The Reluctant Debutante (27 page)

Ginger laughed as her tears began to fall, and she hugged her mother. “Thank you, Mother. Wait until you see my gown. Joseph’s mother is letting me use her wedding dress! It’s white deerskin with beautiful beading on the front, and the most glorious long fringe everywhere! And I have a new pair of moccasins Joseph made for me. I have so much to go over with you about the ceremony. Let’s leave Papa to his pipe and go somewhere where we can talk.”

“Oh dear,” Charlotte replied as she was hustled from the room. “My daughter’s wedding dress is made from deerskin instead of taffeta and lace. Can you at least pin a piece of lace on your head, in deference to your own culture?”

“We’ll see, Mother, we’ll see.”

George grinned to himself as he filled his pipe with tobacco. He had seen no need to jump into the conversation at all. Ginger had handled Charlotte with great aplomb. He wondered if Eleanor Gray had been listening to their conversation with a water glass held up to the wall between the two rooms. He grinned again. Convention be hanged. His Ginger was getting married!

Basil and Joseph watched the wedding guests assemble in the modest front room of Emile Lafontaine’s ranch house. It was a small gathering made up of Joseph’s parents, three brothers and a sister, Ginger’s father, Eleanor Gray, and a handful of friends and family acquaintances. They were awaiting the arrival of Ginger and her mother so the wedding ceremony could commence.

Joseph wore a new shirt made from a deer hide, which had been carefully cured and felt as silky-smooth as butter against his skin. It was heavily fringed and beaded with bright turquoise and red beads creating a mosaic of a bird in flight. It stretched tautly over Joseph’s wide shoulders and chest, and was extremely festive in appearance. His leggings were buckskin, too, as were his calf-high moccasins. His long, straight black hair was tied in a queue at the nape of his neck. He looked polished and strong.

Basil looked his friend over from head to toe. “Any nerves, Joseph?”

“None.”

“So you are willing to tie yourself down with one woman?”

“When the woman is Ginger, yes, I am.”

“How can you be so positive she is the right woman for you? What about your fine speech a few months back when you said you’d have nothing to do with a woman who wanted to make her own way?”

“We have both been guilty of saying stupid things in the past. As I recall the conversation, we were talking about women who wanted no men in their lives. Ginger cannot be included as one of those women, because she is in full agreement that we belong together.”

Basil smiled. “I guess you’re going to have to build a house now, for the two of you. Will you need a loan from the bank for it?”

“You mean, your bank is again willing to do business with the Lafontaines?”

Basil slapped his old friend on the shoulder. “Hey, the Lafontaines are now family! I’ve missed you, these last months.”

“It was a bad time. I am sorry it took a disaster to bring us back together, but so be it. I am about to marry the only woman I ever could see a future with, so regardless of the circumstances, I am pleased with the outcome.”

“You will take good care of her, won’t you? She may be headstrong, but she is unschooled in the ways of the West.”

Joseph fixed Basil in a hard stare. “You will never need to worry about Ginger. I will protect her with my life, if need be, from any harm, as will my father and brothers. She has charmed them all by now, you know. I think Gaston is considering coming east to New York to look for his bride soon.”

Basil groaned in response. “Just make certain he doesn’t come for next year’s season. Jasmine and Heather are going to be on the loose next spring, trying to find husbands, and I wash my hands of any responsibility for the two of them. If he values his sanity, he won’t come anywhere near New York City.”

At that moment, the door opened and Charlotte entered the room, with a hankie already held to her eyes. She had donned a day dress of light green silk with five wide bands of dark-green ribbon layered in graduated steps around the hem. The top of her dress had the same green ribbon set side by side in vertical bands forming a V, and it accentuated the smallness of her waistline, even after giving birth so many times. The sleeves were narrow, constructed of the finest lace over the green silk and cut to encircle her wrists. She had pinned a heavy emerald brooch at the neckline and completed her ensemble by placing a lace bonnet on her head. Its long emerald-green ribbons dangled on either side of her face. To commemorate the occasion and the joining of the two cultures, she had affixed both flowers and a feather on the top of the bonnet.

