Lord of the Wolves (5 page)

“You
are welcome, Madame.”

Sarah
rose and followed Kingston from the dooryard, yet as she turned onto the Indian
path, she couldn’t resist one backward glance. The fire had quickly burned
itself out; the hunter’s lodge lay in ruins. All that remained of the safe
haven where she and Kathryn had taken sheltered were a few charred and
blackened beams. The sight brought a fresh sheen of tears to Sarah’s eyes, but
she quickly blinked them back.

She
would never forget Kathryn Seaton, but it was time to look forward, to the
bright future that awaited her beyond the western mountains. Perhaps one day,
she would return to this place and erect a fitting monument to the memory of
the woman who’d been her friend so briefly. Just now, she lifted her skirts in
both hands and hurried to catch up with her reluctant protector.

Sauvage
set a slow but steady pace those first two hours, yet Madame still had
difficulty keeping up. Crashing through the underbrush, puffing her way up the
smallest hill, and groaning down each incline, she made more noise than a
Seneca village wildly drunk on English rum.

Several
times, he had thrown a warning glance her way, but with little lasting effect. In
that instant, she would quell and seem to shrink beneath his censuring stare,
then, the moment his back was turned, she continued her frightful din.

Hearing
the soft sound of despair behind him, Sauvage turned and found Madame valiantly
battling a blackberry vine for possession of her small lawn cap. The more she
tried to extract herself from the thorny tentacles, the more desperate her
struggles, the more hopelessly ensnared she became.

“Oh,
Kingston!” she cried. “I am caught!”

Sauvage
closed his eyes, summoning up the slight store of patience left to him, and
went back to rescue Madame.

There
were angry welts on her cheek and the lovely white column of her throat, and
the huge blue eyes she turned on him were rapidly filling with tears. With practiced
hands, he extracted his charge, then guided her to a huge uprooted tree, urging
her to sit. “Madame, I fear we must talk.”

The
gaze she lifted to his was fearful,
mon dieu
, forlorn. Sauvage shifted
uncomfortably, foot to foot. “We simply cannot go on like this.”

“I
shall try to walk faster,” she said quickly. “I was doing quite well at keeping
pace until that blackberry vine caught hold of me.”

“It
is not your keeping pace that concerns me, Madame, but your clumsiness.”

“My
clumsiness?” She lowered her gaze to her hands, which were clasped in a tight
knot in her lap, and a single tear coursed slowly over her smudged cheek.

Sauvage’s
stomach constricted. He was feeling that strange sensation again, as if
he
were the one in error here, as if he should apologize to Madame, beg her
forgiveness. Guilt. That’s what it was. Guilt over making her cry. How very
absurd.

How
trying, this whole situation.

“What
a child you are,” he said, taking a seat on the tree trunk beside her. “A child
who has no business even thinking of going to the Ohio country.”

She
pursed her fine full mouth, and Sauvage felt a twinge of genuine regret; she
straightened her spine and he admired the lush curve of her breasts as they
strained against the gray linen gown. He imagined undoing the small, neat row
of buttons that closed the front of her bodice  and parting the garment to
worship those breasts. If the rest of Madame was any indication, those breasts
would be soft and white and voluptuous... pure temptation.

His
body’s response to his wayward thoughts was instantaneous, and beneath the thin
covering of his breechclout, his maleness stirred to life.

Sauvage
found his lack of self-control appalling. He should care nothing at all for
Madame’s maidenly blushes, her sweetly beckoning smiles, her tears, yet he
found himself strangely affected by her, and it only served to make him angry.

He
did not
want
to care for her in
any
capacity. Caring brought
loss, and pain, and loneliness.

Her
soft, yet slightly rebellious voice dragged Sauvage from his musings. “If you
say I am clumsy, then I suppose I must try harder to be less so. However, I
fail to see how a little awkwardness shall prevent me from fulfilling my
marriage contract with Brother Liebermann.”

“Your
ineptitude, Madame,” Sauvage bluntly pointed out, “may very well get both of us
killed. And
that
would certainly prevent you from continuing on to the
Muskingum, to your prospective husband.”

