Merline Lovelace (11 page)

He glanced around, his face expressionless as he
took in the austere quarters. The plank-and-rope bed Private Rafferty had scavenged for them filled the area behind the partition. Julia’s trunk and a rickety crate upended to support the chipped pitcher and washbasin Mary Donovan had contributed took up the rest of the space.

Maria Schnell’s gingham brightened up the front room considerably, as did the beaded and fringed buckskin storage pouch Walks In Moon Light had gifted her with. Julia had added another bright touch only that morning—a clump of primroses stuck in a tin cup and placed atop the cast-iron stove.

“We’re very comfortable here,” she said in defense of her temporary home. “Will I be allowed to stay on Suds Row if I take up duties at the post school?”

“It’s not what I’d prefer, but unless you wish to move back in with Lieutenant McKinney’s wife—”

“No, thank you!”

“The choice is yours,” he conceded. Dropping his hat on the wooden crate that served as her dining table, he peeled off his gauntlets. “Roll up your sleeve.”

He stood so close. Too close. Julia breathed in the rich scents of leather and wool and hot, sweaty male. Her fingers fumbled with the stubborn buttons of her cuff.

“Shall I help you?”

The hidden question behind the polite query brought her head up. She’d made it clear she never,
ever
wanted to feel his hands on her again. The angry words came back to bite her now as she flushed and held out her wrist.

“If you would be so kind.”

Her stilted politeness went up in a flash of heat the moment he grasped her wrist. It was just a loose hold, a mere brush of his fingers against her flesh, yet Julia’s nerves seemed to jump under her skin. If he noticed her instinctive flinch, he gave no sign. His brow creased in a frown as he gently probed the blistered patch.

“Henry said he gave you a tincture of opium. Have you spread the ointment on today?”

“Yes, earlier this morning.”

“Some of the blisters have cracked. You’d better let me put more on. Where is it?”

“There’s no need for you to bother. Really, I—”

Impatience put a sharp bite in his tone. “For pity’s sake, one glimpse of your naked arm isn’t going to spur me to ravish you.”

“I didn’t think it would! You couldn’t ravish me if you tried.”

His head lifted. The look in his eyes stopped the breath in her throat.

“Do you think so?”

“I know so,” she snapped to cover a sudden spurt of nervousness. “Whatever else you did in New Orleans, you never used my silly infatuation to seduce me into bed outside the bounds of marriage. Nor would you now seduce another man’s wife.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that if I were you,” he said slowly. Without taking his eyes from hers, he turned her arm and pressed his lips against the inside of her wrist.

Every instinct Julia possessed screamed at her to snatch her hand away. She was insane to stand there, insane to let her blood heat and her heart race while his touch ignited fires under her skin.

Afterward, she would never remember how she ended up in his arms, never know how her mouth came to fuse so urgently with his. One moment, she was staring as if transfixed at the dark head bent over her wrist. The next, she was swept up on a tide of need so hot and compelling she couldn’t breathe.

She might have moaned. Might have swayed toward him. All she could recall later was the searing pleasure of his mouth crushing hers.

The sound of girlish chatter broke them apart. Stunned, Julia could only stare up at Andrew wordlessly. Whatever might have been said between them at that moment was lost when Suzanne called impatiently for her mother to come see how she and Little Hen had braided the pony’s tail.

“T
ake the brush in your left hand and the currycomb in your right.”

Scrunching her nose in concentration, Suzanne picked up the implements. “Like this?”

Patiently, Andrew bent down to switch them. Her small fingers could barely grasp the flat-backed brush.

“Start at her head,” he instructed. “Work down her forehead and over her face in smooth, even strokes. Slowly, now. Let the brush pick up the dust and dirt. When it gets full, clean it with the comb.”

Stepping back to give the girl room to work in the narrow stall, he kept a close watch on her awkward movements. Andrew had spent countless hours in the stables watching while the senior sergeants drilled recruits, but this was the first time he’d put such a young one through her paces.