She walked up to Joseph and patted his heavily embellished deerskin shirt. “You are being given one of my most precious children today, and all I ask is that you look after her well-being as much as her father and I have during her first nineteen years.”

Joseph took Charlotte’s hand and kissed it. “She will be safe, and treasured, with me.”

Charlotte’s tears came harder. “Actually, I know we are not giving her to you today. Ginger’s heart has been yours since the first night you two danced together, at my suggestion. So I guess I’m responsible for this pairing. Well, me along with your gods who gave you the vision dream those many years ago. It just took me some time to know and accept it.”

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed Joseph’s cheek. “Welcome to our family.”

“
Merci, migwetch
, and thank you, Mrs. Fitzpatrick. And welcome to mine.”

Charlotte took her seat beside Basil, and continued to cry as Ginger made her appearance in the doorway, holding her father’s good arm. The dress of deerskin fit close to her body, clinging to her supple curves. The bodice with its modest scooped neckline was embellished with beads of every color. Feathers were attached at the sleeves, which stopped at her elbows. The heavy fringe at the bottom of the dress swayed when she walked. Unencumbered by layers of petticoats, her step was lively and her feet, encased in moccasins, made no sound as she entered the hushed room. Adorning her ginger-colored locks was a handkerchief of the finest lace. She kissed her father’s cheek before they began their walk down the short aisle between the chairs.

She gazed at Joseph, who stood at the end of the modest room with his brother Gaston and the justice of the peace. When his eyes locked on hers, it was as if they were the only two people in the room. She tried to slow her pace to keep in time with her father’s step, but she practically ran the last few steps, eliciting chuckles from the gathered audience.

She went through the ceremony as if in a dream. Her only real memory of the short service was Joseph’s hand firmly holding her own as she answered questions from the justice and repeated her vows to Joseph, while Raoul beat a steady rhythm on a ceremonial tribal drum. When asked if she took this man to be her husband, she declared, “Most definitely, I do!” Then, she kissed him exuberantly and opened her eyes to see his inviting chocolate eyes blaze with desire at her touch. She couldn’t wait for their wedding night to begin!

The wedding dinner was an odd mix of traditional Ojibwa and French food, including corn bread and rice, along with a sage-stuffed fried bread, a roasted turkey with an orange-and-maple-syrup glaze, making the skin crispy and savory, glazed beets, and winter squash. Instead of a traditional wedding cake, crepes filled with sweet whipped cream and drizzled with maple syrup were served. Sparkling wine was poured and glasses were held high, as each father toasted the newlyweds, followed by Basil’s and Gaston’s tributes.

Joseph and Ginger finally exited the house, amid cheers and laughter. Midnight was tied up and waiting at the porch railing. Joseph’s brothers had decked out the horse with colorful ribbons woven into the mane and tail to commemorate the wedding. Joseph untied the horse, picked up his bride, and vaulted onto the horse’s bare back. Then he turned Midnight toward the woods surrounding the ranch house, and rode toward a small hunting cabin his mother had decorated for the wedding night.

• • •

As the horse trotted away from the house, Ginger settled into Joseph’s arms. Her stomach twitched in anticipation of their upcoming evening. She sighed contentedly and burrowed herself against his strong, broad chest as she rode sidesaddle in front of him. She had been to the ranch in the previous days, but only to meet his parents and family, and to see the immediate grounds of the impressive spread. She spent time in the pens where the horses were kept, petting them and anointing each with a name.

She had already met the brothers, who had helped in the rescue. Gaston was quiet, Raoul was brooding. But Etienne, who had raced with her across the bridge shortly before its collapse, had been a constant companion during the past several days. Ginger was the first cultured woman he had met, and he was constantly showing off his strength and power. Joseph’s sister, Elise, was a precious child and everyone’s favorite. Mary Tall Feather was soft-spoken and knowledgeable, and his father was an entertaining man who had many of the same traits as her father. She knew Emile and Mary would become her fast friends.

Ginger and Joseph were headed to a part of the ranch she had not seen before, and her eyes widened as she began to realize the entire scope of the Lafontaine family business. She observed field after field being cultivated with food for the many horses they kept, as well as produce for the large family to consume.