She
set her jaw, and the look she gave him was mulish.

Sauvage
smiled to himself. Madame’s back was up, but he liked her better this way—as
prickly and defensive as an outraged porcupine—than full of tears and
vulnerability. “Can you have forgotten the attack upon your friends so
quickly?” he demanded. “You must be more watchful, more observant, more careful
how you step, than you have ever been. You cannot just go blundering through
the forest, making more noise than a herd of bison.”

Sarah
looked daggers at Kingston. She was not all that sure that she cared for his
comparison. “I hardly think—”

“That
is precisely my point, Madame.
You do not think!
You must learn to
concentrate, to become fully aware of your surroundings, use the senses the
Creator has given you. He took her hand and brought her to her feet. “Now, then.
Lift your skirts and walk for me.”

The
request was so outrageous that at first she thought she’d misheard him. She
stared at him, open-mouthed, until the statement was repeated, less patiently
this time. “Damn it, Sarah! Lift your skirts and walk!”

Sarah
raised her skirts an inch and took several steps, glaring at him all the while.
It was not enough to satisfy him, however, for he strode to her, and moved the
hands still clutching her linen skirts higher on her hips until a few inches of
trim ankle clad in black stocking showed beneath the hem of her skirts. “Now
walk!” he said. “A dozen paces that way, then turn and come back here to me!”

Sarah
blushed furiously, but she obeyed him. She took a dozen half-hesitant,
half-angry steps along the path, then pivoted, coming back again. With each
step she took, she was more aware of his close scrutiny, aware how his black
gaze never left the exposed turn of her ankles... aware of the nervous flutter
in the pit of her stomach. When she stopped, it was several paces from him. Pointedly,
she dropped her skirts, preserving her modesty. “Are you satisfied?”

“It
is just as I thought,” the frontier rogue said. “You walk like an
Englishwoman.”

“Well,
of course, I walk like an Englishwoman! I
am
an Englishwoman!” The sharp
reply shocked even Sarah. She put her fingertips over her mouth and waited for
Kingston to shout back at her.

But,
he merely smiled, the glint of a secret amusement in his obsidian eyes. “Not
for long,” he said. “From now on, you are a Delaware woman, one of the Original
People. The forest is your home, the animals your friends, but there are
enemies lurking, Huron dogs waiting for you to make a careless move so they can
lift your scalp. What will you do to thwart them? How will you endeavor to keep
your hair?”

“If
indeed I see them before they see me, I shall hide.”

He
nodded, and the scarlet silk tassels which adorned his ear lobes swayed
gracefully. “Very good. Yet how will you keep the Huron dogs from seeing you
when they can hear you from two miles away?”

“Point
taken,” Sarah allowed. “But this solves nothing. Pretending to be a Delaware
woman does not make me one in truth, and as you so rudely pointed out, I still
walk like an Englishwoman. Indeed, I can do nothing else.”

“You
can,” he insisted. “With practice. Watch closely.” He took a dozen steps along
the path, turned and came back again, his movements sure, deliberate. “White
men walk heel down first. That’s why their gait is so ungainly. It throws the
body’s natural balance off-kilter. Setting your toes down first—turned in slightly—remedies
the problem, and the heel will quite naturally follow the toes.”

Sarah
walked a little way along the path, trying her best to mimic his actions, even
though she remained painfully aware that she lacked the savage grace and
catlike movement that to him was so inherent, so effortless. Ten steps, eleven,
twelve. Sarah turned, catching sight of Kingston, who was grinning broadly at
her efforts. The flash of white teeth in his sun-bronzed face caused her heart
to skip a beat. Flustered, she missed a step, her turned-in toes became
entangled, and she fell headlong.

Kingston
caught her. “It seems that we are at a disadvantage to those Huron dogs I
mentioned. But, rest assured, Madame,” he said, touching a playful finger to
the tip of her nose. “It will not always be so. Now, come. You may practice
along the way.”

Hefting
his rifle in his right hand and adjusting his various leather pouches to a more
comfortable position, Kingston started off at a brisk pace.

