Mountain Laurel

  “He came while you were gone.”

  “Who did?”

  “You have such a good time with your captain that you forgot about your little sister?”

  Maddie was immediately alert. “But why? I wasn’t supposed to see him until after tomorrow’s performance. And not even that night. He gave me a map.”

  “Yeah, he said all that. He just wanted to make sure you’d be there. And he said for you to wear somethin’ pretty. Somethin’ that sparkled. I think maybe he’s gettin’ worried about your captain friend.”

  Maddie sat down on the cot. “What did he say about Captain Montgomery?”

  “Said it’d take a buffalo gun to kill a so-and-so as big as he is.”

  Maddie put her face in her hands. “What am I going to do? Tomorrow I’m supposed to go into the mountains to meet him. I’m to see Laurel. I cannot, under any circumstances, annoy the man. Annoy him!” she said bitterly. “He’s already said that Laurel has…has been…I can’t think about it. I have to do what he says.”

  “Then maybe you’d better not go up that mountain with your army friend taggin’ along behind you. And the little one is askin’ questions too.”

  “Little one?”

  “Toby. He’s sniffin’ around Frank and Sam as well as me, wantin’ to know all about you.”

  Maddie stood up and walked to the side of the tent. What was she going to do? What could she do? I have to get rid of Captain Montgomery, she thought. I can’t tell him what’s going on for fear he might interfere. And tomorrow he’ll be even more alert than usual after the fiasco of the last few days. As for that, no one had seen the drunken miners take her, yet somehow, he’d found her. If he could find her once, he could find her again, but this time it wouldn’t be men merely wanting to hear her sing. This time it would be the men holding Laurel.

  “What are you gonna do?” Edith asked.

  “I don’t know. Somehow, I have to make him stay behind when I leave day after tomorrow.”

  “I’ve got some more opium.”

  “He won’t take any food or drink from me.”

  “Club him over the head?”

  “I don’t want to hurt him.” She remembered how he’d given her his blankets and sat up cold all night. He really was only trying to protect her.

  “How about women? I could get a couple more girls together and we could—”

  “No!”

  Edith looked at her awhile. “Too bad you can’t spend the night in bed with him yourself.”

  “I have more important things to think about than seducing a man. Although…” She thought it wouldn’t hurt if he trusted her more. “You say that Toby is asking questions? Perhaps I can ask Toby a few in return. Go now and set the table for luncheon. I can think better with a full stomach.”

  Edith had purchased some chickens, scalded them, plucked them, and fried them in hot grease. Maddie invited Toby to join her for luncheon, and she would allow him to sit nowhere else but at the table with her.

  “You’ve known the captain for a long time, haven’t you, Toby? Please have some more chicken.”

  “Ten years now. Don’t mind if I do.”

  She smiled at him as graciously as she knew how. “Tell me about him.”

  Toby didn’t even glance her way. He was used to women asking him about ’Ring. If he were a man who ran to fat, he would have been a keg on legs long ago from all the women feeding him to get to ’Ring. For the first few years Toby had felt trapped because on the one hand he knew he should keep his mouth shut about ’Ring, but at the same time he didn’t want to cut off his food supply. “Ain’t much to tell. He ain’t so different from most men.”

  “Most fathers don’t hire someone to show their sons the seamier side of life.”

  Toby was startled. “He tell you about that?”

  “Yes, he did. Please, have some more butter on your roll. I was wondering why he doesn’t…I guess I mean, why he doesn’t pay attention to women.”

  “Beats me,” Toby said.

  “Perhaps a lost love somewhere in his past. Someone he loved but couldn’t have.”

  “Oh, you mean like them songs you sing. Naw, nothin’ like that. He just don’t pay attention to girls. Why, I’ve seen them do some of the all-fired orneriest things you can imagine to get him to take an interest in ’em, but he just don’t.”

  “Here, have another tomato. Perhaps his lack of interest in women is a family trait.”

