Authors: Countess In Buckskin
Merline Lovelace (19 page)
A man’s voice called what sounded like a farewell. The ship’s captain answered with a wave and a shout.
With the intentness of a people far from home, the watchers on the shore remained silent as the schooner stood out to sea. Equally silent and intent, Josh descended the stairs.
He searched the crowd that streamed toward him a few moments later but couldn’t see the face he sought. Nor did he find Rotchev. His jaw so tight it matched the ache in his shoulder, he approached Helena.
“Where is my wife?”
His abrupt tone didn’t sit well with the princess. “Do you mean the Countess Karanova?” she snapped.
“I mean my wife.”
Giving him a look that sent the others back a pace, she lifted a hand to hold back the hair whipping at her face.
“Do you not know?”
“I wouldn’t be asking if I did,” he snarled.
She eyed him with acute disfavor for a moment, then enlightenment dawned.
“Do you think she is on the ship?”
Josh didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. The princess could read the answer in his eyes. Taking pity on him, she shook her head.
“Tatiana will not go back to Russia, even for the lands my uncle has promised to restore to her.” Helena’s mouth twisted. “She does not trust his promises.”
“So where is she?”
“In the orchard. She went there most early this morning. She did not even come to see the ship off, or to say farewell to Alexander, who decided to sail to Vancouver on this—”
She broke off as he spun around and stalked away. She called after him, indignation overlaid with a genuine concern lacing her voice.
“Josiah! Have a care to your shoulder! You must not take the stairs like that. Slow your pace, you fool. At once!”
Josh ignored her imperious command. Ignored the gaping spectators who scrambled out of his way. Ignored pain that lanced through his shoulder with each pounding step.
He found Tatiana halfway up the orchard slope. She was on her knees, wielding his knife with fierce concentration. Dirt streaked her face, and perspiration plastered her yellow dress to her back. Josh’s relief and pain spiked at the sight.
“What in thunderation are you doing?” he demanded.
She didn’t lift her head or bother to reply until she’d finished carving a shallow X in the trunk. Then she sat back on her heels and surveyed her handiwork with a look of intense satisfaction.
“I am marking the trees I shall take cuttings from when the winter comes. I don’t intend to abandon my father’s work to the British or the French. Nor,” she added with a glare at Josh, “to the Americans.”
He stared down at her, his heart twisting. The woman kneeling before him looked so fierce and determined, so damned much like the one who’d trekked through the mountains with him, that Josh could hardly force out an answer.
“We can’t stay here until winter,” he said at last. “Not if we want to beat the storms around the Cape. We’ll have to sail south as soon as I return from Oregon Territory and join you in Monterey.”
“I do not go to Monterey.”
Josh stiffened. “We talked about this last night.” “No, you talked of it.”
She held out a hand for him to help her to her feet. Josh pulled her up, eyeing her set expression warily. He’d gone head to head with this woman before, and lost every time. This time, he decided grimly, he’d hold firm.
“I won’t leave you here,” he stated flatly.
She dusted the dirt from her skirts. “I do not stay here. I go with you.”
“What?”
“I have decided that I shall accompany you when you go north.”
“You can’t.”
“Why can I not?”
“I’m traveling hard and fast, Tatiana.”
A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “So you said to me once before. As I recall, I had no difficulty in keeping pace with you.”
“The circumstances aren’t the same and you know it.”
The smile moved to her eyes, and something Josh had never thought he’d see again shone in their violet depths.
“So they are not.”
“Tatiana...”
“I love you, Josiah Jones. I did not know it when we walked the mountains. Perhaps I did not feel it then. I feel it now, however. Most seriously.”
Gritting his teeth, Josh resisted the urge to wrap his arm around her waist and pull her against him.
“Listen to me, Tatiana...”
“I did listen to you.”
She didn’t show Josh’s restraint. Taking care to avoid his wounded shoulder, she brought her breast and hips and thighs to his.
“Last night, when you scowled and reminded me that I am your wife, I listened.”
“Not closely enough, it appears.”
“Most closely! You said my place is by your side, and so it is. As yours is by mine. Together we shall travel to the north, and someday...if not this winter, then the next, or the next after that...we shall return to Fort Ross. I shall take my cuttings and place them in a basket, and you shall carry them for me until we find a place to root them.”
“We’ll root them in Washington,” Josh said stubbornly.
“Pah! I have no use for this so large city with the foggy bottom. Nor,” she added emphatically when his jaw squared, “for a husband who does not answer my words of love with similar phrases of his own.”
She placed her palms against his cheeks, bringing the scent of lavender and earth to Josh.
“Say them, Josiah. Say the words I know are in your heart. A woman needs to hear them.”
He tried to hold firm. Damn it, he had to hold firm.
“Say them.”
His breath went out in a slow, resigned gust.
“I love you, Tatiana Grigoria Jones.”
She waited, then pursed her lips in a disappointed pout. “That is all?”
“Oh, no. That’s not all, but the rest will have to wait until tonight.”
“When we are alone, you and me? Under the stars?”
Josh brushed a kiss across her lips. He fully intended to put down the roots she spoke of before their child came. He’d send a message to Van Buren before he left Fort Ross, detailing the arrangement with Sutter and inquiring about that attaché position.
But the tantalizing prospect of a few more months with only the sky for a roof and Tatiana in his arms called to him like the song of the wind.
“When we are alone,” he replied with a crooked grin. “Under the stars.”
Epilogue
Off the Northern California Coast
October 1847
T
atiana gripped the ship’s rail with one hand and pointed with the other. “There, Helena! There it is!”
atiana gripped the ship’s rail with one hand and pointed with the other. “There, Helena! There it is!”
