Merline Lovelace (3 page)

Her rage burst forth in a spate of passionate Creole. Curving her fingers into talons, she launched herself at him, or tried to.

“Cochon! Fils d’une cochonne!
I will strangle you with my own hands. I will—Oh!”

Pain shot up her arms as he caught her wrists and slammed them back against the stairs. Kicking, writhing, spitting epithets in French, in patois, in English, she tried to free herself.

“Before either one of us strangles the other,” he snarled, “I want you to explain the girl.”

She went still. Utterly, completely still.

“The girl?”

“The child the wagon master brought to this house last night, about an hour after I carried you in.”

“Her—her name’s Suzanne. She’s my daughter.”

“Your daughter?” he echoed, his voice low and so menacing Julia’s heart hammered against her stays. “Or ours?”

“Mine!”

His grip tightened cruelly. “Were you carrying a child when I left you in New Orleans, Julia? Did you panic and tell your uncle? Is that why he was waiting for me with a loaded pistol the night I returned?”

“No,” she whispered. “No!”

“He fired from the darkness, before I had even dismounted. Did you show him my note, tell him I was coming back for you that night?”

She stared up at his flinty eyes, hearing again the crack of her uncle’s pistol, hearing as well the echo of her own moan when she’d rushed to the window and seen Andrew lying facedown in the cobbled street.

She’d learned the devastating truth about him only weeks before. The man she’d flirted and laughed and
fallen hopelessly in love with, the man she’d married in a secret ceremony at St. Lucien’s, the man who’d promised to return for her, was a Union agent.

Andrew Garrett would most certainly return, her uncle had jeered when he’d presented her with the incontrovertible proof. For more detail on the Robichaud line’s shipping schedules. For more information about tonnage and cargo capacity. For more dalliance with the stupid little bitch who’d raised her skirts and tumbled so eagerly onto her back for him.

Julia hadn’t believed her uncle, had
refused
to believe him…until he’d showed her the report he’d received, along with the daguerreotype of Andrew Garrett.
Lieutenant
Andrew Garrett, 2nd Dragoons, United States Cavalry. A graduate of West Point. A commissioned officer in the hated Union Army.

“Yes,” she hissed, scored by the raw memories. “I told my uncle you were coming for me that night. But not because I carried a babe. Because you lied to me. Because you used me to gain information about our steamships. Because you were the enemy.”

He opened his mouth, but Julia rushed on.

“No child of yours ever quickened in my belly, Andrew. Suzanne is not your daughter.”

“Then whose—?”

He stopped, his breath hitching. For a moment, something that might have been compassion flickered in his eyes.

Julia guessed at once what he was thinking. Shame coursed through her, swift and all-consuming. The
same shame she’d experienced the first time she’d realized that the uncle who’d assumed her guardianship along with management of her papa’s steamships regarded her with far more than familial affection.

“No!” she spit. “I never let Justin touch me. Never!”

She owed this man nothing. No explanations. No justification of her personal conduct. Nothing! Only the need to protect her daughter forced a stiff admission.

“Suzanne is Philip’s daughter.”

The blue eyes just inches from her own narrowed dangerously. “Philip?”

“Philip Bonneaux. My husband.”

His breath hissed in.

“I met him in Natchez,” she said in a rush of hate and hurt. “That’s where my uncle sent me to try to avoid the scandal of having my name connected with yours. We married and moved to his home in Mobile. Philip’s in Montana Territory now, in the gold fields. We’re traveling to join him, Suzanne and I.”

Silence spun out between them, so heavy and thick Julia thought she might choke on it. Her neck ached from its awkward angle, her wrists from his unrelenting grip. She tried to wiggle up or down a step to ease the cut of the tread in her back, but he held her easily.

Finally, he broke the silence, his voice a cruel, deliberate drawl. “It appears, madam, you’ve collected a surfeit of husbands.”

“No, I have only one!”

“We were wed, Julia, in the church you yourself chose, and your religion doesn’t allow divorce. You might have thought me dead when you married this Philip of yours, but as you can see, I’m very much alive.”

“You’re not my husband now,” she threw at him furiously. “Nor were you then. After we learned the truth about you, my uncle petitioned the bishop to set aside our marriage vows.”

“On what grounds? We consummated the union…most thoroughly, as I recall.”

The sardonic reminder sent heat spearing into her chest and cheeks. She refused to let her mind dwell on the brief hours she’d spent in this man’s arms, refused to think for even a moment about the breathless passion he’d roused in her eager, untutored body.

