The Colonel's Lady

  She felt a sudden chill spill over her. “Only God knows the future. Not you—or anyone else.”

  “Aye, I do know—just as I know the Americans will win the war and Liam will gain the middle ground for the British. ’Tis a certainty I can’t explain.”

  “’Tis reckless thinking . . . no more.”

  He leaned against the rough wall and looked like he wanted to shake her. “Call it what you will. I’m not coming back.”

  The candle flame flickered in the warm draft, and she wanted to snuff it out to block the specter of his haunted face. “Are you a seer that you can foretell such things?” Her voice shook with suppressed emotion. “God is bigger than any evil you face.”

  “Your God, Roxie. Not mine.”

  “He is yours, like it or not.”

  “I like it not.” He stooped and replaced the wooden floorboards, then slid her trunk over the spot. “You’d best think hard about your future. I’m merely supplying you with what I can while there’s still time.”

  With that, he turned his back on her and went out.

  Cass ended the frolic early, at a quarter till midnight, with two pistol shots fired into the starlit sky. The fiddling ground to a sudden halt, and the dancers dispersed in slow motion, the dirt beneath their feet ground fine as flour. Nary a complaint was heard as he watched his men wander to their quarters. He spied Abby with Bella at the edge of the crowd. Roxanna hadn’t come out of her cabin since he’d left her an hour before.

  He went round and checked the locks on the quartermaster’s and the kitchen and his own office headquarters, wondering if the elusive spy was watching. The lantern was heavy in his hand, and the familiar malarial ache burned behind his eyes. The dread he always felt of its coming shadowed him now. He was in need of all his wits to begin the coming campaign. Nothing must get in his way.

  The guard waited by the sally port, and Cass kicked an empty bottle out of his path as he moved in their direction. Fireflies studded the humid air, and his dry throat craved a bit of brandy. He took a last look around before he left, noting Abby had finally gone into Roxanna’s cabin and Bella was waiting with the guard. Nothing more needed to be done. He left the fort flocked by his usual entourage, sensing their tension.

  How easy it would be for Liam’s Indian allies to tomahawk them in the brilliant moonlight. But ease wasn’t Lucifer’s way. He preferred the chase, the suspense, the intense wearing down of his opponent—like a foxhunt to hounds or a strenuous game of chess. Liam, he remembered, had won nearly every time.

  The ornate door opened a crack, and Hank’s welcome words cut through the stillness. “Good evenin’, sir. Care for a bit o’ brandy, sir?”

  “Aye, a bottle.”

  Hank looked surprised, and Cass well knew why. He hadn’t had a drop since he’d bested Roxie at cribbage and kissed her so soundly. Wordless for once, Bella eyed him with a strange sympathy as he shrugged off his uniform coat. The dark foyer echoed with the snap of a button as it broke free and rolled beneath a lowboy. Everything in his life seemed to be unraveling, he mused, right down to the clothes on his back.

  She moved to retrieve the errant button while he climbed the stair, checking for the locket in his waistcoat but touching Liam’s letter instead. ’Twas a sacrilege of sorts to have them side by side. Shutting his bedchamber door, he sank into the wing chair and thrust the paper into the pale orb of candlelight at his elbow.

  Beloved brother, ’tis time we meet again.

  Swallowing hard, he balled the paper into a fist and threw it into the hearth’s cold ashes just as Hank appeared. “Your brandy, sir.” When he didn’t answer, Hank poured him a glass and left the bottle on the table, dark face creased with concern. “Mebbe it’s cinchona you need, sir.”

  Blast! He could never fool Hank.

  “I’m just tired, ’tis all,” he lied, yanking off his stock.

  The door closed crisply, and Cass passed a hand over his face, which now, at midnight, bore a day’s growth. Nay, he didn’t need cinchona. He needed five hundred more men and fresh powder and lead from the regiments and supply trains that had yet to materialize. Moving to the window, he looked down at the fort, noting the pale light that seeped through Roxanna’s shutter.

  Would that she were here instead, uttering words of comfort and encouragement, strengthening him for what lay ahead. Stripped to his breeches, he eyed the brandy again. It wasn’t this he wanted but the taste of her kiss—and a clear memory of the spacious, verdant estate across the sea that was only his in ghostly recollection. He’d wanted a home. Children. A settled, decent life. How had it all dwindled to this?