Dust motes danced in the sunbeams slanting in through the open stable doors. Swarms of flies buzzed around the stalls, their drone noisy in air redolent with
the familiar odor of leather, hay and horse droppings. A few troopers lingered in the barnlike stables, giving their mounts the extra measure of attention that sprang less from duty and more from a true cavalry man’s love for the companion that shared his long marches.

“Careful around her eye.”

Andrew’s warning came too late. The pony flinched, jerking its head to avoid the bristles. With a squeal of fright, Suzanne jumped sideways. The squeal spiraled into a wail when her foot landed in a patch of manure-filled straw.

“Ohhh! I stepped in horse poopy!”

Her face contorting in comical dismay, Suzanne lifted her leg. The piece of canvas Andrew had wrapped around her shoe to protect it came loose, along with the shoe itself. She perched like a small, unhappy stork on one foot while the other hovered above the muck. Tears sprang to her eyes and might have spilled down her cheeks if Little Hen hadn’t emitted a giggle from her seat on a handy wheelbarrow.

Biting back his own smile, Andrew hunkered down on his heels to retrieve the lost shoe. “You’ll need a pair of boots if you’re going to groom her properly.”

“Or moccasins with high leggings.” With a hand over her mouth to hide her merriment, Little Hen averted the pending crisis. “I’ll ask my mother to make you a pair.”

The sniffles halted. “With beadwork, like yours?”

Her friend nodded.

“Until they’re finished, the sackcloth will have to do,” Andrew said. Slipping her shoe back on Suzanne’s dainty foot, he retied the strings of the canvas boot. “Ready to try again?”

Cautiously, the girl lowered her foot.

“Nice, easy strokes, now. When you finish with her face and head, throw her mane over to the other side and work your way down her neck to her shoulders.”

Folding his arms, Andrew leaned against the stall support and watched the hesitant strokes. She’d pick up the rhythm with practice. The girl was sharp as a tack despite her overly fastidious airs. He had to admit, however, he wasn’t looking forward to teaching her how to sponge out her pony’s nostrils and anus.

“A good cavalryman grooms his horse twice a day,” he told her sternly, laying the groundwork.

“I know. At morning and evening stable call.”

“You’ll be in school in the mornings, but I expect you to report to the stables every afternoon at five. If I’m not here, Private Rafferty or O’Shea will watch you work.”

Frowning in concentration, Suzanne worked the brush down the pony’s neck. The spotted hide rippled under her stroke. Once or twice, the animal swung its head around, as if to check their progress.

“When will I get to ride her?”

“When you’ve learned how to take care of her.”

“When will that be?”

“A few weeks, perhaps. We’ll see.”

The brush stilled. Accusing brown eyes lifted to his.

“That’s what Mama says when she doesn’t want to do something. ‘We’ll see.’ She thinks I’ll forget, but I don’t ever.”

Her cherubic little face took on a decidedly stubborn set. A defiant note crept into her voice.

“Just like I haven’t forgotten my papa. We’re going to find him when we get ’nuff money.”

“Maybe he’ll find you first,” Andrew answered calmly.

“I hope so! Then I’ll get
him
to show me how to ride Daisy. That’s what I’m going to call her,” she announced with a toss of her curls. “’Cause you mashed my other Daisy.”

He’d be a long time atoning for that heinous crime, Andrew realized ruefully. And a long time banishing this irritating sense of responsibility for Julia and her daughter. They’d crept into his thoughts these past weeks, become woven somehow into the pattern of his life. The idea of Philip Bonneaux teaching Suzanne to ride her pony rankled more than he was ready to admit.

Almost as much as the idea of Bonneaux putting his hands on Julia.

Andrew’s annoying possessiveness toward his one-time wife had begun as a small canker, but now gnawed at his insides like a trapped beast. He couldn’t forget that he’d been the first to claim her heart and
body, the first to awaken her to passion. The passion was still there, even after all these years, simmering just below the surface.