For
a moment, Sarah simply stood, staring after him as she tried to sort through
her conflicting feelings... yet, like the man himself, they proved far too
complex to be quickly and easily understood. She only knew that the few words
of praise he had offered, belated and slightly off-handed, had warmed her
considerably, and she would try her best to learn from his tutelage, if only to
please him.

And
so Sarah started off, hurrying in order to catch up to Kingston, and this time
she stepped more carefully.

Sauvage’s
lesson in Delaware stealth had little immediate effect upon Madame. For the
next two miles, she continued to pant like a winded steed while ascending the
slightest grade, and now and again she would catch the toe of her cumbersome
shoe on some protruding root or tangle of vine and nearly sprawl headlong
before she caught herself.

Scanning
the rugged forest trail ahead, Sauvage sighed. It would take a great deal of
time and patience to transform Madame into a Delaware woman. More, certainly,
than he possessed. His efforts, however, had not been totally in vain. The din
she created
was
somewhat less than it had been, and practicing the
toe-in walk kept her from noticing the things that Sauvage could not miss.

The
print of a heel here, a broken branch there, a few gray threads adhering to a
bramble bush—signs of a hasty passage. When he came upon the smattering of
rusty droplets scattered over the leaf-strewn forest floor and saw the hollow
log, he knew that Madame’s short period of distraction had come to an end. He
halted on the path at the foot of a steep incline and waited for her to come to
him.

She
was watching her feet as she walked, unaware that Sauvage had stopped until he
reached out and grasped her arms.

She
glanced up, clearly startled, looking first to Sauvage’s face, then slowly
glancing around. The look of fear and pain that entered her eyes, the
tightening of her mouth as she sought to control her emotions, told Sauvage
more clearly than words that the scene of the attack lay beyond the next rise.

Still
holding her by the arms, Sauvage made for a laurel thicket some fifty feet to
the left of the path. In the midst of the thicket, he bade her sit, then, knelt
beside her.

Sauvage
took her hands in his and squeezed them gently. “Madame, you must listen closely
to me. Can you do that?”

A
hesitant nod. She swallowed hard.

“I
must leave you for a little while. There are some things to which I must
attend.”

“You
will come back? You will not leave me here?”

“I
will not be long,” Sauvage assured her, “but you must promise me that you will
not move from this thicket. Stay quiet and still.” He smiled and lifted her
hands, pressing a kiss to each in turn. “Be strong. A proper Delaware woman,
eh?”

Her
answering smile was tremulous, but her eyes were dry. Feeling heartened,
Sauvage slipped from the thicket, careful to erase all signs of their passage
as he retraced his steps back to the path. Moving silently as a wraith, he
climbed to the summit of the knoll, pausing in the cover of a huge sycamore
tree to survey the clearing below and the forest surrounding it.

The
valley lay quiet. Unnaturally still. Not even the legions of squirrels that
lived in the treetops, whose noisy chirping could nearly always be heard during
daylight hours, deigned to break the silence which had descended like an
invisible shroud over this place.

Careful
not to disturb anything, Sauvage made his way down the steep incline and into
the clearing. The carnage he found was terrible. Three men lay sprawled in the
open, lifeless eyes wide and staring, their hair lifted and skulls exposed. Two
of the men, he did not know. The third he recognized. It was Joshua Stanhope,
Kate’s brother. He’d heard from Kate that Joshua had taken a bride and moved to
the East. And now he lay dead in this quiet clearing, and his bride was a
widow.

Sauvage’s
stomach clenched. He forced himself to rise and move away from Stanhope, to the
savaged remains of Benjamin Bones. Bones, an experienced frontiersman and well
known to Sauvage, was barely recognizable. Each finger was missing the first
and second joint, his ears, nose and eyelids had been cut away, and they’d also
taken his tongue. Judging from the amount of blood lost, and the look of horror
frozen on the man’s face, he’d been very much alive at the time. On Bone’s
right cheek, someone had carved a crude fleur-de-lis.

