Merline Lovelace (25 page)

But she didn’t want her husband to see her and question why she was standing about in the hot sun, Hattie guessed.

“I can do that,” she agreed. “If he does get off, I’ll bring him here straightaway.”

“No!”

She drew in a shaky breath and erased the panic from her voice.

“Tell him it’s not convenient for me to receive visitors right now. I’m too discommoded to see anyone, even my brother. He’ll have to remain on the steamer and depart when it does. I’ll write out a note and explain things. You can take it with you.”

By the time the
Arabella
steamed around the bend of the Grand, her smokestacks belching and her whistle shrilling, Hattie’s fertile mind had devised yet another plot. One that would rid the world of Barbara and leave Zach so disgusted he would never mourn her loss.

Hoping against hope Sir Harry was indeed aboard the steamer, Hattie pushed to the front of the crowd that gathered at the landing. Her pulse leaped when she spotted his guinea-gold curls among the travelers lining the rail. She caught him right as he stepped off the gangplank.

“Your sister sent me. She’s in a bad way. She wants me to take you to her.”

H
attie took Sir Harry straight to the stables behind John Stallworth’s tavern. When he surveyed the log lean-to, his sun-bleached eyebrows snapped into a frown.

“My sister is here?”

“No.”

With a furtive glance over her shoulder, she drew him into the shade of the log building.

“I couldn’t speak of it with all those people milling about on the landing, but word has got around about those false quit-claim deeds you had printed in New Orleans.”

He drew himself up to his full height. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now take me to my sister. At once, if you please.”

The demand scraped Hattie just the wrong way.
What gave this crook the right to look down his nose at her? Or speak to her in the same haughty manner his sister used? Hiding her animosity behind a worried face, she dug Barbara’s letter out of her skirt pocket.

“If you don’t believe me, perhaps you’ll believe you sister.”

She thrust the letter into his hand. His scowl deepened when he saw the broken seal.

“What’s this? Have you taken to reading the letters your mistress writes?”

“No, I never got taught to read. Your sister gave it to me this way. She said Zach—Lieutenant Morgan—found the letter and read it.”

Still frowning, he scanned the few lines.

“Hell and damnation!”

“Barbara says you’re in terrible danger. That’s why she set me to watching every steamboat, so I could catch you and tell you so. She wants you to hire a horse here at the livery stable and leave the post before someone recognizes you. You’ve got to get out of Indian Country.”

He crumpled the letter in his fist. “I’m not leaving without my sister.”

“She doesn’t intend for you to. There’s a cave about three miles up the Fort Smith road, back in a stand of rock. I tied a bit of cloth around a tree limb to mark the place you turn off. You’re to wait for her there. She’ll meet you there as soon as she can throw a few things in a valise for herself and the baby.”

“She’s birthed the child?”

“Not yet. But she’s due any day. That’s why she’s so frantic,” Hattie added, inventing wildly. “She knows Zach’s just waiting for her to deliver the babe. He thinks she was in on this scheme with you. He’ll take the child and let her rot beside you in prison.”

His hot blue eyes grew hard and cold. “Barbara said he only married her to give his bastard a name. I should have tossed him overboard when I had the chance.”

He slapped the letter against his leg while Hattie waited with near breathless impatience to see if he would take the bait. She could have kissed him when he did.

“I’ll tell you this. I’ll never wear a set of leg irons again. Nor will my sister see the inside of any prison.” His jaw tight, he stuffed the letter in his pocket and drew out a silver card case. “Give her this card so she’ll know I’ve arrived. In the meantime, I’ll hire a mount and find this cave. Tell Barbara I’ll wait for her there.”

It was as easy as that! Hattie almost danced a jig as she watched him stride into the livery stable.

After that, it was child’s play to hitch up the neat little buggy Zach had purchased for his wife’s pleasure and bundle Barbara into it. All Hattie had to do was wave that bit of cardboard under Barbara’s nose and echo her brother’s own words.

