Merline Lovelace (7 page)

The concert ended, Zach rose and issued an invitation. “Are you up to a stroll? There’s a harvest moon out tonight. It’s a sight to see rising over the river.”

Barbara started to demur, but the knowledge that the lieutenant must soon return to Fort Gibson changed her mind. If he had questions or qualms about Barbara’s claim of kinship to his mother, she’d best hear them now.

Making her excuses to her host and hostess, she went upstairs to fetch her shawl. Hattie wasn’t in the room, Barbara saw with a dart of annoyance. Nor had she turned down the bed or laid out a nightdress. Wondering what the woman was about, Barbara draped the elegantly fringed Norwich shawl over her elbows and descended the stairs to find her absent maid in the hall, engaged in conversation with the lieutenant.

Their discussion broke off with Barbara’s arrival, and her somewhat tart suggestion that Hattie might attend to her duties sent the maid on her way. Not without a last adoring look at her lieutenant, though.

“You’ve made a conquest,” Barbara commented as they stepped out into a night bathed in bright moonlight. “The woman quite worships you.”

“She would worship anyone who rescued her from the brute she was in service to.”

“Hattie says you shot him cleanly between the eyes.”

“Since I was aiming for his shoulder at the time,” he said dryly, “I don’t take a great deal of pride in the hit.”

“What’s that? I was given to understand you rangers are all crack shots. Was I wrong to trust you to keep me safe during the journey to Morgan’s Falls?”

“Not at all. Until I hear your business with my mother, though, I make no promises for the return trip.”

The threat came accompanied by a smile, but it was still a threat. The view of the moon above the river could wait, Barbara decided. Coming to a halt, she faced the lieutenant.

“Very well, sir. The long and the short of it is that my brother was unjustly convicted and transported to Bermuda, where he rots in the prison hulks. I need five thousand pounds to free him. I came to play on our admittedly loose connection to your mother and borrow or beg the money from her.”

She thought he might gape in astonishment at her outrageous demand. Or perhaps make a show of sympathy for her brother’s plight. She did
not
expect him to slap his leg and burst into laughter.

“You thought to put a hand in my mother’s pocket and pluck out five thousand pounds? Damnation! I wish I had been present to hear her response.”

“She has yet to give it to me,” Barbara informed him icily.

Still chuckling, he shook his head. “You should have told me what you were after. I would have warned you. My mother is the shrewdest horse trader and financier west of the Mississippi. If she gives you five thousand pounds, you’ll pay it back with interest, I assure you.”

No, Barbara would not.

She was tempted, so
very
tempted, to stalk inside, march up the stairs and retrieve the document hidden in her valise. Lieutenant Morgan would find little to laugh about then. Only the certain knowledge that he would challenge the contents of that paper in court and tie up his mother’s inheritance for years kept her from doing just that.

Harry didn’t have years.

“Tell me again how it is you’re related to my mother?” Zach asked when he’d recovered from his mirth.

Barbara wove once more the same web of truth and lies she’d spun for Louise Morgan.

“So the two of you share no blood tie at all.”

“That is correct.”

“Thank the Lord for small blessings,” he muttered.

Barbara went stiff as a poker. “I understand you might be reluctant to acknowledge the connection, sir. You’re a barrister, after all. And a military officer. Your family is much respected in this area. I, as you’ve just learned, am the sister of a convict.”

“We’ll get to the matter of your brother in a bit,” he promised. “My most pressing concern at the moment is making sure there’s no obstacle to collection of the debt you owe me.”

“What debt?”

“You promised to recompense me for the cost of the second canoe.”

She’d forgotten about her rash offer. He had not. Smiling, he curled a finger under her chin and tipped her face to his.

“I’ve been waiting for the right time to collect on the debt. I’m thinking this is it.”

Barbara sucked in a swift breath. Evidently Zach Morgan had been orchestrating a campaign of his own while she was laying out hers. They were like Wellington and Napoleon, each jockeying for position on the battlefield. He might wear the uniform, she thought as he bent his head and blocked the moon’s wash, but she intended to leave this field the victor.

Inside the house, Louise Morgan drew her gaze from the pattern book Urice had pulled from the cupboard and glanced through the parlor window. The wavy glass threw back only distorted shadows, yet there was no mistaking the tall figure of her son or the glint of moonlight in Lady Barbara’s gleaming hair.

As Louise watched Zach draw the woman into his arms, a primal instinct stirred deep in her belly. In the same manner as a wolf sniffing the air, she sensed danger.

