Merline Lovelace (11 page)

Irving’s forehead wrinkled. “No, I—”

“Ha!”

The exclamation came from the stocky Englishman, Latrobe. Stepping around a half-unloaded pack, he joined the two men.

“
I
certainly recall the lady, if my friend Washington does not. She swindled an acquaintance of mine out of two hundred pounds.”

Zach fixed the man with a cold stare. “You must be mistaking her for someone else.”

“Is she a blonde with the most beguiling face and form? Eyes the color of a tropical sea?”

“I remember her now!” Irving put in. “We met on the Continent. In Bohemia, I think it was. She was with someone…her brother, as I recall. That’s how they presented themselves, anyway.”

B
arbara was bored to distraction.

October had slipped into November. The nights had grown colder, the days crisper. The mountains to the north and south had lost their bright slashes of color. The fruit trees in the orchards now raised bare branches to an often leaden sky.

With each day that passed, Barbara had begun to appreciate more how Harry must feel. Her prison was a great deal larger and considerably more comfortable than a warship converted to house convicts, but its walls had begun to close in on her nonetheless.

To be sure, the Morgans had attempted to provide entertainment for their guest. They’d hosted a party attended by all neighbors within two days’ ride. Louise, Vera and the young Reverend Harris had escorted Barbara on a visit to the Methodist mission
that operated their school. Daniel Morgan had even invited her along on a deer hunt. They weren’t riding to foxes, he’d explained with the crooked grin so like his son’s, but she might find the chase exhilarating.

She hadn’t. A mediocre horsewoman at best, she’d barely kept her seat while ducking under tree branches and tugging her skirts free of brambles. After that sorry episode, she’d been reduced to playing with the children when they weren’t at the schoolhouse.

She’d pored over pattern books with Urice, provided lace handkerchiefs and bits of ribbon for little Sarah to fashion into dresses for her dolls, and dealt cards with Theo. So far she’d resisted the temptation to palm the cards as Harry had taught her and relieve Theo of his copper pennies, but the urge was growing greater with each hour of enforced idleness.

More than once, she’d come within a hair of producing the document hidden in the lining of her valise and forcing Louise’s hand. The promise of the five thousand pounds held her back. She’d learned enough about Louise Chartier Morgan now to know the woman would keep her promise. No need to enter into a legal wrangle with the Morgans if she could line her pockets without it.

Then there was the tantalizing prospect of a few more days spent in the company of Lieutenant Morgan. And a few more hours in his arms. After all her years of playing the role of seductress, Barbara was
well and truly caught in her own snare. Zach Morgan had stirred her blood and her passions. As her restlessness grew, so did the itchy urge to experience once again that intoxicating pleasure.

Still, she’d never intended to seduce the Reverend Harris. It was boredom that took her to the schoolhouse, sheer boredom.

A few students had begun trickling back, released by their parents from the onerous tasks of the fall harvest and hunt. Most of them were of Indian blood, interspersed with a few towheaded boys and two freckle-faced girls sporting shockingly red hair. The children sat elbow to elbow on smooth-planed benches. Vera was teaching the youngest simple sums at the back of the room while the serious young schoolmaster labored with the elder students at the front. They all turned and stared with some surprise when Barbara entered.

“Can I be of any assistance?” she asked of no one in particular.

Vera blinked in astonishment. John Harris fairly goggled before stammering out a reply. “Yes. Yes, of course. That is, if you’re sure you wish to…”

The choice was simple. She could either putter about in a drafty schoolhouse with a motley collection of urchins or join Louise in the counting house. The children were infinitely preferable to the stink of the half-cured buffalo hides and the constant clack of Mr. McRoberts’s wooden teeth.

“What subject should you like to instruct?” young Mr. Harris asked politely.

Barbara hadn’t thought that far. She wasn’t particularly qualified to instruct anything.

“I could read to them from Shelley or Shakespeare, I suppose.”

“We prefer to teach them to read to us,” Vera said gently.

“Oh. Yes.” She gave the scrubbed faces a dubious glance and searched her repertoire of skills. “I have some knowledge of gemstones. I suppose you might term that a natural science. I might show your students the best cuts for emeralds and rubies.”

Too late, Barbara remembered her jewel case now contained only sapphires. Hastily, she backtracked.

“But then, your students would have no use for such knowledge, would they?”

