Columbine (16 page)

He had thrown himself into running Plumstead and governing the land around it as his father had done, building the mills to lure more settlers, and expanding into trade with Jonathan and other captains. But nothing had helped. Nothing had eased the anguish or given back to him what he’d lost.

How could he ever explain it to Dianna? He let himself watch her sleep a little longer, knowing he was wasting the short time he could spare to be alone with her, Even if he found the words, how could she possibly understand?

Even before she woke, Dianna sensed Kit was there. Her eyes opened and met his warily, uncertain what to expect. He stood on the other side of the injured Frenchman, his unshaven face streaked with dirt and sweat, and bits of leaves and brambles stuck in his haft. His eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep, his mouth a hard line that would offer no sweetheart’s promises, and she steeled herself to be equally cold and unyielding.

“We need to talk, Dianna.”

Dianna shook her head fiercely.

“There is nothing to say.”

So this was how it would be, thought Kit wearily.

A “nothing” like that from her meant he could talk from now until Christmas and she wouldn’t hear a word of it. But he had to try.

“Dianna, dear ling I regret—” “I want none of your regrets and none of you!”

she answered hotly.

“I’m sorrier than you will ever be about—about what paSsed between us yesterday, and I will thank you never to mention it again.”

“Dianna—” “Nay, I’ll not hear more!” She scrambled out of the chaff and grabbed a handful of the fresh bandages that she and Hester had torn last night.

“This man needs to be tended, MaSter Sparhawk, and I’ll ask you to let me go about my work.”

Kit sighed and rubbed his forehead. How could he set things right with a half-dead Frenchman lying between them? If he weren’t so tired and discouraged, he might have laughed.

“HaS the man said anything of use?”

“Nay,” Dianna swallowed hard, concentrating on both cleaning the wound aS Hester had shown her and not fainting before Kit.

Kit hadn’t imagined her as a nurse and was surprised by how gently she tended to the Frenchman.

The man stirred and groaned restlessly beneath her touch, and Dianna murmured to him softly in French.

The unknown words in her low voice struck Kit’s ear as impossibly seductive, and as the man relaxed, Kit felt the first twinge of unexpected jealousy.

“What are you saying to him?” he demanded impatiently.

Her eyes narrowed at the unmistakable suspicion.

“You don’t know how to trust, do you?” she said tersely.

“I’ve said nothing to him that I wouldn’t say to Mercy.”

“Damn it, Diauna, there are four men dead, a woman and two girls missing, and yet you expect me to–” “Colonel Sparhawk!” The man pounded unceremoniously on the chamber door.

“The messenger’s ready t’ride to the’ garrison at Northfield.”

His expression black with anger, Kit threw open the door and stalked into the kitchen filled with the men from the trainband. They all believed he’d been questioning the Frenchman, and Kit felt like a fool for concocting an excuse merely to talk to a woman who refused to listen.

“Where’s Eleazer? I’ll need another copy of this letter to send to Lord Bellomar, and two more for Albany and New Haven. If it is the Sagomutucks again, then other Englishmen should be warned.”

“Eleazer’s gone t’warn ‘em at Deerfield, Colonel,” said John Davies uneasily.

“Ye sent him there yerself.”

Kit swore and dropped heavily into the chair at the end of the table.

“Why the devil did I do that?” he demanded of no one in particular. From the corner of his eye, he caught Dianna’s small figure slipping among the men, the bucket held before her.

“Eleazer the only man I trust to write a-decent hand.

Ah, well, there’s no help for it but I must write the letter again myself.” He reached for his pen and another sheet of paper.

“I can copy it for you,” said Dianna quietly.

Every man turned to stare at her, but she stood with her head high and her hands folded before her.

“It takes no great manly strength to wield a pen, you know.”

Kit looked up at her from under drawn brows, weighing her offer for only a moment before shoving the paper and pen toward her.

“I need three copies for my signing by the time I return tonight, one to Lord Bellomar in Boston, and one each to the governors of Connecticut and New York. And mark that they’re neat and true, for I want their lordships to read every word.”

