The Colonel's Lady (38 page)

Their eyes met in mutual understanding, and Dovie’s face grew grave. “Well, I . . .” She paused, clearly pained by the question. “Abby’s ma, Bethann, was a real beauty. She hadn’t been workin’ at the tavern long when Colonel McLinn came downriver with a surveyin’ crew. She took to the colonel right off—all the women did. He only had eyes for Bethann, though.”

Bethann
. . .
surveyors.
The two words made a stew of her insides with all their implications.

“He stopped by again on his way back up the Ohio and found she’d had Abby. The colonel wouldn’t admit she was his, said it could have been any man’s. Olympia was in a fury. Only he could have sired a child with a head of hair like that, and we all knew it. Nearly broke Bethann’s heart in two. When she died, Olympia said the colonel killed her, not the pox.”

Roxanna swallowed past the catch in her voice. “The French pox?”

Dovie nodded. “Same as what took Olympia. When the tavern on the Redstone burned, we didn’t have nowhere to go. Olympia heard from the keelboaters runnin’ the river that the colonel was down here at Fort Endeavor. She figured if we showed up with Abby, he might take us all in.”

The story sounded plausible enough. Only Roxanna didn’t want to believe it. She’d thought it was her own pleading on their behalf that resulted in the Redstone women staying on. She guessed Cass had been operating out of guilt even then, allowing them to take up residence.

A new thought pummeled her. Did he have the French pox too?

Dovie rested a hand on Roxanna’s shoulder. “I’m glad Abby’s got her voice back. She ain’t said a word ever since her ma died. But she sure knows who her papa is.”

Roxanna looked down at her lap, thinking of the tender scene between them in the bedchamber and then at table. “The colonel does seem to care for her, whether he acknowledges she’s his daughter or not.” Slowly she stood, fighting an everlasting weariness. “Thank you for telling me, Dovie. I’d best relieve Bella.”

Up the hill she trudged to find Bella waiting in the foyer, wringing her hands in an odd, heartrending way. The guard hovered outside, eyes on the river and woods, as if expecting the enemy to burst forth at any moment.

“The colonel’s worse than I ever seen—talkin’ out of his head and thrashin’ about and callin’ your name and Hank’s. It’s plumb more than I can stand.”

“Go on back to the fort, Bella,” Roxanna said, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “I’ll do what I can.”

Locking the door after her, she took the stairs in a rush, strangely breathless. Might Cass defy Dr. Clary’s predictions and die—or find the guns she’d hidden a second time and harm himself? When she burst through the bedchamber door and saw the twisted bed linens and his restless, sweat-drenched form, her panic soared.

“Coming across the river . . . got to stop them . . .”

She leaned over him as he rambled, and he grabbed hold of her wrist with surprising strength.

“Bella . . . get Roxie . . . tell her . . . her father . . .”

“Cass,” she whispered, bending low and laying cool hands on him. “I’m here and you needn’t tell me anything. I know about Abby and all else.” She was crying now, fear scaring the words out of her. “You mustn’t speak . . . please.”

Taking a basin of water, she wet a cloth and tried to cool his tortured skin, but he continued to thrash about as the fever’s intensity spiked higher. One hour passed . . . two. The clock over the door ticked on endlessly, and nothing she did relieved him. Not cinchona or cold water or kind words. Not prayer, or tears, or all the reluctant love in her heart.

Lord, please . . . help me . . . I’ll forgive him everything if You’ll only heal him.

After countless hours of wrestling with his confession, she was beginning to understand that her father had died in a terrible accident. When her feelings settled and her faith thrust itself to the fore, she knew it was a part of God’s plan. Incomprehensible. Hurtful. But allowed by Him.

She also sensed, deep within herself, that Cass’s physical suffering mirrored the distress buried in his soul. He’d cared for her father, and the guilt of what he’d done was killing him. And she . . . wasn’t she guilty as well? By withholding forgiveness, wasn’t she adding to his grief?

