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Authors: Countess In Buckskin

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Shrugging, he pulled off his spectacles and wiped them on the tail of his coat.
“These tariffs have worsened the situation,” the baron admitted. “For years, we traded arms and hides and cloth made by our weavers to the Californios for wheat and other foodstuffs to supply not only our fort, but the outposts in Alaska. Now, only the more wealthy, like Captain Johann Sutter, can afford to trade with us.”
“Captain Sutter?”
Rotchev smiled. “A most remarkable man. Of Swiss birth, and soon to become a citizen of Mexico. He obtained a grant of land to the south, along the Sacramento River. He chafes even more at the tariffs and restrictions on trade imposed by the Mexican government than do we.”
The baron set aside his goblet.
“Enough of the affairs of Fort Ross. Tell us what news you bring from the East. Did you attend the fur trappers rendezvous last year? Is it true that the price of beaver has dropped so low that the trappers are leaving their mountains to escort wagon trains of settlers across the plains?”
“It’s true,” Josh replied, willing enough to change the subject. Although the baron hadn’t come right out and admitted that the Russians were considering pulling out of Fort Ross, he’d given Josh plenty to think about. He’d take the next few days to see with his own eyes the state of the Russian settlement...and to make sure Tatiana recovered fully from her journey.
Shrugging aside the thought that he was coming perilously close to confusing duty with his personal desires, Josh supplied his host and the young clerk with the specifics of the declining beaver trade. After twenty years, the top hat that no civilized gentleman would be seen without was fading from the fashion scene. Hunters and trappers were leaving the mountains, and settlers were pushing farther and farther west.
Gradually the conversation turned more personal. Rotchev inquired politely of Josh’s home, his family. The American admitted what others knew of him... that he’d worn the uniform of an officer for several years before the mountains called to him. He kept his current detached status to himself, however.
Sometime later, the sound of feet running down the hallway cut him off in midsentence. Josh jumped up, every muscle in his body tensing.
A small child darted into the room, guinea gold ringlets flying. She skidded to a stop before the baron. Casting huge sideways glances at Josh, she poured out a spate of breathless Russian.
“English, Irina,” Rotchev admonished with a shake of one finger. “You must speak English in front of our guest.”
The little girl stumbled over the words. “Mama... Mama says we are to...to...” Blushing, she scooped invisible food into her mouth.
“We are to eat?”
The bright ringlets bobbed vigorously.
“Da!”
“Without Mama’s company this night?”
“Da,
Papa.”
The baron rose. “So we shall. Come, Josh, let me show you to the table. Mikhail, you will escort Irina, if you please.”
 
Josh bedded down in the single men’s quarters that night. For the first time since leaving the Valley of the Hupa, he was warm, dry, clean and well fed. His stomach rumbled contentedly from the mountains of black bread, potatoes and hot, spicy meat patties he’d consumed. The brandy he’d downed should have sent him into instant sleep.
Instead, he lay wide-awake, his hands folded under his head. He stared at the bottom of the bunk above him while snores from the other men rose in a snuffling, whistling, snorting chorus. As one sleepless moment slid into the next, Josh admitted what kept him so edgy and restless.
He missed the feel of Tatiana’s body curled into his. Even more, he missed Tatiana. After the long days and nights they’d spent together he felt suddenly...cut off. She’d been his concern for so long now that he almost resented having the burden taken from his shoulders.
Which made no sense at all, Josh admitted wryly. He’d wanted to get her to Fort Ross as much as she’d wanted to arrive at its gates. Damn it, his small role in her life was done. He’d served his purpose.
If they’d both lost sight of their separate purposes for one mindless night, they’d recovered their senses the next morning. Now Tatiana had reached her destination, and Josh had to decide what he was going to do with the information he’d gleaned from Baron Rotchev.
With war threatening between Mexico and the United States over the status of Texas, the discontent of immigrants like this Captain Johann Sutter could make a difference in northern California...as much as the disposition of Fort Ross. In the noisy darkness, Josh swiftly amended his orders once again. He’d head south. Talk to Sutter and other settlers. Relay his findings to the United States vice-consul at the presidio in Monterey.
