The Colonel's Lady (15 page)

15

Cass eyed Richard Rowan’s journal where it lay on the middle of his desk, surrounded by such a stack of papers it was barely visible. Across from him stood Micajah Hale, tricorn hat twirling in his gloved hands in a rare moment of tension. Try as he might, Cass couldn’t keep his mind on the major’s attempts at conversation. Hale was hemming and hawing in such an infuriating way Cass was tempted to bring his fist down atop the polished wood to startle him into coherency. But he was little better this morning, he mused, his mind taking myriad rabbit trails yet always returning to the half-buried journal and its cryptic entries.

Finally he could stand it no longer. Leaning forward slightly, he leveled his senior officer with a less than gracious gaze. “Blast it, Micajah! Come to the point!”

Micajah’s composure crumpled like a spent cartridge. “With all due respect, Colonel, you don’t make it easy for a man to state his case.”

“Seems you could have stated it a quarter of an hour ago when you first walked in. Miss Rowan will be here soon, so I advise you to start talking.”

A tide of red inflamed Micajah’s fair face as he sat down hard in the nearest chair. “Miss Rowan is the very reason I’m standing here making a fool of myself.”

At this, Cass came to full attention. The furious fire that hardly seemed to thaw the blockhouse’s chill now seemed to burn his backside. Reaching up, he ran a cold finger around the overly warm linen folds of his stock. Tight as a noose it felt.

Breath pluming in the bitter air, Micajah finally said, “I’ve come to ask your permission to court Miss Rowan.”

Cass leveled him with another hard look. “You’ve been drinking.”

The petulant jaw tightened. “I’m stone sober and dead serious.”

“I commend you for coming to me about the matter—but why would you?”

Standing, Micajah jammed his hat on his head, only to take it off again. “Why? Because your former adjutant, her father, made you her guardian of sorts.”

Aye, guardian indeed.
Cass rued he’d ever shared Richard Rowan’s dying request—with Micajah or even Roxanna. Guilt drove a typically closemouthed man to stupid confidences. Yet here his second-in-command stood, offering a sensible solution to his dilemma. Micajah could well woo and wed her, thus relieving him of his own responsibility to both her and her father. And in so doing, Cass could resign his commission and return to Virginia now or Ireland at war’s end, without so much as another guilty pang.

Yet he heard himself saying quietly and with conviction, “You’re not the man for her, Micajah.”

Stiffening, the major resumed sitting, his expression an unattractive mix of defiance and disbelief. “I say, sir, you’re making this harder than it ought to be. Why not let Miss Rowan decide?”

“Why? Because she’s grieving and not likely to make a wise decision where you’re concerned.”

“But—”

“If that’s not reason enough, let’s look at the facts. You’ve two broken betrothals and a wandering eye. Although your enlistment is about to end, you have few prospects and a mountain of debt.”

Twisting in his chair, Micajah seemed about to have an apoplectic fit. “With all due respect, Cass, you’d do well to look to your own situation before maligning mine.”

Ignoring this, Cass continued, his Irish lilt intensifying in his irritation. “Miss Rowan is pure, intelligent, sensitive, and extremely religious.”

Everything you’re not
, he didn’t add.

A satisfied smile slid over the major’s flushed face as if they’d reached some sort of agreement. “Aye, she is indeed—all the qualifications for a fine wife. I’ve often thought the right match would improve my lot in life . . . yet you’d interfere.”

There was a peevishness to his plea that Cass didn’t like, and it only hardened his resolve. Standing, he looked over the major’s head to a sole window, catching a glimpse of Roxanna crossing the frozen common.

He said with sudden finality, “I’m assigning you to a woodcutting detail till you can clear your head of her.”

The air was so taut with tension it seemed to snap. From the look on Micajah’s face, Cass might as well have said he was court-martialing him. The major spun away without a word, nearly colliding with the orderlies and the object of their heated exchange as she came in. Cass noticed the look that passed between them and searched for something that might indicate Roxanna’s attraction for him. He found her greeting merely polite, and Micajah’s a bit too hearty.

He felt a twist of something he couldn’t name and didn’t care for. When she approached his desk, he tried to fight the feeling that she nearly always elicited of late and he could no longer shove aside—a wave of pure, unadulterated delight. Her presence seemed to settle his blistering mood, and the intensity of moments before ebbed.

He motioned for an orderly to help her with her cape while another rested her desk on the edge of his own. A whole week he’d been away from her, drilling his men, while she’d sought refuge in the kitchen, turning out one mouth-watering meal after another despite the lack of provisions. Not only this, but it was reported she had been visiting the sick in the infirmary, remembered the names of the least of his men, and had started some sort of a sock distribution campaign.

“Good morning, Colonel McLinn.” The soft slur of her words, coupled with her winsome, warm smile, nearly made him forget where he was.

For a few stunned seconds he groped about for a rationale to explain away her effect on him. He guessed his sympathy for her was simply coloring his judgment. That and the fact he’d been without feminine company for too long. The plain truth was he could never let his feelings go forward, because the sight of her would always remind him that he’d shot her father.

“I’m sorry to call you out of the kitchen.”
Back to Bella’s unimaginative rations
, he thought wryly.

“I’m ready to transcribe,” she told him, eyes falling to the center of his desk where her father’s journal lay. A flash of something inexplicable crossed her pale face, then skittered away like mist.

Reaching out, he moved a sheaf of papers and buried the book. “I have to interview the Indian prisoners this morning, and I’m in need of an official transcript. But I realize this might be asking too much of you. Major Herkimer could serve in your stead. He sometimes worked with your father.”

