Island of the Swans (25 page)

“
Mehitabel!
” she repeated crossly. Presently, the black house slave appeared at the door, breathing hard. “Will you please tell Mr. O’Brien that a visitor has arrived. You’ll probably have to knock loudly at his door. I think he’s still asleep.”

The housemaid nodded and retreated from the sun-splattered morning room. Arabella knew full well her brother was asleep.
Unconscious
was probably a more precise description. Here it was midmorning, with a million chores to be attended to, and Beven O’Brien was upstairs, sleeping off his third hangover of the week.

“Damn him, anyway!” she said out loud.

She entered the broad hallway and stepped to one of the narrow windows flanking the front door, eyeing the large patches of paint curling away from the pale yellow walls. She peered out at the cart whose wooden sides concealed its contents, although Arabella could make out a round, white shape dipping in and out of sight along the rim of the slats nearest her view. The driver pulled hard on the reins as the vehicle crunched to a halt at the front door. He jumped down from his perch and briefly inspected his mysterious baggage, then swung his thick frame up and over the sides of the cart and leaned down to reach for an object out of her view. He tugged at it, trying to pull it off the floor. A sack of meal, or perhaps a heavy pile of tobacco, she speculated.
Really!
she fumed.
Didn’t tradesmen appreciate what a back door was for?

Suddenly, Arabella gasped when she got a closer look at the round white sphere she’d spied earlier. It was a human head swathed in bandages! The victim was apparently unconscious, and his buckskinned companion hiked his charge’s large body over his own massive shoulders with great difficulty.

“Beven! Mehitabel! Come quickly!” Arabella cried from the bottom of the stairs, rushing back to peer through the thin strip of glass by the side of the front door.

Who in the world were these men?
she wondered.
And why were they coming here?
She didn’t feel up to playing nursemaid, what with all the problems confronting her regarding the plantation.

“Gadzooks, woman! Couldn’t you cope with this yourself?” croaked a voice behind her. “I’m feeling a bit rough this morning. I fear I’m coming down with a touch of influ—”

Arabella whirled around to see her brother Beven stumbling downstairs, barefoot and disheveled. He made an attempt to tuck his linen shirt into his stained and wrinkled breeches, but the simple act of standing on the curving staircase required a herculean effort.

“I could cope with it, brother dear,” Arabella retorted sarcastically, “but I don’t
care
to! Now see who this is and send them around back.”

She turned to look out the window again, just as the older man carried his bandaged burden up the last step onto the mansion’s front porch. Arabella’s jaw dropped as she stared at the face that was now only inches away from hers through the window. Several small red scars seared the man’s upper lip and a longer one sliced across a prominent cheekbone. They were all fresh. It was a very handsome face, she noted with interest, despite the blood-soaked bandages and the ravaged look of the injured man. She couldn’t recall the unfortunate gentleman’s name, but she distinctly remembered being introduced to this rugged officer, looking splendid in his Black Watch kilt at Charles Carroll’s party in Annapolis exactly a year ago—a celebration held to commemorate the repeal of that odious Stamp Act. If it were the same man who had so caught her eye that night, he would have an arresting mane of claret-colored hair under that bloody bandage.

Before Beven could stagger to the front door, Arabella opened it wide and waited expectantly for the buckskin gentleman to address her.

“Good morning, ma’am… name’s Shelby. Captain Evan Shelby. This here’s Thomas Fraser,” the man said by way of explanation for their presence on her front stoop. “He’s a lieutenant in the Forty-second Regiment. He said he met you once,” he continued, hiking the man’s large six-foot-four frame on his bent shoulders. “The lad’s not dead yet, but he
will
be if we don’t put him right to bed and get a doctor.”

Arabella whirled around and started barking orders.

“Beven, I want you to ride over to Dr. Scott’s in Annapolis immediately.”

Her brother nodded sullenly and retreated to locate his boots. Meanwhile, several of the servants, including Mehitabel, were peeking around the corner of the hallway.

“Mehitabel, go turn down the counterpane in the blue room, next to mine, and be quick about it. Jemma, get me some hot water and some cool—and
fresh
linen! Zeb, help this gentleman carry… what’s your name again?”

Arabella took a breath and turned to look at the wounded man’s rescuer.

“Shelby. Captain Evan Shelby. Mason-Dixon expedition. We… ah… also met about a year ago… at an excellent fox hunt of yours. So sorry about your husband’s… ah… demise,” he stammered lamely.