But first, he’d spend a few days at Fort Ross...only to ascertain its exact state, he told himself firmly.
 
With that goal in mind, he rose with the first faint streaks of dawn the next morning. Pulling on the durable fringed shirt and leggings that had dried beside the woodstove overnight, he shook Mikhail awake. The young clerk poked his nose out of the covers.
“Why do you rise so early?” he asked groggily.
“I’d like to look around the fort and the outlying areas.”
“Go look,” he mumbled, jerking the feather ticking up over his ears.
That was good enough for Josh. Pulling on his fleecy blanket coat, he headed for the door.
Cold clean air and the tangy scent of wood smoke greeted him. With most of the fort still bathed in dim shadows, Josh followed the smoky scent to the west gate. The two sentries lifted the bar at his approach and the massive wooden portals creaked open. Josh strode through and made for the lodges built a short distance away.
He soon located the Wiyot who had transported him and Tatiana south. Hunkering down beside the leader, he entered into a lively debate over exactly how much had been asked and how much promised for the canoe trip. Their Pomo hosts enjoyed the dickering hugely, laughing and adding their advice to both parties. Soon they were joined by several Aleuts, the native Alaskan hunters who’d accompanied the Russians south to hunt otter.
Ears tuned, Josh picked up more subtle hints about the Russian’s increasingly tenuous hold on Fort Ross.
“The wheat rots at the root in the damp soil,” one Pomo told him.
“The crows eat the barley seed before it can sprout,” another put in.
“These Russians know not how to work the soil, as do the Spanish to the south,” a wrinkled old man said sagely. “They are workers with wood, not tillers of the earth. Only their orchards bear fruit.” He waved a bony hand toward the distant rows of bare, stunted trees. “But with even these, the wind and the sea take their toll.”
Josh swiveled on his heel to survey the orchards that spread across the rolling plateau and climbed up the hillsides to the east. Suddenly his eyes narrowed.
A lone figure moved among the trees. Head bowed, skirts lifting in the early-morning wind, she walked slowly, almost aimlessly, as though lost and not aware of it. As Josh watched, she seemed to stumble. She sank to the earth and sat there, shoulders slumped in utter despair.
Cursing, Josh surged to his feet. Abandoning his surprised companions without a word, he loped across the low, rolling hills. His heart hammered with the force of a drum by the time he reached her.
“Tatiana!”
She lifted her head. Josh’s chest contracted at the sight of her pale face and red-rimmed eyes. He stopped and hooked a hand under her elbow to pull her up.
Once on her feet, she flowed against him as though she belonged there. Instinctively his arms folded around her. Josh buried his face in her hair. Still slightly damp from a washing, it smelled of lilacs.
“I’m sorry about your father, sweetheart,” he murmured into the soft fragrant mass. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you last night, but I grieve for you.”
She clung to him, her nose buried in his neck. A shudder started at her chin and worked its way down her shoulders, past her hips, to her knees. Josh tightened his arms.
They stood locked together, heedless of the wind whipping from the sea or the birds twittering in the gnarled, leafless trees. At last, Tatiana pulled free.
She wore a long black dress and a knee-length coat of gray wool, Josh saw. A collar trimmed with black braid stood up under her chin like a sentinel. In her European attire, she seemed at once different, and achingly familiar.
“I welcome your condolences,” she said in a ragged voice. She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, then her violet eyes lifted to his. “I was most... most distraught last night and did not show the gratitude I should have. I thank you, Josiah, for bringing me to Fort Ross. From my heart, I thank you.”
Tell her!
The urge slammed into Josh like a fist.
The president’s orders be damned! Tell her now why you brought her to Fort Ross!
Before he could shape the words, she bent and scooped up a canvas bag that lay at her feet. Her hands shaking, she pulled out a bundle of twigs.
“I have come to do as my father sent me to do.”
“But I thought...that is, I figured...”
Her mouth curved in a tight smile. “You thought perhaps that my father’s death would alter things? No, it only makes me more determined than ever to prove him right. If only one cutting takes, if only one tree bears an abundance of fruit, it shall make the difference to Fort Ross, you shall see. All shall see!”
