Gypsy Lady (43 page)

A
militant gleam springing into her violet eyes she muttered to herself,
"If he thinks I'm leaving
my
son,
he's in for a decidedly nasty shock!" Throwing up her head much in the
manner of a wild, spirited filly, she placed her hands on her slim hips and
arms akimbo defied him.

"I
let you bully me once into a compromising situation, but I'm
damned"
—she smiled to herself at his look of surprise when
the curse fell so easily from her lips and deliberately, almost enjoying it,
repeated it—"I'm damned, if I'll let you do it again! I'm not leaving here
with you, today or ever!"

His
unexpected shout of disbelieving laughter annoyed her intensely, and frowning
fiercely at his amusement, she gritted, "I mean it, Jason! I'm not
leaving!"

The
laughter died from his eyes instantly, and very softly he threatened,
"You'll come with me all right! It's
either that or I
stay and
face St. Clair. Will you enjoy seeing your lover shot
down?" he taunted. "Because I'll do it, I promise you. I've been
promising myself that pleasure ever since I saw him with you in New Orleans. The
only thing that's stopping me is his infant son! So don't tell
me
what you're going to do!"

The
words fell like deadly drops of poison into a pool of silence, and the fight
drained out of Catherine. Faced with this cold-eyed stranger, Adam would pick
up the thrown gauntlet with alacrity. She couldn't allow that to happen. How
could she bear it if either her husband or her brother were
killed.
But how could she leave her son? No, she thought stubbornly, she wouldn't! She
would have to tell Jason the truth—if it came to that.

Impatient
with her silence, Jason grated, "Well?"

Meekly,
hating herself for the meekness, she said in a low voice, "I'll pack."

At
the moment that seemed the easiest way out. In the mood he was in, any
explanation she offered would be angrily repudiated, and she could visualize
his look of incredulity if she told him Adam was merely her brother!

She
started to walk past him, but he grasped her arm and smiling tightly, drawled
nastily, "You don't mind if I watch—you have a disconcerting habit of
disappearing."

She
shrugged, and together they entered the house.

James,
his brown eyes straying constantly to the lean hand that gripped his mistress's
arm, listened impassively as in a low voice she ordered him to have one of the
servants pack a trunk for her and Nicholas. At the last command Jason threw her
an icy stare.

Waiting
only long enough for James to begin his way up the staircase, he growled,
"Nicholas?"

Appearing
much more calm than she felt, she said quietly, "Yes, Nicholas—my
son." Steadily her eyes fought with his. "I'm not leaving him, Jason.
You can threaten St. Clair, you can break every bone in my body, but I will
not
leave
my son!"

There
was no fear in the eyes that gazed into his, only grim determination, and
finally with a harsh laugh, he barked, "Take the brat then—but don't
expect him to keep you from your wifely duties!"

Flushing
at the implication, she twisted away and ran up the stairs. Jason followed
immediately behind her and watched every movement she made. An hour later she
was seated in Adam's coach with Nicholas on the seat beside her and Jeanne, her
eyes wide with fright, across from her.

After
a quick look inside, Jason slammed the door and mounted his own horse. As the
coach pulled away from

Belle Vista, a soft, gusty
sigh of relief left her. She had her son safe beside her, and surprisingly,
considering the circumstances, Jason had allowed her to write a brief note- to
Adam. Granted, he had read it before tossing it carelessly down on the table,
but she had been thankful that Adam would not return home and hear just from
the troubled servants of Jason's arrival and her subsequent departure.

Her note had said only that
her husband had come and was taking her and Nicholas away. Fervently Catherine
hoped that Adam would accept her letter at face value and would take no sudden
action—at least that he would do nothing until she had had time to acquaint Jason
with the true facts. She had enough to cope with without Adam's volatile
presence complicating matters.

The sun was hot, and
looking resentfully at Jason, his dark head covered by a crisp white linen hat,
Catherine wondered how he could appear so cool and vital. She felt like a limp
rag. Brushing back a heavy lock of hair, she grimaced at the feel of the
perspiration on her temple. Her dress clung wetly to the middle of her back,
and for the hundredth time she wondered where he was taking them.

It
was five days since they had boarded the flatboat at Natchez and begun the trip
down the Mississippi River. She had assumed their destination was New Orleans,
but on the morning of the second day they had disembarked at one of the
landings along the river and had continued towards their unknown destination by
horse and wagon —Jason by horse and the women and child by wagon.

Loaded
wagons, men, and horses had been waiting for Jason's arrival. Definitely
uneasy, Catherine had eyed the boxes of provisions that filled four of the
wagons. A fifth wagon apparently was used as a cookhouse, and looking at the
glum-faced individual who was in charge, she hoped the food would not be an
extension of his personality.

She
had been inordinately relieved to discover that a sixth wagon, a covered wagon,
had been set aside for her use. It offered privacy from the curious stares of
the men and a certain amount of respite from the blistering sun, but it also
became very stuffy and close by late afternoon, a disagreeable facet—and Nicholas
often let everyone know how very disagreeable he found it.

