The Beloved Woman (18 page)

The rhythm was abnormally fast, she thought. She eased her hand onto the lean, muscled terrain covered in soft hair. His skin was damp, but whether from dew or sweat she couldn’t tell. Worried, she slid closer to him and laid her hand on his forehead. He jerked awake and grabbed her wrist, twisting it in a deliberate attempt to hurt.

“Let go, it’s Katherine!” she said in his ear.

“Katie.” He brought her mauled wrist to his mouth and kissed it. “Sorry.” Then he exhaled with a long, weary sound. “Strange dreams. Can’t remember ’em.”

“Do you feel all right?” She touched her fingers to his forehead again, then to his jaw. The skin was cool.

“Yeah. Sure.” Abruptly he slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “Now I feel even better.”

Katherine debated for a few seconds, then gave up and rested her head on his shoulder. But she tucked her uppermost arm between his side and her breasts and kept her legs pinched together at the knees and ankles, not touching his.

He chuckled, the sound rumbling warmly under her ear. “I’m gonna sleep a helluva lot better than you do, unless you relax.”

“Oh, be quiet, scoundrel.” She sighed with disgust but draped her arm over his chest and edged one knee atop his thigh. Then she sighed again, this time with pleasure. Nature must have designed women to sleep next to men this way, she mused, because it was perfect.

Barely three paces from them a husband and wife stirred sleepily. Katherine could see them without raising her head. She lay in breathless dread as they nuzzled each other and whispered love words in Cherokee.

The woman lifted her skirt and the man pushed his trousers to his thighs. He got to his knees and raised the
hem of his hunting shirt. Katherine could see the dim outline of his jutting arousal. He stretched out on his wife and she circled him eagerly with her legs as he thrust into her, groaning softly.

Katherine trembled. She wasn’t shocked—there was no privacy in the stockade, and people were forced to love as well as die in public. It was also true that no matter what the missionaries had taught them, Cherokees simply weren’t prudish about sexual matters. Men and women were meant to enjoy each other.

No, she wasn’t shocked, but she wasn’t certain this was a wise thing to watch with Justis. He was likely to think the pastime worth copying.

She would not, she told herself, take him with her back against the hard earth and hundreds of people around them. Not for their first joining, at least.

Katherine bit her lip. Oh, no, no. She couldn’t think in hopeful terms such as those. They were a dream with no future, even if General Scott said she could stay in Gold Ridge. She was sure Justis had rethought his impulsive offer of marriage, and she couldn’t bear to become his mistress while knowing that one day he’d take someone else as his wife.

Even if he did make his reckless, dutiful offer again, she wouldn’t take it. A white man could never be fully accepted by his own people as long as he had an Indian wife. Justis’s devotion might turn to regret as time passed. That possibility was too tormenting for her to risk it.

The husband curled his wife’s hands above her head and held them as he arched into her faster. Her cry of delight was muffled against his shoulder, and he buried his face in her hair as his body curved in one last, nearly violent lunge. Then he slumped atop her, and she stroked his shoulders affectionately.

Within a minute they lay side by side again, asleep. Katherine realized that her hand was stroking Justis’s
chest through his shirt and that her leg had inched farther across him. She was rubbing her thigh against his.

She raised her head to look at him. To her amazement he was asleep, too, though he frowned harshly and his breathing was still too fast. Even in the moonlight his face looked drawn with fatigue, and when she felt the moisture on his forehead, she knew this time it was sweat, not dew.

Don’t let him fall sick with a fever, she prayed. She moved up and put her arms around him, then cradled his head against her chest. He stirred, burrowing his face into the soft valley of her breasts. She fell asleep holding him that way.

K
ATHERINE WAS TOO
frantic to ask anyone’s permission. The guards lazed on the ground in the broiling afternoon sun, but as soon as she strode boldly through the gate they leapt up and surrounded her.

“I need to see Captain Taylor immediately,” she told the lieutenant in charge.

“He’s gone to town, miss. He probably won’t be back until after dark.”

“Mr. Gallatin is very ill,” she said as calmly as she could. “I thought I could treat him here, but I can’t. He needs to be taken out of the heat.”

“I can’t authorize that until the captain returns.”

She drew her chin up and gave him a commanding look. “Do you want one of Gold Ridge’s leading citizens to die in a Cherokee stockade because you refused to help? What will General Scott say when he hears how you’ve treated a white civilian?”