Such suffering pushed her to the very edges of her endurance, made her nearly writhe with him. Hair askew, she dropped to her knees by the bed, too worn to pray, and just listened. Beyond the birdsong and steady ring of the blacksmith’s hammer at the fort came an unmistakable impression.
The study.
Resting her damp cheek against the tousled linen of the bed, she waited as the impression pierced her fear and exhaustion once again. Then, against her will, she got up and went downstairs.

The room behind the finely paneled door held a stubborn memory. Of all the rooms in the stone house, this was his—it held his beloved scent, bore his rough yet refined mark, was the most broken in.

Going to a writing desk, she looked down and caught her breath. A Bible lay open to Psalms.
Oh, Cass
. . . Her heart, so sore, seemed rent in two at the poignant sight. Had he been reading, seeking? Realizing he wasn’t forsaken?

Opening the polished mahogany top revealed further surprises. Pencil and ink drawings abounded. Mostly of her, done with such exquisite detail tears filled her eyes. The feeling with which he’d worked was palpable, springing from each page with depth and life.

Beneath her likeness were other faces. Abby. Bella. Hank. Cass himself—or Liam? And . . . Cecily? She knew so little about the woman, but this portrait, in vivid Bordeaux ink, told her so much. Cecily was breathtakingly beautiful . . .

Gripping the desk lid, she took in the writing implements and every rich, inky hue—turquoise, tobacco, verde, auburn, indigo. Six turned wood and brass seals. Blue and silver sealing wax. Feeling like a trespasser, she shut it away and faced the bookcases.

Oh, Lord, please show me why I’m here.

There were so many books, the spines of some visibly worn.
Tom Jones.
Dodd’s
Sermons to Young Men
. The classic French
Dance of Death
. Several volumes of Irish poetry. A giant tome of black leather with gold lettering demanded closer inspection, but she had to stand on a small ladder to reach it. ’Twas an encyclopedia of remedies, and it hung heavy in her hands.

The big book opened easily, having been marked by a black ribbon.
Malarial fever. Chills. Joint pain. Vomiting. Convulsions. Death.
A court physician had once cured Louis XIV’s son with a decoction of rose leaves, lemon juice, cinchona, and wine.
Cinchona bark is most effective in wine.
Was this her answer, then?

Returning to the kitchen, she measured out the despised cinchona before descending the cellar steps for wine. Six drams of rose leaves were easy enough, for Bella had recently stripped two bushes clean. The drying trays were in the keeping room behind the hearth, full of petals and leaves. Bella had talked of making a sachet. But lemon? Lemons were a luxury. Rummaging through every cupboard produced little till she came to Bella’s makings for preserves. A packet of dried lemon rind would have to do. Gripping the handle of a steaming kettle, she poured hot water over the rind as a substitute, letting it steep till it turned a deep yellow.

Just what, she wondered, was she resurrecting him for? Battle? The death he claimed would come? A future without him?

She opened a window, heedless of the danger, eyes on the wide river dappled a greenish-gold in the sunlight. A light breeze caressed her face and hair, making her want to lean upon the sill and succumb to sleep, not return upstairs and force Cass to drink.

But the wine went down far better than the water, and he even came to his senses for a few breathtakingly lucid moments. “I ne’er believed you’d be feeding me spirits.”

“I have no choice. ’Tis a divine directive.”

His smile was more shadow. “The old water-into-wine trick?”

“You
do
know Scripture.”

“I’m not the heathen you think I am, Roxie.”

“I know,” she said, the poignancy of his and Abby’s prayer engraved upon her heart. “I stopped believing you were a heathen the moment you taught your daughter to pray.”

His eyes, so clouded by illness, turned to blue ice. “Abby’s not mine.”

She leaned back against a bedpost, wishing she had some wine herself. “She snuck in here and called you Papa. And Dovie told me everything.”

“Everything?”

She swallowed hard, the sordid story bitter to the taste. “How you and a surveying party came to the Redstone tavern . . . and you met Bethann.”

“Is that her mother’s name?”

She rolled damp eyes and looked away. “You’d do well to remember such a liaison.”

“You don’t think the British send surveying parties downriver dressed as Bluecoats?”

Her gaze swiveled back to him. “I . . . what?”