He’d come for his sister.

He wouldn’t leave without her.

He’d wait for her on the Fort Smith road.

Hattie could have laughed aloud when the cow started for the door, then ground her teeth and said she’d have to empty her bladder before she could climb into the buggy. While she squatted over the chamber pot, her onetime maid lifted a long-bladed hunting knife from one of the wall pegs. She would have preferred to use a pistol. A bullet was quicker and cleaner, but also noisier. She couldn’t risk someone hearing the shots. The knife was safely in her pocket when Barbara waddled out of the back room.

As Hattie gave her a boost into the buggy, she remembered one last detail. She would have to hurry back and pack a valise to make sure the tale she’d tell Zach rang true. She’d do just that after she saw Sir Harry and Barbara on their way to hell.

“Z
ach?”

Sallie Nicks tapped lightly on the door to the hot dusty room where Zach and the clerk assigned to the federal commission sat sweating over a map of the proposed Seminole boundaries. They’d both shed their coats and rolled up their sleeves, but Zach’s white linen shirt stuck to his shoulders and back like a wet rag.

“May I speak with you a moment?”

Anticipation and instant worry leaped like twin tigers inside him. He could think of only one reason why Sallie would need to speak with him. His wife’s pains had begun for real this time.

Pushing back his chair, he groped for his cane. “Have you come about Barbara? Is it her time?”

“No. Well, I don’t think so.”

“What’s this?”

The widow pursed her lips. “I merely wanted to ask you why Barbara would go jaunting about in a buggy with her time so near.”

“What makes you think she’s jaunting about in a buggy?”

“One of my field hands saw her. He said she tooled off down the Fort Smith road at a smart clip.”

Zach shook his head. “He must have mistaken her for someone else.”

“I don’t think so. He mentioned that she had Hattie with her. The maid was handling the reins.”

“This makes no sense. Barbara said nothing to me about traveling anywhere today.”

Or any day. In fact, she’d protested vigorously when he’d tried to send her to Morgan’s Falls to wait out her time in more comfortable surroundings.

“It made no sense to me, either,” Sallie said after the slightest hesitation, “until I saw the passenger list from the steamboat that arrived this afternoon. The manifest included a Sir Harry Chamberlain. He’s Barbara’s brother, is he not?”

“He is.”

Just in time he bit back a warning to Sallie to keep her purse close at hand. Zach’s opinion of Chamberlain had not improved during the weeks he’d spent in Charleston, stretched out flat on his face while the Englishman prowled the streets in search of amusement.

Her dark eyes troubled, Sallie shared yet another bit of news. “Sir Harry hired a horse from John Stall
worth’s livery, Zach. He rode down the Fort Smith pike shortly before Barbara did.”

In a single heartbeat Zach went from puzzled to coldly furious. Whatever the hell Chamberlain was up to, it spelled trouble of some sort. Zach was damned if he’d let the bastard drag his wife into another of his dangerous schemes.

“Thanks, Sallie. I’ll make a check of our quarters. I’m sure Barbara left a note or word with a neighbor explaining matters.”

A quick search of their two rooms and a survey of their neighbors revealed no note or message of any kind. What he did find was a half-finished meal and an empty peg where his hunting knife usually hung.

His stomach knotting, Zach threw aside his cane and lifted his rifle from its pegs above the mantel. He didn’t know why Harry had returned to Fort Gibson or where he and Barbara were headed, but every muscle and sinew in his body was now strung as tight as a bow.

Three minutes later he was at the stables where he kept his mounts. Peter, the freed slave who’d tended to Zach’s mounts during his time in the army, still served as his groom.

“Bring my saddle.”

The groom’s jaw sagged. “You’re going to ride?”

Gritting his teeth against the pain that speared through his back, Zach threw the saddle blanket over his roan and didn’t waste breath on the obvious.

“You’re in no shape to climb into a saddle,” the elderly groom protested.

“Jump to it, man!”

