Judith E. French (12 page)

 

On Christmas morning they awoke to the faint knock of a servant. But when the maid entered for a few seconds to bring a tray loaded with hot food and a pot of steaming tea, they ignored the breakfast bounty. Sterling pulled the coverlet over their heads, and they rolled and kissed and touched until play became passion.

“Are ye never satisfied?” she asked him. “This makes the third-”

“We’ve a lot to make up for.”

“Within reason,” she teased.

“Am I hurting you?”

“Nay,” she cried. “It’s just that I’ve never known a man to—”

“Are you willing?”

Her answer was a kiss that led to other things and kept them abed until the sun was nearly straight overhead. Finally, eyes heavy-lidded and lips bruised and puffy from lovemaking, they dressed and went downstairs to celebrate the remainder of the day with Forrest and his bride.

In spite of her earlier reluctance, Cailin found herself drawn to Kate Wescott. The younger woman seemed not to care that Cailin’s clothes were plain and out of fashion or that Cailin was Scottish.

“Lady Leah’s clothes will fit you as though they were made for you,” Kate declared. “I know we’ll find a gown suitable for our Christmas ball.”

Cailin was shocked. “I couldna wear—”

“Nonsense,” Forrest said. “My mother would insist if she was here. She has far more in her wardrobe than she will ever wear. There’s a green velvet that will make you the toast of Annapolis. With that hair, Mistress Gray, you will break hearts, I promise.”

“As long as they remember that she’s my wife,” Sterling muttered.

“I have not agreed—” Cailin began.

“Quiet, woman,” Sterling ordered with a grin. Thus, despite her arguments, Cailin danced the night away—not only in her husband’s arms, but in her host’s arms and also in the embrace of many of his friends and neighbors.

No one seemed to care for politics here in the colony. No one asked her about Prince Charlie or the rebellion, and no one looked down their long English noses when they heard her Scottish accent. Men and women alike were cordial, and she could not help but respond in kind.

That night, she and Sterling retreated to their chamber and spent the evening in each other’s arms. She did not think of what would come of their marriage or what would happen when winter receded and they had to go west into the wilderness. She didn’t think about the future at all. She lived only for the moment, for Sterling’s kisses and whispered words of love.

In the days and weeks that followed, Forrest and Kate taught Cailin much about life in the Maryland Colony. In the magic of her happiness, it was easy to forget that Sterling was her sworn enemy and that life on Lord Kentington’s estate was a far cry from how she would live as the wife of a poor tobacco planter.

Kate’s life was a whirlwind of duties and pleasures. Together, the two young women rode horseback across the frozen fields, visited with Kate’s many relatives, explored the shops in Annapolis, and shared late-night suppers, card games, and laughter I with their husbands. I

Cailin saw little of Sterling during the day. He spent long hours studying tobacco culture, discussing the merits of various crops and the problems of shipping product to England. He inspected tobacco prize houses, drying barns, and land set aside to raise the young tobacco plants from seed.

“I need to learn all I can,” he explained to Cailin when they were alone in bed. He pulled her against him and stroked her hair. “Forrest learned all this from the time he could sit a horse. I’m long past thirty.”

“Hardly a toddling graybeard,” she teased.

“Old to be starting on virgin land. From what I remember, we’ve some meadowland, but most is tall timber. Forrest says there’s a good market for masts if I can float the logs down river. A white oak mast suitable for His Majesty’s man-of-war will bring twenty pounds.”

“Kate and I rode to the river crossing today,” Cailin said. “You’ll never believe what she told me.

She said that her mother-in-law Lady Leah bathes there every day—even in winter. Have you ever—“

Sterling chuckled. “Yes. I do believe it. If you ever get the chance to meet the earl’s wife, you’ll see why. She’s an unusual lady, to say the least.”

“But to swim in winter? She must be mad.”

“Not mad. She is half-Indian.”

“What? That’s nay possible.”