  “No, ma’am. In fact, that’s one of the things that worried his father. All six of his younger brothers is real interested in girls. Even the little ones. ’Course it could have somethin’ to do with the fact that the boy is the ugly one in the family.”

  She paused with her fork on its way to her mouth. “Captain Montgomery, this man here with us is the ugly one?”

  “Yes, ma’am, he is. And his little brothers never let him forget it. They say they own dogs better-lookin’ than their oldest brother.”

  At that moment Maddie realized that in spite of the sincere look on Toby’s face, surely he was teasing her. She smiled at him indulgently. “If he isn’t interested in women, what is he interested in?”

  “Duty. Honor. That kind of thing.” Toby said the words as though they were dreadful qualities. He looked at her over a mouthful of skillet bread. “You interested in him?”

  “Of course not. I was just wondering how trustworthy he is.”

  Toby set the bread down and, when he looked at her, his old eyes were intense. “He’s trustworthy. You can trust him with your life. If he says he’s gonna protect you, he means it. He’ll give up his own life ’fore he’d let anything happen to you.”

  She frowned. “I don’t imagine he’d ever involve himself in anything illegal.” Such as trying to influence a territory about becoming slave or free, she thought.

  “Hell no! Oh, sorry, ma’am. He’d agree to be tortured ’fore he’d do anything bad.” Toby grimaced. “I tell you, the boy can wear a man down. He don’t lie, he don’t cheat, he don’t do nothin’ that ain’t upholdin’ to the laws of man and God.”

  Maddie gave him a weak smile. It was just as she’d thought. If Captain Montgomery found out about the letters, would he turn her over to the army for discipline? Haul her back to the capital and have her tried for treason? Would he say that the good of the country was more important than the good of one child?

  “You’re sure thinkin’ hard on somethin’, ain’t you, ma’am?”

  “I guess I am.”

  “He’s a good boy,” Toby said. “You can trust him with your life.”

  But can I trust him with my secrets, she wondered. “What is he doing now?”

  “Watchin’.”

  “Watching what?”

  “Watchin’ out for you. There’s men followin’ you, and he sets up on a hill and watches ’em, what he can see of ’em anyway. Two of ’em keep pretty well hidden, but the other two are bumblefoots.”

  She stopped eating. “You mean he just sits up there and watches? Watches everything I do?”

  Toby gave her a little half smile. “He’s tryin’ to find out what you’re hidin’. You oughta just tell him so he can get some sleep. I can’t even get him to eat anything ’cept hardtack, and thank the Lord we’re runnin’ out of that.”

  Just tell him, Maddie thought. She would if it all weren’t so very serious. “Edith, put the rest of this chicken and some tomatoes in a bag.”

  “You gonna go see him?”

  I’m going to give him something else to think about besides the men who are following me, she thought. “Yes. Perhaps he’d like a little company.”

  “He’d rather read than visit with a female,” Toby said, and could hardly keep the laughter inside. He’d said that a hundred times to a hundred females and every one of them had considered it a personal challenge. He was glad to see this opera singer was no different from other women.

  “Oh? Perhaps I can persuade him otherwise.” She took the bag of chicken and tomat
oes from Edith and went up the hill.

  “Captain?” she asked. He was sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree, looking for all the world as though he were asleep, but she knew he wasn’t. His breathing was too even, too deep. She settled on the ground near him. “You can stop pretending now. You’re too good a mess captain to let someone walk up on you.”

  Slowly, he opened his eyes but he didn’t smile at her. “What are you doing up here?”

  “I brought you some fried chicken.”

  “I’ve eaten, thank you.”

  “Toby told me what you eat. Have I done something to offend you?”

  “You mean besides lying and getting kidnapped?”

  “And telling you you can’t sing? I know your sense of humor is, as far as I can tell, nonexistent, but surely I didn’t hurt your feelings.”