As all around him the other men rumbled and nodded in agreement, Kit finished the tall flacon of cider Hester had brought him. He should, he knew, eat something as well, for he intended to visit the farthest points of his settled land today, a good day’s hard riding at best. But he was still too concerned about what he might find to linger at Plumstead any longer, and restlessly he rose to leave. Only at the doorway did he let himself pause to look back at Dianna, bending over the table to study the letters she was to copy. Let her read them, he decided as he left. Then perhaps she would understand.

Dianna stared down at the letter before her, the words blurring before her eyes. She wanted to take Mercy and go home, never to see Kit Sparhawk again. She needed time alone to think. She felt trapped in his house, trapped as much by his overwhelming presence as by the danger waiting in the forest. He hadn’t bothered to thank her for copying his infernal letters, let alone bid her farewell. Because she had rebuffed his attentions, she knew she could expect no better. But, oh, how it hurt!

She forced herself to read the letter before her.

Kit’s handwriting was irritatingly like him, bold and confident and masculine. But the events his words described made her soon forget her own concerns. In short, blunt sentences, Kit described the massacre of the Barnard men and the kidnapping of the women, the scalping of the Frenchman and the destruction of barns and houses. And this, he concluded, might only be the beginning of a long, bloody conflict in the river valley.

“Is this true, Hester?” Dianna asked hoarsely, her face drawn with horror.

“If Kit’s written it, then true it be,” replied Hester.

“Poor Dorothy Barnard! She be a timid soul anyways, and then t’lose her men an’ her home on the’ self-same day must be too much for her to bear. God preserve her an’ restore her an’ the lasses back to us!”

“But surely when the governor sends us the soldiers Kit has asked for—surely then they will be rescued I Hester shook her head sadly.

“There’s no certainty in this world, lass. This be a big land, and the’ governor has many calls for his troops. One poor Wickham ton family don’t account for much wit’ those fine folks in New Haven. An’ even if the soldiers come, why, the’ trail will be so cold by then that Goodwife Barnard’s sure to be lost t’English eyes forever.”

“Can’t Kit and the trainband men go after them?”

“Don’t believe he hasn’t thought on it!” ex claimed Hester ruefully.

“But those roguish savages could lead them clear t’Montreal, an’ who’d be left here? Trainband men have farms an’ families t’tend, an’ Kit—faith, there’s hardly a soul ‘round here that don’t depend on him for something.”

“What will the Indians do to the women?” asked Dianna. She thought of the day when she and Mercy had met the Indian in the woods. What if he hadn’t been friendly?

“If they didn’t kill them outfight, they’ll likely sell them in Montreal, where th’ priests will try t’beguile them into turning Papist,” said Hester with true Protestant contempt.

“Else they’ll keep the’ women for themselves an’ turn them into heathen squaws. Me, I never could decide which fate’d be the’ worst.”

Dianna had heard enough. With a sigh, she carefully began to copy Kit’s letter as Hester, a broad wooden spoon in her hand, bent over Dianna’s shoulder to watch.

“Then it be true? Ye can read an’ write like a gentleman? I never learned beyond makin’ my mark,” she marveled.

“With your French an’ writin’ an’ all, ye can do more good for Kit than the’ rest of’ us women-folk combined.”

But when Dianna remembered the cold expression on Kit’s face, she knew he’d only one use for her, a use that would bring no good to any of them.

For the next two weeks, Dianna was never far from Kit’s thoughts. Again and again, as he rode across open meadows and through uncleared forests, he could think of little beyond her—her smile, her laugh and, most of all, how she’d looked wearing nothing more than wildflowers–and again and again he cursed himself for being so besotted. It was dangerous, for one thing. He could be mooning away after Dianna and not see the glint of a musket or knife in the tree overhead until it was too late. Too many people were counting on him for him to risk his life and theirs by acting like a lovelorn schoolboy.

It was all Dianna’s fault, of course. He’d tried to apologize, and God knows he’d never had to do that to a woman before, but she’d just stuck her haughty little nose in the air and dismissed him, there, in his own house. In front of Hester, she had shrugged off his thanks for copying the letters with a brusqueness that bordered on being rude, and had given him no opening to admit to the misspellings she’d corrected, an admission he’d felt sure would have melted her resistance. With Plumstead full of women, she was the only one who didn’t look to him for reassurance, or smile at his jests when he sought to cheer them.