Unbidden, the legend that had haunted her for most of her life leaped into her mind. She’d lived with the curse of the blue-eyed maiden for as long as she could remember.

Did Lady Barbara bear the same curse?

Her eyes weren’t a deep indigo, as Louise’s were. More a shimmering turquoise, like the waters that lapped the shores along the Gulf of Mexico. Yet Louise couldn’t help but wonder whether this English beauty would bring disaster to those who loved her, as had the blue-eyed maiden of legend.

With a little shiver of unease, she turned away from the window.

B
arbara had been woefully unprepared the first time the lieutenant kissed her. This time she intended to control matters.

Her palms rested on his chest. Her head tipped to a better angle. Her mouth moved seductively under his. She’d long ago mastered the art of heating a man’s blood to near fever pitch with little more than a kiss. It required style, not vulgar grunts and gasps. A sensual promise of more to come, redeemable at an unspecified future date.

So it was with some surprise Barbara felt a sudden heat race through her veins. The rush brought with it the overpowering urge to press her breasts and belly against the lieutenant’s powerful frame. She leaned closer, intending only a little more contact, but he took instant advantage of her nearness. Widen
ing his stance, he tightened the arm he’d slipped around her waist and deepened the kiss.

She was crushed against him. The woman in her thrilled to his strength and the play of his muscles under her fingertips even as the seductress experienced a frisson of alarm. The heat between them flared too fast, too intense. Reluctantly, she moved to douse the sparks before they fully ignited.

Drawing her head back, she broke the kiss. Her senses screamed an instant protest. With some effort, Barbara ignored her hammering heart and lifted her gaze to the lieutenant’s.

He looked thoroughly bemused. Grateful she wasn’t the only one so affected, she struggled to find her voice.

“I hope…I hope that is adequate recompense for any and all debts owed you, because it is all I intend to pay.”

“Then it will have to suffice.”

The very real regret in his reply acted as a balm to her agitated senses. She hadn’t lost her touch. Reassured, she eased out of his arms and permitted herself only a small shiver of delight when he rearranged the drape of her shawl over her bare shoulders.

“Shall we continue our walk down to the river?”

“In a moment.”

Zach wasn’t sure he could stand upright, much less trek down to the river. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had tied him in so many knots.

“Why don’t you tell me about your brother first. Why was he imprisoned?”

“It’s rather complicated. And difficult to explain to a man schooled in the law.”

The touch of bitterness in her voice suggested she had lost faith in the courts. Zach wasn’t surprised. Her brother had been convicted, after all.

“Just tell me what you will.”

She turned away and took a moment to gather her thoughts. When she faced him again, Zach sensed she was choosing her words with care.

“Harry has something of a reckless nature, but he’s watched over and protected me for as long as I can remember. Our mother died when I was only a babe, you see, and our father when I was five. Harry was heir to the title, an empty estate, and the responsibility of his sister.”

“Was there no one else to take on that responsibility?”

“A cousin,” she said with a lift of her shoulders. “He resented the expense of our upkeep and did his best to break Harry’s spirit. We left his household as soon as Harry reached his majority and made our own way after that.”

A tug of sympathy for the unknown Harry stirred in Zach. As the eldest in a large and lively brood he would have shaved pennies and picked pockets if driven to it to provide for his siblings. He suspected Barbara’s brother had done the same.

“Fortunately, Harry was always lucky with dice. Less so when it came to certain business ventures.”

“Taken for a ride, was he?”

Barbara bit her lip. As much as she hated painting her brother as an unsuspecting dupe, she certainly couldn’t admit he was the one who’d taken any number of unsuspecting gentlemen for a ride.

“Harry invested heavily in a railroad that was to be laid through the Swiss Alps,” she said instead, “and convinced a number of his friends to do the same. When the firm that was to have engineered the project went bankrupt, the uncle of one of the investors accused Harry of enticing his nephew into the scheme.”

He’d also produced evidence that Sir Harry Chamberlain had printed the fictitious engineering firm’s prospectus himself. Had his nephew not become so besotted with Chamberlain’s beautiful sister, the angry lord had charged, he would never have fallen victim to the scheme.

“My brother demonstrated to the court that he’d lost his investment as well, but his loss was insignificant compared to the thousands of pounds others had invested. He was held responsible and sentenced to ten years in prison.”

She turned to the lieutenant again, wanting—
needing
—him to see her anger at her brother’s fate.