Her five-year-old daughter hopped from foot to foot in a fever of anticipation. The girl’s velvet traveling cloak, dyed a deep violet to match her eyes, flapped in the breeze.
“Where, Mama?”
“There, on the bluff. Do you see the crosses atop the chapel?”
“Oh, yes! I see them!”
Her whole being alive with excitement, Tatiana turned to the three males standing in the lee of the forward cabin.
“Come at once, boys. And you, Josiah. You can see the fort!”
Her youngest, a towheaded imp of three, escaped his father’s hand and scampered forward to join his mother. His brother, a soon-to-be-seven-year-old, possessed more of the dignity of the president in whose honor he’d been named. Martin took two running steps, collected himself, then moved at a more deliberate pace to the rail.
Smiling, Josiah joined his family. His strong arms wrapped around Tatiana’s waist. Her heart thumping, she leaned back against his chest.
She could not believe they at last returned to Fort Ross! Seven years had passed since they’d left to travel to the Oregon Territory. Seven exciting, tumultuous, most passionate years.
In those years, governments had changed. Wars had been fought. Tatiana had discovered an unexpected liking for the city with the foggy bottom and the witty politicians. Her husband had been promoted several times and taken his ever-growing family to foreign lands exotic enough to satisfy even his wanderlust.
And in those years, the Russians had abandoned their settlement at Fort Ross.
The Russian flag had been lowered for the final time on the first of January, 1842. Alexander Rotchev, his family, and some one hundred colonists had sailed the same day for Sitka, never to return.
Tatiana had not been present to see it, of course, but Helena had sent her the details by letter.
Poor Alexander. Through Helena’s missives, Tatiana had learned of the baron’s long, frustrating negotiations for the sale of the fort. After many meetings with British and French officials, his every deal had fallen through because the Mexican government claimed title to the land around the settlement. Despite the deed that Alexander produced, signed by the Pomo Indian headmen, the European governments would not commit to such an expensive venture unless they could obtain full title.
Nikolas, damn him, refused to allow the baron to negotiate with the untitled, uncouth peasants who comprised the elected government of the United States. Gleefully the Mexicans had awaited the Russians’ departure, expecting the ripe prize of the fort and all its holdings to fall into their hands.
To the astonishment of all, Captain Johann Sutter had made a formal offer for the fort, which Alexander accepted in the tsar’s name. To this day, no one knew how Sutter had come up with the funds for such a purchase.
According to Helena, the Swiss had stripped the fort of all that could be carried or carted or driven on the hoof to New Helvetia before the ink was even dry on the agreement. Sutter’s Fort had soon rivaled the strongest of the Spanish presidios...which stood the Swiss in good stead during the recent war. With his wealth and his armaments, Sutter had helped the settlers in California throw off the yoke of Mexican rule.
Now the United States flag flew over the presidio at Monterey. And soon Tatiana would discover the results of her father’s work.
Her whole body strained with the effort to see the trees that climbed the slope behind the fort. From this distance, all she could discern was a canopy of green.
“Mama!” Martin exclaimed, forgetting his dignity in his childish disappointment. “You said it was a most grand fort. It doesn’t look grand from here.”
Tatiana shifted her gaze from the orchard to the stockade. Gasping in shock, she gripped Josiah’s forearms and stared at the remains of the Russian settlement.
After just seven years, the once sturdy outpost consisted of nothing but hollow shells. The gates were gone. The buildings had been stripped of all removable lumber. What remained of the roofs had tumbled in.
Only the Orthodox crosses remained atop the chapel towers to remind viewers that this was once an outpost of the Russian Empire.
Helena turned wide, adoring eyes on her father. “Was it really grand, Papa?”
“Yes, chicken. It was grand.”
Up close, the emptiness and disrepair became even more apparent. Tatiana climbed stairs grown rickety, calling every other step for the children to have a care. Her hand in Josiah’s, she walked through a compound overgrown with weeds.
Even the glass was gone from the windows, she saw with dismay. And the great, cast-iron bell that had called the residents to worship. Yet the deserted ruins still carried a ghostly and distinctly Russian air. She shivered, sure that if she listened closely enough, she would hear the lively strains of the
hayivka.
hayivka.
Josiah caught her shiver. Taking her hand, he tucked it into the crook of his arm.
“Nothing remains the same, Tatiana.”
“Yes, yes, I know.”
She knew, but she couldn’t resist a last, forlorn look over her shoulder as he escorted her through the gaping gate.
Her melancholy vanished the moment the orchards came into view. She halted abruptly, dragging her husband to a stop with her.
“Holy Father above,” she whispered. “Even I would not have believed it.”
Lifting her heavy velvet skirts, she plunged under the canopy of boughs.
The children raced ahead of her, darting back and forth among the rows of trees with all the exuberance of healthy youngsters at last released from weeks aboard a narrow, confining ship.
Tatiana let them run. She felt like a child herself. She could have laughed and wept and danced for joy, all at the same time.
“But look, Josiah! But look!” She spun in a circle, hands outflung. “Every tree I marked with the X bows almost to the ground with the weight of its fruit. Never have I seen such a harvest!”
She plucked a succulent, yellow-striped apple from a low-hanging branch, polished it on her sleeve and bit into it. She munched delightedly, juices running down her chin.
“Good?” Josh drawled.
Laughing like a girl, she swiped her chin with the back of her hand and offered him the apple.
“Try it for yourself! I swear to you, you’ll taste the sweetest, ripest, most succulent fruit ever put upon the earth.”
Grinning, he pulled her into his arms. “I already have, my love. I already have.”
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