Peter complied, but muttered the whole time he tightened the cinch and adjusted the stirrups.

“Miz Louise will have my head for this. First that saucy maid acomin’ in here demanding to have the gray put between the shafts of the buggy and sayin’ Miz Barbara done ordered it. Now you trottin’ off with a bullet jigglin’ up and down in your spine. I don’t like this. I’m tellin’ you, I don’t like this a-tall.”

Zach ignored the old man’s grumblings, just as he always had, but he couldn’t ignore the agony that jolted up his back when he put a boot to the stirrup and a hand to the pommel. Fire raced along his nerves. His teeth clenched so tight his jawbones popped in their sockets. Dragging in a harsh breath, he swung into the saddle.

“W
here is he, Hattie? I don’t see him.”

The tense, nervous passenger twisted in the buggy seat and scanned the dense woods on either side of the narrow road.

“There’s a cave just off the road,” Hattie said soothingly. “See, I tied that bit of cloth on a tree branch to mark the place.”

Barbara spotted the limp rag. “When did you do that?”

“I…er…”

Cursing her slip, Hattie fumbled for an answer. She could hardly say she’d all but run the three miles out and back earlier this afternoon, before the
Arabella
docked.

“Months ago,” she lied. “When I was picking blackberries. I stashed some in the cave and thought to come back for them but never did.”

Deftly, she maneuvered the buggy off the dirt track and as far into the trees as she could. The Fort Smith road was nowhere near as busy as the National Pike. Riders or wagons rarely passed down it more than once a day. Still, there was no need to leave the buggy smack in the middle of the road.

“Here, let me help you down. You don’t want to stumble and fall.”

Not here, anyway. She could drag the fat cow to the cave if she had to. Years of chopping firewood and dressing carcasses had certainly given her the strength for it. But why drag a dead weight through the underbrush if she didn’t have to?

“Here’s the path. Watch those tree branches.”

Barbara plowed ahead of her, clearing the way like the prow of a boat. Hattie followed in her wake. Her blood began to pump. Sweat slicked the palm she slipped into her pocket.

“Harry!”

With a little cry, Barbara broke through the trees and rushed into the arms of her golden-haired brother. He wrapped her in a fierce hug. Hattie’s fist tightened around the knife handle. She waited, her heart hammering against her ribs, until they broke apart.

“Oh, Harry!”

The skirts of her tentlike gown swirling about her ankles, Barbara took a few agitated paces before swinging around to face her brother.

“How could you plunge into another disastrous scheme? Didn’t you learn from the last one?”

“Now, Babs, this scheme is hardly disastrous. You can’t imagine how much I’ve raked in these past months.”

“No, and I don’t wish to. Do you have
any
idea of the grief you’ve caused?”

“No, and I don’t wish to,” he echoed with a shrug.

They didn’t so much as remember she was there, Hattie thought on a wave of hate so strong it carried her right up to the golden-haired bastard. He turned to her with a sharp look, as if questioning why someone like her would dare to interrupt her betters in the midst of a heated discussion.

In one swift move, Hattie dragged the knife from its sheath inside her pocket and plunged the blade into his belly. She yanked it upward, gutting him as swiftly and skillfully as she’d gutted any hog or deer.

B
arbara didn’t understand at first what was happening. Hattie’s back was to her. Her slender figure had blocked all but the sudden movement of her arm. But when Harry tottered back a step, she saw the knife buried in his belly.

“Nooo!”

Wild with shock and disbelief, she threw herself forward. The sheer bulk of her knocked Hattie sideways.

“Harry!” Barbara spun back to her brother. “Dear God, Harry!”

As if in a daze, he looked down at the intestines bulging through the slit in his stomach. He raised his head, gave her a look of utter astonishment and sank to his knees.

Sobs ripped from Barbara’s throat. She dropped
awkwardly beside him. Desperate, she tried to shove the bloody white ropes back inside his gaping wound. In her horror, it didn’t occur to her that she might suffer the same fate until Harry’s lips curled back in a rictus of agony.