Julia had pushed out of his arms and beat a swift retreat after their shattering kiss two nights ago, but Andrew was no fool, nor some green, johnny-raw fumbling with his first woman. He’d felt her response, tasted the desire that had flowed as hot and hungry in her veins as it did in his. She’d wanted him for those few, searing seconds. As much as he’d wanted her.

Every muscle in his body tightened at the thought of another man fanning the flames of that desire, another man running his hands and lips over her feverish skin. Fighting a scowl, he hunkered down to show Suzanne how to work the currycomb from the end of the pony’s tail upward.

When Suzanne finished grooming and feeding her pony, Andrew escorted the two girls to the building that housed the offices of the post adjutant. Located at the western end of the parade ground, right on the bend of the river, the structure sat almost atop the site of the old fur-trading fort. It was a sprawling facility constructed in a mix of wood and adobe, with various additions designed by different architects.

Besides housing the post records and company rolls, the building also served as an unofficial social center. The library room contained over three hundred volumes in addition to subscriptions to various journals and newspapers, while the music room boasted
an upright piano and a surprising selection of sheet music.

A large hall at the rear of the building served a multitude of purposes. It was here that the chaplain held services on Sundays and the Laramie Players performed their masks and minstrel shows. Here, too, Private Jacobs conducted his evening lectures on botany and butterflies. And it was here that Julia would conduct classes.

The hall’s benches and tables were now lined up to form writing desks for the children who’d report for class the next morning. There would be twenty-three, a nervous Julia informed Andrew when he arrived with Suzanne and Little Hen. Most were offspring of enlisted personnel, although a few civilians and Sioux and Cheyenne were also sending their children.

“Where will Little Hen and I sit, Mama?”

“In the first row, by the window.”

While the girls tested their seats, Andrew hitched a hip on the sturdy table that served as the teacher’s desk.

“Do you have everything you need?”

A harried Julia tucked a pencil into her braided hair. “Yes, I think so. Ordnance Sergeant Schnyder has been most helpful.”

If anyone could turn up whatever was necessary for the schoolroom, it was Leodegar Schnyder. The sergeant had arrived at Fort Laramie with the original contingent of infantry way back in ’49. He’d lost his
first wife to cholera and subsequently married a laundress named Cross-Eyed Julie. Currently, he served as post librarian and garrison postmaster among his many other duties.

“Let me know if there’s anything Sergeant Schnyder can’t scavenge for you.”

She cast a quick look around the room. “All I can think of at this moment is a new set of maps for the geography lessons. That one is sadly dated.”

Andrew spared a glance at the painted canvas map nailed to one wall. It depicted the boundaries of the United States prior to the war with Mexico that had brought Texas and California into the Union.

“The sutler said he could bring in a new set for us in his next shipment of goods,” Julia explained, “but his prices are too dear.”

“I can provide more current military maps as a temporary measure, but you might as well tell the sutler to go ahead and place the order. The officers’ special welfare and morale fund can stand for the cost.”

“I didn’t know officers had a welfare and morale fund.”

“It’s, uh, unofficial.”

“Unofficial?”

Grinning, Andrew confessed the truth. “We toss a dollar from each pot into a tobacco jar during our Saturday night poker games at Old Bedlam. That jar has funded everything from Lieutenant Stanton-
Smith’s new reading spectacles to the recent delivery of two cases of Tennessee sippin’ whiskey.”

Bemused by the grin that softened the hard angles of his face, Julia barely heard his explanation. For a fleeting moment he reminded her so much of the Andrew Garrett she’d once known that desire and despair gripped her in a brutal vise.

What was happening to her? Why was she so drawn to this man? She’d hated him for so long, then buried her memories of him so deep. How could he now stir her blood with a mere smile? Or quicken her pulse with just a whiff of the scent of leather and horse that clung to his uniform?

He’d rolled his sleeves up on his forearms and opened the neck of his uniform shirt in concession to the heat. If she reached out, she could trace a forefinger along the silvery path left by a trickle of sweat. If she bent forward just an inch or two, she could mold her lips to his as she had two nights ago.

Shaken by the intensity of her need to do just that, Julia turned away. Her heart skipped a beat when she found a pair of frowning brown eyes watching her from a front row desk.

