Elizabeth Grayson (19 page)

“The commodore barely drew breath all winter for talking about how fine and fast that steamer was going to be,” Zeb Mortimer chimed in, “so we all figured young Rossiter would get the captaincy.”

“Hell, Zeb!” George Rush smacked Chase on the back. “Don’t you know this boy can pilot rings around Rossiter? For once in this life, the prize has gone to the man who deserved it.”

“Well, you ride high on those Gold Star fortunes, boy,” Greene advised, dropping his voice to an undertone,
“while you still can.”

Chase turned and looked at the
Julie B
’s captain directly. “What do you mean, Barnaby?”

“Oh, nothing much,” Greene answered, reaching for the drink the barkeep set before him. “Just that I hear tell Gold Star boats are making unscheduled stops.”

Chase knew better than to ignore Greene’s information. The river trade lived and died on messages passed along from man to man. “Just what kind of unscheduled stops have the Gold Star boats been making?”

“The kind of stops”—Greene lowered his voice even more—“where unrecorded cargo gets unloaded in unexpected places.”

Chase leaned closer, hoping he was wrong about what the other captain meant. “What kind of cargo?”

Greene shrugged. “Contraband, maybe. Things that might eventually find their way to the Indians.”

Guns and ammunition.

Chase’s gut tightened. Someone thought the Gold Star boats were running weapons? Chase couldn’t believe it and would have questioned Greene more closely, except that Zeb Mortimer interrupted them.

“George here says you got command of the
Andromeda,
Captain Hardesty, because you married the commodore’s daughter. Is that right?”

Chase had known someone would ask that sooner or later, and he couldn’t see much point denying it.

“I got both Ann Rossiter
and
the
Andromeda,”
he drawled and lifted his glass toward where his wife was still visiting with her new friends. “Which as far as I’m concerned is a damn fine bargain.”

All the men turned to stare at her.

“A lovely woman,” Captain Greene pronounced and drank to Ann’s health.

“You brought your new bride way out here?” Mortimer asked incredulously. “And her in a family way!”

“Ann wanted to see the West before the baby came.”

“Well, your Ann must be an intrepid woman,” Rush offered. “Mrs. Rush thinks going to The Planters House Hotel for tea is high adventure.”

Talk turned, as it always did among rivermen, to business—steamers and cargo and the most recent changes in the river. When Chase looked up a few minutes later, he saw Boothe had cornered Ann, and he immediately set his drink aside.

Rue lay a hand against his sleeve. “Ann’s been contending with her brother since they were children. It’ll be better if you let her handle him.”

“Her family’s not like ours,” he said shortly and shook off his brother’s hold. Rue hadn’t seen the venom in Boothe Rossiter’s eyes that day in Sioux City; nor did he feel a husband’s responsibility to protect Ann from her stepbrother.

Yet tonight, Ann seemed to be holding her own. Her chin was tilted at a defiant angle, and she seemed to be ignoring whatever Boothe was saying. But as she turned to leave, he grabbed her arm and swung her around.

It was all Chase needed to see him do. He started toward them, slicing a path through the closely packed bodies like an otter through the scum on a pond. He was too far away to keep Rossiter from pushing Ann back against the wall, too far away to hear what it was Boothe said that made her eyes fill with tears.

Whatever it was, Chase hurdled the last few feet and jerked Rossiter away from her.

Boothe spun around and raised his fists to defend himself. Chase slammed a punch right through his guard.

The slimmer, darker man reeled and staggered backwards. Chase caught a glimpse of Ann cringing back against the wall just as her stepbrother came back at him. He brushed off the other man’s blow and hit him as hard as he could.

Pure feral joy surged up his spine.

Fort Benton didn’t have a reputation as “the wildest town in the West” for nothing. Men who’d been drinking companionably moments before set to brawling. Strangers pounded strangers with their fists. Furniture flew and windows shattered. Fighters reeled from one opponent to another. A table of bottles and food went over with a clatter. The air reeked of whiskey and pickled onions.

When Rossiter came at him again, Chase jabbed him even harder. He ducked Boothe’s answering blow, then rammed his fist right into Boothe’s belly. Chase followed with an uppercut. Rossiter went over like he’d been poleaxed.

