Merline Lovelace (5 page)

“My father was a member of the first official United States expedition to explore this territory,” Zach said with more than a touch of pride. “He paddled down this very river twenty-six years ago. That’s when he met my mother.”

He dropped the bait deliberately, curious to see if she would take it. She did.

“I understand she’s half-French.”

“That’s right.”

“She was married to another Frenchman, was she not, before she wed your father?”

Well, that answered Zach’s question. The lady knew a good deal more about his parents than their names.

“She was married to a fur trapper by the name of Henri Chartier. He died the same day my father
stumbled on their camp. A mountain cat ripped out his throat. It happened not far from here.”

Barbara suppressed a gasp. He’d intended to shock her, she guessed at once, and he’d succeeded. Suddenly the pine-shrouded bluffs lost their air of stillness and took on one of menace.

As unease rippled down her spine, she debated whether to continue her inquiries about Henri Chartier. She wasn’t ready to tip her hand yet, but her brother’s desperate circumstances weighed heavily on her mind.

Eyes cool, she surveyed the man next to her. For all his size and self-proclaimed tendency to give in to a sense of the ridiculous, he was no fool. Once Barbara’s anger at being made the butt of his joke had burnt out, she’d been forced to acknowledge just how skillfully he’d played her.

Almost as skillfully as he’d kissed her.

She had yet to erase the memory of his mouth covering hers. What’s more, she had only to see the ripple of his muscles as he pitched his cigar into the river to experience a surprising and rather annoying quiver low in her belly.

She’d have to decide how best to make use of the heat that kiss had stirred.

B
y midafternoon, the small party of travelers had left the Arkansas River and turned up the Canadian. Gradually the high, rocky bluffs fell behind them and the land flattened to rolling hills, although the mountains remained always in sight.

The going was slower now. The men paddled against the current, passing only the occasional Indian village. As the sun sank toward the hills, the October air lost some of its warmth. Barbara had just begun to believe her long-anticipated meeting with Louise Chartier Morgan might be delayed yet another day, when her ears picked up the faint sound of splashing water.

Moments later, a bend of the river revealed the source of the sound. A stream emerged from the undergrowth covering a steep hill. From there it tum
bled in a silvery cascade over glistening black rocks before dropping a good twenty feet into the Canadian.

Atop the hill sat a two-story house with a commanding view of the river in both directions. Unlike so many of the rough-hewn log dwellings Barbara had seen since her arrival in Indian Country, this one was of smooth-planked wood painted a gleaming white. Low wings flanked the central structure on either side, while windows of thick, wavy glass reflected the gold of the slowly setting sun. Behind the main house sat a cluster of outbuildings that included barns, stables and what looked like quarters for servants or slaves. A windbreak of tall trees separated the outbuildings from the cleared fields beyond. Unless Barbara missed her guess, she’d finally arrived at her destination. Swallowing, she fought to still the sudden flutter in her chest.

“Is this Morgan’s Falls?”

“It is,” the lieutenant replied with a touch of pride.

Her glance swept the cluster of buildings and acres of cleared fields. “The plantation is larger than I expected.”

“My father was granted the original two hundred acres in recognition for his services as scout and surveyor, and my mother claimed title to the rest through her Indian blood. Like Sallie Nicks and John Jolly, she also holds a trade commission from the government.”

Barbara’s nervous sense of anticipation increased
as the lieutenant took his canoe past the falls to a point where the hill sloped down to the river. The prow hadn’t so much as nosed the red mud bank before a boy in canvas work pants and a loose-sleeved work shirt dashed down the hill.

“I spotted you a mile and more away!” he shouted.

“Did you? Good eye, Theo.”

Skittering the last few feet on the seat of his pants, the boy goggled at Barbara. He was as brown as a chestnut and sported a good-size lump over one eye. Like a gangly pup, he hadn’t yet grown into his hands and feet but their size and his easy familiarity with the lieutenant suggested they must be brothers.

Splashing into the river, Morgan pushed the canoe toward the bank. “Lend a hand here, Theo.”

The boy scrambled to help drag the craft onto the grassy slope. Once there, the lieutenant gave him an affectionate cuff on the shoulder.

“Been fighting again, I see.”

“It’s that cussed Urice. She whacked me with a—”

“Mind your tongue, Theo, and say hello to our guest, Lady Barbara.”

Aggrieved, the youngster rubbed his shoulder and turned his attention to the woman his brother handed out of the canoe. “How do you do, ma’am?”

“Quite well, thank you.”

“This scamp is my youngest brother, Theophilus.
Here, Theo, take the lady’s bandboxes while I help the others.”