The lieutenant paled beneath his sunburn. “I’ll send a messenger for Captain Taylor right now.”

Katherine went back inside the stockade and wound her way among the lean-tos until she reached the one she’d rigged, with the help of friends, for Justis. He lay
sleeping restlessly in the sparse, hot shade, his face flushed an unnatural color.

He’d insisted all day that he felt fine, despite the fact that he had no appetite and was noticeably tired. Stubborn! she thought now, sinking to her knees beside him. Her throat clogged with tears.

He’d followed her around the stockade, doggedly helping her as he had during the other days, until finally he’d leaned against a wall, remaining there until he had slumped to the ground, half conscious.

Even then, when men were carrying him to a shady spot, he kept muttering that he wasn’t going to leave her. Katherine cupped her hands into a tin bucket and smoothed water over his forehead. His eyes fluttered open.

“What’s wrong with me, gal?” he asked.

“Oh, not much,” she said lightly. “You’re a white man who’s caught an Indian fever, that’s all. As soon as I get you back to town you’ll be fine.”

“Feel like I’m roasting from the inside out.”

She clenched her teeth. The damned captain had better hurry or she’d show his men how much war a Cherokee woman could wage. She bent over Justis and wiped sweat from his neck. “I’m going to undress you. Nobody here will care whether you’re clothed or not, and at least you’ll be cooler.”

He smiled weakly. “So I have to get dog-pukin’ sick to make you undress me?”

“I’m a doctor. I’ll try not to gape.”

“Go ahead. Gape.”

She removed everything except his shirt, which covered him to mid-thigh. “I’ll leave you some dignity.”

“Hope you’re impressed.”

She glanced down at long, muscular legs and thought of the soft but amazingly large bulge her hand had brushed as she unbuttoned his trousers. “You’ll do.” She
touched the fiery skin of his face. “I’m going to rinse you off. You’ll feel better.”

He shut his eyes and nodded. “Couldn’t feel worse.”

She dipped a rag into the bucket and wiped his head and neck, then did each leg from thigh to foot. When she was through she sat back on her heels and gazed at his cotton shirt for a moment. If he didn’t mind, why should she? She lifted the shirt hem to his waist and quickly covered his groin with a cloth.

“Well, that’s no howdy-do,” he mumbled, his voice faint. “Didn’t you like the looks of it?”

She laughed miserably. She hoped his bawdy teasing meant he was stronger than he seemed. “I’ve not had anything to compare it to, but I’d say you deserve your vain Cherokee name, Stud.”

“It’s a prizewinner.”

“Here, lift your arms so I can get the shirt off.” When it was a struggle for him to obey, she felt like crying. She finally got the shirt and wiped it across her damp eyes. “You are indeed the hairiest
a-Yu-ne-ga
I’ve ever seen. But it’s a very beautiful pelt.”

She smoothed a wet rag over his chest and stomach, watching their erratic movements as he breathed. Water pooled in his navel and in the slight indentations of several small scars on his abdomen. She brushed it away with her fingertips.

“Playin’ in my fur, are you?” he murmured, his eyes still shut.

“How did you get these?” she asked, touching the scars.

“Man tried to carve me with a rusty old sword.”

“I assume you broke the sword and the man’s neck.”

He managed a faint look of amusement. “Nope. I was only half growed at the time. Maybe eight years old.”

She fought the whimper of anguish that rose in her throat. “Rest,” she whispered. She sat down by his side
and fanned him with a paddle made of reeds from the riverbank. “I’ll have you out of here soon.”

“Don’t let ’em steal my heart and eat it,” he said, his voice trailing away in sleep. “The Cherokee witches.”

She cried and smiled. “I’ll keep it safe. I swear. I’ve got my hand over it.”

I
N ALL HIS
weeks of watching Katherine Blue Song wrestle with death and sickness at the stockade, Captain Taylor had never seen fear in her eyes. But now he saw it—stark, almost wild. And mixed in with it, as she looked up at Amarintha Parnell in the wagon Amarintha had hastily commandeered, was hatred.

“He’s no good to you dead, Miss Parnell,” she said fiercely. “The doctor in town doesn’t know half what I know about treating these fevers.”

Amarintha pursed her mouth and fluttered a hand over her heart. “You want your freedom, and this is a very convenient way to demand it, isn’t that so? Well, Justis will be perfectly fine as soon as someone other than a heathen Indian woman is caring for him.”

