Merline Lovelace (18 page)

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Authors: Countess In Buckskin

BOOK: Merline Lovelace
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The farm manager and his wife gaped at the account of the incident at the shepherd’s hut. Shocked, they shook their heads over the fact that Colonel Garanski had overstepped his authority and dared to lay hands on the Countess Karanova. No one could wonder that her husband had responded violently to that provocation! Or that the two unfortunate grenadiers were killed in the ensuing melee.
Goodwife Petrova dragged her chest of medicines from under her bed. Clucking in dismay, she unwrapped the bloody, makeshift bandages Tatiana had tied over Josiah’s shoulder.
“He is of the most fortunate!” she exclaimed after cleansing and probing the wound. “The blade went in sideways, missing bone and sinew. He shall ache, but not lose the use of his arm.”
Swiftly Tatiana translated for the sweating, whitelipped patient.
“We shall stitch him,” the farmwife said briskly,
“and make for him the sling. Then we shall feed him red meats to replace the blood he has lost and much vodka, yes? To ease the pain.”
Josh downed a good portion of both. Over Tatiana’s protests, he also insisted on pressing on to the fort.
“It takes worse than this to lay me up,” he told her bluntly. “Far worse.”
For all his brave words, he couldn’t quite hide a grimace as she helped him into a borrowed linen shirt.
“This is madness, Josiah!” his wife exclaimed. “You must rest, and regain your strength.”
“I’ll rest at Fort Ross.”
“Why do you wish to push yourself so?”
“We are only a few hours away. We might as well finish the ride.”
“Pah!”
She spun on her heel and headed for the door, clearly disgusted with his stubbornness. Josh followed at a more deliberate pace.
He couldn’t rest, any more than he could explain to Tatiana the tension that tore at him like the talons of a fierce. ravaging vulture. He hardly understood it himself. A part he could ascribe to the fire of battle still pumping through his blood. A part to the shaft of fear that went through him when he saw Tatiana curled in a tight ball on the ground.
Most, he knew, stemmed from the gut-wrenching realization that had come to him in the instant she’d turned her white, frightened face up to his. He didn’t just
want
his wife. He didn’t assert his claim on her because of the babe. He held her in his heart in a way he’d never held Catherine.
Tatiana was like the mountains he’d come to love. Strong. Clean. Dangerous as a late spring blizzard at times, and so beautiful he couldn’t recall any features but hers. Couldn’t ache for any touch but hers. Couldn’t love any woman but her.
And now he might lose her.
For two days, they’d talked and tried to ease their differences at the shepherd’s hut. For two nights, they’d slept apart.
Tatiana had said she couldn’t be a wife to him while Fort Ross’s fate was yet undecided. Now that fate no longer hung in the balance.
The bastard hanging head down over his horse had brought startling news. The tsar had restored a good portion of Tatiana’s lands to her. He’d ordered her home and decreed that Fort Ross was to be sold.
Rotchev must leave immediately to consult with the British at Vancouver. Josh had to complete his damned mission.
And Tatiana....
What would she choose to do?
What could he allow her to do?
If she decided to return to her native land, could he let her go? The question haunted Josh all the way back to Fort Ross.
 
The fort’s walls came into view just as the sun dipped toward the sea. Josh’s jaw, already tight with the pain in his shoulder, clenched even more when he spied the three-masted schooner riding at anchor in the small half-moon bay.
Given the heat of the season, the baron immediately set men to digging graves in the cemetery outside the fort. The three soldiers were laid to rest at dusk, with proper prayers said for their souls and sufficient quantities of vodka downed by the residents of the stockade to honor their memories.
Night had fallen by the time Princess Helena finally, firmly, shut the door to her parlor and faced the three weary survivors.
“Now one of you will tell me in truth what occurred!” she demanded.
Her husband rubbed a tired palm across his bald crown. “It was just as we said, Helena. Garanski grew overzealous in the execution of his duties. Josiah was forced to come to his wife’s aid.”
“And your husband was forced to come to mine,” Josh added, crossing the room to hold out his good hand. “I didn’t thank you properly, Baron. If ever I have a chance to repay the debt, I will.”