As the second canoe neared the shore, the boy’s gaze darted to Hattie and lingered for a startled moment on her bruises before dropping to the bandboxes piled in the canoe.

“Urice is going to fall into raptures when she sees all these,” he predicted somewhat glumly. “There’ll be no talk of anything but ribbons and laces for days to come.”

“Urice is my sister,” the lieutenant explained as he beached the second canoe. “She spends more time poring over dress patterns than she does her lessons. Unlike Vera, another sister, who is just the opposite.”

With a shy smile, Hattie put her hand in his. “Urice? What an unusual name.”

“Yes, it is.”

Barbara watched the byplay with a raised eyebrow. She would have to teach Mistress Goodson the proper etiquette for a woman in service, which did
not
include gazing up at her betters with such obvious adoration.

“My mother lost a fierce battle with the priest who baptized us,” Zach explained, tucking one of the bandboxes under his arm. “The priest held fast for biblical names instead of the native names she’d chosen, so she started at the end of the alphabet and worked forward. We range from Zachariah, Youris
and Xavier to Vera, Urice, Theo here and the youngest, Sarah. Only Washington was spared.”

Barbara allowed him to take her elbow and escort her up the steep path to the house. Hattie, the boy and the two warriors followed.

“Washington, one must assume, was named for your country’s first president?”

“No, for an old friend of my parents, Washington Irving.”

Barbara tripped over her feet and would have fallen flat on her face if not for the lieutenant’s firm grip. Her heart thumping against her stays, she struggled to keep her voice steady.

“Do you refer to Washington Irving, who penned
The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gentleman?

“I do.” He smiled down at her. “How gratifying to know one of our American authors has won the attention of European readers.”

“Attention and acclaim.”

“He’s been living abroad for some years. Have you met him?”

“Once, very briefly.”

She and Harry had been seated across the dinner table from the author during a dinner hosted by a Bohemian baron. The meal became quite lively when their host let slip that he’d presented the charming Lady Barbara with the diamond bracelet she was wearing. His baroness had expressed severe and rather vocal displeasure.

“You say Mr. Irving is a family friend?”

“More of an acquaintance, really. My parents met him when they went East some years ago. They’ve maintained a somewhat erratic correspondence with him ever since. He’s always promising to come West for a visit, but has yet to… Here, watch this patch of pea vines.” He slanted her a quick grin. “You won’t want to snag your gown again.”

With the lieutenant’s strong hand under her arm and the ever-ready gleam of laughter in his dark eyes, Barbara allowed herself to relax. From the sound of it, his family claimed only a passing association with the author. Certainly nothing that might interfere with her plans. She let out a relieved breath, only to swiftly draw it in again as the woman she’d traveled so far to confront burst from the house.

“Zachariah!”

Aside from her lustrous black hair, Louise Chartier Morgan held little resemblance to her son. Nor did she in any way resemble the ignorant, half-breed savage Harry had told Barbara to expect.

Slender and petite, she wore a sensible, if surprisingly modish, gown of dove-gray wool. Its three-tiered embroidered collar flattered her heart-shaped face and made her look more sister than mother to the tall, broad-shouldered woodsman who swept her into a fierce hug. Her face was alight with joy when he released her.

“Me, I could not believe my ears when the servants tell me you are come! Have you taken leave from your duties at Fort Gibson?”

“Only for a few days. I’ve brought you guests.”

“So I see.”

Eyes a deep, startling blue looked over Barbara before flitting to Hattie and the two warriors who’d accompanied them. The woman was really quite beautiful, Barbara thought. And so very exotic. With those remarkable eyes, glossy hair and high, copper-tinted cheekbones, she might have posed for a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence of an American princess.

She had time for only that one thought before the woman’s gaze fixed on her once again. Louise Morgan cocked her head, and for the strangest moment Barbara felt as though she was seeing more than just a rumpled, travel-worn visitor. The odd sensation passed as her son made the necessary introductions.

“Mother, this is Lady Barbara Chamberlain. She’s traveled all the way from London to meet with you.”

Astonishment filled the woman’s eyes. “To meet with me?”

“It’s true,” Barbara confirmed with a smile. “Although had I known how long and arduous a journey it would be, I might have thought twice before undertaking it.”

“And me, I make you stand here while we talk about it! Zachariah, tell me the names of these other
guests you bring and let us take them inside so they may freshen themselves.”

The lieutenant introduced Hattie, then lapsed into a native tongue unintelligible to Barbara but comprehended by his mother. She replied in kind and elicited animated comments from the two Choctaw. Clucking, Louise Morgan shook her head.

“It is so absurd, this tangle of treaties.”

“Yes,” her son agreed, “it is. President Jackson has named a commission to sort matters out. I’ll tell you and Father about it over dinner.”