Josh’s hands curled into fists as she sank to her knees once more.
“I shall begin here, to test my skill. Once I am sure of what I do, I shall work my way up the slope.”
She pulled a small knife from the canvas bag and attempted a cut halfway up the trunk. The blade sawed uselessly against the tough bark. Frowning, Tatiana tossed aside the kitchen utensil and held up her hand.
“Give me your knife, if you please. It has the sharpness that is needed...as I well know.”
Silently Josh pulled the blade from its sheath. Tatiana took it and laid it against the gnarled trunk.
“I make the cut, here, just above this swelling bud. My...” Her voice faltered. Swallowing, she continued in a low, shaky tone. “My father said that was of the most importance.”
The razor-sharp blade made a deep slash in the bark. That done, Tatiana selected one of the small twigs and whittled its end to a flat vee. Fingers trembling, she inserted the wedge-shaped end into the cut and held it in place with a palm.
Her other hand fumbled awkwardly for the bag. When she couldn’t reach whatever it was she sought, she raised her eyes to the man standing rigidly beside her.
“Will you help me, Josiah? Please? Just hold the cutting in place while I wrap it with cheesecloth.”
Slowly Josh went down on one knee.
Chapter Eleven
 
 
D
uring the next few days, the backbreaking work of inserting her precious cuttings into endless rows of apple and pear trees soothed Tatiana’s grief like a healing balm.
She could almost hear her father’s gentle voice instructing her where to slash. How deep to insert the little twig. How much rich mulch to wrap around the joining. Almost see his eyes shine as he waxed eloquent about his passion. Gradually Tatiana’s pain at his loss gave way to an acceptance based on an unshakable faith in God’s mercy.
She worked steadily from dawn to dusk alongside the Pomo and Russian laborers Alexander sent to assist her. Josiah knelt beside her throughout the first day, and only relinquished his place on the second when the baron invited him to ride out to visit the fort’s tannery and gristmill.
“Go,” Tatiana urged, brushing a grubby hand across her brow. “I have plenty to help here, and Alexander will welcome your company.”
His expression closed, he nodded.
Shading her eyes with her hand, Tatiana had watched him stride away. Long legged, lean hipped, he carried himself with a sinuous grace surprising in so large a man. The swaying fringes on his shirt drew her eye to the wide planes of his back and muscled shoulders. Unbidden, Re-Re-An’s words came back to her.
He was much a man, this fringe person.
Very much a man, Tatiana admitted silently.
 
To her surprise, Helena echoed the same sentiment some days later.
Insisting that Tatiana take a break from her labors to join in the celebration of the feast of Saint Sergius, founder of Russia’s greatest monastery, the princess ordered a bath and an afternoon of rest. Just before dusk, she swept into her daughters’ room with a bundle draped over her arm. Shooing the giggling girls from the room, she surveyed Tatiana from head to toe.
“No, no, you shall not wear that black gown to the feast tonight. It is too old and unfashionable.”
Tatiana blinked. Helena had given her the dress, and the princess was nothing if not fashionable. Even here, at the farthest outpost of the tsar’s empire, his niece changed her sturdy wools and linens each evening and sat down to dinner in velvet and lace.
“I’m in mourning, Helena. This will do.”
The older woman tilted her head to one side. “When did you leave St. Petersburg?”
Tatiana thought back over the long, wearying weeks of travel by coach, by sled, by ship and foot. “In October, just after the feast of Saint Berens.”
“It is now March,” Helena said gently. “Although you could not know it, your father has been dead for almost six months. It’s proper that you wear mourning, but not such smothering black. I’ve brought you another dress.”
She shook out the gown draped over her arm and held it up. A spill of lavender silk trimmed with black lace and sparkling jet beads caught the light.
“Helena, I cannot!”
“The tsarina herself declared gray and lavender acceptable for mourning after three months,” the princess stated firmly. “Besides, your American leaves Fort Ross tomorrow. Will you send him off remembering you only in stained buckskin and crowlike black?”
Tatiana felt a painful catch just below her heart. “He’s not my American.”
Helena gave a most unroyal snort. “He all but eats you with his eyes. What’s more, I noticed how his hands moved over you with a most interesting familiarity the first night you arrived, when you fell into his arms.”