  An avalanche of emotion rose up inside him. He picked up the crystal glass with its amber promise and saw it for what it truly was—an empty pledge to dull the pain of what he longed for but couldn’t have. Turning toward the hearth, he hurled the glass with a hard arm, and it shattered against the metal fireback, sending shards in every direction. Nay, he wouldn’t face Liam muddleheaded and malarial. He’d face him sober and sharp-eyed. Or not at all.

  Olympia was dying. Sitting beside her bed, Roxanna tried to pray with her, but she was already out of her head. ’Twas just as Bella had said. Dr. Clary had given her mercury, but the resulting black bile was so horrendous Roxanna begged him to stop. And then, right before midnight, she came to her senses, clutching Roxanna’s hand with surprising strength. The other Redstone women huddled nearby, crying and praying intermittently. Abby, thankfully, was with Bella.

  “Abby needs a decent mother,” Olympia whispered, her voice so ragged Roxanna had to bend her ear to her parched lips to hear. “She needs . . . you.”

  Me? A shillingless spinster? With no hope of a secure future?

  Roxanna opened her mouth to protest, then felt a rush of caution. With tears blinding her, she said, “Go in peace, Olympia. Abby will always have a home . . . with me.”

  The foolish promise seemed to hover in the air, a sort of bond between them, and a faint smile warmed Olympia’s wan face.

  “God has forgiven me . . . He’s heard your prayers . . . and mine. Tell Abby I love her.”

  Thankfulness trickled through Roxanna’s grief. All was not lost. Olympia knew her Savior. Abby would have a home.

  As the minutes ticked past midnight and Olympia took a last breath, all Roxanna could think of was Abby . . . and Cass. In a mere three days he would march.

  The next morning Olympia was promptly buried beside the men on the hill and then forgotten, or so it seemed. Going to headquarters, Roxanna could hardly keep up with the activity stirring all around her. Cass—every officer—seemed tightly wound, pulsating with a restless, reckless energy. Was this how men became before battle? His gaze seemed saber-sharp as he surveyed the maps on his desk, and his dictation was no less forceful.

  “Every soldier, prior to the march, is to have said accoutrements: a bayonet fitted to his gun, scabbard and belt, a pouch and cartridge box holding twenty rounds of cartridges, one pound powder, fifty pounds of lead balls, and a hundred buckshot.”

  Save the orderlies, they were alone, but he hardly looked at her. There were so many details to attend to, and his officers were trying their best to do exactly as he asked without risking his ire. To his credit, not once had he raised his voice to them all morning, though they seemed taut as fiddle strings. Strangely, the closer the hour drew for his departure, the more self-possessed he seemed to be.

  Yet in the dim light of the blockhouse lamps, Roxanna began to notice a few alarming things. A telltale flush had begun to show beneath his deeply tanned face. And his astonishing eyes were far too bright. He seemed to be fighting some fierce internal battle, winning and losing by turns before her very eyes.

  “And finally, every man should have a knapsack . . . a blanket . . . and canteen.”

  His voice trailed off—a bit wearily, she thought. Out of the corner of her eye, she studied him, her quill still, as he straightened from bending over his maps. So tall he was, yet he seemed sudden
ly to list, bringing a heavy hand down atop his desk as if to ground himself. In that soundless second, their eyes locked and his subterfuge came crashing down.

  Oh, Cass . . . you are so very sick.

  She was on her feet, forgetting her bitterness, frightened he might fall.

  Heavens, but a wool uniform in such weather is ludicrous—and with a fever . . .

  Her fingers touched his blue sleeve, but he jerked away as if she was little more than a pesky insect. “Nay, Miss Rowan.”

  The rebuff threw a black shadow over her. She’d merely meant to suggest he remove his coat. The warning in his tone returned her to her chair just as the scouts came in, fresh from their foray across the wide river. Their news set her heart to pounding. Liam McLinn and over a thousand British and Indians were poised to march south toward the settlements.

  Never before had leftovers remained following supper. To a man, all seemed to have lost their appetite. Their commander hadn’t eaten at all. Only Abby, secure on her stool in the kitchen, relished her hominy and gravy and biscuits. Roxanna forced a smile for her sake, glad to see her eating so well after Olympia’s passing. The only sign she gave of missing her aunt was clinging to Roxanna and Bella a bit more closely and carrying Sukey everywhere she went, even the necessary.