“As we lacked sufficient funds to bribe the superintendent of prisons and assure Harry a comfortable cell in Rams Head or Millbank, he was transported to Bermuda. He’s there now, worked like a field slave
by day and confined in a filthy cell by night. I won’t leave him there to rot! I cannot!”

“No, of course you cannot. Do you think to demand a new trial? Is that why you need five thousand pounds, to hire a team of barristers and attempt to reverse your brother’s conviction?”

She needed the money to hire a boat and crew, bribe the prison guards and spirit Harry away from that damnable island in the middle of the Atlantic.

Whatever funds were left must go toward establishing a household in Italy or Spain. As an escaped convict, Harry couldn’t return to England. But if the lieutenant wanted to think Barbara intended to work within the law instead of outside it, she wouldn’t disabuse him of the notion.

“I’ve consulted any number of lawyers,” she said. “They all indicated such an effort would require both time and money.”

“Yes, it would. And the outcome is very much in doubt. From what I’ve heard of British courts, they are as slow and ponderous as the courts in this country.”

“Will you add your voice to mine, then? Explain the circumstances to your mother and suggest her funds would not be misspent?”

“I’ll tell her what you’ve told me.
She
must decide whether to expend funds on your brother’s behalf.”

She might have known he’d respond with the slip
pery ambiguity she’d come to expect of all men trained to the law. She was suddenly out of patience and tired of acting the supplicant. Deciding she’d eaten enough humble pie for one day, Barbara hitched her shawl higher on her arms.

“The air has taken on a chill. Shall we return to the house?”

“Yes, of course. Here, let me wrap my coat around you.”

Before she could protest, he shrugged out of his frock coat and draped it over her shoulders. It carried both his scent and the heat from his body. The blend of fragrant tobacco and lye soap lingered on Barbara’s shoulders long after she’d trimmed the candle and tugged his sisters’ down-filled comforter up to her chin.

She woke to a spill of sunlight and an annoying clatter. Struggling up on one elbow, she squinted through the slanting sunbeams at her maid.

“Whatever are you doing?”

The irritated query spun Hattie around and caused the porcelain pitcher in her hand to rattle again against its matching, rose-painted washbowl.

“I’m pouring your hot water,” she said, obviously confused by the question.

“Didn’t you see I was sleeping?”

“Yes, but…”

“In the future, you will wait for me to wake be
fore drawing back the curtains and clumping about in my room.”

“But it’s going on to ten o’clock. The family all took breakfast hours ago.”

“Indeed?”

Barbara supposed it would do no good to inform the woman she rarely rose before noon. She wasn’t in London or Vienna, but in the wilds of a country where the inhabitants evidently sat down to breakfast before dawn.

“Mrs. Morgan said I was to bring you a pot of hot chocolate when you woke. Or there’s coffee, if you prefer.”

“Chocolate will do.”

Still sleepy and irritable, Barbara shoved the coverlet aside. A porcelain chamber pot took care of her most immediate need. The hot water washed away the last of her grogginess. She was feeling more alert and composed by the time Hattie returned with a tray containing a china pot painted with feathery pink roses, a matching cup and saucer, and a puffy, honey-coated bun.

The chocolate was dark and rich and foamy. The bun melted in Barbara’s mouth. She savored every bite while she debated between the hunter-green traveling dress she’d worn the day before and the lavender kerseymere she’d snagged on the pea vines at Fort Gibson. Deciding on the kerseymere, she sipped a second cup of chocolate while Hattie
brushed out her hair and wove it into a smooth, shining coronet atop her head.

“Your bruises are beginning to fade,” she observed as Hattie placed the last hairpin. “The lotion must have helped.”

“And it smells so sweet, too. The lieutenant commented on it this morning when I walked back from the kitchens with him.”

“Did he?”

Her eyes took on a dreamy, faraway look. “He’s a fine man, the lieutenant.”

Barbara started to issue a sharp warning to the woman not to overreach herself, but bit back the words. What did it matter to her, after all, if Lieutenant Morgan chose to dally with the mistress in the moonlight and chivvy up the maid in the morning? He certainly wouldn’t be the first man to do so. Still, Barbara was in a somewhat pettish mood when she descended the stairs some time later.

She found Vera awaiting her in the parlor. The girl could be quite a beauty, Barbara thought. She had her mother’s blue eyes and lustrous black hair. How unfortunate she insisted on scraping it back in a tight bun. And her keen mind might well put some men off. Barbara herself found it just a bit daunting.

