The Beloved Woman (9 page)

Justis finally reined the stallion to a halt. Katherine continued to gaze into the distance. After studying the rigid control in her posture and the quiver of restraint at the base of her throat, he knew she was very near to crying again. He’d never seen a woman so determined to be strong, and it filled him with both respect and tenderness.

He didn’t want to examine those feelings too much because he’d never felt them so strongly before, and they worried him. It was hard to care this much about a woman who had good reason not to care back. He had never belonged to anyone heart and soul, and he wasn’t certain that he wanted to now. But he knew without
doubt that he wanted Katherine Blue Song to belong to
him
that way.

Justis sighed. He hoped that she’d come to feel something for him, even if it were only desire. He knew he could make her want him in bed.

“None of the grave-robbin’ bastards around these parts will find your family now, Katie. You can count on it. If the greedy fools weren’t so convinced that Cherokees bury gold with their dead—”

“Thank you,” she said in a small, sad voice. “I know you had to make certain no one would find them. I understand.”

He stepped down from Watchman, went to the small mare tethered to a sapling, and led her to Katherine. “Up you go, gal. It’s not safe for us to stay here long. Too far from town.”

She faced him, and grief and bitterness made her eyes glow like polished onyx. “Of what concern is my safety to you, sir? You’ve done your duty. Buried the dead. Rescued the orphan. I’ll go west with my people, and you can put your conscience at ease.”

“Goddammit,” he said fiercely, hurt by her disdain. “You’re determined to leave me. But I’m not gonna let you end up alone and like the rest of the Cherokee women around here. If you don’t know what the gangs are doing to ’em, I’ll tell you.”

She swayed and raised a hand to her mouth. “Are you saying that my mother and sisters … even little Sallie …”

“
No.
” It was easy to lie, easy to tell any lie that would wipe away the horror in her eyes. Cursing his thoughtless tirade, he quickly wound the horses’ reins around a tall shrub, then pulled Katherine into his arms. Her pride failed her, and she leaned against him.

“Forgive me, gal,” he murmured. “No. That didn’t happen to them.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said sadly. “But I don’t want to know the truth either.”

He eased her head against his shoulder and felt her tears on his skin, though she made no sound. Finally she managed to say, “Not many people care. Why do you?”

He shut his eyes for a moment. Sitting there in church this morning, he’d made his decision—not that he’d been moved by some spiritual revelation. No, he’d simply admitted what he’d wanted all along, no matter how much trouble it caused.

“Come over here and sit down.” He led her to a shady spot under a maple tree, and when they were seated he put his arm around her shoulders. “Why do I care?” he repeated. “I guess I’ve got selfish reasons, gal—Katie … Miss Blue Song.” He cleared his throat. “You’re a beautiful woman, a woman with education and culture. I want you for my wife.”

She gasped softly, then gazed at him in absolute disbelief.

“I do mean it,” he said grimly. “I really do.”

“Do you think I’d ever marry a white man? Sitting in the midst of what white men have done to my family, how can you ask me to marry you?”

“Because I’m not your enemy, and you know it.”

She pressed her temples as if trying to force calm thoughts into her mind. “This is amazing, sir. You think you can have whatever you ask for. And why do you ask? It doesn’t make sense. You can have so many other women.” She looked up sharply. “I knew Qualla and Big Pumpkin. They were friends of my mother’s.”

“And they were fine gals too. I cared about ’em. It wasn’t easy for me to say good-bye when they decided to go west last month, but I knew that every day they stayed just put ’em in more danger.”

“You’ve done without women since then, and now you’re desperate?”

He made a sound of disgust. “If I was just lookin’ for a pretty piece, I wouldn’t have to marry to get it!”

“You should be perfectly happy using the girls at the houses of entertainment in Gold Ridge. Rebecca told me that you even considered buying one of the establishments, but Sam talked you out of it.”

“I thought I could run it a lot more kindly than the old bitch who was in charge! If you’d seen the way those places treat their girls, you’d want to help too!”

She gazed at him askance. “You’re a commendable humanitarian. Or so it appears on the surface.”

“Look, Katie.” He squeezed her shoulders and exhaled wearily. “I don’t want to use those girls, all right? I don’t want to pay for that particular kind of pleasure. I’d rather go without.” He arched a brow. “Or get married.”

