The Colonel's Lady (8 page)

Only my father
, she thought.
And you can hardly remedy that.

Her eyes grew damp as he stood and cast a long shadow in the dim kitchen. She watched him turn and go, wishing he’d invited her to meet him at the stone house instead. Its handsome facade remained a riddle, looking like it had been plucked from some lush hill in the Virginia countryside and settled stone by stone upon this wild and dangerous ground. It truly reminded her of home.

The home she no longer had.

When land taxes had come due and Papa’s soldier’s pay came late, the debts had mounted and the creditors had come . . . Shrugging the painful memory aside, Roxanna tried to dismiss her homesickness, but it made her nearly ill with longing. She’d loved every stone of that house, unassuming as it was. It had been the only home she’d ever known.

In this dim, dismal fort, she couldn’t forget Old Orchard, as Papa called their former farm, its expansive windows gracing every wall and drawing the outdoors in, every room resplendent with light whatever the season. Here a loophole just big enough to ram a rifle barrel through had to suffice, the danger was so deep. Aye, this place was fraught with danger and a hint of mystery, the least of which was her father’s sudden death.

9

She couldn’t sleep a wink between missing Papa and considering the coming confrontation with the colonel. Sometime during the night she plucked her dulcimer from the mantel and sat as close to the fire as she dared, the flannel of her nightgown hardly warming her. Her hair was loose and hung like a mourning shawl about her slumped shoulders as she softly played, casting glances at Pa’s open Bible. If she kept her mind on both the Bible and the music, she’d be all right, even in the frigid darkness with soldiers and Indians right outside her door.

Colonel McLinn’s fine house was too far away for comfort. Though it was less than a stone’s throw from the fort’s west wall, she felt they were a continent apart. She wished he was inside this fort with the rest of them, perhaps because she craved the security of Papa’s presence. There had always been something so solid and enduring about her father . . . The irony of it stopped her cold. Thus far there’d been no enduring men in her life—not her father, certainly not Ambrose—and no promise that there ever would be. Why would Colonel McLinn be any different?

Forehead furrowing, she looked down at the polished walnut of her instrument, admiring the tiny cut leaf pattern fashioned by Papa’s own hand. His gift to her, he said, to while away the long winter hours. She stroked the strings as quietly as she could, mindful of the sleeping soldiers on all sides of her. “Barbara Allen” had been one of Papa’s favorite tunes, and she thumbed the notes, tears spilling onto the tops of her fingers. But this was a good grieving. Music, like Scripture, soothed one’s soul. She continued on, pouring her aching heart into the music, each note becoming a thing of beauty in the firelit cabin.

Long before daylight, she secured a copper tub from Bella and heated bucket after bucket of water. The tiny cabin was soon as steamy as a midsummer’s day, and a cake of rose-geranium soap was taken from her trunk.

Benumbed, she let Bella fuss with her, heating curling tongs so that her hair fell from the back of her head in ebony spirals to her shivering shoulders. She felt like she was going to a ball, but it was only Colonel McLinn she was to see. Bella removed her corded linen dress from the clothespress, and then, wearing French stays that seemed to stifle any remaining emotion and prop her up, Roxanna sat before the fire and waited for Bella to finish weaving a blue ribbon in her hair.

“Law, Miz Roxanna, you look good enough to eat,” Bella exclaimed, clucking over her like a mother hen. “Reminds me o’ my days seein’ to fancy folk in Philadelphia before the war broke out.”

“Were you a lady’s maid, Bella?”

“Once upon a time I was, before I come down in the world to a mere washerwoman.”

“Who did you work for?”

“Well, I was turned out o’ the Eustaces’ mansion a few years ago. They rightly suspected me o’ bein’ a Patriot and were afraid they’d be accused o’ forsakin’ their Tory leanin’s. But they was good folks. They freed me after they got religion.”

“How did you meet Hank?”

A hint of a smile touched her lips. “I took up washin’ for General Washington’s troops the same time Hank joined the rebel army. He’d been with the British first and got his freedom, then saw servin’ with them was just another sort o’ slavery.” She set the curling tongs aside to cool and dug in her pocket, producing a small, cracked hand mirror. “I’m glad you don’t own a mournin’ dress. You’d look just awful in black.”

Roxanna took the mirror reluctantly, eyes widening at the sight of her elaborately coiffed hair. “Maybe we shouldn’t take such pains—”

“Now hush. Do you want to get out o’ these woods or don’t you?”

Roxanna looked at her in surprise. She hadn’t said a word about her situation, but Papa always vowed her every feeling was written on her face. Did Bella suspect she hadn’t a shilling to her name? And no relatives to turn to?

“You won’t have to plead yo’ cause long before Colonel McLinn, bein’ a lady and all. Hatin’ this place like he does, he might just take you east himself.”

This startling thought did little to ease her. Indeed, her angst seemed to double at Bella’s words as she pondered her predicament. Here she sat in the middle of Indian-infested wilderness, with the river she’d just come down frozen hard as a brick, and she must now go begging. Mortification seeped into her very soul as she anticipated pleading her case before the proud colonel.

Bella eyed her with grim sympathy. “You want me to go wi’ you, Miz Roxanna? Or just announce you?”

She stood breathless in her too-tight stays. “Neither.” Making a fool of herself in front of McLinn was bad enough. She’d not beg before Bella too.

Father in heaven, please prop me up.

