Merline Lovelace (9 page)

This was not so bad, she thought with a mix of pleasure and relief. Not bad at all. Relaxing her tense muscles, she let him pull her into the rhythm. When he punctuated his thrusts with low, hoarse growls and nipping kisses, she lifted her legs and wrapped them around his calves.

The thrusts grew stronger. Faster. Barbara’s breath came in sharp pants now, and every muscle in her belly clenched tight. She opened her eyes to the bright sky and brilliant sun, then squeezed them shut again as shudders wracked her.

Her head went back. With a cry, she gave herself up to the pleasure spiraling through her.

The intensity of it stunned her. So much so, it was some time before she realized Zach hadn’t shared it. She opened her eyes to find his skin stretched tight across his cheekbones and his mouth clenched in what looked very much like pain.

He was still lodged deep inside her. She thought perhaps he was waiting for her to bring him to the same shattering release he’d brought her. Gathering her strength, she clenched her thighs.

His lower body jackknifed. With a muttered oath, he jerked away from her. Only afterward, when he used his shirttail to cleanse himself, did Barbara understand that he’d spilled his seed on the grass.

With understanding came relief. This stolen hour had erased the awful memory of her one other coupling, but that’s all this was. A brief, passionate interlude. She’d never see the lieutenant again once she departed Indian Country. She certainly couldn’t leave here carrying his child.

Yet the oddest sense of regret tugged at Barbara as she straightened her clothing. She couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to hold her child in her arms. Or raise it in a home filled with love and laughter, such as the Morgans had built here in this wild, untamed land.

With a man such as Zachariah Morgan to share her days and nights.

Really, she was being quite ridiculous! One tumble in the grass, and she started weaving the most absurd fantasies. She had to remember why she was here and why she would leave as soon as Louise Morgan handed her a bank draft for five thousand pounds.

T
he fall afternoon had taken on a nip by the time Zach and Barbara rode up to the stables. Neither of them noticed the small figure at the window of his sisters’ room, nor the woman who stood in the doorway of the counting house.

Her expression troubled, Louise watched her son reach up to help their guest dismount. He was besotted with the English woman. Louise saw it in his smile as he lifted her from the saddle. In the way his hands caressed her waist.

A heaviness settled in her chest. She should take pleasure in the knowledge Zach had lost his heart to a woman of such beauty. Most mothers would, she supposed. Yet there was something about the lady that stirred the deep, primitive instincts of a she-wolf determined to protect her cubs.

“It’s her eyes,” Louise muttered to her husband as they dressed for dinner that night. “Each time I look into them, I see disaster.”

Daniel had learned long ago to respect his wife’s intuition. He’d also learned to step warily around the legend that had haunted her from her birth.

“Vera’s eyes are as blue as yours,” he reminded her. “So are Urice’s. Do you see disaster when you look into them?”

“No! Only in those belonging to this Englishwoman.”

Daniel said nothing as he pulled a clean linen shirt over his head and tucked the tails into his breeches. A grimace crossed his face when he eyed the coat laid out on the bed. All these years out of the army and he still felt more comfortable in a roundabout jacket than a cutaway with all these brass buttons.

“I see them when they return this afternoon,” his wife continued, crossing the room to help him tie his cravat. Her nimble fingers arranged the linen in neat folds.

“The lady’s gown was stained with grass. So, too, was Zach’s shirt. And he wears the most foolish face.”

“I don’t doubt it. The lady could knock any man off his pins…if he wasn’t already married to the most beautiful woman in Indian Country.”

The outrageous compliment won him a smile, but
it was fleeting at best. As Louise gave the linen stock a final twitch, her face settled into glum lines.

“Me, I think they lie together.”

“What?”

“Zach and his lady. I think they lie together this afternoon.”

“You’re jumping a mighty big creek here, and all because of a few grass stains.”

“I jump this creek you speak of because Zach comes home with a so-foolish look. I know this look,” she insisted stubbornly. “It is the same one you wear after we roll in the blankets.”

The notion that his son had lifted Barbara’s skirts was surpassed in Daniel’s mind by the notion of doing the same to his wife. After almost twenty-six years of marriage, this small, fierce female could still tie him in knots.

“It’s been a while since we rolled in the blankets,” he commented.

“Oh, yes! A great while. Six…no, five days.”

With a lazy smile, he moved a step closer and backed her against the mattress. “I’m thinking dinner can wait.”

“Daniel, we have a guest!”

“I’m thinking she can wait, too.”

When Daniel escorted his wife downstairs some time later, he was in a decidedly mellow humor. He had yet to accept the idea Zach had breached the vir
tue of a guest staying under their roof, but it didn’t take long to convince him Louise had the right of it. His son didn’t look as smugly satisfied as Daniel himself felt at this moment. He came damn close to it, though, whenever his glance rested on the stunning blonde seated across from him.