  “No, you didn’t hurt my feelings. Now, will you please return to your own tent?”

  “And leave you up here alone to spy on me?” Before he realized what she was doing, she reached behind him and grabbed the spyglass. He made a lunge for it, but she put it behind her back. He leaned back against the tree.

  “This is old,” she said, looking at the beautiful, worn brass case. “Isn’t it the kind sailors use?”

  “Perhaps.”

  She pulled the glass out to its full length. “Ah, yes, now I remember. You tied up Frank and Sam with sailor’s knots. It is my guess, Captain, that you’ve had something to do with the sea in your life. Am I right?”

  He snatched the glass from her hands without answering.

  “What in the world has made you so grumpy?”

  “I have things to do and I’d rather you went back to your own camp.”

  She opened the bag Edith had given her and withdrew a somewhat scrawny chicken breast. “I brought you something good to eat.”

  “Oh? Is it poisoned? I’m not eating any food you give me.”

  “You drank the port I gave you.”

  “You poured us both glasses from the same bottle and you drank first.”

  “All right,” she said with resignation, stripped a piece of meat from the chicken, and ate half of it. She held out the other half to him.

  “Thank you, but I’ve eaten.”

  “It’s awfully good,” she said, holding the chicken in front of his face. “The very best I’ve ever eaten. Mmmmm.”

  He gave a bit of a smile and snapped at the chicken, but she jerked it away from him, laughing.

  He lunged at her, then caught her around the waist, pushed her to the ground, and caught the chicken and her fingers in his mouth.

  At first she was laughing, but then, abruptly, she became aware of his body on hers and her fingers inside the warmth of his mouth. She stopped laughing and looked at him. She did not take her fingers from inside his mouth.

  “ ’Ring,” she whispered.

  For a moment she thought he was feeling the same as she was, but the moment passed and he caught her wrist and pulled her hand from his mouth. “Chicken, yes, but human fingers, no.”

  It seemed that he’d refused her at every opportunity she had given him. It was difficult not to throw the entire bag of chicken at him and go back to her own tent. Instead, she reminded herself that she had to be nice to him for Laurel’s sake. If she was to meet one of the kidnappers after her performance the following day, she had to have Captain Montgomery’s trust.

  She forced herself to smile at him. “If you are through trying to smash me with your oversized body, I’d like to get up.”

  “Sure,” he said cheerfully, rolling away from her. “I guess the chicken is safe, but I want you to take a bite of each piece before I do.”

  “Really, Captain, you’d think I was a master poisoner.”

  “A Lucrezia Borgia?”

  “Who’s that?”

  He looked at her over a chunk of chicken. “How many languages do you speak?”

  “Including the American ones?” She was pleased to see his eyes widen at that.

  “Including the language that uses such terms as sleep-insider and mess captain. What is a mess captain, by the way?”

  He was really, truly, the most observant man she’d ever encountered. She doubted if her pulse rate was unknown to him. “Mess captain is a trapping term and means the leader, or an experienced trapper. I told you I’ve had some contact with mountain men.”

  “Ah, yes, in Lanconia. Have you ever even been to Lanconia?”

  “How is your chicken? Would you like a tomato?”

  He accepted the tomato and took a bite of it. “It seems odd to me that you know so much about music and languages yet know next to nothing about history. And as far as I can tell, you know as little about arithmetic as anyone on earth.”

  “I came all the way up this hill to bring you food, and here you sit, insulting me. I don’t know why I bother being friendly to you.”

  “I don’t either. I’m sure you had a reason for coming up here, but it wasn’t merely to bring me chicken. What was waiting for you in the tent when we returned?”

  She looked away, unable to meet his eyes.

  “Someday, Miss Worth, I hope that you will realize that you can trust me.”

  “My father told me that people have to earn trust.”

  “And we know that whatever Daddy says is the law.”

  “Just what is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve mentioned your father before…repeatedly.” He filled his mouth with chicken. “Do you know that when you speak of your father you sound as though you’re speaking of God? I imagine your father is a good mess captain.”