She saw at once she’d said the wrong thing. Vera’s chin lifted, and a cool expression came over her delicate features.

“Our students are not such rustics as you might suppose, Lady Barbara, although a knowledge of gemstones is not required in our curriculum.”

“How are you with charcoal?” Mr. Harris said a little desperately.

Barbara’s glance flew to the potbellied stove in the center of the schoolhouse. Indignation stiffened her shoulders.

“If you’re asking whether I’m qualified to carry
coal,” she said on an icy note, “I must confess a lack of ability in that regard.”

“No, no!” Horrified, the minister made haste to explain. “We’re in need of a drawing master. How are you with charcoal sticks and watercolors?”

“I’m told I have a fair hand,” she replied, still somewhat stiff.

“Excellent! We’re well supplied with drawing paper and colors. Perhaps… Perhaps you might take the middle class on a nature walk. Have them sketch the orchards or a view of the river.”

“Yayyyy!”

Theo’s whoop of joy rang through the schoolhouse. Spurred by the tantalizing hint of freedom, he and three other lively youngsters scrambled from their seats and danced around Barbara. She was seriously reconsidering her rash offer of assistance when Mr. Harris restored order.

“Children!” he admonished sternly. “Fetch your drawing pencils and sketchbooks and form a single file.”

A hasty scramble ensued. Once the art supplies were gathered, the four lined up as instructed. Mr. Harris introduced each.

“Theo, you know. These are Samuel Fulton, Mary Claremont and Che-ko-tah Williams.”

Barbara looked them over with some trepidation before starting for the door. The four followed in her wake like eager ducklings.

“You must mind Lady Barbara,” Vera instructed the small formation as it passed. “And don’t sully her skirts too badly.”

Considerably alarmed by that final admonition, Barbara led her charges outside.

In the next few hours Barbara gained a profound respect for schoolmasters. She couldn’t imagine how in the world they managed to engage the attention of four rambunctious children, much less an entire classroom.

She led them to a sunny spot on the hill overlooking the river. Once there, her students displayed a lamentable tendency to turn cartwheels, run about and assault each other.

“Theo, do stop whacking Samuel with that branch!”

“I’m not Samuel,” the recipient of the whacks replied cheerfully. “I am Che-ko-tah.”

“Yes, well, I wish you would sit down. You, too, Theo.”

The boys dropped cross-legged onto the grass beside their peers. Barbara then spent an exasperating twenty minutes attempting to illustrate perspective, a concept she vaguely understood but had never been called on to explain before. Five minutes into her lecture, her students were squirming and rustling the pages of their sketchbooks. Finally, she abandoned her professorial role.

“Just draw the scene as you see it.”

They attacked the task with abandon. More charcoal ended up on trousers and blouses than on paper. And, as Vera had predicted, on Barbara’s skirts. Oddly, the smudges didn’t annoy her as much as she would have imagined.

The children’s exuberant spirits lifted her own. She was soon smiling at their lively chatter and sketching away with them. She hardly winced when Mary, a small, dark-eyed girl, tugged on her skirt with a grubby hand.

“Yes, Mary? What is it?”

Silently, the girl held out her drawing. The paper contained only a few lines, but the bold strokes captured the river’s curve with stunning accuracy.

“Goodness. Wherever did you learn to draw like this?”

“From my grandmother. She paints horses and buffalo and running deer on the tents and tepees in our village.”

“Your grandmother should be the instructor here, not I,” Barbara observed dryly.

She echoed that same refrain to John Harris when she showed him the girl’s drawing later that evening. They were in the parlor, awaiting the others before going in to dinner.

“Look at this,” she said, smoothing out the sketch on a piecrust-edged table. “It’s really quite amazing.”

“It certainly is.”

He bent to examine the drawing more closely. Admiration shone in his eyes when he turned them on Barbara.

“And you’re a remarkable instructress to have coached Mary to such artistry.”

She responded to the flattery with a trill of flirtatious laughter that came as naturally to her as breathing.

“La, sir! You give me more credit than I deserve. The girl has been coached by her grandmother.”

“That may be so, but this is the first time she’s demonstrated her abilities. No, you must let me sing your praises as an instructress.”

Barbara’s mouth curved in a smile that was as sensual as it was instinctive.

The young minister’s glance dropped to her lips. A flush rose in his cheeks. Wrenching his gaze up to meet hers, he swallowed convulsively.