The sergeant major couldn’t decide how best to probe his son’s intentions toward the English beauty. Or whether he should ask at all. Zach was a man, not a boy. He was long past the point of needing or wanting advice from his father. Yet Daniel couldn’t let the matter slide. He knew damn well Louise wouldn’t let him. He’d have to speak with his son about Barbara.

The right opportunity didn’t present itself until the next morning. As he had the previous day, Zach accompanied his father and a crew of hands to the south fields, where they were clearing a stand of scrub oak.

Morning mist drifted like witch’s breath above the river and the first touch of frost sparkled the grass. Winter was only weeks away. Daniel repressed a shudder at the thought. If he lived to be a hundred, he’d never forget his first winter in Indian Country. He and a bumbling lieutenant had led a ragged band of starving, snow-blind soldiers down the river known then as the Arkansaw.

They spelled it Arkansas now, like the territory the white settlers had staked claim to in what had once
been Indian Country. Shaking his head, Daniel tramped along the path.

Arkansas Territory. Missouri Territory. Most of the state of Louisiana. All carved from the land Tom Jefferson had promised would belong to the red man forever when he first proposed the Indian Removal Plan way back in ’03. Daniel had believed the promises, had spent years helping the Corps of Topographical Engineers chart these rivers and mountains.

Louise had looked at matters through different eyes. She’d watched the Osage force the Quawpaw from their traditional hunting grounds, then seen the Osage in turn forced north. She hadn’t trusted Jefferson any more than she now did Jackson.

And with good reason. Old Hickory was bent on resettling the eastern tribes. The long-standing enmity between the Osage and Cherokee had erupted into violence often enough in the past. With the Creek, Seminole, Choctaw and Chickasaw now being added to the mix, the situation in Indian Country was dangerously unsettled.

Frowning, Daniel picked out a tall white ash and lifted his ax from his shoulder. He could think better when his hands were busy at some mindless task. Zach took up a position on the other side of the scaly trunk. Within a few swings they’d established an easy rhythm.

“You say this commission Jackson’s appointed will…”

Daniel grunted as his blade bit into trunk.

“…arrive at Fort Gibson soon?”

“Any day now.”

“Who mans it, do you know?”

“Colonel Arbuckle mentioned Governor Stokes of North Carolina. Also Henry Ellsworth, from Connecticut.”

Zach swung hard, widened the cut and pulled his ax free.

“The third is a Reverend Schermerhorn, of New York.”

“You’ll need to keep an eye to your mother’s interests when these politicians start playing with boundaries.”

“You know I will.”

“If you’re not too busy bundling with your bit of English silk and lace, that is.”

Zach’s ax halted in midswing. His eyebrows snapped together.

“Don’t scowl at me, boy. I wasn’t the one who came home with grass stains on his backside.”

Slowly, Zach lowered his blade. He swept the other workers with a quick glance, saw none of them had broken their swing. The steady whack of blades rang through the woods.

He admired and respected his father as much as he loved him. Daniel Morgan had never spoken a falsehood that Zach knew of, was always ready to put his back to any labor and kept careful rein on both
his strength and his temper. Yet he would allow no man, even his father, to speak ill of Barbara.

“I think you should know I’ve got my sights set on that bit of English silk and lace.”

Daniel leaned an elbow on his ax handle. “It’s like that, is it?”

“It is.”

After yesterday, how could it be anything else? Zach had bedded his share of women. Warm and willing tavern wenches. A saucy eastern miss or two. The sloe-eyed Cherokee maiden he’d tumbled headlong in love with some years back. She’d chosen to marry a man of her own clan, and Zach had been a long time recovering from his bitter disappointment.

He’d never taken advantage of a woman as alone and vulnerable as Barbara Chamberlain, though. By her own admission, she had no money and no family except a brother in prison. She’d come to Morgan’s Falls for help, and Zach had used her urgent need to satisfy his own.

A long night’s reflection had bred a disgust of his actions, a determination to do the right thing, and a pulsing sense of anticipation whenever he thought of taking her in his arms again.

Adding to the lust she stirred in him was an in-bred sense of urgency. Back East, a man might take months to properly court a lady like Barbara. On the frontier, he had to stake his claim quickly. Women were as scarce as gold nuggets, good women even scarcer.

Maids hired to accompany officers’ wives to a remote posting generally wed within weeks of arrival. Similarly, widows rarely remained in mourning for long. Soldiers had been known to line up five and six deep to offer comfort and security to the wife of a fallen comrade. After yesterday, Zach wasn’t about to allow anyone else to get in line for Lady Barbara.

“Have you informed the lady of your intentions?”

“Not yet.”