“What about Amarintha Parnell? Or some other respectable girl in town?”

“Too much trouble. They got more webs than a spider. And Amarintha has a mean streak. Besides, what good would one of them do me? They don’t know anything about the outside world. They don’t speak French.”

“Ah. It was my ‘
haute
society’ that convinced you.”

“Dammit, you twist my intentions. Let’s go back to the point. Will you be my wife?”

“What kind of benefit would you get out of marrying me?”

“If anybody could teach me manners, you could. That’s what I’d get. In return,
you’d
get to stay in Gold Ridge. If you’re betrothed to a white man, the governor might exempt you from the removal.”

She laughed dully. “So you’ll marry the Blue Song daughter out of duty. Well, sir, I won’t marry just to have a roof over my head. Besides, you’re addled for even thinking of marrying an Indian.” Sarcasm tinged her voice. “You want to be an important man, you want to move in important circles. Marrying an Indian would make you scandalous in polite society.”

“Not up north. That’s where I’m heading eventually. Gonna put some Gallatin gold into New York investments.”

“Blue Song gold,” she corrected him. “Taken from Cherokee land.”

“You’ll never forget that,” he said grimly. “So be it. Then look at things this way—if you want to have a say in how the gold’s spent, marry me. We don’t have to tie the knot until you get accustomed to the idea.”

“How noble of you,” she said dryly.

“Not the least bit. And I don’t give a damn what polite society thinks of me. Never have. I just don’t want to feel like a backwoods hick when I have to deal with nabobs. You can learn me everything I need to know.”

“Teach you.”

“See? It’s already workin’.”

“I’m not going to marry you.”

“I figured you’d say that at first. You think on it, gal. You got nobody but me.”

He stood, held out a hand, and watched her take it reluctantly. After he helped her to her feet he swept a predatory gaze around the woods. One hand came to rest on the pistol in his belt. “We best get back to town. I’ve killed my share of the trash roaming these woods. Like to avoid killing any on the day I proposed marriage to you.”

“How very sentimental.”

His mouth curled in annoyance. “I don’t think you want sentiment, Katie. Neither do I. But I think we could be happy together.”

Her eyes went dead. “I would never be happy with a man who uses my rightful inheritance to hold me in bondage.”

“You marry me, the land and the gold will practically be yours. I think I’m doin’ what your folks would want.”

“And after you decide that you’ve soothed your conscience toward me and improved your social graces enough, you’ll send me on my way.”

“You’ll probably worry me to death before that happens. Then you’ll be a wealthy widow.”

“I doubt the Georgia courts would let me keep a white man’s estate.”

Justis knew she was right. He also knew that there was no sense in talking to her anymore today about the subject of marriage. She looked exhausted and angry.

“Enough for now,” he said as gently as he could. “I’ll walk off a little ways. You say your farewells. Say ’em good—I don’t want to bring you back here again. This part of the country will be even more dangerous when the army starts rounding up Cherokees.”

Katherine watched him lead the horses away. Marry him? Teach him to be a gentleman and at the same time share a bed with him? Somehow, she didn’t think he’d be a gentleman in bed if being one meant that he’d have to curb the virility that had earned him a Cherokee name such as The Stud. What frightened her, what made her clench a fist against her stomach, was that she wanted him because of it.

Slowly she turned and faced the valley. Sorrow welled up in her, pushing aside all other thoughts, making her feel half crazy with grief. This land held her family, it was part of her blood. It was all she had left.

She made a silent, sacred promise to herself. Nothing must ever take this land away from her. Even if she never saw it again, it would always be waiting.

Justis Gallatin would not keep it, or her.

T
HE SOUND OF
silence was a warning to Amarintha. After years of training herself to accept it, she knew with out consciously paying attention that the judge’s pen had stopped moving on the papers that lay atop his desk. The silence meant that he’d finished his work for the day. The squeak of his chair reverberated through the parlor as he reared back.

“Sweet baby, you’re going to ruin your eyes staring out that window like a cat watching a bird. What is it, another good fight going on at the square?”

“No, Daddy, not this afternoon.”

