Columbine (15 page)

I’ve never known another man. She had been willing, but he had led her. She’d been so deliciously tight around him, and now he realized why. Her eyes burned into him uncertain and vulnerable, waiting for him to explain. Oh, God, what had he done?

He heard the voices in the kitchen below, his name called again. Soon they would come upstairs to find him. Hastily he tied the drawstring of his breeches.

He longed to kiss her again, but there was no time.

“Dianna, I promise we will talk,” he said hurriedly, “I swear to it, sweeting, but now I must go.”

Stunned, Dianna watched the door slam shut. She had given him her heart and her innocence, and he had sworn to talk. To talk She pressed her palm across her mouth to hold back the tears. Oh, God, what had she done?

With old memories pressing on him like granite, Kit stared down at the man stretched out on the broad trestle table and wondered if he would live. Scalping didn’t automatically mean death; it was usually exposure or the fever that came with the wound that killed. This man had been found soon after the attack, and he was young, and strong enough that he might survive. Kit prayed he would, if only for the sake of all the families in Wickhamton and the surrounding farms.

If this was to be the end of the peace the valley had enjoyed for nearly nine years, then Kit, as militia captain, needed to know what tribe had attacked the man, how many braves had been involved. There was always the chance that this had been personal, reparation for some dishonor or crime that the man had committed. Kit sighed, knowing he couldn’t risk doing nothing. Already he’d sent riders to the farthest settlers to bring the families to the safety of Plumstead, and he himself would lead the first patrol within the hour.

Kit watched while Hester cleaned and dressed the man’s wound. He was a stranger, likely French, and a trapper from his clothes. Odd that the Indians hadn’t bothered to strip him. His moccasins were almost new, and the glinting saint’s medallion he wore on a thong about his neck should have been a great prize. Perhaps the Davies brothers had inadvertently frightened off the attackers when they found the man near their cornfield.

“There’s all I can do for him now, Kit,” said Hester grimly as she lifted the pail of dark-stained water from the table.

“Put him in the’ little chamber off the’ kitchen an’ I’ll watch him best I can.”

Kit nodded to John and Samuel Davies, and together they began to gingerly lift the man from the table. But as they did, he groaned and his eyes fluttered open.

“Mon Dieu, qui est vous? Je n’ai pas d’ argent’t” “French,” said Samuel with disgust.

“Wouldn’t ye know we’d save a bloody Papist.”

Kit silenced him with a frown.

“You’re among Englishmen, my friend,” he said carefully to the wounded man.

“We wish to help you. Can you tell us who hurt you?”

But the man only stared up at him, his expression confused.

“Je ne comprends pas. Anglais ? Anglais.t Mere de Dieu, preservez moi.t” “We won’t hurt you,” began Kit again, but the man’s eyes were becoming more and more panicked, and Kit feared he would injure himself further.

“Pray, be calm.”

“Non, non, vous tes Anglais—” “Se tai’re said Dianna as she entered the room and gently took the man’s hand, She leaned over him so he could see her clearly.

“Vous tes entre des amis. “Oui?” the man whispered desperately.

“Des amis, mademoiselle ?”

Dianna nodded.

“Oui, nous sommes amis. Main-tenant, reposez vous.” She was relieved when he closed his eyes again and his breathing became regular with either sleep or unconsciousness. She wondered what had happened to him and why he feared them so. As his face relaxed, she could see how young he was, perhaps only nineteen or twenty. His frame still had the rawboned look of adolescence, and his beard and moustache were pathetically sparse.

“Ask him who he be,” demanded Samuel impatiently.

“Ask him—” “Nay, Samuel, ye let him be for now,” said Hester sharply.

“Best to put him t’bed, else he’ll never answer yer questions in this life.”

As the unconscious Frenchman was slowly lifted from the table, Kit at last caught Dianna’s eye. Her hair was once again neatly braided, the flowers gone, and he winced inwardly when he noticed how she’d folded her shift into the top of her bodice so the torn edges wouldn’t show.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

“I did not know you spoke French.”

Her chin shot up bravely, her eyes flashing.

“There are many things you don’t know about me, Master Sparhawk,” she answered.