Barbara hid a smile as his Adam’s apple bobbed above his linen cravat. How reassuring to know she hadn’t lost her touch after all these weeks of rusticating.

If only the lieutenant were here instead of this gangly young minister. The game would take on a definite spark then. Her thoughts filled with Zach, she had to wrench her attention back to Harris.

“You are, uh, really quite remarkable, Lady Barbara. Or did I say that already?”

“You did. A woman never tires of hearing compliments from handsome gentlemen, however.”

She’d play with him for just a while longer, she decided. Tilting her chin to a more provocative angle, she slanted him a smile from beneath lowered lashes. To her secret amusement, his Adam’s apple went wild once more.

Gulping, he leaned toward her. Their shoulders brushed. Neither of them realized they’d acquired an audience until a strangled gasp sounded just inside the door to the parlor.

“John!”

Popping upright, the minister turned a fiery face to the young woman standing stiff with shock.

“Vera! I didn’t hear you come downstairs.”

He scrabbled for the drawing and held it out with all the desperation of a murderer offering evidence that might save him from the gallows.

“Lady Barbara was just showing me Mary’s artwork. But look! It’s quite, er, remarkable.”

Vera’s throat worked. As her swain had done just a few seconds before, she swallowed several times before pride came to her rescue.

“Yes,” she said, lifting her chin. “It is.”

Turning on her heel, she swept out of the parlor

Dinner that evening was a distinctly chilly affair. Vera refused to look at Mr. Harris and answered every question put to her in a polite monotone.
Louise, who’d evidently had the story from her daughter, favored her guest with disapproving looks. The young minister spooned his soup in silent misery.

Barbara was unused to explaining her actions, but the barrier she’d thrown up between the young lovers nagged at her conscience. She caught Vera alone the next afternoon and attempted to mend matters.

“You shouldn’t view what you saw last night in the wrong light,” she said with one of her most charming smiles. “Mr. Harris and I were merely indulging in a bit of light banter.”

Vera’s eyes flashed with something that looked very much like contempt. “You must excuse me if I find such banter distasteful. Not that one should expect more of you, I suppose.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You told us the night you arrived at Morgan’s Falls a woman should employ every weapon in her arsenal to get a man to… How did you phrase it? To lift her handkerchief for her.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Stung by the girl’s disdain, Barbara snapped back. “I don’t want him lifting my handkerchief. Or anything else, for that matter.”

“Don’t you?” Abandoning her dignity, Vera poured out her hurt. “I don’t know how I could have thought so. Perhaps because you allowed my brother to get under your skirts so easily.”

Barbara’s breath escaped on a hiss. Reminding
herself that her flirtation had caused this girl pain, she grudgingly conceded the field.

“I may have toyed with Mr. Harris, but he could never care very deeply for a featherhead who hasn’t read so much as a page of Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s treatise on… on…”

“On the education of women,” Vera supplied through gritted teeth.

“It’s you he respects. You he admires.”

“Ha!”

Out of patience with the chit, Barbara delivered some stern advice. “If you would stop scraping your hair back in that spinsterish bun and indulge in a bit of silly banter with the man once in a while, you’d have him on his knees.”

“If he doesn’t love me for my mind, I don’t want him.”

With that ridiculous pronouncement, she marched off.

Barbara spent the next few days enduring the silent displeasure of Louise, the icy politeness of her elder daughter and the embarrassed glances of Mr. Harris. As if that weren’t enough, Theo became positively impish and resisted Barbara’s every attempt at instruction in the use of colored pencils. So it was with profound relief that she greeted the news that Zach’s ranger company was due to return in a few days.

“Colonel Arbuckle’s note indicates they’ll be back in time for the Cotton Balers’ Ball,” Louise related to the family that evening.

Urice instantly brightened. Although not yet fourteen, she was desperately eager to taste the delights of womanhood.

“How wonderful! You can’t say I’m too young to attend the ball now that Zach will be there to partner me. When do we leave for Fort Gibson? Mama? Papa?”

Louise’s glance lingered for a long moment on Barbara before shifting to her husband. “When do we leave?”

Daniel Morgan smiled. “That depends on how long it will take my ladies to pack all their ribbons and bows.”

They settled on a date two days hence. With an overnight stop at the Jolly farm, they would arrive at the fort the day of the ball.