“I know it.” Alexander returned his firm grip. “If not here, perhaps in Russia.”
“Perhaps.”
The unspoken acknowledgment of Fort Ross’s numbered days descended like a pall over the room. Sighing, Helena wrapped an arm around Tatiana’s shoutders.
“I’m sorry, my friend. So very sorry. For you. For Alexander. For all of us who tried to make a home in this land. In my letter, I begged Nikolas to give your precious sprouts time to bear fruit. At least...” She gave Tatiana’s shoulders a gentle squeeze. “At least he has spared your life and given you back some measure of what was taken from you and your father.”
“So he has.”
The flat, unemotional response had Helena chewing on her lower lip.
“What will you do now?”
A frown creasing her brow, Tatiana glanced across the room at Josiah. His tanned, weathered face gave her no clue to his thoughts.
“We must talk about that, my husband and I.”
“And so you shall,” Helena declared. “After you both have bathed and rested and we have tended to this wound which even now drips blood onto my carpet.”
“I told him he should not ride,” Tatiana said tiredly. “He does not listen.”
Helena lifted a brow. “He shall listen to me. Come, you shall sleep here this night, and I shall prepare a draft for this stubborn American.”
She swept Tatiana toward the hall that led to the back rooms, then cast a minatory glance over her shoulder.
“You will come with us. Now, if you please.”
Josh didn’t much care for being ordered about like one of the princess’s children, but he was too anxious to get his wife alone to argue. He nodded to the baron.
“If you will excuse me?”
Alexander waved a hand in dismissal. “Go and drink Helena’s draft. It’s most efficacious, as any of us at Fort Ross can attest.” He heaved a long, slow sigh. “I must write my report of today’s events, so the captain can take it with him when he sails tomorrow morning.”
Chapter Eighteen
 
 
H
ampered by his injured shoulder, Josh left the copper hip bath tucked behind a lacquered screen for Tatiana’s use.
While the servants bustled into the room with bucket after bucket of hot water, Helena instructed her daughters to remove their dolls from the massive sleigh bed, gather their nightdresses, and go curl up in Papa and Mama’s bed. The two girls left with their arms loaded and many a sidelong glance at Josh.
“You shall bathe,” Helena ordered Tatiana sternly, before turning her eye on Josh. “You, you shall wait while I prepare my draft.”
After helping Josh remove his shirt and pouring a pitcher of lukewarm water into a porcelain washbowl painted with delicate pink roses, Tatiana disappeared behind the screen. One-handed, Josh sluiced himself down. He was scraping his palm across his whiskered cheeks, wondering how he’d manage a razor when the Princess Helena reappeared, mug in hand.
“You will swallow this all,” she instructed Josiah, plucking the razor from his grasp. “Most immediately.”
He took the sickly sweet-smelling drink. “Are all Russian women so managing, or only those who hitch a title before their names?”
“Most of us like to take matters in hand, regardless of rank,” she replied tartly. “You’d best keep that in mind.”
Josh’s gaze slid to the lacquered screen. “I will.”
Helena followed his glance, then flapped an impatient hand. “Drink. Drink. Then I shall go and leave you and Tatiana to your rest.”
Steeling himself, Josh tipped the mug to his lips. A combination of chocolate and tincture of opium mixed with alcohol slid down his throat. Even the sweet chocolate couldn’t disguise the laudanum’s bitter taste.
“I hope this brew works better than it tastes,” he sputtered, choking.
“It does,” his hostess replied. “Few of my household require a second dosing.”
Josh didn’t doubt it. He’d claim an instant cure, too, to avoid another treatment.
“You shall sleep well this night,” Helena declared. “You and Tatiana.”
That remained to be seen, Josh thought grimly as the door closed behind the princess. He surely hadn’t slept much the past few nights, with Tatiana so close and so very distant.
Feeling shakier than he’d wanted to let on, he heeled off his moccasins and loosed the ties on his leggings. He tossed the pants atop a humpbacked chest and made for the bed. Gratefully he stretched out on sheets smelling of sunshine and lavender.