“Now if you’re done, I promised Asa that Mercy and I would be home before nightfall.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” Fear for her made his tone sharp.

“You will stay here.”

“You are not my mastexI” How dare he treat her so coldly after what had just passed between them?

“You will stay, Dianna,” he said curtly as he pulled on the hunting shirt that Hester handed him, and took his rifle from the pegs on the wall.

“You’re the only one who speaks this man’s language, and you must be here when he wakes.”

“But I—” “That’s an end to it,” he growled. Already men were gathering outside the barn, talking excitedly among themselves as they checked their muskets and rifles, and the first wagon full of frightened women and crying children had drawn into the yard. He slung his powder horn over his shoulder and left to join the others.

His manner cut Dianna to the quick. You’re a silly, trusting fool, Dianna Grey, she told herself miserably, to dream of love with a man who never cared’t “You’d do better to send Kit off with a smile, lass,” said Hester so pointedly that Dianna blushed, wondering how much the older woman had guessed.

“Else we may all end like that poor lad in there.”

Dianna’s expression was so confused that Hester rolled her eyes and clucked her tongue.

“Where be your wits, girl? D’ye think that Frenchman cut himself shaving?

“Twas Indians, Dianna, Indians that took his scalp, and they’ll take yours as well if they catch ye out a-walkin’. A head o’hair like yours would look mighty pleasing danglin’ from some brave’s waist.”

Dianna’s gaze flew past Hester to the departing men, and in vain she searched for Kit’s gold-streaked haft among them. If what Hester said were true, she might never see him alive again.

“Ah, but I disremember, you’re fresh from London,” said Hester more sympathetically, misreading Dianna’s concern.

“We’ll be safe enough here at Plumstead. Built stouter than most forts, this house.

An’ Kit an’ the rest of’ them will come to no harm,

neither. Indians be too clever t’attack a force of’ armed men. It be the families livin’ all alone that the’ sneaking savages prey on. That’s why we’ll be havin’ a houseful until Kit sorts this out.”

At that moment a woman Dianna recognized from meeting appeared at the door, one child in her arms and four more following, each with hastily packed bundles of belongings. The youngest girl was weeping, and automatically Dianna went to comfort her.

From then until long past nightfall, she was constantly busy, from peeling carrots for Hester to melting lead for musket balls over the fireplace coals to rescuing a kitten from an over-ardent child. There were thirty-four people at supper, and while the men took turns standing guard from the upper-floor windows, the women and children had to be settled in the five chambers upstairs, the lucky ones in the beds, but most roBBed in blankets on the floor. It was a tense, somber gathering, with no one certain what the darkness would bring.

As Dianna scrubbed out the last kettle with a handful of sand, her whole body felt on edge from listening and waiting and trying to be cheerful. She watched Hester go for one more bucket of water, a man coveting her with his musket from the doorway as she walked to the well and back.

“We’ve one more task this night, lass,” said Hester wearily as she leaned away from the full bucket in her tight hand.

“Ye must watch me wit’ the Frenchman now an’ learn, an’ then the’ care of him falls to ye.”

The small room where the Frenchman lay was stifling.

One wall backed on the kitchen chimney, and the two narrow windows were shut against the harm of the night air. As Hester lit the lantern over the bed and began to unwrap the bandages on the man’s head, Dianna gasped with horror. The top of his head was completely gone, his bare skull white where his hair and scalp had been. At the sight, Dianna felt the room begin to spin around her and the blood pound in her ears.

“Don’t faint on me now, lass,” warned Hester as she quickly reached out to steady Dianna.

“I can’t take on two of’ ye at once.”

At the sound of her voice, the Frenchman stirred.

“Solange, c’ est to?”

Hester nodded at Dianna.

“There now, speak to the lad,” she prompted.

“He needs t’bear his own tongue.”

Dianna hesitated, unsure of how to reply, and the Frenchman struggled weakly to rise from the narrow bed.

“Solange? Ou est to?”

“Soyez calme, s’il vous pla,” murmured Dianna, gently pushing him back, and to her surprise he grasped her wrist with unexpected strength.

“I am here.” “That’s good, lass, hold him steady while I finish.”

Deftly Hester rinsed the wound and began to He fresh linen strips around his head.

