he reached for a limp haversack and began picking up the mess, knowing his men were too dissolute to be of much use, glad Roxie was still abed on the hill and couldn’t see the disorder.

The thought of her asleep in his house—her lush hair spilling across a pillow in whatever bedchamber Bella had put her in—was enough to keep the most pious man awake. Pious he was not, yet her winsome goodness made him want to be better than he was.

He was tired this morning, not because of the night’s devilment, but because he hadn’t been able to dislodge her from his mind in the darkness. And now, at daylight, she was still with him, hair falling down from its pins as it had been when she’d last danced with him in her fetching copper dress. So lost was he in the thought of her that he hardly heard Hank approach from behind.

“Colonel, sir.”

Cass swung round, haversack half full, grinning at Hank’s obvious amazement at seeing him in his shirtsleeves and breeches, picking up garbage to boot.

“Bella’s done fixed yo’ breakfast, sir. Why don’t you go on in and let me see to this mess?”

Trading the sack for the steaming cup of coffee in Hank’s hand, Cass said, “Since it’s such a fine morning—and I’m still sober—I thought I’d come out.”

Glancing at the clear blue sky, Hank nodded. “The Almighty’s made a fine mornin’ all right, maybe on account of yo’ behavin’ yo’self.”

Still grinning, Cass gestured to the hill. “How are things at the house?”

Grinning back, his teeth a stark white in his ebony face, Hank said, “Well, sir, you’d best ask Bella ’bout that. Word is Miz Rowan’s sleepin’ like a baby on that fine feather tick in the blue room. Abby too.”

The blue room
. . .
the one adjoining his. His disappointment at not being able to show her the house himself was keen. He was forever reminding himself to distance himself from her, to take every caution and not be alone with her. Because being alone with her reminded him of her father—and her perplexing plea returned to him like an endless echo.

Please, I don’t want to fall in love with you.

The poignant words had burned themselves into his brain like a brand, and it had taken some time for him to sift through the meaning behind them.

She was, he hardly needed reminding, in mourning, upended by a broken betrothal, without a home, in hostile territory, unable to leave. What woman, under similar circumstances, would want a romantic entanglement? Her bruised and broken heart would have little left to give, even if she’d wanted to. And at times he sensed deep down in his soul that she did want to. Little things had given her away. A lingering look. Her unmistakable delight when dancing with him. The painstaking efforts she made to please him with pen and paper.

Turning his hair loose from its tie.

But he had little choice except to respect her wishes and simply fulfill Richard Rowan’s dying request. Until she left, he was her guardian and she was his scrivener.

Other dire reminders skirted his conscience and pushed his pain deeper still. Not only had he killed her father, he’d destroyed the secure future she hoped to have. Even if he confessed, the guilt of it would follow him to his grave. There was simply no undoing that bitter winter’s twilight.

“Colonel, sir. Here she comes.”

Hank’s voice pulled him out of his reverie. He spied her leaving the stone house, a willowy shadow on the sun-dappled hill, making her way to the fort with Abby in hand. The guard followed at a respectful distance, saber-tipped muskets gleaming in the pale morning light. She paused to take in her garden, then the river where the keelboats lay at anchor, before turning and looking toward him. The ever-expanding ache in his chest rivaled any earned by a musket ball in battle.

Please, I don’t want to fall in love with you.

Aye, he could honor that. But she’d not said anything about him falling in love with her.

Roxanna set aside the quill she’d been sharpening and returned her penknife to her pocket. She’d been thinking of her garden with its prim rows of peas pushing through all that rich Kentucke soil and what a punishment it was to remain indoors on such a day. But at least the blockhouse window and door were open this Monday morn, letting in the light and a welcome breeze. Sometimes, as if sensing her restlessness, Cass would call a halt to their work and she’d go outside to pull weeds or just glory in being beyond fort walls, even with the guard on her heels. But today he seemed to have forgotten all about her.

Tucked in a corner with paper and inkpots and sand, she’d been making final copies of letters to the Continental Congress and the acting commander at Fort Pitt regarding the coming campaign into Ohio. Across the wide green river of the same name, which the Shawnee called
Spaylayweetheepi
, he would go at some undetermined point in future, and everything they did now seemed caught up in that end.