She
and Jeanne were the only women except for a small, dusky-skinned young girl who
Jason had thrust at her, saying curtly, "If I'd known I was to be saddled
with a nursery I would have brought you more servants, but as I didn't, madame,
between Jeanne and Sally here, you'll have to manage!"

That
Jason had planned for this trek well and that
these hard-eyed
men, mostly bearded, worked for him was
apparent from the start. And
that he knew them more than just casually was also obvious from the scraps of
conversation Catherine overheard when at night the men gathered around the
chuck wagon. There were several blacks included in the group, but they
appeared to prefer their own company and always formed a smaller group a short
distance away. Whether they were slaves or free men she was uncertain, and when
she had idly questioned Jason on one of the few occasions he stopped to speak
with her, he had snapped, "Does it matter?"

Bewildered
at the hostility in his voice, she shook her head and was thankful when after a
cool, faintly contemptuous glance, he had urged his big bay gelding away from
the wagon and had ridden ahead to converse with a wizened little man who went
by the misnomer of Goliath.

One
evening when Jason appeared to be in a more approachable mood, she braved
herself to ask about Indians. They were obviously traveling deeper into uncivilized
places, and Catherine, her head filled with grisly tales of what the savages
were capable of doing, was worried that her life might end by the blow of a
tomahawk.

Jason
had laughed at her worry. "Listen, little kitten, the Natchez were the
most powerful tribe in the area, but after they nearly destroyed the old town
of Natchez, the Spanish, with the help of the Natchitoches broke their power
forever. And over the years the Natchitoches have been decimated by disease and
what have you. We never had anything approaching the Iroquois coalition in this
region. That doesn't mean that in the early days there wasn't bitter, bloody
fighting with the settlers, but only that our Indian problem never reached the
magnitude of, say, the settlers in the eastern part of the United States."

"Aren't
there any Indians left?" she asked wide-eyed.

Smiling
indulgently, he replied, "Of course there are. But now our Indians seldom
attack. There are occasional outbreaks of violence, but it's usually a handful
of braves who get liquored up and go on a rampage. They certainly wouldn't
attack us. We are too many and too excellently armed—and I do post guards, just
in case."

Catherine
hadn't been entirely satisfied with Jason's answer, but took heart from the
sight of the rifles and pistols that every man carried. Gradually, she came to
recognize the men and was able to place names with faces. She knew, of course,
that the gold-toothed, bald- headed Negro who drove her wagon was named Sam and
that the cook was called Henry, and that the only Indian in the party, a tall,
strikingly handsome Cherokee who rode his horse as if he had grown out of the
saddle, had the chilling name of Blood Drinker. It had been Blood Drinker who
had prompted Catherine's earlier fear of Indians. She had caught his steady
black-eyed stare on her more than once and was positive he had designs on her
long hair.

The
rest of the men remained strangers, and aware of the watchful eye Jason kept on
her, they would continue to remain so. The distance between the master's wife
and the rough-mannered men he employed was wide and deep, almost feudal. Even
Jeanne, in her capacity as Catherine's maid, was safe from their advances
merely because she was madame's personal servant.

Ordinarily,
a well-born Southern lady did not consort with the men her husband hired to
work on his lands. In the normal course of events Catherine, and Jeanne for
that matter, would probably never have met these individuals, much less spoken
to them. The men had their place and the women of the master's household
another.

There
was one thing that puzzled her. Adam, except for a few trained white men, ran
his plantation entirely with black slave labor. Judging from the mixed group
that looked to Jason for command, it seemed he employed an equal amount of
White men. But there was more than just idle conjecture about the men that
puzzled Catherine. There was Jason himself—and where was he taking her.

It
was a peculiar thing, though, that with her son safely asleep in the swaying
wagon behind her and her tall, if distant, husband riding not too far ahead,
Catherine felt a queer contentment even though their destination was as yet
unknown to her. Eagerly she scanned the passing countryside, her eyes wide and
fascinated, as every day revealed a new and totally different landscape.

They
were moving slowly in a northwesterly direction, and as they left the swampy
lowlands created by the huge flood plain of the Mississippi River, the ground
began a slight, gradual rise; there were fewer and fewer signs of the murky,
nearly opaque, almost motionless bayous that crisscrossed the area. And as the
ground began its infinitesimal slope to the north, so did the vegetation
change.

Gone
were
the gray, moss-hung cypress trees, their gnarled roots
like great knobby knees rising out of the brackish water of the bayous, gone
were the swamp oaks with their wide-spreading branches. Gone too were the
stands of the tall, stiff, razor-bladed palmettos. In their places now stood
mile upon mile of long-needled pine trees and gray-barked beech and shady ash
trees, virgin stands of timber as yet untouched by the hand of the white man.