“Nay . . . I’ll stay.”

He simply stared at her in relief, expecting more than a simple
nay
. After Micajah’s unending petition, he could have leaned across the desk and kissed her. Still, he wondered if she might change her mind in the face of the two intimidating captives. Turning to an orderly, he said, “Bring in the two Shawnee.”

“Where would you like me to sit?” she asked, expressive blue eyes sweeping the room with its assortment of benches and chairs.

“Well behind me,” he replied, removing a long, colorful belt from a desk drawer. Seeing her interest, he draped the wide swath of beads over his coat sleeves for her to admire. “It’s wampum.”

“What does it mean?”

“It’s a sort of historical record, keeping account of treaties and battles and the like. This was taken from one of the burned Shawnee villages.”

She reached out a hand to touch the shiny, mysterious pattern of blues and reds and blacks, a bit awed, he thought. “’Tis sacred,” he told her, “and highly prized.”

The door groaned open and they both looked up. A lanky man in buckskins entered, dark hair plaited and clubbed and tied with whang leather, hazel eyes swinging from Cass to Roxanna.

“Miss Rowan, this is Ben Simmons, my principal scout—and translator.”

They exchanged a greeting, and Roxanna seemed surprised when Simmons said, “I was real sorry to hear about your pa. He was a good man—the best.”

Their eyes met briefly in wordless understanding while Cass looked on. Recalling that deadly day nearly locked his voice in his throat. He said with difficulty, “Ben’s the best scout in the Kentucke territory. Only he’s too humble to admit it.”

Simmons flashed him an appreciative look. “That’s some compliment, considering it’s from the finest commanding officer on the frontier.”

“The only one, anyway,” Cass murmured, eyes on the door swinging open again.

Wary, he realized something was amiss even before the orderly took him aside. The older Shawnee—the one who liked to talk—was ill and refusing to leave his pallet, asking for a medicine man. But this perplexing turn of events seemed less significant than watching the interaction of Roxanna Rowan and his favorite scout as they continued their conversation in low tones. He knew Ben Simmons as well as any man, and he sensed his friend had more than a passing interest in the woman who stood before him.

The orderly said tentatively, “Colonel, sir . . . do you still want the other Shawnee brought in?”

“Aye, I do,” he replied absently, his mind churning along with his emotions, neither having to do with the matter at hand.

He crossed to his desk and lay the wampum aside, recalling what he knew about Simmons and his tragic past. Bits and pieces came back to him, gleaned over their two-year acquaintance.

Simmons’s wife and child had been killed by a group of Shawnee raiders several years prior. Hardened as he was to the realities of war, Cass felt his insides twist at the gruesome memory. It had made his own forays into Indian territory all the easier, easing any guilt he felt about desolating the Shawnee. He merely burned their towns and crops, he reasoned. He hadn’t killed their women and children.

Within a few minutes, the sole Shawnee was ushered into the blockhouse, and a hush fell over the room. In the face of so many armed men, Cass asked that his leg irons be removed. Then, like the director of a stage play, he assembled all the players. Roxanna took a seat in back of him yet still near enough to clearly hear Simmons interpret from where he stood. Half a dozen regulars were interspersed about the room, and a guard was posted outside the door.

He glanced at Roxanna again and noticed that her features had leached to the hue of raw linen. Had she never seen an Indian up close, he wondered? Though captive more than two months, the younger Shawnee had lost none of his hauteur but retained an aura of undiminished vitality and extreme hostility. Though he’d grown thinner, he remained one of the finest Indians Fort Endeavor had ever seen.

Cass didn’t blame Roxanna for staring. No doubt the Indian had caught many a Shawnee maiden’s eye in the middle ground. If only he was as communicative as he was commanding. So far he’d not uttered a single meaningful word, save a few flawless English epithets aimed at the guard. This was why Cass had resorted to using wampum. Wampum for words. He had to know who among the British in Detroit was inciting the Shawnee and other tribes to raid the Kentucke settlements. Until he knew, he couldn’t cross the Ohio and quell the growing trouble.

After a tedious half hour, Ben Simmons took Cass aside and told him it was hopeless. It was then that Cass reached for the wampum on his desk. He draped it across one arm, the ends of the belt nearly touching the floor and shining in a kaleidoscope of color. At once the Shawnee stiffened. Cass could feel an unmistakable dislike thread the air between them.

“Tell him the belt will be returned to him when he tells me which Redcoat chiefs are sending the Shawnee south into the settlements to do their fighting for them.”

Simmons translated, and behind them Roxanna leaned over her lap desk. Cass could hear the persistent scratch of her quill as it met paper between the long, tedious silences. After more pointed questions and few answers, Cass called for a break and sent for the doctor downriver at Smitty’s Fort to attend to the older chief.

As the door opened and closed behind the courier, an orderly appeared bearing a cloth-draped wooden tray. ’Twas Bella’s not-so-subtle reminder that he tended to overwork everyone around him, Cass mused. Roxanna rose and took the tray, bringing him a cup of coffee. A cluster of apple tarts crowded a small pewter plate, and he eyed them appreciatively, wondering if she’d made them.

A feeling of wonder—and raw alarm—settled in his chest as he watched her take the second cup and cross the quiet room. Steam swirled around the pewter rim as she set the coffee down on the bench beside the uncommunicative Shawnee. Without a word she motioned that it was meant for him. The fiercely fixed stare that had been unbroken swiveled to take in the offering. For a moment Cass feared the warrior would overturn the bench, coffee and all, and the image of Roxanna’s terrified reaction made him tense. He set his own untouched cup down on his desk, ready to intervene.