“I did not fall into his arms. I fainted.”
“I know you, Tatiana Grigoria! Do not try to tell me you shared nothing but polite conversation those days and nights in the mountains.”
Heat rushed into Tatiana’s face. She looked away, unable to meet her friend’s eyes.
“Ahh, I embarrass you. I’m sorry.” Helena wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I only hoped that you had found joy, however brief, with a real man after all the pain your cursed Aleksei gave you.”
“I found... something.”
“I knew it! Sit down and tell me all.”
Sighing, Tatiana sank onto the edge of the sleigh bed. “There’s nothing to tell. He desired me, and I...yes, I desired him. Once. Only once.”
“Why?”
“Well,” she said with a defensive lift of one shoulder, “he’s passing handsome without the awful beard he wore when I first saw him, and he treated me gently. Most of the time,” she added on a disgruntled note.
Helena let that interesting aside pass. “I meant, why only once? Were I stranded in the mountains with such a man, I might be tempted to forget my marriage vows many times over.”
“Ha! You would never do so! You think the sun rises and sets at Alexander Rotchev’s express wish. You would never forget yourself, especially with this too gruff woodsman.”
“Yes, well, Alexander told me some interesting bits about this woodsman who kisses a lady’s hand with the most precise correctness. Did you know he was an officer in the American Imperial Guards, or some such?”
“Like Aleksei,” Tatiana echoed in a small, faint voice.
“Not
like Aleksei!”
No, not like Aleksei. Thinking back, Tatiana recalled how Josiah had stood toe-to-toe with her in the Hupa sweat house and adamantly refused to take her into the treacherous mountains. When he’d dropped his silly basket, everyone present had seen evidence of his thrusting desire. Yet still he’d refused her company.
Nor, once she’d forced herself upon him, would he take her body in trade for his services. Even after he’d given in to her pleas and brought them both to searing, shattering pleasure, he’d not followed that act with demands for another. As he himself had told her, he reserved his heart for only one.
Quite
unlike Aleksei.
Staring down at her laced hands, Tatiana admitted the stark truth to Helena. “We shared but one night by his choice as much as mine. He does not want me. Not really. He loves the woman he once hoped to marry.”
The princess plumped down beside her, still clutching the silk gown. “What woman?”
“She is called Katerina. He carries her portrait with him always.”
“Why did they not marry?”
“She died.” Tatiana’s brow wrinkled. “Some six years ago, if I remember correctly. Before he lost himself in the mountains.”
A silence settled over the room while both women pondered the precariousness of life.
“Do you want this Josiah Jones to want you, my friend?” Helena asked softly.
“No! Yes! I don’t know!” She threw the older woman a tortured glance. “What would it matter if I did? He is of America. I am of Russia. He will go his way tomorrow, I mine.”
“Listen to me, Tatiana. If I’ve learned nothing else with Alexander, I’ve learned that where one comes from and where one travels to matters not when the heart guides the steps.”
“But...”
“But me no buts. Do you love this man?”
“I...I desire him,” Tatiana admitted. “Most fiercely. But I will not lose my head with my heart again, Helena. It hurts far too much. Besides,” she added after a moment, “he loves his Katerina.”
“Bah! If you cannot make a man forget a love six years dead, you’re not the woman I remember. Stand up, Countess Karanova. Stand up.”
Yanking Tatiana to her feet, she measured the gown against her shoulders. “Yes, yes. This will do nicely. Tonight the American shall see you in something other than buckskin or black wool. Tonight, my friend, he shall see you as the woman you are. Now change, and quickly, while I go fetch my box of perfumes and paints.”
The silk clutched to her bosom, Tatiana stood unmoving long after Helena rushed out. Her friend’s question echoed in her mind. Did she want Josiah to want her?
She had only to think about his departure on the morrow to know the answer. After so many days and nights in his company, sharing so many travails, the thought of watching him walk away left a hollow, panicky feeling in her stomach.
She’d never met a man so sure of himself. So at one with the world he inhabited. He was strong enough to be gentle. Gentle enough to bring her to a passion she’d never known.