Within moments the fire in his shoulder dulled to a steady, throbbing ache. A welcome lethargy crept up his arms and legs. His senses roamed free, then gradually centered on the activity taking place behind the lacquered screen.
He could hear the quiet splashes. Smell the faint tang of violets that scented the bathwater. See the shadows his wife cast on the far wall with each bend and stretch.
When at last she stepped out of the copper hip bath, Josh’s fingers curled on the soft linen sheet. The shadows on the wall shifted, softened, sharpened, forming a silhouette of long, curving legs, a gently rounded belly and lush breasts.
The sudden, urgent ache in Josh’s loins pushed the ache in his shoulder completely out of his mind. Not even the laudanum could dull his fierce hunger.
Gritting his teeth, he closed his eyes.
Behind the shield of the screen, Tatiana pulled on the nightdress Helena had left for her. The soft sun-washed lawn settled over her like a filmy cloud. Fine lace edged the neck and the cuffs. Her fingers fumbling with the buttons at the neck, she tried to understand her foolish reluctance to leave the bathing alcove.
She was weary in both body and spirit, unutterably so, and Josiah lay sorely injured. They could not consummate their strange marriage this night, even if she wished to. Which she did, she admitted tiredly.
Why, then, did she dread to face him? Why did she fight the urge to curl up against him and draw upon his strength, as she longed to do? And why, God help her, did she not wish to hear him speak again of the future he had planned for them, in this far-off Washington?
She knew the answer in her heart.
She’d felt it even before she’d seen him unleash his fearsome fury.
He was a wanderer. A man more suited to the wild, untamed land he roamed than to the walls of a city. He professed willingness to trade his beloved mountains for her safety and that of the babe, but would the trade truly bring the safety and security?
For a few terrifying moments this morning, Tatiana had feared that she would watch Josiah die at the hands of the grenadiers. She’d known then that if he died, she would mourn him always,
always,
as she’d never mourned Aleksei.
Now she wondered whether caging a man such as Josiah Jones might not kill him as surely, if more slowly. Much troubled, she stepped from behind the screen.
He lay asleep. The oil lamp on the dresser cast his face in soft light. Tatiana studied his profile from across the room. With his head nested in pillows edged with lace and a fine linen sheet drawn up to his chest, he still managed to appear as rugged as his mountains.
Could she tame him?
Should she?
Step by hesitant step, she approached the bed. Her fingers curled into fists to keep from reaching out, but the urge to touch him was too strong to deny.
As light as it was, the brush of her fingers across his cheek brought him instantly awake. With the speed and the instincts of a wild creature, he whipped up a hand to capture hers.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
His sun-bleached brows slashed downward as he fought the laudanum’s pull. Slowly his bruising grip relaxed.
“You do that with or without meaning to, Tatiana Grigoria...Jones.”
It was the first time she’d heard her named attached to his. The arrangement sounded awkward and strange to Tatiana. To Josiah, too, if the frown still creasing his brow was any measure.
He nodded to the empty space beside him. “Will you join me? I’d like to share a bed with my wife at least once before I leave.”
She hesitated. “Still you must go north?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Within the next few days. I’ve delayed too long as it is.”
“And how long shall you be gone this time?”
“Two months, maybe more, maybe less.”
Two months, more or less? Involuntarily Tatiana’s hand went to her stomach. The babe she carried barely showed as yet. The only real signs of her pregnancy were her full, tender breasts and rounded belly. In two months, though, she would grow heavy. In two more after that, she would give birth.
He saw the protective gesture. Shaking his head to throw off the effects of the sleeping draft, he pushed himself up on his good arm. The sheet drifted downward, leaving bare his chest and the bandages wrapped around his shoulder.
“Join me.”
This time, it wasn’t a request.
Still Tatiana hesitated.
“I won’t leave you or the child unprotected, if that’s what you fear,” he told her bluntly. “Nor will I leave you at Fort Ross. I don’t want to take the chance that the bastard you call tsar will send another ship for you.”
“Where, then, shall you leave us?”