He laughed. “Anything is possible. Look at you, here in my bed—as cozy as a woodchuck. Three months ago, would you have believed that?”

“Nay.” She shook her head. He was stroking her leg in a way that made it hard for her to follow the conversation. Sterling’s desire for her seemed insatiable, and she wanted him so badly that sometimes she counted the hours until they could discreetly close their bedchamber door and shut out the world. Some days, they could not wait. She giggled aloud as she remembered the close call they had had on Sunday last.

The minister had come to conduct services at the plantation in the morning and share the bountiful dinner afterward. But between the closing prayers in the great hall and grace in the dining room, Sterling had lured her into the buttery, tossed up her skirts, and performed what could only be described as a remarkable feat before the butler discovered them still in each other’s arms. Only the servant’s discretion prevented a scandal. Still more shocking, she was as guilty of the sin of lust as Sterling, and as unrepentant. Neither cared a fig that the good cleric had waited so long for their arrival that his soup was cold before he got to taste it.

She was mad for her husband’s body. The thought was troubling, and she pushed it away and tried to remember what Sterling had been saying to her. “You said Lord Kentington’s wife is half-Indian, but surely, he canna have wed a savage.”

“You did.”

“I see little Indian when I look at you,” she observed, “other than the color of your hair and eyes—and your dark skin.”

“You’ve named me devil often enough. There’s a saying here, half-breed-not just half-Indian and half-white, but half-devil as well.”

“That much seems reasonable, although your arithmetic doesn’t add up.”

He kissed her then, long and lingering, so that butterflies tumbled inside her and she no longer wished to fence words with him. Instead, she kissed him back and pressed her naked body close to his.

Much later, before they fell asleep, she remembered their discussion of Lady Leah. “Great English lords do not wed little red-skinned girls,” she said. “They. may lie with them but

“Lady Leah was herself born of noble blood. Her father was a Scottish earl. Remember, I told you that she was half-Scot.”

“Half-Scot, ye said, but nothing about the Indian blood.”

“It wasn’t important.”

“Nay, I suppose not. But all the same, I’m eager to meet her, this noble savage who swims in the river in winter and runs this grand household.”

“From what Forrest tells me, his mother is more interested in her people than she is in the plantation. Lord Kentington has good servants. And now that Forrest has wed Kate, she is the real mistress here.”

“Mmm,” Cailin said, snuggling down beside him. “But I still have to see her with my own eyes to believe it.”

“You will,” he promised. “You will.”

 

January passed and then February without Lady Leah’s return. And as spring approached, Sterling became more and more anxious to leave the settlement and travel to his own land.

“Cailin should stay here with us,” Kate insisted. “At least until you have a house up. You can’t expect her to sleep on the ground while you cut logs to build a cabin.”

“That’s exactly what I expect,” Sterling said. He glanced across the table at Cailin. “I want you with me,” he told her.

Her throat constricted. She’d not imagined that he’d leave her behind. They were still as hot for each other as they had been since they’d first consummated their marriage.

“It’s not really safe,” Forrest said. “There are rumors of unrest with the tribes. Mother—”

“I want her with me,” Sterling repeated. “Cailin?” He looked into her eyes, and any fears she might have had vanished.

“Aye,” she agreed, lifting her glass of wine in salute. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

“Then it’s settled,” Sterling said. “We’ll leave the second week of March.”

“You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for,” Kate argued. “The wilderness is not Annapolis.”

Cailin laughed. “And neither are the Highlands. I’m used to hardships. And if Sterling insists on being massacred by savages, where else should I be but by his side?”

 

S
leeping on the ground has merits that I never thought about before, Cailin mused as she snuggled closer to Sterling’s solid warmth. It was very early in the morning, still an hour before dawn according to her sleepy reckoning. And it was either May 15 or 16. Keeping a calendar was not so easy in this vast wilderness. Yesterday, Sterling had led her to a patch of ripe wild strawberries. Yes, it was definitely mid-May. Past time for planting, yet they were still cutting and burning trees to clear a field.