She kept her distance, but her small, slender figure was always there, taunting him with her proximity alone until he thought he’d go mad from wanting to touch her. How could she have given herself so freely to him that one perfect afternoon and now not even deign to meet his eye?

Perhaps if he’d had more success in the forest, he could have borne her rejection more gracefully. Each day he and the others rode out on ever-varied patrols, checking on the farms and houses that had been so hastily closed and searching for any signs of the Indians that had killed the Barnards. But at dusk they returned to Plumstead with no news, and it ate at him that he still didn’t even know which tribe was responsible.

They had struck and then vanished, their identity and motives mysteries, and Kit had little patience with mysteries weighted against the lives of English women and children.

Kit’s last hoPe for a clue lay with the Frenchman, and even that was fading as fast as the trapPer’s life.

He had never regained consciousness to be questioned about his assailants, and when the fever had settled into his weakened body, Hester and Kit each knew without sPeaking that the man would not survive.

Only Dianna tenaciously believed he would recover and spent long hours talking to him in French and bathing his body with cool, damp cloths. Her attentions irritated Kit, not only because they struck him as so misplaced—before the attack, the man had probably been as coarse and wolfish as any other French trapPer, certaiy company Dianna would have taken pains to avoid—but also because it was at Kit’s own order that she had begun tending the injured man in the first place. To be jealous of a dying man was ludicrous, yet Kit was, and knowing it didn’t make it any easier to bear. Being jealous meant he cared about her in the way that he’d been doing his damnedest to deny.

Late one evening Kit sat at the kitchen table, moodily swirling the beer in his tankard as he watched Dianna with the trapPer through the oPen dOOr. The candle in the lantern brought out the mahogany streaks in her hair, like a soft red halo around her face. As she changed his bandages she sang, crooning almost, the seductive sound of her voice wrapping around the soft French words.

It was tOO much for Kit. In three long strides he was in the little rOOm. Dianna’s startled face upturned before him as he caught her by the arm.

“What do you want? You’ve no reason to hold me thus!” Her pale eyes flashed her anger.

“You wanted to learn how to fire a musket,” he replied, “and by God, I’m ready to teach you.”

“But you refused before—” “Things are different now.” He pulled her along after him, pausing in the kitchen only to grab a musket, bullets and powder, before he led her out the door and away from the house. Dianna struggled to break free, twisting and jerking back, but his grasp was too strong to break, and she followed stumbling after him.

“You said we all had to stay near the house!” she yelled at him.

“Your orders, Colonel SparhawkI” He ignored her, intent on reaching the small copse of beech trees. The moon was just past full, the meadow they crossed almost as brightly lit as by day.

He stopped before the trees, releasing her so suddenly that she reeled to one side.

“You’re mad, you are,” she said as she flung her loosened hair back out of her face. She was breathless from fighting him, and breathless, too, from being alone with him. For a fortnight she had been able to keep her true feelings about him buried behind a careful mask of indifference, but she did not trust herself without the safety of others around her.

“To fire guns after dark with all the country fearful, we’ll likely be shot ourselves! I’m going back to the house now—’ “You’ll stay,” he said as he unshouldered the musket, “and you’ll learn.” Before she could protest, he had caught her again and yanked her back hard against his chest. Holding her within the circle of his arms, he began to load the gun, shaking a little powder into the priming pan and snapping it shut with two fingers.

“This is the firelock. Make certain it’s at half-cock before you begin, and only a smidge of the powder here.” Deftly he then sloped the musket down, steadying it with one hand while with the other he shook more powder down the barrel. Next went the wadding and the ball. Then, after drawing the ramrod from the barrel’s loops, he gave it three quick strokes to shove the ball in place. In spite of herself, Dianna watched him, fascinated by the practiced ease with which he loaded the musket. The confidence with which his long-fingered hands moved was almost graceful, and she remembered too well how those same hands had moved across her body.

Loading a musket was a task Kit could probably do while drunk, asleep or both, and considering the effect Dianna was having on him, it was just as well.