Since the keelboats had come and gone, their days had been an unceasing routine of correspondence and dispatches and details. By sending couriers on differing routes, Cass had managed to keep them alive and reestablish a chain of communication previously broken. But it seemed they all held a collective breath nevertheless when fresh messages were tucked in dispatch cases and the men rode away.

Looking across the suddenly still room, she almost smiled to see Cass leaning forward in a cane-backed chair, Falling Water seated beside him, Ben Simmons shadowing them from behind and translating. They were studying a map, their backs to her, discussing winsome rivers and valleys and ridges that few, if any, white men had ever seen. Having picked up some of the mellifluous Shawnee tongue, Cass could communicate a bit with Falling Water directly, and his efforts often brought about her small, delighted smile.

Sometimes it seemed to Roxanna that she’d tell him anything he wanted. And who could blame her? The tan, intense lines of Cass’s face—and his astonishing blue eyes—seemed to shift more rapidly than the weathervane atop the fort commissary. Brooding one minute, animated the next, he had a mercurial charm that was both disarming and endearing. She wondered if this was a common Irish trait.

From the corner, the clock struck the hour of three, but he paid no attention. He’d already met with the two male prisoners that morning. Out of leg irons but still well guarded, they came in separately. First the older chief, fully recovered and garrulous again, and then the younger, less talkative but clearly pleased at having his sweetheart in residence. Roxanna watched them make eyes at one another with a kind of awed envy.

Save the Sabbath, the three Shawnee had met with Cass in the orderly room every day for a month. Sometimes she wondered if his strategy was simply to wear them down in order to glean the information he wanted. His officers were less patient, probably weary of fort walls, she guessed, and wanting to finalize plans and begin the campaign. He conferred with them often, asking them their opinions and insights.

“They’ve given us plenty to go on,” Micajah had told him the day before. “More than I ever dreamed you’d drum out of them. But how can you be sure they’re telling the truth?”

“Because I bring them in separately, ask the same questions, allow them no time to confer, and see if they give me the same answers.”

The officers pondered this, poring over the detailed maps on the table, till Joram Herkimer finally said with a sort of suspicious wonder, “They’ve practically handed over the key to their territory, telling you about every valley, river, Shawnee town, and the like.”

“You glean a great deal from asking the right questions,” Cass replied. “But most of it comes from how you ask them.”

Still, Micajah looked perturbed. “They’ve still not told you who Hamilton’s second-in-command is out of Detroit? The one plying them with trade goods and sending their warriors to raid the settlements?”

Cass shook his head slowly, eyes on a particularly detailed map. “Nay, but I’m coming closer.”

There was a murmur among them, and Major Herkimer said, “I wish you’d allow some of us to be present when you question them.”

“Why? To make them feel they’re being bamboozled?” Hard azure eyes shot down the notion. “I’ll not give the appearance of a court-martial.”

Micajah leaned against the mantel, eyes roaming to Roxanna as she worked across the room. “When do we move?”

“July at the latest.”

Her head bent over her work, Roxanna felt nearly woozy. The thought of marching north in deep summer when the mosquitoes and flies and chiggers were the thickest would be punishment enough, but to make war in wool uniforms with sixty-pound packs . . .

Cass traced a path on the map with a forefinger. “Our intent is to avoid the peaceful Shawnee towns and push north toward Detroit. We’ll strike Shemento’s band if we have to, as he’s closely allied to the British. The other chiefs are declaring their neutrality, if only to spare their women and children another hard winter.”

A glimmer of satisfaction shone on Micajah’s face. “So your reputation as the Bluecoat town burner is having some effect.”

A shadow passed over Cass’s features. “I’m not proud of past tactics. Burning villages amounts to making war on women and children, and I’ve decided to try a far different tack. I’ll not have an army of firebrands and brutes.”

At this, a few of them looked shamefaced, and Roxanna sensed surprise and tension in the air. Returning to her work, she found the letters dipping and swaying in a wash of black ink as she tried to contain her swelling emotions. She was hardly aware of the officers ending their discussion and leaving her alone with Cass and the orderlies.

Brooding again, he stared into the low fire a few moments before turning in her direction, giving her time to compose herself. Still, her unsettled feelings lingered. He was leaving. Though he’d said little of what was ahead, the campaign he’d soon wage was fraught with danger, and as she’d learned firsthand in December, not everyone came back.

His shadow fell across her lap desk, but she didn’t look up for fear he’d see the tears in her eyes. “I’ve nearly finished this final letter, and these documents are ready for your signature.”