“Yes, I recall our meeting then,” fibbed Arabella. There had been hordes of riffraff at the last hunt, and Hugh Delaney’s death had offered the excuse she needed to cancel the event this spring, thank heavens! Those spongers had been eating her out of house and home every year.

She gestured toward the curving staircase. Shelby and Zebediah half carried, half dragged the injured man up the long winding stairs and down the carpeted hallway on the second floor.

“In here,” Arabella said, pushing the door against the wall of the guest bedchamber with a thud.

Mehitabel adjusted the windows to air out the stale smell permeating the seldom-used chamber while the men eased the unconscious lieutenant’s long, lean frame onto the four-poster.

Arabella directed the maid, “Take off his… what
are
those?” She was referring to strange objects covering the lieutenant’s feet.

“Moccasins…” declared Shelby. “They’re part of the Indian garb he wore on patrol when his party was ambushed near Fort Pitt last fall,” Shelby answered, easing the sweat-soaked shirt off Thomas’s body.

Arabella hardly had time to wonder why the poor man had been traveling for months in this condition before she recoiled at the sight of the crimson gashes that streaked the lieutenant’s shoulders and chest. On the biceps of his left arm there was an ugly deep cut the circumference of a sovereign.

“Musket shot,” Shelby explained, pointing to the circular wound, “and Indian carvings… the lad got nicked several times before crawling into the underbrush. He saved himself by rolling into a ditch and covering his body with leaves as his mates were slaughtered. He lay still till the Mingos left. Then he crawled to an abandoned trapper’s cabin at Turtle Creek, for safety.”

“But that happened
months
ago,” Arabella exclaimed, puzzled. “Charley Carroll told me about the skirmish at Fort Pitt… let’s see… it must have been way back in December. Yes, that’s it! He told me at his father’s Christmas party that several fresh recruits from the fort whom we’d met the previous May had been killed by Indians last autumn.”

“Everyone, including me, assumed Fraser, here, had died in early October, along with several other lads,” Shelby replied, motioning for Zebediah to help undress Thomas, who was breathing steadily, but lay on the bed with his eyes closed.

“They even had a funeral at the fort. But the soldiers had been hacked up pretty bad and scalped by the braves… and since
everybody
was dressed as Injuns… well, there was a lot of confusion, I suppose.” Shelby and Zebediah began to roll Thomas’s leather breeches gently down the unconscious man’s muscular thighs. “At any rate, Fraser finally made it to a settlers’ compound near Redstone where he collapsed,” continued Shelby. “Out like a lantern for days, they told me. Old Enoch Van Dyke’s missus nursed him for months, though they hadn’t the slightest notion who he was, then.”

Arabella modestly busied herself adjusting the drapes in the window next to the bed. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the two men pull the trousers past Thomas’s ankles. No scars on his legs, she thought, permitting herself a glimpse of a nest of ruby hair that cushioned a sizable, soft penis at the base of the lieutenant’s naked torso. She fumbled for the tie holding back the worn, blue curtain, and waited to hear the sound of the cotton sheet rustling over Thomas’s inert body before she turned to face Shelby.

“The poor blighter was in pretty ragged shape all winter,” Shelby related. “Cut up like a filet fish, Van Dyke said… couldn’t even tell you his name. But the old woman poulticed him and pampered him and fed him every herb she had. At any rate, he finally came around… and then remembered most everything. He couldn’t talk very well, though, for a while. As you can see, he took a blow to the head. Bouncing around in that cart opened the big gash on his crown again,” he added, pointing to a spot above Thomas’s temple. Arabella wrinkled her nose as she surveyed the dirty linen bandage covering the gash on Thomas’s head. “Finally, the lad woke up one day and had his speech back, but he was still weak as a lamb,” Shelby continued, while both he and Arabella applied soft cloths soaked in cool water provided by Mehitabel. “Old Sarah Van Dyke wasn’t about to let him die, though, what with five eligible daughters in the family. When I arrived on the scene, they had him bundling with the middle girl. Sarina, I believe her name was.”

“That must have been quite a tonic for a man in such dreadful condition,” Arabella commented dryly, wringing a compress with pronounced vigor.

“Well, I can speak plainly about such things, Mrs. Delaney… you being a widow and all…”

“I think it’s perfectly appalling,” Arabella said, trying to sound outraged. “
Bundling
with a complete stranger? I hope the poor man hasn’t contracted a disease… or spread one, for that matter!”