  “My father is the best! The absolute best there is. He is honest and kind and good and…” She hated the way he was smirking at her. “And he has a sense of humor.”

  “Anybody who has been through what I have in the last few days and is still sane has to have a sense of humor.”

  “All of it brought on by yourself.” In spite of her good intentions, she could feel herself getting angry. “Why don’t you go back where you came from and leave me alone?”

  “And leave you to all the men who are watching you?”

  “The only person watching me who bothers me is you.” She stood up and started to go back down the hill, but he caught her skirt.

  “What’s the matter, don’t you have a sense of humor? What’s making you so grumpy?”

  She looked down at him, not knowing whether he was serious or laughing at her.

  “Come on, you don’t want to leave, and you know it. You know what I think, Miss Worth?”

  “No, and I don’t care to know.”

  “I think that for years now you’ve been treated as a legend rather than as a person. I don’t think you’ve allowed anyone close enough to you to question your story of being a duchess from Lanconia. All you’ve had to do was sing, and with that voice of yours, all sense leaves a person and he can’t use what brains he was given.”

  “Is that so?” she said, trying to sound haughty but not quite accomplishing her goal.

  “You’ve spoken about that manager of yours, but as far as I can tell, all he cared about was the money you brought in. Tell me, how long has it been since you saw anyone in your family?”

  To Maddie’s disbelief, she felt tears forming in her eyes. “Let me go,” she said softly, tugging on her skirt. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

  “No, you don’t,” he said quietly, and there was a hint of apology in his voice. “I didn’t mean—”

  He broke off, for they both heard the sound in the bushes at the same time. It was in the opposite direction from where her camp was. Whoever had made the noise had to have come down the mountain.

  Maddie didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone move so fast. One second Captain Montgomery was on the ground and the next he was on top of her, pulling her down with him, his arms wrapped around her back and one leg wrapped about her legs, the other leg guiding them as they rolled down the hill, away from the camp, away from t
he sound in the bushes.

  They rolled for some distance, Maddie’s body rarely touching the ground as his big body enveloped and protected her. He stopped fifty feet down the hill, hiding them in the scrub oaks. She started to speak, but he put his hand at the back of her head and buried her face in his neck. He was protecting her completely, so that should any danger—a shot, an arrow—come, he would receive it and not her.

  The thrashing in the bushes became louder, and she recognized it at the same time that he did.

  “Elk,” she whispered against his neck, and he nodded.

  Still on top of her, still covering her, he turned his head, allowing her to do so also, and they saw not an elk, but a mule deer standing on the hill, where they had just been. The deer stood still and watched them for a moment, not knowing what they were, then, as ’Ring lifted his arm, the deer hurried off into the woods with its springy gait.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, rising on one elbow to look at her.

  “Perfectly.” She started to move out from under him but stopped when she felt something sharp pricking her. “I seem to have a thorn in my shoulder.”

  He moved off her, sat up, and turned her over. He pulled two cactus thorns from her shoulder. “There. Any more?”

  She sat up and moved her shoulders. “No, I think that’s all of them.” She looked back up the steep hill they had just rolled down and saw it was covered with flat-leaved cacti, and she was glad for the protection of her skirt and petticoats, her corset and corset cover. She looked back at him. “I’ve never seen anyone react so quickly. Thank you.”

  “Nothing a good mess captain wouldn’t do—or your father.”

  She started to tell him what she thought of his little jest, but instead she smiled. “Do I really talk of my father in worshipful tones?”

  He smiled and nodded at her. “You ready to go back to your tent now?”

  She said, “Yes,” and looked down at her skirt to brush it off. There were cactus thorns sticking out of it everywhere. She looked back up the hill at the path they’d made as they’d rolled and looked at the many cacti they’d rolled over, then looked back up at him.

  “Turn around,” she said.