Chase stood grinning down at him, ferociously pleased with himself.

Then, before anyone else could grab him—or her— Chase gathered Ann up in the crook of his arm. Together they scuttled to the right and to the left, through the maze of howling, brawling men. They stumbled out onto the steamer’s deck, both of them breathless.

Chase swept Ann down the gangway while he had the chance and dragged her into the shadow of one of the piles of goods on the landing. “Are you all right?” he asked, skimming his hands over her to make sure she was.

“Fine,” she answered, though her voice was shaking.

“Did that bastard hurt you?”

If Boothe had done more than muss Ann’s hair, Chase was going to go back inside and—

“He didn’t hurt me.”

Still, there was something wrong. Though her head was bent, she was standing so stiffly she might as well have bathed in starch. So if she wasn’t hurt, she must be ...

Chase’s breath caught fire halfway up his chest. The elation he’d been savoring, dimmed.

She must be angry.

Ann had made it clear enough what she thought about brawling when he showed up at their wedding all battered and bruised from that dustup on the levee. Now, just when things seemed to be going a little better between them, he’d picked another fight.

He supposed it might not hurt to apologize. “Now, Ann,” he began. “I’m really sorry I started that fight—”

“Chase.”

“—but when I saw Boothe put his hands on you—”

“Chase.”

“—I wanted to pound that bastard to kingdom—”

She lifted her hand and pressed her fingertips to his mouth.

Chase caught his breath. The feel of those cool, soft fingers against his lips made it almost worth a reprimand.

“I want you to understand,” she said. Her eyes were wide and shining in the dark. “I want you to understand that you needn’t apologize to me for starting that fight.”

Surprise skipped through him. “I—I don’t?”

“I—I can’t say anyone has ever stood up for me like that.” Her mouth softened in a way that made him want to kiss her. “And the very idea that you would—”

“You’re my wife,” Chase insisted. “What did you expect me to do when Boothe was plaguing you?”

It was an odd notion that she’d be surprised that he’d protect her. In his family, the women always had a father or a brother or a husband watching over them—whether they wanted to be watched over or not. But then, all Ann had was Boothe, who hated her, or the commodore, who attended to what was good for Ann only when he benefited from it himself.

Chase looked down, seeing his wife in a whole new light.

“I wanted you to do exactly what you did,” Ann admitted.

“You don’t mind that I punched Boothe?”

She looked flushed, chagrined. “I hoped you’d knock him halfway to Helena!”

Chase did his best not to laugh. He could see the admission wasn’t an easy one for her to make—and not just because it sanctioned fighting. What Ann was saying was that she liked him protecting her, that she trusted him to do it. That he had a right to defend her if he saw fit.

Knowing that’s how she felt gave him a kind of validation Chase hadn’t even known he needed.

He stepped in a little closer, smoothed a strand of her hair. “So, Mrs. Hardesty,” he said, “do you mind if I go on protecting you?”

“From Boothe?” she asked him.

“Well, yes. Boothe,” he said. “But I suppose I could protect you from other things, too.”

“Other things?”

Chase eased close enough that he was aware of her warmth against him, caught the faint, clean scent of lavender in her hair. He felt suddenly flushed, suddenly light-headed and breathless.

“Well,” he drawled, “I suppose I could protect you from the mice in the pantry.”

“Really?” She giggled and looked up at him with glistening eyes. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard her giggle and the sound of it made his chest swell with warmth.

“Maybe I could protect you from drinking Harley Crocker’s coffee,” he suggested. “Or tyrannical French cooks.”

Ann laughed outright. “How about protecting me from the bat-sized mosquitoes along this river?”

“I’m not sure I can promise to protect you from the mosquitoes.” He lowered his head, focusing on her soft, bowed mouth. “But I think I can handle some of the other things.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, leaning into him. “I’d like that.”

But just when he might have kissed her, might have taken her in his arms and drawn her against him, two drunks staggered out of the
Independence
’s salon. Halfway down the landing stage, one of them fell in the river.

Chase stepped out from between the crates to make sure the man could swim, and by the time he turned back, Ann had begun to wend her way back toward the
Andromeda.