But desire was not enough, she’d learned all too painfully. She must think with her head, not her heart!
Josiah was a wanderer, with no lands, no roots.
Her lands, what remained of them, spread along the Volga. If her father’s great gamble failed, she could expect to suffer mightily at the hands of the tsar. If the cuttings saved this far-flung outpost, she could go home with her head high and expect some measure of restitution. Take up again the life she led before Aleksei.
Quite unexpectedly, the prospect chilled her.
Was that what she desired? To return to the court of the tsar who’d executed her husband? To see again the cold black eyes of the colonel who’d held her arms and forced her to watch? To spend her days dancing attendance on the tsarina and her nights with another husband, this one chosen for her by Nikolas?
Her fingers crushed the silk as the future loomed dark and bleak ahead of her.
What choice had she?
None, she realized. Except perhaps...
Her gaze dropped to the gown in her hands.
 
Josh made his way through the noisy, laughing throng crowded into the lower rooms of the two-story warehouse. In the short time he’d spent at Fort Ross, he’d learned the names of a good number of the sixty or so Russian residents. They now greeted him cheerfully, as did the Pomo and Aleuts who’d joined tonight’s celebrations.
They were a hardworking, industrious group, Josh had discovered, but far more suited to clerking and woodworking than to agriculture or animal husbandry. No wonder their tsar had grown disenchanted with Fort Ross’s inability to resupply the Alaskan settlements. It could barely provide for itself.
The larders showed no evidence of any lack tonight, however. Trestle tables groaned as women in white blouses and bright-colored skirts loaded them with platter after platter of steamed sea bass, boiled potatoes, and vegetables simmered in a flavored stock. The mouthwatering scent of spiced beef rolled and fried in a flaky dough filled the air. In the past few days Josh had developed a real taste for these delicious piroshki, if not for the vodka that flowed so freely from earthenware crocks.
Music rose in tinkling, merry notes over the din. Oblivious to the noise all around him, a musician rested one foot on a stool and plucked away at a many-stringed instrument. Josh stood listening quietly until a flushed, grinning Mikhail pushed a cup into his hand.
“To your health, Josh, and to our blessed Saint Sergius.”
The others in the room picked up his refrain. “To Saint Sergius!”
The celebrants emptied their cups in great noisy swallows. Swiping their arms across their mouths, they eyed Josh expectantly.
He took a deep breath. Braced his shoulders. Lifted his cup. “To Saint Sergius.”
Prepared as he was, the combustible brew nevertheless brought tears spurting into his eyes. He blinked rapidly as a chorus of ribald laughter rose all around him. Even Mikhail, looking boyish and unclerklike with his sandy hair all askew, doubled up.
“To the tsar!” a short, stocky, bearded craftsman shouted a moment later.
Josh swallowed a groan and another swill.
Ever the proper host, Baron Rotchev signaled for silence. Politely he lifted his cup. “To His Highness, the President of America!”
Heads went back. Cups tilted.
“To the sea,” a dark-eyed Aleut offered. “And the otter it...”
Josh muttered a prayer of thanksgiving as the storehouse door opened and Princess Helena’s light, merry laugh interrupted the round of toasts.
“La, my husband! Do you begin the festivities without us?”
Sailing into the room, she dragged off her cloak. Golden hair upswept, rubies at ears and throat, her bosom white above a low-cut gown of bloodred velvet dripping gold lace, she generated a collective gasp of admiration.
The baron bowed over her hand. “No, my dearest wife, I would never dream of beginning anything without you. We only get the preliminaries out of the way. Now that you—” he smiled to a figure at the door “—and the Countess Karanova have arrived, the party truly begins.”
Josh stood rooted to the floor as Tatiana glided through the crowd. Her hair was a tumble of shining sable curls, her lips a deep, rosy red. Holding herself as regal as any queen, she bestowed a brilliant smile on the baron. He bowed again, beaming.
“My dear countess, you look quite like your old self. If the Princess Helena did not already hold the title, I would declare you the most beautiful woman in all the Russias.”
She gave a gurgle of laughter. The merry, tinkling sound hit Josh with even more of a wallop than the cloudy liquid in his cup.

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