The
lily of France
,
heraldic symbol of his father’s king and the chosen mark of
La Bruin
. It
was a taunt he well understood. A calling card to tell the world who was
responsible for the blood bath.

His
jaw hardened as he got to his feet. He recalled with vivid clarity the first
time he’d laid eyes on that hated symbol. He’d been but a gangly youth of
eleven who’d recently lost his mother, dogging his father’s steps through the
streets of Quebec, a place far removed from the quiet village on the Allegheny
River where his mother’s people dwelt.

The
stink of the city streets had offended his senses, the manner in which his
father’s people had lived, hundreds of houses of stone and brick and wood
crowded one upon the other, flanking the narrow winding cobbled streets, had
filled him with disdain. Yet, he’d remembered his manners and said nothing of
his thoughts to the man in whose footsteps he followed. Then, they’d rounded a
corner and climbed the steps to a great frame house.

His
father had opened the massive front door, and with a hand on Sauvage’s
shoulder, had ushered him into a parlor where a woman sat, a boy Sauvage’s age
standing near her elbow.

The
woman, his father’s legal wife, had glanced at Sauvage, then turned her
attention back to the embroidery in her lap, as though she’d viewed something
distasteful. Sauvage had tried hard to ignore the woman’s coldness, to ignore
the boy who stood glaring his hatred at the bastard half brother his father had
dragged home, and instead focused his attention on the linen square in the
woman’s silken lap. The lily of France had been lavishly worked on it in purple
and gold.

His
father had seized the embroidery, ignoring her outraged gasp, and held it out
to Sauvage. “You see this, boy?
This
is your heritage. The lily of
France. You remember it! You remember that you are descended from great men and
courageous women.”

The
memory of his father’s voice faded, replaced by the droning of a gnat close to
Sauvage’s ear. Absently, he brushed it away, still staring at the grotesque
mask that once was Ben Bones, but seeing instead that purple and gold
embroidery, the same piece of cloth that he’d found beside Caroline’s lifeless
body one year ago.

Impatient
now to leave this place, Sauvage shoved the memory away. The lily of France, a
symbol of hatred, insignia of a madman. Each time Kingston saw it, he knew that
he was not the only one who remembered that long ago day.

Sarah
and Kingston camped that night on the banks of a winding creek a few miles west
of the attack. The glade Kingston selected was sheltered by a ring of willows,
closely set, so that the long and slender branches provided a graceful living
curtain that separated the two of them from the outside world.

Seated
on the blanket with which Kingston had covered her the night before, Sarah
removed the pins from her hair and combed through the tangled mass with her
fingers. The results were far from satisfactory but it was the best she could
do without her silver comb and brush, which had been lost, along with her
clothes and belongings in the previous day’s attack.

She
would be going to Brother Liebermann with nothing more than the clothes on her
back. Not that it mattered in any case. Her belongings were worldly goods, and
therefore easily replaced. Would that her fellow travelers had all been as
fortunate as she.

She
had thought of them a great deal since she and Kingston had resumed their
journey earlier in the afternoon. Poor Mr. Windham and his son, Henry, Joshua
Stanhope, Mr. Bones, and Kathryn. She’d thought of them and prayed. There had
been a great deal of time for prayers and reflection on the long walk to this
place, for Kingston’s manner had been different since his return.

He’d
been strangely silent. Why, he’d barely spoken since returning to the laurel
thicket. That had been hours ago, and Sarah would have welcomed the sound of
his voice, even raised in unthinking insult, for it would at least provide a
distraction and make her feel less alone.

There
was something else, too, a dark look that came into his eyes when he thought
she did not see. That look troubled Sarah. She knew that he was anxious to be
rid of her, to get on with his business of finding and killing the Frenchman,
which in turn troubled her, too.

As
the cobalt blue of the sky gradually deepened, turning to a velvety black, Sarah
continued to watch Kingston closely, trying to fathom his mood.

“What
is it you want from me?” He was sorting through the contents of his leather
pouches, a distracted frown on his handsome face. He spoke without looking up.