“Mama’s with Mr. McRoberts at the counting shed,” she informed her guest. “She asked me to bring you down, if you should like to see it. I thought I might also show you the mission school.”

Mr. McRoberts, Barbara recalled, was the wizened little man with the wooden teeth. She had no idea what he or Louise Morgan did in their counting shed, but professed herself agreeable to a visit.

“I’ll just fetch my parasol.”

When she returned a few moments later, Vera acted the proper hostess.

“Do you wish breakfast before we take our tour? We kept some ham and griddle cakes warm for you.”

“Thank you, but I’m not hungry. I just devoured two cups of chocolate and the most delicious bun.”

“Did you like it? That’s fry bread. Singing Bird, Mr. McRoberts’s wife, taught us to make it. She’s from the Navajo tribe, you know.”

“No, I didn’t.”

She followed the girl through the house and out the back door. The sun beat down with surprising warmth for late October. So unlike the cold, rainy Octobers in England.

“You’ll think me appallingly ignorant,” Barbara said, raising her parasol, “but I must confess I’m unfamiliar with the various tribes who inhabit Indian Country.”

“The Navajo don’t live in Indian Country. Their lands are far to the west, in Spanish territory. Although…”

A troubled look came over Vera’s delicate face.

“It’s hard to say anymore
who
lives in Indian Country. My mother’s people used to roam this
whole area. The tribes being relocated from the East have pushed them far to the north. Not without considerable bloodshed, I must tell you. We were never allowed to stray far from the house when I was younger. Papa still insists we carry a rifle whenever we go down to the river to fish or swim.”

Barbara had heard the issue of Indian Removal hotly debated during her long riverboat ride and again at Sallie Nicks’s table. Listening to the issue discussed over wine and braised mutton chops was one matter. Learning the fine-boned girl beside her carried a rifle when she went down to the river put another face on the matter altogether. Barbara had been lulled by the gentility of this plantation into forgetting it sat in an as yet unsettled land.

The hair on the back of her neck tingled as she swept the vista before her with a keen glance. Her gaze darted past the cluster of whitewashed outbuildings to the tilled fields beyond. Most of the fields were still dotted with stubble left from the fall harvest, but a bright patch of pumpkins grew in one.

At the far edge of the fields stood the orchards. What looked like apple and peach trees had already begun to lose their greenery, but the nut trees were weighted almost to the ground with a rich harvest of pecan and hickory.

It was the tangle of oak and ash beyond the orchards that drew Barbara’s nervous glance. The dense greenery seemed to stretch forever, covering
the undulating hills, shrouding the mountains that loomed to the east and south. Anything—or anyone!—could hide in that impenetrable wilderness.

“Should you like to see the school first? It’s on the way to the counting house.”

Nodding, Barbara tore her glance from the seemingly endless vista of sky and earth. Vera escorted her past the kitchens and smokehouse, circumvented a henhouse and swine pen, and led the way to a cluster of whitewashed buildings set on a slight rise.

“You’ll find the school and dormitories empty right now. Our students have gone to help with the harvest and participate in the fall buffalo hunt. They’ll return next month.”

“Who are these students?”

“Mr. Harris’s church holds a charter from Chief Walter Webber of the Cherokee to instruct their children. Their principal mission is some miles from here. My mother donated land for an additional school. She funds it on the condition that it accept
any
student wishing to attend. Mr. Harris and I teach a very diverse group, I will tell you.”

Barbara wondered why a young woman with Vera’s beauty, education and family wealth would choose the spinsterish occupation of teacher. She had her answer when they entered the school and spotted the young Reverend Harris at the table toward the front of the room.

“Good morning, John.”

The missionary looked up, and a look of utter adoration came over his face. “Good morning!”

An answering blush tinged Vera’s cheeks as she stood aside to allow Barbara to precede her. “I’ve brought you a visitor. Will you show her about?”

The young missionary eagerly agreed. He gave her a tour of the schoolhouse and the dormitories while describing in great detail his students’ course of instruction. The breadth of the curriculum surprised Barbara. She herself had been schooled in little more than watercolors, music and the literature deemed acceptable to young women of breeding. She’d certainly never studied mathematics or the use of globes. Not formally, at least. She’d learned a great deal about geography from jaunting about Europe with Harry. And she’d developed the very useful ability to count cards while sipping champagne and smiling bewitchingly at the gentleman seated across from her. Neither Vera nor Mr. Harris, Barbara suspected, would appreciate that particular skill.