She rolled onto her back away from him and stared at the blue velvet sky above. Crystalline stars shone in the canopy of heaven. So bright they were ... In all her nights, she had never seen stars so close or so big and brilliant.

God, but it would be easy to forget Culloden, to let Scotland and her family fade away as though they had never been. It would be natural to accept this good man as her husband, to nurture and love him, to bear his children and grow old beside him. ’,

No man had ever set her afire as Sterling did. His touch ... Hell! One glance of those piercing black devil eyes, and she melted inside.

Theirs had been a honeymoon to equal any. Nay—to best any time of love and laughter spent by a bride and groom. He had carried her off to an enchanted land of giant trees, pure ice-water brooks, and deep, swift rivers. Never had she lain in grass so thick and green or breathed air so sweet and invigorating.

Sometimes she thought that this land was the Eden the Bible spoke of. Everything was larger than life here in this Maryland forest, even the man who claimed her as his wife. Each day, it seemed, he found a new wonder to share with her: a doe coming down to the river to drink in the morning mist, a raccoon sitting on its hind legs and washing its breakfast before it ate, a sunset of flaming orange and purple so colorful it looked as though it had been painted on a blue-gray canvas.

Sterling could read the forest floor like a book. Crouching, he would point to the slightest indentation in the leaf-covered earth and tell her of an animal’s passing. “Here, see this,” he would call out. “A bear and two cubs crossed here just before dawn. She’s old and she’s missing a toe on her left hind paw, but she’s still spry. Her cubs are strong and fat. See here, where they walked along this log.”

He knew each bird by the sound of its song, and he could imitate their calls. He could catch fish without a hook and line, and snare rabbits with a few twists of handmade bark cord.

One afternoon, he’d led her to a wind-fallen hollow tree large enough to stand upright in. But they’d not stood in its cavity for long. He’d stretched full length in the warm sunlit cave and pulled her onto his lap. They’d wrestled playfully until she was on her hands and knees and Sterling—

Sweet Mary! Had any maid been so happily and thoroughly swived in so many different places? Sterling’s education had been far more extensive than her own. She had not dreamed that feathers or even commonplace items such as apple tarts could be put to such wanton uses.

Sterling made a soft sound in his sleep and reached out a hand. As soon as he touched her, he relaxed. His breathing deepened and became more regular. She knew that he would spring up fully awake at the slightest hint of danger, but now there was nothing more alarming than the hiss of the fire and an occasional hoot of a far-off owl.

How different this marriage would have been if the past several years could be erased, Cailin thought. If Prince Charlie had never made his last attempt at regaining his throne and the Battle of Culloden had never been fought ... If so many of her dear ones had not died under the English guns ... Had she come to Maryland and met Sterling not as an enemy dragoon but as the colonial he truly was, she could have loved him unconditionally.

Still, she had to admit that Sterling was not the same man she’d been forced to wed at Edinburgh Castle. With every mile they’d traveled away from the bay country, civilization had slipped from his shoulders. His senses seemed keener, he laughed more easily, and his step was lighter. He moved through the wilderness as silently as one of the wolves that shadowed their camp.

Sterling had always carried himself erect, with the proud bearing of a military man. Years in the saddle as a dragoon had given him grace and a commanding manner with horses and men. Those attributes had only increased since they had reached the trackless forests; now, he moved with the assurance of a crown prince.

Except that she’d never heard of a crown prince who could appear and disappear at will. Sterling had developed the most exasperating habit, partly as a jest and partly ... Truth was, she didn’t completely understand how or why he would be standing talking to her one minute and vanishing into the trees the next. It amused him to find a spot and sit as still as a stone, watching her from his hiding place as she worked, without her awareness of his presence, until he tired of the game and spoke her name.

Even his speech, still deep and resonant, had softened with a colonial accent since they’d arrived in Annapolis. He no longer spoke like an Englishman. And, at times, she’d even caught him singing.