“No banns had been called,” she ground out. “And, my uncle took pains to inform me, you were not of the Catholic faith. The bishop declared the ceremony invalid, Andrew. We were never married! Never! Not in the eyes of the Church. Certainly not in my heart. Now let me go, you bastard, or I swear I’ll—”

“Mama!”

The small, shocked exclamation halted her in mid-threat.

“Why are you lying on the stairs? With that man on top of you?”

Julia wrenched her head to the side. Heat flamed
up her neck and cheeks when she spotted not only her daughter, but Mrs. Schnell, a bewhiskered officer who had to be the surgeon, and a red-haired giant of a trooper, all staring in stupefaction at the couple entwined so intimately on the stairs.

M
ortified, Julia yanked her hands free of Andrew’s loosened hold.

“Get
off
me!”

The furious whisper wasn’t necessary. He was already disengaging. With an awkward maneuver of knee and sword, he levered upward. His face could have been carved from bedrock when he reached down to help her.

Swallowing the urge to bat away his hand, Julia crabbed up a step or two, yanked on her rucked-up skirts and scrambled to her feet unaided. Her eyes shot a fierce warning before she bent to pick up the tray and resume her descent. Her still-shattered nerves jumped with each thud of boots on the wooden treads behind her.

“I tripped coming down the stairs,” she told her wide-eyed daughter with scrupulous truthfulness, if not precise accuracy. “When Major Garrett came up to, ah, assist me, we became a bit tangled.”

The look Maria Schnell exchanged with her bearded husband told Julia the too facile explanation would require more detail later. At this point her only concern was addressing Suzanne’s astonishment and harnessing her own.

Andrew’s terse aside that he would speak to her later didn’t help matters. Nor did the silence that once again settled over the hallway after the front door rattled shut behind him.

“It was nothing,” Julia assured her bewildered daughter. “Just a silly accident.”

“But he was on
top
of you, mama.”

Another wave of heat seared her cheeks. “Yes, yes, I know.” Brushing past Suzanne, she held out her hand to the surgeon. “Your wife told me you tended me last night. I’m very grateful.”

“That’s why I’m here.” With a keen glance, he assessed her still shaky condition. “You should stay in bed for another day or so and regain your strength. Let Maria’s dumpling soup put a spot of color back in your cheeks.”

Her smile encompassed both the surgeon and his wife. “That’s very kind of you, but Suzanne and I must get back to the wagon train. We’re supposed to leave this morning and I’m afraid I may have delayed them.”

“If you mean the train that was camped up on the bluffs, it’s already left. They pulled out well before dawn.”

Julia fought a wave of panic. She hadn’t yet recov
ered from her confrontation with Andrew Garrett. She wasn’t prepared for another blow so soon, or one so devastating.

“Are you sure?” she asked, her voice thin with desperation.

“Quite sure. I saw they were gone when I rode up to the hospital to make my morning rounds.”

The weight of the Hottenfelders’ desertion settled like a hundred-pound sack of feed on Julia’s shoulders. They’d abandoned her and Suzanne. Left them hundreds of miles from their destination, with nothing more than the clothes on their backs!

In a more rational moment, Julia supposed she wouldn’t blame them. Everyone must pay their way, in life as well as on a march across the plains. She had simply run out of the resources to pay hers.

“No doubt they wanted to travel as far as possible before the heat grew too intense,” the surgeon explained gruffly.

She nodded, too numb to inform him that she’d grown quite familiar with the necessity of sparing the animals the heat of the day.

The red-haired private cleared his throat. “Beggin’ your pardon, soor.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Major Garrett brought something for the leddy when he come.”

Stepping aside, the trooper waved a beefy paw toward a small, humpbacked chest.

Dully, Julia stared down at the trunk. Bound with
leather straps, it contained everything she and Suzanne now owned. Two dresses for her daughter, one for herself. The sturdy boots, heavy striped cotton skirts and shirtwaists they’d worn on the trail. Extra sets of linen drawers, chemises, a silk wrapper. The Bonneaux family Bible. The letters Philip had dispatched to her from St. Louis, from Omaha, from someplace called Adler’s Gulch in Montana Territory.

Three letters. Only three, in almost two years.

Handsome, irresponsible Philip Bonneaux was no better at putting a pen to paper than he was at managing his financial affairs.