ANN DIDN’T HURRY VERY WELL THESE DAYS, AND SHE needed to make the trip from the
Andromeda
to the Indian encampment and back before the steamer pulled out of Fort Benton at noon.

As she walked, Ann fingered the square of downy flannel folded over her arm. After Spotted Fawn Woman had given her the tiny pair of moccasins two days before, Ann decided to make a gift to repay her kindnesses. She had worked most of the previous day binding a blanket with claret-colored ribbon and embroidering clusters of daisies in the corners. Ann just hoped her new Indian friend would like it.

As she plodded the length of the landing in the direction of the fort, Ann glanced back at the boats lined up at the edge of the river. The
Cassiopeia
had left at dawn. Only when she saw the river mist erase it line by line, did she feel as if she could breathe again.

For awhile at least, she needn’t worry about Boothe’s threats, what he might say to Chase about her child, or how she would respond to him if he did.

Yet terrifying as Boothe’s malice was, the way Chase had taken her part filled her with a kind of wonder. She couldn’t remember another person in her life who’d done that. Not even her mother.

“We’ve come to St. Louis to stay,” Sarah Pelletier Rossiter had explained to her when Ann complained about the way Boothe treated her. “We both need to learn to be accommodating.”

Chase hadn’t accommodated anyone last night.

When Boothe threatened her, Chase had dispatched him with his fists. Ann was a little appalled at the pure, intemperate joy she’d felt at seeing Boothe laid out on the floor. She shouldn’t have sanctioned fighting, shouldn’t have felt such pride that Chase was willing, and completely able, to protect her. Still, she couldn’t seem to help what she was feeling. Somehow she was able to stand taller, was able to protect herself better just knowing Chase was there if she needed to turn to him.

As Ann entered the Indian encampment behind the fort, several of the women nodded at her and nudged one another. Two children stopped and stared. Feeling like an intruder, she quickened her pace, heading purposefully toward Red Dog’s tepee. Ann had hoped to find Spotted Fawn Woman sitting outside in the sun, but there was no sign of her.

Then Ann saw the thin blue vapor trailing from the tepee’s smoke hole and scratched on the stiff, elk-skin door. “Spotted Fawn Woman, are you there?” she called out, then scratched a little more insistently.

Red Dog himself thrust the hide back out of the way.

Ann gasped at the sight of him. The man’s skin and clothes were caked with ash. His chest-length hair was hacked off short and hung in tangles that were gray and powdery with dust. Long, freshly bloodied cuts ran down his chest and arms. His face was streaked with soot.

He glared at Ann with bloodshot eyes. “Why are you here?” he demanded.

Ann held out the blanket in both hands. “I made this for Spotted Fawn Woman and your baby.”

He glared at her with what could have been either fury or anguish. “I have no baby.” His voice was raw and guttural. “I have no wife. My wife is dead.”

Ann stood staring, suddenly feeling breathless and gone at the knees. “What—what happened?”

A fierceness came into Red Dog’s eyes, a grief so bright it was like staring into the sun. He refused to speak, but Ann didn’t really need him to explain. Just knowing passed a cold, threatening hand over the child in her own womb.

Tears for Spotted Fawn Woman and the man who mourned her rose in Ann’s eyes. “What—what would you have me do with this?” she asked him.

Red Dog hesitated, then took the soft, flowered blanket into his hands. He held it for one long moment, then he turned. Just as the hide door dropped back in place, Ann saw him lower the blanket into the fire.

Ann stumbled back through the encampment, Spotted Fawn Woman had been so young, hardly more than a girl. She’d seemed so happy to be carrying a child, so full of life and hope.
How could she be dead?

Ann knew women died in childbirth. She’d heard society matrons whispering behind their fans about some young wife who’d died without delivering her child. Girls at school had talked about older classmates who’d bled to death or succumbed to childbed fever.

Ann slowed her steps as she crossed the rutted landing. As with so much else about this child, Ann hadn’t thought beyond the moment: the moment she’d realized she was pregnant or the moment she’d felt the baby stir within her. Why would she have dwelled on the dangers of childbirth when her baby wasn’t coming for months? How could she think about death when being out on the river made her feel so vital and alive?

Besides, Ann never really knew anyone who died in her travails
—except, of course, her mother.