“Mind me, now, for you’ll do the same come morning. Call me if the wound turns putrid or a fever takes him.” She finished at last and looked at Dianna curiously.

“What’s he been saying, anyways?”

“He thinks I’m a woman named Solange,” said Dianna softly.

“I thought it best to agree.”

“Aye, let him be at ease. We’ll not get much sense out of’ him for a day or two at least. Mayhap never, if his wits went with his hair.” Hester gathered up the soiled bandages and the bucket.

“Ye stay with him tonight in case he wakes. Ye shall find more comfort in that chair than some of them upstairs. I’ll be in the kitchen if ye need me.”

Dianna nodded and looked down at the slow rise and fall of the man’s narrow chest beneath his coarse shirt. He had once again fallen asleep, and gently she eased her hand free from his, wondering if she would ever learn who Solange was.

With a sigh, Dianna tried to make herself comfortable, curling her legs up in the rush-bottom chair and resting her head across her folded arms. From the kitchen, she could hear Hester chatting softly with the men on watch, and beyond that, outdoors, the whirring of cicadas in the trees. She was too exhausted to stay awake long. Although she wished it were otherwise, her last thoughts before sleep claimed her were of Kit and how sweet it had been to lie in his arms on an afternoon in June.

It wanted still two hours until dawn and Kit hated to wake Dianna. The single candle’s light from the tin lantern washed her figure in shadowy gold as she slept, her face pillowed in her crossed arms, her lips slightly parted. It seemed the one peaceful moment in Kit’s world right now, a world gone horribly awry.

He longed to find solace in her arms and in her embrace, forget the memories of old tragedies and the fresh, raw images of what he and the others had found beyond Plumstead. But he had no right to her comfort, not after the way he had treated her this afternoon. No, it had been yesterday, he reminded himself wearily. Only yesterday. It might have been a lifetime, given the way he felt now.

The Davies brothers had been lucky. Their house and barn had been burned to charred, smoking timbers, but their horses and cattle at pasture left unharmed.

If the brothers had not brought the Frenchman to Plumstead, they would likely have met the same fate as their neighbors, the Barnards.

John Barnard and his three sons had been shot dead in their cornfield, their attackers boldly using the tall, new corn for cover. From the moccasin footprints between the rows, Kit doubted the Barnards had seen the Indians until it was too late. Their house, too, had been burned, and there was no sign of Dorothy Barnard or the two daughters. Women made useful captives, for ransom or to sell as servants to the French, and, grimly, Kit knew it unlikely that he’d ever see them again.

Kit and the others had pushed on to the rest of the surrounding homesteads, continuing to travel long after nightfall. They had found no more destruction, but Kit had warned the other settlers and urged them to come to Plumstead for safety. That most stubbornly refused did not surprise him. Many years had passed since the country surrounding Wickhamton had been attacked, and despite the attack on Deerfield to the north in February, newcomers in particular naively scoffed at the danger. But then few carried with them the memory that had haunted Kit every hour, every day, since the year of his twenty-second birthday.

It had been early autumn, still warm in the afternoons, though the leaves had begun to change and the first, weak frosts marked the ground at dawn.

Kit’s mother, Amity, had spent the night with a friend in Wickhamton, easing her through a difficult birth; with six children of her own surviving infancy, Amity’s comfort was much in demand. It was Kit’s task to bring his mother home, but at the last moment, for a reason he never could remember, his father had gone instead and taken his youngest daughter, Tamsin, with him. When they did not return by supper, Kit had ridden out to meet them, certain his mother had, as usual, dawdled to gossip with friends and that his father would welcome his elder son’s company.

Instead what Kit had found were the slaughtered bodies of his parents and sister scattered across the Wickhamton road like mangled dolls.

If he’d only gone instead of his father… If he’d left to meet them even a quarter-hour earlier

No one held him to blame except himself. If Kit had been there, too, his friends had argued, then he would have perished as well. Even the minister had told him he’d been spared by God’s infinite mercy.

But Kit did not believe them then, and he did not believe them now. Some part of him had died that afternoon along with his parents and sister. Methodically he had tracked the four Mohegans responsible for the killing, and as he watched them hanged, he had realized the empty satisfaction of his revenge.