“Abby is Liam’s child, not mine. Once again you judge me too hastily.”

She stared at him, suspended between disbelief and the knot of hurt and confusion festering inside her. Would he explain away her locket so easily?

He went on, carefully and deliberately, his gaze never wavering. “Olympia tried to blackmail me into claiming Abby as my own when she first came here. But I was nowhere near Redstone when she was conceived. I was still in the east serving under Washington while Liam was populating the middle ground.”

Heat touched Roxanna’s face as she thought of others besides Bethann and Abby. “But Olympia didn’t believe you,” she murmured.

“Why would she?” His terse tone revealed his disgust. “She didn’t know about Liam. She only believed what he told her—that he was Colonel Cassius McLinn.”

Shame pinched her.
But I know of Liam and I still blamed you.
All that Micajah had told her returned to her in a sickening rush. Liam—Lucifer—had caused untold trouble for Cass in the east, and was doing so still. How would it be to have an enemy twin masquerading as yourself, doing duplicitous things in your name, perpetuating untold damage?

She sat down on the end of the bed. “Was Liam always so base?”

“Nay, once he—like Lucifer himself—was good. But the war . . . divided loyalties . . .” He was already slipping away from her, wracked by the severe chills that followed the fever, so violent his teeth nearly chattered. “Please . . . build a fire to take the chill away . . .”

A fire in June.

She drew the bedclothes up around him, went to the hearth, and kindled a small fire with unsteady hands, if only to solace him. Having him out of his head rattled her beyond all reasoning. She felt vulnerable and defenseless in this imposing house with this imposing man who seemed naught but a beacon for the enemy.

Her eyes roamed the room, but all its lovely details seemed to blur before her gaze finally settled on the dog irons—twin soldiers—and a balled-up clump of paper in the ashes. She snatched it up and smoothed out its once fine vellum, looking at the longhand so much like Cass’s own.

Beloved brother, ’tis time we meet again.

Crumpling it up, the feel of it like poison, she flung it into the fire. Liam was coming. Soon. But for the moment she was almost too tired to care. Another hour passed, and she felt nearly ill from lack of sleep. With a last glance at Cass—eyes closed and still shaking—she passed into the blue bedchamber, leaving the adjoining door open in case he needed her. The room’s elegance reached out to her, an inviting cocoon of blue brocade and wainscoting and sunny corners. Climbing up onto the high bed with as little grace as Abby, she collapsed atop the feather tick, half asleep before her head touched one of the pillows.

The bed curtains around Cass were blowing in rich profusion like the sails of a ship. For a moment he thought he was at sea on the vessel
Liberty
that had brought him to America from Ireland. Throwing back the sweat-stained sheet, he found his feet, every muscle protesting from being abed so long. A fire had smoldered out in the grate, and a window was cracked to emit a honeysuckle-scented wind. ’Twas dawn, he guessed, not dusk.

Standing up proved a remarkable feat. He swayed, his aching head adance. Going to the washbasin, he leaned both head and bare shoulders over the porcelain bowl and poured the entire pitcher of tepid water over his upper body. Despite being sick to his stomach from the wine Roxanna had given him, the makeshift bath seemed to ground him. Sluicing off the water with his hands, he pushed back his hair before tying it carelessly with a string and moving through the twilight shadows.

Though he’d not spoken or opened his eyes much of the time, he’d been acutely aware of when Roxanna was or wasn’t with him. And she’d left his side hours ago. The clock over the door told him so, as did the ache in his chest. Unable to find the locket, he felt adrift, groping about the bed linens, afraid she’d vanished as mysteriously.

Roxie, my love, where are you?

The blue bedchamber beckoned. He made it to the door and leaned against its sturdy frame, taking in one slender, stocking-clad foot below a petticoat atop the bed’s rumpled counterpane. In the semidarkness, turned on her side, all the hills and valleys of her beneath her dress took his breath. She seemed as finely sculpted as a lush landscape he’d once come across at sunset on a march into the middle ground. The same almost holy awe took hold of him, and he wanted to reach up and still the ticking of the clock and stop time, overcome by the brevity and beauty of that fleeting moment.