He spared himself no physical effort. Day after day, she’d watched him, stripped to the waist, wielding a broadax and chopping down trees. His hands had blistered from the oak handle; sweat had run off his back in rivulets. He’d never complained and never slowed his pace. Four hired men had come with them from Lord Kentington’s plantation, and Sterling had outworked every one of them. At first, the laborers had been surprised and unsure of how to react to a master who swung an ax and rolled stones into place to make the foundation for a house. But they’d soon learned that Sterling expected his orders to be carried out. He was fair but unyielding. And if he drove himself to the limit, he expected a full day’s work from his men as well.

His skin had quickly darkened in the sun to a deep bronze, and every spare ounce of flesh had dropped away, leaving him a lithe, sinewy Adonis who laughed and loved with a greater zest than Cailin would have believed possible.

When Sterling had forced her to marry him and taken her to his father’s house in England, she had thought him. to be a willful, even stubborn man. But he had also seemed troubled, at times uncertain of purpose. Now, she saw only determination and focus. Lines caused by years of care and cynicism had vanished from Sterling’s face. In their stead, she saw hope and the fulfillment of a dream.

“You should have come back to America years ago,” she’d told him one afternoon. “You look younger here, more alive than I’ve ever seen you.”

He regarded her intently with those riveting hell-black eyes and slowly grinned. “If I’d come back years ago, I’d not have you,” he reminded her.

“You don’t have me now,” she answered.

“Don’t I?” He leaned his ax handle against a tree and ran a hand possessively down her back to fondle her bottom.

“For two years only,” she reminded him, trying to wiggle free. She’d been carrying a basket of clothes to the river to wash them.

“We’ll see,” he’d said, tilting her chin with his other hand and covering her mouth with his. “We’ll see about that.”

Cailin sighed, remembering what had happened to the wash, and how late supper had been that night. Sterling was impossible ... and wonderful. And she was hopelessly addicted to his kisses and the loving that always followed them.

If she had half the sense God gave a goat, she’d forget revenge, duty to family, Prince Charlie’s accursed rebellion, and every vow she’d made to return to Scotland. Sterling had offered her a share in his dream, and it didn’t take a vast amount of imagination to know that she could find happiness as Sterling’s wife and partner in this new world.

“Ye be the most obstinate lass it has ever been my misfortune to ken,” her husband MacGreggor had told her the last time she’d seen him alive. That was her failing and her weakness. Once she made a promise, she must keep it or die trying.

“Oh, MacGreggor,” she murmured into the darkness. “Why did I ever let lust and a handsome set of legs lead me to the altar?”

She’d not thought of MacGreggor in weeks. He’d been a good catch for a woman without wealth, or so everyone had said. He was young and full of vinegar, and his kisses made her head spin. “Marry or burn;” the priest proclaimed. And her cousin Jane had just given birth to a beautiful baby boy.

“Long past the age to wed,” a neighbor had told her.

“She’ll end up old and sour, caring for her sister’s children,” Aunty Meg had predicted. “She’s too choosy by half, that one.”

Reasons ... some foolish, some wise. MacGreggor had been willing to have her, sharp tongue and all. He’d offered her a ring and a household of her own, and she’d accepted him. Later, she’d found that he was the father of three little bastards by three different women. And that the mischievous smile that had captured her still charmed other fair lassies.

First, she’d caught him with the shepherd’s wife. Next, they’d had a public shouting match at the spring horse fair when he’d let his hands roam too freely over the flanks of a gypsy fortune-teller. And finally, MacGreggor had tried to turn her over his knee when she’d questioned him about the woman’s red satin garter she’d found in their own marriage bed.

He’d tried to explain and had failed most miserably. She’d not believed the lie that the single garter was a gift he’d bought for her. In the argument that had followed, they’d broken the pitcher and washbowl and torn the hangings from the poster bed, but it was MacGreggor who’d gone down to breakfast in the hall with an eye as black as the devil’s cod and scratches on his face that did not fade for a fortnight.