She had certainly chosen her husbands well, Julia thought on a wave of something perilously close to hysteria. The first had turned her silly head with his lies, the second had won her heart with his charm. And feckless charm, Julia had discovered to her chagrin, could prove every bit as heavy a burden as lies.

As if sensing how close her houseguest teetered on the brink of despair, Maria Schnell bustled forward and took charge. “Well, now that you have your trunk, what you both need is a hot bath and a fresh change of clothing.”

Julia grasped at the offer. Surely,
surely,
she could think more clearly once she washed the trail dust from her hair and from her mind.

“That would be wonderful.” Somehow, she managed a smile for her daughter. “What do you say,
ma petite?
Shall we see how many bubbles we can stir up?”

Dainty, fastidious Suzanne skipped eagerly down the hall.

As Andrew had anticipated, the news that Major Garrett’s wife—who wasn’t really his wife—spread through the post like a prairie fire fanned by the incessant winds.

Henry Schnell had issued strict orders to his spouse, his striker and his maid to hold their tongues. Both he and Andrew had recognized the futility of such an order, however. Gossip flowed faster than whiskey at these isolated outposts, where officers and troopers alike welcomed any diversion from the daily monotony of drill and fatigue duty.

No doubt Private Rafferty had told only his bunkmate, and then after swearing him to the strictest confidence. And the Schnell’s maid had probably whispered only a word or two to her cousin, a laundress married to a private in the 4th Infantry’s Company D. Either murmured confidence would have triggered a swift and inevitable reaction.

The cavalry troopers would have chewed the news over with their noon meal of beans and bacon. The laundresses would have telegraphed the delicious gossip with every slap of wet longjohns. From either of these sources, the rumors would have circled back to the officers and their wives with the speed and flash of summer lightning.

For that reason, Andrew wasn’t surprised when the trooper detailed as orderly of the day rushed up across
the parade ground just after the two o’clock call to boots and saddles.

“Colonel Cavanaugh’s compliments, sir. He’d like to speak with you.”

Returning the trooper’s salute, the major acknowledged the order. “Tell the colonel I’ll report to him shortly.”

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir. He said at once.”

“All right.”

With a word to the regiment’s sergeant major to continue the drill, Andrew crossed the parade ground to a white-painted, two-story wooden building. Long verandas fronted each level and gave the structure a graceful facade. The largest building at Fort Laramie, it served as both the administrative and social center of the post. The working and living quarters of the commander took up one wing. Unmarried officers occupied the other. In between were the officers’ mess, several storage rooms and a combination billiard and card room. The lively parties given by the building’s bachelor residents had long since earned the building the nickname of Old Bedlam.

Andrew found Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Cavanaugh in his office, hunched in the chair behind his desk. The much decorated veteran of the Cumberland Campaign peered at his subordinate through red-rimmed eyes.

“Well, G’rett, what have you to say for y’rself?”

The slurred words and carelessly buttoned uniform told Andrew that Cavanaugh was having another of
his bad days. Unfortunately, the bad far outnumbered the good in recent months.

“Concerning what matter, sir?”

“You know what matter. Who’s thz…?” Frowning, the colonel swiped his tongue along dry, cracked lips and began again. “Who is this woman I’m hearing rumors about?”

“I knew her as Julia Robichaud,” Andrew answered stiffly.

“Well? Is she your wife or isn’t she?”

“She was once.”

“And now?”

“Now she’s married to a man by the name of Philip Bonneaux.”

Cavanaugh leaned back in his chair. A sly smile lifted the ends of his gray mustache. He was enjoying this, Andrew knew.

Personally and professionally, the colonel and the major were poles apart. Cavanaugh shared the infantry’s traditional disdain for cavalry. In most cases the rivalry between foot sloggers and horse soldiers was a good-natured one, particularly at frontier outposts like Fort Laramie where mobility was as important as firepower.

In the colonel’s case, however, the laudanum he poured down his throat to dull the ache left by the minié ball he’d taken at Chancerilorsville clouded both his judgment and his abilities. He resented the fact that Congress had recently created four new cavalry regiments to guard the frontier, while severely
reducing the infantry. He resented even more the hostile Sioux and Cheyenne, whose demands for an end to the invasion of their lands had led to years of bloodshed on the plains. Like most of the men who served on the frontier, he’d taken as his personal credo the sentiment trumpeted by so many Eastern papers, that the only good red man was a dead one.