  Last night after Olympia died, an orderly had brought a trundle bed to Roxanna’s cabin, and she made it up as homey as she could, with a Star of Bethlehem quilt and a plump pillow. Listening to the soft, snuffling sounds Abby made in sleep, Roxanna felt her spirits sink like stone. She didn’t know the first thing about being a mother. And she didn’t know how she’d take care of herself in future, much less a child.

  Across the room, Cass’s tooled leather chest lay undisturbed in its hiding place, offering little comfort. Blood money, she mused. A tidy sum to atone for her father’s death. She’d not touch it, no matter how desperate she was.

  Thinking of it now turned her more melancholy. She looked up from a stack of just-scrubbed pewter plates, jarred by a resounding thud in the dining room. Bella was already at the serving door, Dovie and Mariah and Nancy right behind her. No shouting or cross words or warning were heard—just the splinter of shattered glass and the heavy thump of overturned furniture.

  What on earth . . . ?

  Roxanna feared it was the Herkimer brothers and Micajah. She’d felt their growing animosity for days. Had it erupted all over again? Cass wasn’t present, she remembered. His meal untouched, he’d excused himself minutes before and headed up the hill.

  Sucking in her breath, she froze as the serving door flew wide open, sending Mariah and Dovie reeling. Abby scampered off her stool as Micajah was knocked backward into the kitchen. Nose bloodied, he picked himself up and flashed them a rabid look before charging back into the dining room.

  “Law! Send for McLinn!” Bella cried, wild-eyed.

  Dovie disappeared in a flash of linen out the back door, and Roxanna moved closer to peer at the fracas, wiping her hands on her apron, fear rising. Cass couldn’t have his officers beat up before the campaign even began. Without thinking, she stepped into the candlelit room, right into the heart of the fray.

  “Miz Rox—” Bella’s cry alerted her, and she ducked as a stool sailed past her head.

  Like angry bulls, nostrils flaring, Micajah and the Herkimers rampaged, oblivious to the main door opening and Cass coming in. Never had she seen him so angry. His face, touched by fever at supper, was now white and tight with fury. He grabbed Micajah by his collar and flung him out the door onto the dust of the parade ground, then turned and punched Joram in the stomach. Joram doubled over in pain, leaving Jehu to mutter some excuse for their behavior till Cass cut him off.

  “Two against one is not a fair fight, no matter who started it.” With that, he cuffed Jehu in the jaw and sent him toppling backward onto an overturned table. “When the three of you come to your senses, you can clean up this mess—and apologize to the women.”

  With that, he went out.

  Roxanna stood agape.

  “Law, if he’s thisaway with the ague, that brother o’ his better get on back to Ireland,” Bella breathed.

  The Redstone women had fled, so Roxanna and Bella finished cleaning the kitchen in silence. Distracted, Bella began looking out the door every few minutes, displaying a rare restlessness. “Hank should’ve been back from Smitty’s Fort by now. He always rolls in right before the officers have their supper.”

  Her words raised the fine hair on the back of Roxanna’s neck, and her hands stilled on the kettle she was filling. Oh, Lord, please not Hank. Everything seemed to be disintegrating all around them—the keelboat disaster, the enemy marching south, Olympia’s death, the officers in disarray, Hank missing. Taken one at a time was daunting enough, but all together, ’twas too much.

  “Perhaps he had trouble with that wagon wheel like last time,” Roxanna murmured, giving her a reassuring half smile. Abby twirled on her stool, lost in her own childish world, untouched, Roxanna hoped, by the trouble swirling around them.

  Shoulders slumped, Bella said nothing and dried a last dish. Pushing down her rising uneasiness, Roxanna hung a kettle from the crane, praying Hank would materialize at the back door. Lord, please . . .

  Bella eyed her wearily. “Abby and I’ll stay put till those three roosters right the dining room and settle their feathers and apologize. You’d best go on back to your cabin. You look a mite peaked to me.”

  Did she? She certainly felt it. Untying her apron, Roxanna left the kitchen and came round the springhouse to the startling sight of Cass talking to Graham Greer near the smithy. Before she’d taken two steps in their direction, Cass disappeared into the commissary and Graham approached her. She greeted him, conscious of the warm stickiness of the early summer twilight, struck by how still the parade ground was, empty of all but the lookout on the surrounding banquette above. They moved unhindered toward the bench beneath the great elm in the fort’s far corner.