In
spite of its terrifying beauty, Catherine had been happy to leave the swampy
lowlands behind. During the day it was a visual treat, but at night—there was a
different feeling, a feeling of danger and menace that couldn’t be hidden
underneath the soft, low murmurs of the frogs and crickets or the haunting cry
of the owl. After darkness the roar of a bull alligator would cause her to
shudder with a primitive fear, and the scream of the hunting cougar or the
sudden ear-piercing cry of some hunted creature dying beneath the claws or
fangs of the hunter jerked her upright from a sound sleep on more than one
night. The swamps were a primeval place, and the further the swamps were behind
them, the better she liked it!

She
lost track of time, one day drifting smoothly into the next as they continued
on their journey, always pushing steadily northwest. This journey reminded her
vividly of the days of growing up with the gypsies as they roamed from place to
place in their gaily colored caravans. The small cook fires at night brought
the memories back even more strongly as she sat, her knees drawn up under her
chin, watching the leaping reddish yellow flames. So had she done as a child,
Adam at her side, watching Reina prepare the evening
meal.
There was even music— not the stirring blood-tingling sob of the gypsy violins,
but the livelier and occasionally sadder music of the blacks; the sound would
carry and wind through the quiet night broken only by the cry of the night
animals.

After
the first few days Jason had ordered Catherine and Jeanne to stay near
their own
wagon except for those necessary trips into the
woods. They did not even join the men for meals—Sally cooked for them at their
own small fire. After tasting the revolting fare prepared by Henry, Catherine
was delighted with the arrangement. Jason's surprise at her ready agreement
had been evident, and instead of relieving some of the tenseness between them,
in some odd way it had only added to it.

The
air fairly crackled with unspoken fiery emotion whenever they were near one
another. It grew with every passing mile, though consciously neither did
anything to add to it. Even Jason, beyond those few comments he had made at
Belle Vista, did not bring up the estrangement between them.

Nor
did he mention Nicholas—he ignored him. And Catherine, giving into a wave of
feminine spite, would manage to flaunt her son very nearly right under Jason's
disapproving nose on the occasions when he sought her company. That he never
looked at the child was evident— for if he had, he might have wondered about
those clear green eyes so like his own. But he never so much as glanced at the
black-haired imp who so resembled him, and eventually Catherine's desire to
thrust the baby to his attention died, to be replaced by an empty feeling of defeat.
What was the use, she thought wearily? Jason had decided the child was not his,
and injured pride, she admitted grudgingly, kept her from telling him the
truth. Eventually, she reversed her actions and made certain Jason had as few
opportunities as possible to observe Nicholas.

Catherine
also spent more than one sleepless night trying to figure out Jason's attitude
towards her. What precisely did he have planned for her? His manner was cool
to the point of indifference. Beyond seeing that she had everything she needed
and slowing his horse to walk by the side of her wagon and asked politely how
she did, he treated her much in the manner he did Nicholas—he ignored her!

Why?
she
asked herself silently, night after night. Why this
remoteness? If he wanted none of her, why take the trouble to find her and
compel her to come with him?

Granted,
there was little privacy, but still, she told herself doggedly, there were
moments when they could have talked—if he had wished. Even just making everyday
conversation would have been better than his habit of gaz
ing right through her. It
reminded her painfully of those days in Paris. Yet—and yet—more than once she
had been surprised to see some spark of emotion in his eyes, but it was so quickly
shuttered and gone that she couldn't identify it.
Desire?
Hate?

His silence on what their
future would be nagged at her unmercifully. Always, no matter what she did,
there was wonder and worry about what he planned for her. One night, in the
depths of despair, she decided he must have some subtle revenge in mind and
didn't want to alarm her unduly until it was too late. With the unwelcome
thoughts driving any hope of sleep from her brain, she crawled carefully out of
the wagon. Sitting on the hard wooden seat, she stared perplexedly out into the
black night.

The darkness was broken by
the soft silver rays of the waning moon. Except for the men who had the night
watch, the camp slept quietly. Here and there in the faint light from the coals
of the dying fire, she could discern the shapes of the men as they lay on the
ground asleep. Idly she wondered what they thought of the odd situation that
existed between her and Jason. And as always, her wonderings shifted to her
husband. Where was he?
Asleep out there before her?
Making the rounds to see if the guards were alert and watchful?

Suddenly, as if her
straying thoughts had conjured him there, he loomed beside her and asked
harshly, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Startled, she twisted in
the direction of his voice and would have fallen off the edge of the wagon if
his arm, a steel band of muscle, hadn't snaked out and prevented her fall. It
also crushed her against his body, and for a moment she hung there, half lying
against his chest, her face upturned to his and her legs still within the
wagon.
But only for a second.
Then muttering a curse,
he lifted her to the ground, holding her tightly to him, his mouth hungrily
seeking hers.

Remembering his reactions
to her unguarded response at Belle Vista, she fought the wild surge of dizzy
desire that swept through her. He wasn't going to place the blame for his own
unleashed emotions on her this time! Stiffly, she held her body as far away as
his arms would allow, and her mouth, usually so warm and yielding, was pressed
tightly closed against her teeth. Instantly aware of what
she
was doing, if not the reasons behind it, his hold slackened, and he raised his
head, his eyes glittering in the faint light.