Taylor shifted awkwardly as Miss Blue Song shot him a desperate look. Damn, he was hot for Amarintha—even if she had her eye on Gallatin—but he hated to play the villain. He could probably let this determined squaw go back to town with Gallatin; he could overlook the governor’s orders under the circumstances and no one would care, not even the general. Well, no one but Amarintha would care.

“I’m sorry,” he told Katherine. “You can’t leave the stockade. But I assure you that Mr. Gallatin will get the finest attention. In fact, wouldn’t you feel better if a real doctor looked after him? If he died while under your care, there might be trouble.”

“He’ll die under that fool’s care in town!”

“I’m sorry, Miss Blue Song,” he said again, watching
her warily. She seemed very close to violence. “You can discuss your case with General Scott tomorrow.” Taylor motioned to several men. “Go get Mr. Gallatin and bring him to the wagon.”

She latched a hand onto the wagon and looked up at Amarintha. “You’re jealous for no cause. I’m not interested in Mr. Gallatin for personal reasons. He’s been a good friend to me and I don’t want him to die. You can
have
him, Miss Parnell, after he’s well. I’ll be going west. But please, please, don’t take him out of my care right now.”

Amarintha sighed as if thinking. “Captain, excuse the bad language I’m about to use.” She bent down so that her face was inches from Katherine’s and asked softly, “Don’t you think I know the kind of nasty things you savages do with men? You can’t keep your hands off them; you’d just as soon lay down for this one as the next. Mr. Gallatin is not just your friend, you lying squaw. He’s like any other man—he’ll take whatever’s easiest to get, be it white or Indian. Well, you may have gotten him into your bed, but I won’t let you ruin him for decent society.”

She sat back and smiled with unnerving ease. “I’m waiting. Captain.”

Taylor glanced toward the stockade gate and saw his soldiers carrying the unconscious Gallatin out on a blanket. Though another blanket covered him, it was obvious he was naked.

“What have you done to him, you female devil?” Amarintha demanded. “You’re filthy,
filthy
!”

Katherine grabbed a buggy whip from the wagon seat and drew it back to strike the mules. “Hold on, Miss Parnell, because you’re going for a ride straight to hell.” She swung the whip.

Taylor reacted as he thought any gallant ought to, given the threat to his lady. He leapt forward and landed a fist in Katherine’s temple. She fell against the wagon
and slumped to the ground while soldiers grabbed the reins of the startled mules.

“Oh, this is the most dreadful thing!” Amarintha cried. “Please, let’s take Mr. Gallatin away from this awful place.”

Breathing heavily, already ashamed of what he’d done to the woman who lay at his feet with her incredible black hair strewn around her in the dust, Taylor yelled, “Load that man in the wagon, dammit!”

The soldiers put Gallatin onto a mattress in the back. He moved his head weakly and frowned. Taylor climbed into the seat beside Amarintha and took the reins. “Carry that woman to her friends and see that they look after her!”

Taylor felt justified but sick as he drove away with Amarintha’s small hand patting his arm soothingly. He looked back and saw one of the soldiers dragging Katherine Blue Song’s limp body into the stockade.

K
ATHERINE SAT IN
a shady spot by the stockade wall, her head back and eyes shut. Her temple ached this morning, but not as badly as it had during the night. No, today she had a clear mind, and all she could think about was Justis. She heard running feet and looked up to see Sam dashing across the crowded compound toward her. His eyes filled with distress at her disheveled appearance and swollen face.

“God in heaven! How are you?” He squatted beside her and she grasped his arms.

“How is Justis?”

He exhaled wearily. “Not good. Amarintha has him hidden away at her house and I couldn’t get in to see him until this morning. The damned doctor keeps bleeding him.”

She wailed softly. “That’s no help! It will only make him weaker! Sam, get me out of here.”

“The general’s arrived. Let’s go see him.”

He helped her up while she anxiously tried to straighten her hair and clothes. “I don’t look very impressive, Sam.”

“Just be yourself. I think the general will be smitten.”

General Winfield Scott, a tall, imposing veteran who favored long sideburns and fine uniforms, very much deserved his nickname, Old Fuss and Feathers. As Katherine sat across from him in the rough little cabin that served as the stockade’s headquarters, she was shocked to learn that he was sympathetic to the Cherokees’ plight, and hers.