“Do you like that seat?” she asked, summoning a bright smile.

“No.” Pursing her lips in a decided pout, Suzanne slipped off the bench and marched to the opposite end of the row. “I’ll sit here.”

Julia’s heart sank as she realized even her daughter had sensed what everyone else on post already
knew—that her past relationship with Major Andrew Garrett hadn’t ended with the sharp crack of a pistol one dark night in New Orleans. They were still tied by old lies and new circumstances, none of which Julia felt up to explaining to a five-year-old.

None of which she
could
explain. For the life of her, Julia didn’t understand how the cravings of her treacherous body could blunt the hurt she’d suffered at Andrew’s hands. Or how each day she spent at Fort Laramie blurred even more the memory of her husband’s face. Fighting a feeling of panic, she turned a determined smile on Andrew.

“If you’re sure your fund can bear the cost, I’ll place the order for new maps as soon as I’ve finished here.”

He took the hint and rose to leave. Resolutely, Julia busied herself with the books Sergeant Schnyder had dug out of the library storeroom and refused to dwell on how empty the schoolroom suddenly seemed.

To Julia’s amazement, she proved a rather competent teacher. Her secret relief at abandoning the drudgery of the tubs infused her with an enthusiasm that soon overcame even her most recalcitrant student’s indignation at being sent back to school in the middle of summer.

Her unique status on the post also gave her an authority her immediate predecessor had lacked. Although not technically an officers’ lady, she wasn’t Suds Row, either. Her students had picked up enough
from their parents to know she carried a certain cachet that stemmed directly from Major Garrett.

She spent the first week simply getting to know her pupils and classifying them as to age and ability. The second, in adjusting her hastily contrived lessons to accommodate their wide range of interests. Julia’s own convent education had emphasized prayer, literature and setting exquisite little stitches in priests’ robes and altar cloths. She soon discovered that the popular works of Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper held far more appeal to children raised on the frontier than Shakespeare or Jane Austen, and that sewing held as little interest for her students as it had for her.

She also discovered a wealth of knowledge scattered among the troopers at the post. Private Lowenstahl of the magnificent blond mustaches and superb dancing ability offered to teach an hour of music each week, aided by one of the company buglers who also proved extraordinarily proficient on the piano, banjo and harmonica. Private Jacobs expanded his lectures on botany to include nature walks that took the youngsters out of the classroom and gave Julia an hour or two of blessed quiet to set the room to rights again. Even the colonel’s orderly, Corporal Gottlieb, volunteered his services. Taking to heart Julia’s casual comment that she would like to capitalize on the diversity of the post’s population to supplement history and geography lessons, the corporal drew up a duty roster. Soldiers of Russian, French, German,
Irish, Norwegian and other extraction reported to her on designated days, red faced and sweating in their best dress uniforms.

Mindful that at least a fourth of her students were of mixed white and Indian blood, Julia also planned a series of visits to her classroom by representatives of the Cheyenne, Sioux and Arapaho tribes. In this, she met unexpected resistance.

The first warning came from Mary Donovan, who invited Julia to take tea with her one Sunday afternoon shortly after July rolled into August. Although Julia had visited Mary’s home on several occasions, this was the first time she’d been issued a formal invitation. Consequently, she dressed herself and Suzanne in their best frocks and tipped a parasol to shade them from the low-hanging sun while they made the short walk to Mary’s quarters.

Like the other apartments on Suds Row, Sergeant Major Donovan’s consisted of just two rooms. To accommodate their seven children from this and previous marriages, the sergeant had received permission to knock out a portion of the rear wall and add a lean-to. He and Mary had also collected sufficient furnishings over the years to make their quarters as comfortable as most on Officers’ Row. A black-and-pink cabbage-rose carpet covered the floor of the front room, which contained a humpbacked settee and easy chair in addition to a hand-carved walnut hutch and sturdy dining table. What could be seen of the rear
room beyond the partition showed a chest of drawers and a tester bed draped with mosquito netting.