“What makes you think she’ll have you? You can look the part of a gentleman when you have a mind to. Even act it at times. But…”

“But I’m not the sort of country bumpkin a woman like Barbara would marry?”

“But you come from a world much different than hers,” he finished calmly. “Do you really think you can bridge so wide a gap?”

“You did,” Zach reminded him.

“That’s right, I did. But not without some cost.”

“Whatever the price, I’ll pay it and gladly.”

His father studied him in silence for a moment. “Well, she’s a beauty, for sure. You’ll have your work cut out for you to—”

“Zach!”

The breathless shout cut through the whack of the other axes. Both men turned to see Theo racing through the harvested fields. His boots threw up clods of dirt.

“A ranger just rode in,” he panted when he
reached them. “He says he has orders to fetch you back to Fort Gibson straightaway.”

Zach found the ranger seated on a stump outside the kitchens, wolfing down the coffee, fresh bread and the bowl of suet pudding Zach’s mother had provided him. A small crowd had gathered around, eager to hear whatever news he brought.

Zach strode across the yard. Judging by the layers of dust coating the private’s fringed buckskins and weary mount, he must have ridden through the night.

“What’s happening, Bowles?”

“It’s them pesky Pawnee, sir.” Shaking his head, the lanky ranger spit out the dregs of his coffee. “A raiding party hit a Cherokee settlement. They made off with a dozen horses and three captives. Colonel Arbuckle’s sending Captain Bean and a troop of rangers out to retrieve them. Since you know Pawnee country as good or better ’n any of our scouts, Captain Bean asked for you to go along, too.”

“I’ll get my gear and be ready to ride by the time you finish your breakfast.”

It was still early morning. If they pushed hard through the mountains, they could make the fort by nightfall. He was planning the route in his head when his father stepped forward and offered the ranger a fresh mount.

“I planned to send a string with my son when he
returned to the fort. You can put your saddle on one of them.”

His military duties pulled at him, but Zach couldn’t leave without taking care of one piece of business.

“Has Lady Barbara come downstairs?” he asked his mother.

“Not yet.”

Hattie edged out of the curious crowd. “She told me she rarely rises afore noon. Said I wasn’t to clump about and wake her.”

The maid looked different, Zach thought. It must be the ribbon she’d woven through her hair. Returning her smile with an absent one of his own, he caught his mother’s elbow and drew her aside.

“About Lady Barbara…”

“Do not worry yourself. I will see she has a bank draft for the funds she needs. Your father will escort her back to John Jolly’s, where she may catch the next steamboat.”

“That’s just it. I don’t want her to catch the next steamboat.”

“What do you say?”

“She hopes to buy a new trial for her brother and reverse his conviction. I know, which she may not, that will be well nigh impossible to bring about without someone trained in the law to assist her.”

His mother’s eyes narrowed. “And you think to provide that assistance?”

“I do. She has no one else,” he reminded her. “That’s why she came so far in search of you.”

“She came for money. I will give it to her.”

“I’ll provide whatever funds she needs,” he said quietly, “if I can convince her to become my wife.”

“Zach!”

A flurry of instant protests rose in Louise’s throat. Just in time she gulped them back. For all his lazy smiles and ready laughter, her son could turn as stubborn as any mule when he set his mind to something. Taking a deep breath, she attempted reason instead of the barrage of hot arguments she wanted to loose.

“You must think on this. She is English. Her father was a gentleman.”

“Your father was French, and you wed another Frenchman with ties to royalty. Did that stop you from loving an American rifle sergeant?”

Louise clamped her mouth shut. She wasn’t about to admit she’d loved her rifle sergeant only last night, and quite lustily. Her thoughts troubled, she could only listen as her tall, handsome son bared his heart.

“This excursion into Pawnee country shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks. A month at most. If Barbara will wait that long, I’ll take leave from my military duties and go with her to London.”

Shock snapped her head back. “You would do that for her?”

“If I must.” His mouth curving, he slipped into her native tongue. “She’s bewitched me, Wa-Shi-Tu. Just as you did the warrior you took to your heart.”

Louise had no argument for that. There was none. Her son was ever one to walk in a path of his own making. Nor did he hem and haw and debate for weeks or months over every decision, as did so many trained to the law. He’d traded his wig and robes for an army uniform quickly enough, and his uniform for the backwoods garb of the rangers. Now, it appeared, he would alter his path yet again for this woman Louise could not bring herself to trust.

“And you must remember,” he added when she remained mute, “you’re Barbara’s aunt by marriage. Her only relative other than her brother. Have a care to her until I return and can assume that responsibility myself.”

For the second day in a row, the noisy clatter of a pitcher against the washbowl dragged Barbara from sleep. Surprisingly, the rude awakening didn’t annoy her half as much this morning as it had yesterday.