 Caught
off guard, Sarah swallowed hard and glanced away. “Come, come,” he prompted. “There
must be something, or are you intent upon looking a hole through me, simply for
something to do?”

“I
am intent upon no such thing,” Sarah insisted. She saw his mouth curve in a
smile and she colored slightly, suddenly thankful for the firelight, which
effectively hid her blush. “Dear me,” she said. “Are you always so direct? You
make everything sound so calculated, deliberate, indelicate, and nothing could
be further from the truth.”

“Madame,
this is not England, and I cannot take the time to be delicate—time that is
better served in keeping us alive.”

His
words sent a chill up Sarah’s spine. She must be bold and brave and a help to
Kingston, instead of a cowardly hindrance. “Is our situation so dire?”

He
glanced at her, that same measuring look he’d given her earlier. “We are
running low on supplies. I was headed north to trade when I came across you and
Kate.”

Sarah
frowned. “How low, precisely?”

“I
have but five rifle balls left, less than an ounce of powder, and the jerked
meat I carried will soon all be gone.”

His
implication was clear. They were facing great difficulties in the days ahead
and would need to ration their supplies. “Well, then, we simply must subsist on
what we have, or find a place to purchase more.”

He
shook his head and his raven locks shimmered blue in the firelight. “There
isn’t a trading post within fifty miles.”

“What,
then, do you suggest?” Sarah asked quietly, bracing herself for his reply.

It
was precisely as she suspected. “It isn’t too late to turn back,” he replied. “We
can make it to Bethlehem without undue hardship, and once there, I can trade
for supplies at Nat Leasure’s place on Maiden Creek.”

Sarah
was already shaking her head. “It is out of the question. You gave your word.”

“Damn
my word! It is the wisest course.”

She
would not hear it. “I do not think you appreciate how difficult it was for me
to leave England behind and come here to America. I put my faith in God and
gave Gil my pledge to come to the Muskingum. What manner of sister-in-law would
I be if I went back on my pledge because of the paltry matter of five rifle
balls? What manner of Christian would I be if I failed to put my trust in God
to see us through this minor difficulty? Have you not heard of the Lord Jesus
Christ and his loaves and fishes? How he fed multitudes with a small bit of
food?”

Kingston
smiled at her comparison; it was the first time his expression had softened
since early morning. “I have heard the story, but had no idea the same theory
could be applied to rifle balls. On the other hand, I once killed two men with
one shot. The missile went straight through the first and into the heart of the
second.”

“I
am not sure I like that comparison,” Sarah said. “And I confess that I cannot
help but notice that your concern seems newly arisen. You seemed to have no
qualms last night in the hunter’s camp about pursuing
La Bruin,
despite
the low state of your supplies.”

At
the mention of the French renegade, Kinston’s expression clouded. “That was
then, and this is now,” he said flatly. “Quite suddenly I have more than my own
life to worry about.”

His
statement chilled Sarah. “Are you saying that you would have gone off in pursuit
of your enemy, knowing full well what you lacked?”

“
Oui
,
Madame. I would have done exactly that. And because of it you think me mad.” It
was not an accusation, and he was not at all defensive. Indeed, he seemed
amused, though it was something more sensed than seen by Sarah, for his
expression remained as hard as flint.

“In
all truth, I do not know what to think,” Sarah admitted, “except that something
must have occasioned all of this. Something you are not confessing.”

Sauvage
passed a hand over his face. She was bringing it all back to him with her
constant chatter, everything he’d been trying to forget over the course of the
long afternoon. The carnage of the massacre, the lily of France, the parlor in
Quebec, things he did not wish to remember, yet could not seem to forget. Into
the dark memories, Madame’s voice intruded. “It is the Frenchman, is it not? That
terrible, godless man,
La Bruin
?”

Gazing
into her large blue eyes, Sauvage felt a catch in his chest. The golden
firelight glimmered in the soft brown strands that framed her face, played
across her cheeks, and gilded the tips of her spiky lashes. She was the very
embodiment of all things feminine, and it seemed he could deny her nothing. “For
me, it has always been
La Bruin.
”