The old warhorse should have been invalided out years ago. Unfortunately, he had too many friends in Washington to go quietly into retirement, and too much pride to accept the fact that the rest of the post increasingly turned to Major Garrett as de facto commander. Andrew had borne the colonel’s rancor for months. Only he knew that opium and frustration were fast turning rancor to hate.

“If you have no further questions, sir, I’ll—”

A rap on the door cut off his retreat. At the colonel’s growl, the orderly of the day presented himself.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir.”

“Well, what is it?”

The corporal’s glance darted from the commander to the major and back again. “Mrs. Bonneaux is here and wishes to speak with you.”

A gleam of malicious delight shone through the haze in Cavanaugh’s eyes. Andrew cursed under his breath.

“Show her in, Gottlieb.”

“Yes, sir.”

The corporal clicked his boot heels. With the precision of one who’d served five years in the Prussian
army before emigrating to America, he did an about face.

“Right this way, ma’am.”

Andrew braced himself, but the Julia who swept in on a rustle of silk skirts a moment later took him as much by surprise as she did Cavanaugh. She wore the same dress she had last night, the same shining coronet of braids. But her walk held a confident sway and her smile dazzled lieutenant colonel, major and corporal alike.

“Thank you,” she told the gaping Gottlieb.

He recovered, clicked his heels once more and closed the door behind her. She glided forward, her stride checking for a moment when she spotted Andrew. Spots of color rose in her cheeks, but she looked pointedly away from him and nodded to the commander.

“It’s kind of you to see me, sir. I know how busy you must be.”

The malicious gleam in Cavanaugh’s eyes deepened. “Your timing is quite perfect, ma’am. We were discussing you.”

“Were you?”

Her little trill of laughter floated on the air. For a moment she sounded so much like the Belle of New Orleans that Andrew’s gut knotted.

“How very fortunate that I came when I did, then. May I sit down?”

“Of course.”

With a rustle of her skirts, she took the chair in
front of the desk. “I don’t know what Major Garrett may have told you about me,” she began.

“Nothing very much. I hope you will satisfy my curiosity.”

Her color deepened, but she calmly removed her gloves and smoothed them in her lap before answering.

“There’s really very little to tell. As you may have been informed, the major and I went through a marriage ceremony that was later declared invalid. I married another man soon afterward.”

Andrew had to admire her poise. She recited the facts without a trace of emotion, as if the passion that had led them both into a disastrous union had never engulfed her.

“My daughter and I were on our way to join my husband—”

“Your present husband?” Cavanaugh inquired with a lift of his brows.

Her lips thinned at his baiting, but she continued in an unruffled manner.

“We were on our way to join my husband in Montana Territory when I fainted. I’m quite recovered now, and ready to continue my journey. Unfortunately, the company we were traveling with has already left the post.”

“So I understand. They can’t have gone more than ten or twelve miles.”

“Yes, I know.”

She smoothed her gloves again. Folding his arms,
Andrew waited to see how she’d explain to the colonel that the company had intentionally left her and her daughter behind, and that they wouldn’t welcome her back. The wagon master’s wife had made that abundantly clear last night.

Neatly, Julia avoided the awkward explanation. “Mrs. Schnell has very generously offered to let me stay with her for a few days. She also informs me a telegraph line was just completed to Virginia City. I thought, perhaps, you might be so kind as to send a telegraph to my husband.”

“Certainly, ma’am.”

Andrew entered the conversation for the first time. “The telegraph lines are down between Fort Reno and Fort Smith. They were cut yesterday.”

Two faces swung around to his, one dismayed, one outraged.

“Why wasn’t I informed?” Cavanaugh demanded.

“The report is on your desk.”

The wooden reply raised a flush on the older man’s face. “Is that why you came knocking on the door to my quarters earlier?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You should have told me the contents of the report, major!”

Andrew refrained from pointing out that he
had
told him. Twice. With the onset of one of his swift rages, Cavanaugh’s fist hit the desktop.

“It’s that demmed Red Cloud. The savage massacres eighty of our men only six months ago, cuts our
telegraph lines and harasses the railroad crews, and what do those pantywaists in Washington do? They pander to the heathen by trying to make peace with him!”

His vehemence startled Julia, who threw a quick glance at Andrew. He kept silent, unable to explain without enraging Cavanaugh further the complex, protracted negotiations to carve Sioux and Cheyenne reservations out of the vast territory that stretched from the Black Hills in the east to the Bighorn Mountains in the west. One of the old school, Andrew’s superior considered negotiation and appeasement just one step above cowardice.