  “Thought I’d speak my mind before we take our leave,” he said matter-of-factly despite his high color. “Somehow a campaign always makes you want to settle matters beforehand.”

  She simply nodded, wondering about his and Cass’s conversation—if it had to do with her. She tried to keep her gaze from straying uphill to the stone house, as was her habit.

  He ran a hand over the cleft in his chin, eyes alight. “When I come back from this next foray . . .”

  When. His hopeful wording jarred sourly with Cass’s fatalistic “I’m not coming back.”

  “I don’t know what your plans are now that we can’t go upriver to Philadelphia, but seeing as how Olympia has passed and Abby needs a home, I was thinking the three of us might return to Virginia . . . together.”

  She swallowed, struck by the simplicity of his proposal, so unlike Cass’s passion-filled plea. Yet this might well be the last offer of marriage she’d ever have. Uncertainty made a bubbling stew of her insides. Shouldn’t she give him some consideration, at least?

  Her voice was soft, rife with reservations. “Will you be leaving for Virginia right after this campaign . . . if . . .”

  He took a seat on the bench beneath the elm, inviting her to do the same. “If I return, aye. Have you been praying—pondering my offer?”

  She hesitated, knotting her hands in her lap, groping for an answer. With her mind in such turmoil over Cass, she hadn’t given it much thought, truly. Graham might not survive the middle ground. But if he did . . . was this the Lord’s will for her, then?

  Fixing her eye on the firefly lighting on her indigo skirt, she simply said, “When you come back, I’ll give you my answer.”

  At this, he placed his hat on the bench and took her hand. Despite herself, she stiffened, unfair comparisons sluicing through her mind at his touch. Graham was so small. So simple. She could never imagine them well matched in anything—not a game of cribbage, or verbal sparring, or a kiss. He could never bring out the heights and depths in her that Cass did. Yet he
seemed a good man, a God-fearing man. Life with him, if dull, would be safe . . . sound. Abby would have a father, a home. Perhaps brothers and sisters. The decision wasn’t hers alone. She had Abby to consider too.

  “Virginia has always been home to me,” she said at last.

  33

  Come morning, Hank was still missing. The night before, a search party had been sent out by Cass but hadn’t returned. A haggard Bella stood in the kitchen after breakfast, near tears and almost shaking. Why, she truly loves him, Roxanna realized, and she’ll be devastated if he doesn’t come back. With Bella stripped of Hank’s secure presence, Roxanna began to see her in a new, vulnerable light. What would Bella do without Hank? Yet speculating about the future seemed foolish. As it was, none of them could think beyond the fear and dust of Fort Endeavor. The coming confrontation with the British and Indians loomed like a boulder, barring anyone’s hopes or plans or dreams.

  “Miz Roxanna, would you pray for Hank?” Bella pleaded in the shadows.

  “Why, Bella, I’ve been doing little else,” Roxanna said softly, thinking of their near sleepless night.

  “I mean out loud—here and now.”

  Reaching out, Roxanna took one of Bella’s dark, work-worn hands in her own and squeezed tight, the words as hard to come by as hen’s teeth. “Father, You know what we have need of before we ask, and we need Hank back safe and sound.” She hardly heard what else she prayed, her mind was so riddled with other petitions. “And Bella . . . please ease her heartache. And Abby . . . help her speak. And then there’s Micajah’s broken arm . . . and a whole army coming against us.” She swallowed, fear locking her voice in her throat. She couldn’t pray for Cass, though she’d promised to do that very thing.

  Tomorrow Fort Endeavor’s army would move across the mile-wide river to meet the enemy in the middle ground. To that end, just beyond her door, the fort pulsated with activity. Supply wagons and horses were being readied by every available man within fort walls. She could hear Cass’s voice above the din and marveled that he managed to stay atop his fever. Did anyone but she and Bella suspect how sick he truly was? He was now minus one officer in the field—Micajah would stay behind with a remnant of men and nurse his broken arm. The rest of the severely undermanned, ill-equipped army would cross the Ohio and move north before the British and Indians could set foot on Kentucke soil.