If she’d quickened with MacGreggor’s babe, perhaps they would have come to terms before parting. But she hadn’t. And the pleasure of his company was not enough to overcome her shame and anger at his roving eye. So she’d packed her trunk and returned to her stepfather’s house.

She’d remained there, a little wiser but no less stubborn. So complete and scandalous was their separation that MacGreggor’s death brought sadness and regret, but no real heartbreak.

A wolf howled nearby, and Cailin flinched.

“Shhh,” Sterling soothed. “They’ll do us no harm. The pack is hunting deer, most likely.” He pulled her close, and she relaxed and let her eyelids drift shut.

When I married MacGreggor, I was a woman in body but still a child in my mind, Cailin thought. Why couldn’t it have been Sterling whom I met at that wedding? If he had kissed me instead of MacGreggor ... if he had asked for my hand in wedlock ...

I would have slapped his face and set the dogs on him.

She caught her lower lip between her teeth.

If I was too young to recognize MacGreggor for what he was, I wouldn’t have been mature enough to see beyond Sterling’s enemy uniform.

Sadness swept over her. Two years she had promised Sterling Gray, and two years they would have. She would give her body willingly and take sensual joy in his. But theirs was an arrangement. When the time had passed, she would keep her vow and return to Scotland.

And regret leaving him for the rest of her life.

She was still tired from yesterday’s long day’s work. She had carried branches all afternoon and helped to dig the foundation trench for the cabin. She’d rolled rocks and carried water from the stream for the thirsty men to drink. She’d cleaned and cooked for seven men, and in an hour or two, she’d rise and begin all over again. But this morning—in the darkness before dawn—sleep eluded her.

Restlessly, she turned and wiggled. Something didn’t feel right. An odd, prickly sensation spread up the back of her neck. Uneasy, she opened her eyes and stifled a cry of alarm. Beyond the fire, in the stygian blackness of the forest, red eyes glowed.

“Sterling.” His name came out a bare whisper, but she felt him tense.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s just a wolf.”

Cailin’s mouth was suddenly dry. “A wolf? Just a wolf?” She shrank back against him. “Aren’t you going to shoot it?”

“He’s just curious.”

As she watched, the animal’s eyes grew larger. “Sterling.” Gooseflesh rose on her arms.

“He won’t hurt us.” Sterling sat up. “Greetings, Brother M’wai-wah.”

The creature took a few steps closer to the fire, and a huge gray form emerged from the darkness. Cailin’s teeth began to chatter. The wolf’s legs were long and surprisingly slender, its coat gray-black. White hairs sprinkled the ruff of its neck and encircled its muzzle.

A cold wind rustled through the trees. A log on the fire cracked, shooting sparks into the air. White teeth gleamed in the beast’s mouth.

“Sterling!”

“Shhh.” He moved to kneel between her and the wolf.
“M’wai-wah, ili klecheleche?”

For a long minute, he and the wolf stared into each other’s eyes. Slowly, Sterling smiled.

The wolf lifted one paw as if to salute them, and then dropped to its haunches and gave a low, doglike whine.

Sterling extended both hands, open to show that he held no weapons.
“Auween khackey?”
Who are you? he asked.

The wolf opened its mouth, letting a red tongue loll. Its eyes were yellow now, as bright as molten gold, and it was close enough for Sterling to hear its breathing. ,

Sterling was puzzled. He’d told Cailin that there was no reason to be afraid of the wolf, and normally that would be true, but this animal was not behaving as it should. It didn’t look sick or mad, but wolves were generally shy of humans, and it was late spring, a time when there were many young birds and animals, making food easier to come by for predators.

Sterling slowly reached for his rifle. He’d not shoot unless he or Cailin was in danger. Instinct told him that the wolf wouldn’t attack, but he couldn’t be sure. He’d never seen or heard of a wolf coming so close to fire.