He chuckled. “Too bad.” After a moment she heard him shift his chair again. His pen began scratching once more, putting wayward lives to rights, sentencing people to pay for their crimes, wielding more power than a knife or gun in a town where the law needed to be merciless to be respected. The judge was infinitely respected.

Amarintha renewed her concentration, and once again her fingers dug viciously into the piece of needlework that lay forgotten in her lap. Rage slipped through her veins like mercury, fueled by suffocating desperation.

She was going to lose her only chance to escape this hell if she didn’t get Justis away from that pretty, red-skinned bitch.

“I’m just watching Justis Gallatin parade his squaw around the stores,” she said casually. “How can he dote on her so? She doesn’t look the least like a white woman. Her skin is coppery and her eyes are almost slanted, like a cat’s. That hair of hers is blacker than sin—no white woman ever had hair that black. She draws stares everywhere she goes. You know that he took her to the Methodist meeting on Sunday, don’t you?”

“The man has a right to squire her anywhere he pleases.”

“But it’s not proper. She acts as if she thinks she’s going to stay here after the rest of her people are carried off. She couldn’t, could she?”

“Not unless Mr. Gallatin can get an exemption for her from the governor.”

“You ought to send a letter to the governor, just to make certain that he understands the situation.”

The judge stopped writing again. A small muscle twitched in Amarintha’s neck. “Now, sweet baby, why
are you so interested in whether or not Justis Gallatin likes that lady?”

Amarintha swiveled on the settee and quickly smiled. “I just like to stir up trouble, Daddy, you know that. It’s my favorite pastime.”

His dark, suspicious eyes always seemed unnatural to her because they contrasted so starkly with the white hair and the fair complexion mottled by age marks. The pouting look she gave him finally eased their shrewd scrutiny.

He winked at her. “I’ll write the governor about Mr. Gallatin’s lack of good judgment, and in two weeks, when the stockade’s finished, off his Indian lady will go.”

She clapped in delight and blew him a kiss. “You chastise the lawless, Daddy, and I’ll chastise the fearless.”

Laughing with admiration, the judge drew a heavy gold watch from his vest pocket and checked the time. “I’m done with work for today,” he said. “Pull the parlor drapes, sweet baby.”

Amarintha set her needlework aside and went to the windows, taking the usual amount of time to close the heavy damask coverings, subduing the usual brief swell of nausea, then pivoting gracefully toward her father, who had, as usual, begun to undo his trousers.

“Coming, Daddy,” she said with a smile.

J
USTIS HAD A
fine mahogany desk in his office at the mine, and bookcases full of books he’d never read, and a map of the United States on the whitewashed walls. His desk was furnished with an astral lamp so rare and the oil so costly that when it arrived from Boston, people had come out to the mine just to see it.

The lamp cast its bright light on the paper, ink pot, and pen that Justis shoved across the desk to Sam. It wasn’t that Justis couldn’t write, but Sam could write
with the kind of beautiful penmanship that made important people take notice.

Sam, Charleston born and raised, was the perfect business partner for a man who had neither the delicacy nor the patience to be eloquent. He spent nearly a minute writing a date and salutation on the letter, then tapped his fingers on the thatch of light brown hair along his forehead and said solemnly, “Let’s try again.”

Justis twirled the tip of his hunting knife into a mangled block of wood that he held cupped in one hand. He had stared down the barrel of guns without flinching, but now a sheen of perspiration coated his forehead and his palms felt clammy.

After several seconds of listening to his abject silence, Sam said carefully, “Why don’t you just outline the points you want to make and let me put them in final form? Then I’ll read the letter back to you.”

Justis ground his teeth together. Frustrated by his lack of expertise in a matter that meant so much, he stabbed his knife into the desktop. “It has to be perfect. I’ve gotta make sure Katherine gets to stay.”

“I know, friend, I know. Tell me what you want to say.”

“That Katherine Blue Song deserves to be left alone. That she’s a fine lady and can do a lot of good here in Gold Ridge. Tell the governor that she knows how to doctor people and how she sewed up a cut on Noah’s arm this week. Tell him that she graduated from the Presbyterian Academy for Young Ladies in Philadelphia. Tell him that she speaks French, for God’s sake.”