“Pah!” Still shaking her head, she led the way inside. “That Jackson, he is beyond anything a rogue.”

Barbara paid scant attention to the conversation. She had little interest in the politics of this provincial backwater, but the obvious signs of wealth that greeted her when she stepped inside Louise Morgan’s home snared her instant attention.

The house was filled with the scent of waxed oak floors, a feast of rich colors and the echo of laughter. Two rooms gave off the central hall, one a parlor, the other a dining room. Both contained furnishings that might have graced a country home in Sussex or Kent. The dining room boasted chairs covered in striped silks, a table that looked as though it could seat a dozen comfortably and a three-tiered silver epergne filled with fall fruits and nuts.

Family possessions were scattered about the parlor. Leather-bound books. An embroidery basket
spilling skeins of bright silk. Pipes stacked in a rack beside a leather tobacco pouch. A bow and quiver of arrows propped in a corner of the dining room.

This was a home well lived in, Barbara thought. The kind of home she dimly remembered from the years before her father had lost his estates to an unlucky turn of the cards and his life to a pistol shot on the field of honor. Barbara had just celebrated her fifth birthday when she and her brother went to live with a distant and sternly disapproving cousin.

The subsequent years were turbulent to say the least, as their relative attempted to crush Harry’s reckless spirits. Their fierce arguments had finally led to an exchange of blows. Harry and the then-twelve-year-old Barbara had slipped out of the house in the dead of night and embarked straightaway on their adventurous, if somewhat up-and-down, life.

She loved the freedom such a life allowed her. She truly did. Harry had taught her to throw off so many of the conventions that narrowed life to a dull routine and live every moment to the very fullest. It was only at odd moments, when Barbara caught a glimpse of a comfortable, well-appointed house like this one, that the treacherous desire for a home and family of her own crept into her heart.

Sternly, she quashed the insidious longing. What was she thinking? Harry was her family. Her
only
family. He was depending on his sister to free him from the foul prison where he breathed in the stink
of unwashed bodies every day. Her back stiffening, Barbara turned to the woman she and Harry had selected as their next prey.

“May I beg a private word with you after I remove my travel dirt?”

“But of course. Come, I take you and Hattie upstairs to refresh yourselves. Zach will bring your valises. Theo, take Chula Humma and Ok-Shakla to the kitchens so they may eat before they go back to their village. And ask Lula to fetch hot water for our guests.”

The bedchamber Louise Morgan showed Barbara to obviously belonged to her daughters. Cloaks and colorful shawls hung from pegs, and the open doors of a tall wardrobe showed a profusion of sturdy calico, dainty checked gingham and lustrous silks. Sweeping up a sunbonnet that had been tossed carelessly on the bed, her hostess tucked it into the wardrobe while her son deposited one load of bandboxes and went downstairs for the rest.

“This is a lovely room,” Barbara said, struck by the view its dormer window gave of the river and the green mountains beyond, “but I shouldn’t like to dispossess your daughters.”

“They won’t mind. Urice is happy to give up her bed if you’ll speak to her of the latest fashions in feather bonnets. Vera, too, if you’ll share your views on radical feminine philosophers.”

“I would, and gladly, if I knew any.”

Laughing, the slender matron headed for the door.
“Vera will no doubt inform you. She teaches in our mission school and loves the chance to discuss these so-modern ideas. I’ll send someone up with clean bed linens. If you wish to speak with me before dinner, I wait for you in the parlor.”

Barbara was trying to decide which boxes to have Hattie unpack when the lieutenant carried in the rest of her things.

“Do you have all you need?”

“Yes, quite. Tell me, is dinner a formal affair?”

“Only when my parents entertain nobility,” he replied, a smile in his eyes. “Two months ago they hosted Iesh, a Caddo chieftain. His presence, of course, caused a flurry of baking and silver polishing. I’d guess yours might merit the same.”

Barbara suspected it would. Deciding she would need all her armor and then some when she confronted Louise Morgan, she directed Hattie to the appropriate valise.

“You’ll find a blue silk gown and a Norwich shawl in there.”

The gown was sadly crushed. While Hattie went to find a pressing iron, Barbara used the interval to shed her traveling dress, scrub her face and hands, and change her underlinens. Clad in a chemise of fine lawn, a lace-edged corset and silk stockings trimmed with delicate embroidery designed to draw the eye to a neatly turned ankle, she dug through the opened valise for her jewelry case.

Her hand closed around the embroidered case, then stilled. Chewing on her lower lip, Barbara released the case and felt for the slit in the valise’s lining. Slowly, she withdrew a piece of oilskin folded to a small, flat square. Inside the protective covering was the document Harry had lifted from the dead body chained next to him.