“How many acres does your father own?”

“Several hundred now, but we have plans to add more next year. We are talking to the farmer whose property adjoins ours about buying his land, which would enable us to have more crops for our horses. With St. Louis expanding as it is, fairly soon our land will be at the town’s doorstep.”

“Making it even more valuable.” Ginger’s analytical mind began to whirl with possibilities.

“You are not to have any ideas tonight about how to help the family business. Tonight, you are to think only of how to please your husband.” As Ginger turned her head, he captured her full lips in a gentle kiss.

“I have been thinking of little else for the past five months, Joseph. I may not know everything about lovemaking yet, but I know there is more to it than what we experienced in the cabin months ago. Where are we headed?”

“We are going to our hunter’s cabin in the middle of the woods. My family uses it every fall, when we need to lay in a store of meat for winter.”

“We were in a hunter’s cabin the night of the horserace, too!”

“Which is why I chose it. I want to finish what we started, without the intrusion of Basil this time.”

A shiver of excitement ran down her spine as she thought back to the night five months earlier, when Joseph had declared his love for her — only to be wrenched from her grasp immediately afterwards.

She smiled up at him. “I can’t wait.
Gizahgin
, Joseph.” She kissed him passionately.

“
Gizahgin, ma petite
. My heart, my
odayin
, is yours and has been since the night of the Cotillion. The minute I touched you as we walked to the dance floor, I knew my life would never be the same.”

“You certainly hid your feelings well!” she teased him.

“Not well enough. I could not keep from thinking about you, and wanting you.”

She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. “I want you, too. In every way possible. Are we almost there?”

“It is a bit of a ways into the woods. My mother and Elise were there earlier, getting the cabin ready for us.”

Ginger’s body hummed in anticipation of the upcoming evening. “Your mother told me about how she and your father got together. Your grandfather sounds like a very wise man. It takes a man with great vision to have known thirty years ago that the Indian ways were changing. But doesn’t your grandfather still live in an Ojibwa camp?”

“Yes, but he is on a reservation and cannot stray from the designated ‘Indian’ area. If my mother had taken another Indian as a partner and had children, we would all be confined to the reservation and would not be free to walk the streets of town or earn a living. It is not like the old days. Grandfather was right, as he is about many things. I will have to tell him I now understand the dream I had many years ago.”

“What dream?”

“My dream of lilacs. When I was still a young man, I asked him to interpret the dream for me, and he said it was not time for me to know the answer. But you are the answer, I now know. Ever since I first took your hand to lead you to the dance floor and smelled your lilac scent, I knew meeting you was what the dream was about. And today, our wedding, is the culmination of the dream.”

Ginger thought her love for Joseph could not grow any more, but she was wrong. Her heart expanded in her chest as he revealed this part of his past to her.
Let no one say again we were not meant to meet each other.
She was stunned to realize Joseph had dreamed of her years before their actual first encounter. It was as if some force beyond their control had moved them into position so they could find each other.

She turned her face up for another kiss before she snuggled even deeper against his chest. “Isn’t your brother, Raoul, living most of the year on the reservation? Why would he turn his back on his white roots? Why would your grandfather allow it, if he knows the Indian way is dying out?”

“Raoul is a very angry young man. He hates it when white people taunt him about his Indian blood, when he is so proud of it. He asked my mother why it was only the Indian blood people found so offensive — he considers his white blood tainted. My father and Raoul had a bitter battle, and Raoul packed up and went to Grandfather’s. I imagine he will return to Canada shortly. If anyone can survive being a traditional Indian, it will be Raoul.”

“I hope someday Raoul finds what he’s searching for. But as for us, any sign of the cabin yet?”

Joseph laughed and urged the horse into a canter.

By the time they got to the little cabin, both Joseph and Ginger were in a high state of arousal. Joseph quickly took care of Midnight. His mother and sister had lit and banked a fire earlier to remove the chill from the air. Joseph added wood and the small blaze soon began to crackle as it filled the air with warmth. He wrapped his arms around Ginger and pulled her into an embrace.