Cass pored over the papers on his desk by the light of a dozen candles situated just so against the early morning gloom. But his mind wasn’t on the stack of missives from Richmond, important though they were. Some had sat waiting the six weeks he’d been on the winter campaign against the Shawnee and British. Nay, even longer, since the malaria had struck and his second-in-command had seen to things in his stead.

He didn’t like to let correspondence linger any more than he liked his own to sit on Virginia’s end as it so often did. But he had more important matters to attend to just now. Like the fifty prisoners in ball and chain just beyond the blockhouse door.

And Roxanna Rowan.

Running a hand over his jaw, he rued his lack of rest. She—nay, the locket—had kept him up long past midnight. And then, when he did sleep, he’d awakened to see it lying on his bedside table, the firelight playing off of it so that it glinted and tempted him to take another look. He’d resisted the urge to study that unfamiliar face, not liking what happened to him when he did.

He should have returned the locket to her in the kitchen when he’d found her after breakfast yesterday morning. But the timing hadn’t been right, and timing was everything, at least where she was concerned. He was out of his ken dealing with a grief-stricken daughter, composed as she was. There was something about her that made him want to tread as lightly as a skittish colt on cracked river ice—mostly because he was to blame for her fragile state.

Leaning back in his chair, he chewed his cheek as the clock struck seven. Bella was likely in the kitchen making an abomination of breakfast by now. He tried not to recall the fine coffee, feather-light pancakes, crisp bacon,
and
subsequent spike in morale among his men yesterday after a good meal—or the fact that Roxanna Rowan had looked at home in that kitchen. He hated to take it away from her, but he had no choice. He’d not rest till he’d put her out of this wretched place.

“Colonel, sir?” The door opened and the orderly appeared, a willowy shadow behind him. Cass stood as Roxanna entered, struck by the lush lines of her pressed gown and the gloss of her hair as it cascaded over her shoulders in three faultless curls. Bella’s work, surely.

He gestured to a chair. “Please, have a seat.”

Taking the chair he offered, she sat on the edge of it, her downcast eyes sweeping the enormous desk strewn with maps and spyglass and papers. In the candlelight, he could see faint shadows beneath her eyes that suggested a night bereft of rest, much like his own.

She looked up just then and gave him a timorous smile, her eyes a flash of ocean blue behind their fringe of black lashes. The effect was so winsome yet so artless he felt the heat rise from his neck to his temples. Time to take command of this tenuous situation, he reminded himself. But how to begin?

He sat down and leaned back in his chair, wishing Roxanna Rowan was a soldier and he merely had to issue an order and she’d disappear to do his bidding. Marking time, he began slowly and carefully, inviting her to jump in. “I want to talk about your future plans . . .”

She squared her shoulders, hands folded in her lap. “Yes, of course.”

“Bella tells me you are doing better.”

“Bella is very kind.” She swallowed and looked past him to the elaborate clock across the room with its silver-plated hands and bold numerals. “I must leave this place, of course. But with the Ohio River frozen . . .”

“There are other ways to travel, Miss Rowan.”

She darted a look at him. “Through the wilderness, you mean?”

“Aye, I could assign a contingent of soldiers to escort you to Virginia.”

“But the weather . . . and the Indians,” she began, knotting her hands in her lap and looking down at them. “Truly, ’tis more than this. You see, when the Indians raided the flatboat, I lost my indispensable—”

“Your . . .
indispensable
?”

She flushed. “My handbag—it fell into the river. I have no funds to travel.”

He leaned forward. “You have your father’s pay, which I gladly give you today. And the journey would be of no expense. But,” he admitted, pushing a paperweight atop a pile of correspondence, “it would be . . . complicated.”

“Fraught with danger, you mean.” When she met his eyes again, he realized they were even bluer than his own.

“Aye,” he said.

“With the warring Shawnee.”

“Don’t forget the British.”

Her shoulders sagged a bit, and one curl spiraled down over the rich fabric of her bodice when she tilted her head. “Did you know my father well, Colonel?”

The unexpected question seemed sharp as a saber tip. He fixed his eyes on the buffalo fur hanging on the wall across the room and said, “Your father spent nearly every waking hour sitting in that chair, taking down all I told him. I suppose I did.”

“Then you must know he lost his wife—my mother—last year?”

“Aye.”

“I only mention it because I have no near relatives.”

“Not one?”

“Some distant relations in Scotland. But with the war on, the sea is hardly safe for travel.” She lowered her eyes again, and he sensed her profound dismay at all the doors slamming shut before her.

He made himself look away from her tense face. Hadn’t there been some business about a man—a betrothal? Like a dream slowly remembered at daylight, he recalled her father’s displeasure. Richard hadn’t liked the man who’d pursued her. Liked him so little, in fact, that he’d shared his reservations with Cass himself. What was the scoundrel’s name? Abe? Amos? Adam?

Ambrose.

The clock struck eight o’clock so loud and long it prevented him from speaking for several moments. Finally he asked quietly, “You have no sweetheart? No intended?”

Immediately he regretted the question. She flushed and seemed to flounder under his scrutiny, her translucent skin turning scarlet. “I—I did. But the betrothal was broken. I meant to tell my father when I came here . . .”

The sudden silence turned excruciating.

“Say no more, Miss Rowan.” He got up and went to a corner table where a portable writing desk rested. Lifting it off its stand, he came to her and placed it in her lap.

“Your father’s lap desk,” he said, yet knew he didn’t need to.

The telling emotion on her pale face reassured him she’d not forgotten. She wrapped her hands around it almost lovingly. Steeling himself against his own grief, he leaned against his desk, crossed his arms, and looked down at the planks in the floor, affording her some privacy.