Captain Shelby cleared his throat with embarrassment.

“No, ma’am. That type of illness is not his complaint. Believe me, Mrs. Delaney, he only slept
near
the girl. Poor Thomas, here, was in no shape for much recreation, if you get my drift.”

Arabella was familiar with the well-known practice of bundling. Impoverished settlers, with their one- or two-room cabins, often put total strangers in bed with female members of the family, given the scarcity of living space on the frontier and the expense of shelter. Arabella knew for a fact that, for want of a wooden board designed to separate a visitor from his sleeping companion, many a dainty miss wound up at the altar with a baby on the way. Still, many a casual drifter found a permanent abode in this fashion, so perhaps bundling performed a necessary social service for the lower orders.

“Well, despite Mrs. Van Dyke’s efforts, it looks like a definite relapse to me,” Arabella noted sarcastically, indicating the lad’s apparent unconsciousness.

Shelby drew a breath and explained.

“Word finally came to me in January at Christiana Bridge where the Mason-Dixon expedition was wintering, that a redheaded white man, dressed in Indian garb, was recuperating at the Van Dykes’ at Redstone. I couldn’t believe it! I’d visited his commanding officer, Captain Maxwell, in November. He’d told me the sorry tale of how they’d buried the soldiers’ brutalized remains while Maxwell was down river on other business.” Shelby rubbed his chin, recalling his conversation with the saddened military man. “The captain was real struck by it all, because the lad was to marry his favorite niece. Apparently, the Frasers were large landholders in Scotland before some sort of local rebellion there twenty years ago. The lad knows farming and sheep raising, Maxwell told me. The poor sot would have been a ‘Sir’ something, if his family’s fortunes hadn’t turned sour.”

“How tragic…” Arabella murmured, as she gently cleansed Thomas’s musket wound with her moistened cloth and formed a plan. “So, what you’re telling me is that two of His Majesty’s men—along with some dead Mingo thought to be Thomas Fraser—all got a decent Christian burials near the walls of Fort Pitt,” chortled Arabella, gently scraping off a patch of dried blood just below Thomas’s hairline. “But Lieutenant Fraser has such distinctive red hair. Didn’t anyone notice that none of the corpses fit his description?”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” Shelby said grimly, “but those Indians made shepherd’s pie out of the bodies. Scalped and chopped ’em up real fine, Captain Maxwell was told. Blood everywhere. That’s why I could hardly believe the rumors that Fraser, here, was alive before I decided to go to Redstone myself to see if it was true.”

“If he lives through this latest mishap, where will he go? Back to his regiment?” Arabella inquired, scanning the intriguing form of her new guest beneath the thin sheet.

“A farmer at Frederick told me the Forty-second is already on its way home. They’re marching across Pennsylvania and are scheduled to sail from Philadelphia in mid-July. Fraser begged me to get him to his ship on time. He said he wants to get back to his lady. We slogged through the muck and rain for three weeks. I caught a chill myself, I did,” he said, pounding his barrel chest and coughing loudly to prove it.

“Well, I fear Lieutenant Fraser has caught more than a chill,” she answered, bending over him and putting her head on his chest. Soft golden hairs tickled her ear as she listened to his breathing and was reassured by the even rhythm of Thomas’s heartbeat. His chest sounded raspy, however, and his skin was burning to the touch. She glanced sideways at Shelby as she reached for Thomas’s wrist to measure his pulse. It was strong and steady.

Arabella avoided Shelby’s eyes. She felt an uncharacteristic blush creep into her cheeks as thoughts of keeping the handsome lieutenant company spun through her mind.

“Don’t you think the poor man’s too sick to make the trip to Philadelphia any time soon?” she asked solicitously, the rest of her scheme clicking into place.

“God, yes!” Captain Shelby replied. “His lungs were rattlin’ the last miles here. You will look after him, won’t you, Mrs. Delaney?” Shelby asked earnestly. “I’m a month late catching up with the Mason-Dixon expedition. I’d be most obliged if you’d write Captain James Maxwell, care of the
Victory
in Philadelphia, once you know the outcome. If the lad lives, at least Maxwell can bring the glad tidings to his niece, in the event young Fraser is too ill to risk an ocean voyage, come July.” He glanced down at Thomas’s unconscious form. “And if he doesn’t make it… well, they’ve buried him once already. No need to do it twice.”