“Babs! Look to…yourself!”

She threw a terrified glance over her shoulder, saw Hattie observing them with a smile.

A smile! She stood there with Harry’s blood staining her entire dress and smiled!

“You murdering whore!” Barbara screamed, her frantic hands still squishing and plunging among Harry’s guts. “Are you mad?”

“Some might say so, I suppose. But quite clever in my madness, wouldn’t you say?”

“Clever!”

The piercing shriek startled a flock of birds. Wings flapping, they whirred into the sky.

“This is hardly clever, you stupid bitch. You’ll hang for this.”

“Oh, I think not. Who’s to say what happened here?” She flicked Harry a smug glance. “Not him, certainly.”

A whimper escaped Barbara as she, too, looked down at her brother. His eyes had closed. His mouth was slack. Choking back sobs, she stilled her bloody hands.

“Now, mistress, I shall attend you one last time.”

With studied casualness, Hattie tested the bloody
knife tip with a finger. Nausea flooded Barbara’s throat. Swallowing convulsively, she wrapped her arms around her belly.

“You can’t… You must not… My babe…”

“Your bastard, you mean.”

Like a snake shedding its skin, the brunette abandoned her mocking pretense. The hate Barbara had glimpsed before in her eyes now burned bright and fierce.

“You thought to tie Zach to you by spreading your legs and letting his seed take root.”

“No!”

“Zach married you because of that babe. Everyone knows that.”

“Hattie, listen to me…”

“It will shatter him when he learns you ran off the moment your brother came for you.”

She took a step forward, the knife tight in her blood-drenched fist.

“You told your brother you couldn’t continue in your farce of a marriage. I tried to stop you from leaving with him. When you insisted, I had no choice but to drive you to your arranged meeting place. I argued. I pleaded. I cried bitter tears when you went off with him, never to be seen again.”

Barbara stumbled back. Her smothering fear for herself came nowhere near to the terror she now felt for her unborn child.

“Please, don’t kill my babe. Please!”

All the while she choked out pleas, Barbara’s terror-filled mind searched for a way to save her child.

She couldn’t run. She was too big and clumsy. She wouldn’t take three steps before the madwoman plunged the knife into her back. She’d have to use her bare hands to fight off the vicious blade. Or a rock! A heavy rock.

She took another step back. Threw a glance at a tumble of boulders. She’d never make them. Hattie was only a few yards away.

“Listen to me!” she pleaded. “You could cut the babe from my belly. Slice me open the way you did Harry and take the babe to Zach.”

The maid’s lip curled. “Do you think I didn’t consider that? No, it won’t answer. I can hardly show up at the fort with your brat in swaddling blankets.”

“Yes, you can! You can say I went into labor and dropped the child, but didn’t want to take it with me. Zach will believe you. He thinks I tried to rid myself of the child in Washington.”

“Too bad we didn’t succeed in that attempt.”

“We! Did you…? Did you poison me?”

“I tried my best to.”

Her mouth curving in that same murderous smile, Hattie stepped over Harry’s body.

“The knife is faster than cowbane, thank goodness, and more—”

She stopped dead, her skirts snagged by a bloody
hand. Like a ghoul rising from the grave, Harry lifted his head and gasped out an agonized cry.

“Run…Babs!”

Shrieking in rage, Hattie twisted around. Her arm swept up. The blade slashed down.

Once. Twice. Again.

With a sob of pure terror, Barbara ran for the tumbled boulders. She scrabbled for a loose rock, tearing off her nails, bruising her knuckles. She got her hands around one. Swung her bulk around. Raised her arms. Drew her lips back in a snarl.

“You’ll not kill my babe!”

Using every ounce of strength she possessed, Barbara heaved the rock at the woman rushing toward her. The missile left her hands just as the crack of gunfire split the air.

A red hole blossomed between Hattie’s eyes an instant before the rock smashed into her face.