“I want you to go south, to the presidio at Monterey. You’ll remain under the protection of the American vice-consul until I return.”
“And then?”
“Then we’ll sail for Washington.”
She searched his eyes. “Is that what you wish, Josiah? What you truly wish?”
“What I wish,” he replied, exasperated, “is for you to get in this bed. You’re my wife, Tatiana. However it came about, you’re my wife. Your place is beside me.”
Inexplicably his disgruntled scowl decided the matter in her mind.
She’d seen this man in so many moods and manners. Slack jawed with astonishment at her unexpected intrusion into the Hupa sweat house. Grim as he pulled her with him through a blinding, iridescent wall of white. White lipped with fury when he burst into the bedroom she’d shared with Mikhail. Exploding with awesome fury when confronted by three heavily armed grenadiers.
Never had she seen him sulky.
Tatiana could not explain, even to herself, why the sight of him thus, wounded and weak and most petulant, should melt her heart. But it did. Holy Father above, it did!
From the moment she had met this man, she’d drawn on his strength. Now, for the first time, he came close to admitting that he needed to draw on hers. It was not, perhaps, a passionate declaration of love. Nor even an acknowledgment that they had differences yet to work out between them. But it soothed her troubled soul.
She needed him. He needed her. Little else mattered.
Smiling, she crossed to the dresser and blew out the oil lamp. Darkness descended, lightened after the first instants by the moon’s glow shining through the crack in the curtains. Following the silvery path, she retraced her steps to the bed and crawled in beside her husband.
He gave a grunt of satisfaction and settled her against his good shoulder.
 
Josh woke the next morning to dazzling sunshine, a head still fuzzy from Helena’s damned draft, and a sense of something missing. It took him less than a second to identify the loss.
Tatiana.
He swept the bedroom with a quick, searching glance. His gaze snagged on a splash of filmy white touched with lace. The nightdress lay folded neatly over the top of the screen.
After the long hours of deep, drugged sleep, Josh had regained a measure of his strength, but not the peace of mind that should have come after sharing a bed...finally!...with his wife. The tension that had clawed at him yesterday returned.
Where was she?
Josh suspected this tight, curling unease wouldn’t leave him until he saw Tatiana on her way to Monterey and knew she was beyond the reach of this bastard, Nikolas.
He threw off the sheets and sat up, grimacing at the fire in his shoulder. It ached like the devil now, and would for some time, he suspected. He didn’t look forward to the weeks of hard travel ahead.
Naked, he crossed the room to his clothes piled atop the humpbacked chest. Setting his jaw against the pain in his shoulder, he pulled on his leggings. The borrowed linen shirt proved more of a challenge. Sweat filmed his forehead by the time he got the blasted thing over his head and his good arm into the sleeve.
Swearing under his breath, he reached for the belt that lay across the chest. His string of colorful oaths broke off when he noticed that his knife was missing. He fingered the fringed sheath, frowning. His tension took another tight turn.
Damn it, where was Tatiana?
Tying on his belt with some difficulty, he shoved his feet into his moccasins and headed for the bedroom door.
Sunshine and silence filled the Rotchev house. The front parlor was empty, as was the kitchen. Curtains fluttered at open windows. A basket of unwashed vegetables sat on a worn worktable alongside a plate covered with a napkin. A low flame burned beneath a brass samovar in the corner. Josh’s senses recorded the scent of spicy meat pastries and well-steeped tea. The aromas set his stomach to rumbling but didn’t deflect him from his one consuming concern.
Where was Tatiana?
He yanked open the back door and stepped out into the blinding sunlight. Throwing up his good arm to shield his eyes, he searched the compound. Except for two women kneading wet clothes beside a tub of water and the sentry leaning from a window in the southeast blockhouse, the fort stood empty.
His gut knotting, Josh strode to the women.
“Have you seen the Baron Rotchev?” he asked. “Or the Countess Karanova?”
The women answered in a cheerful jumble of Russian and a slap of wet clothes. Cutting across the compound, Josh put the same question to the bearded sentry.
The guard waved a hand toward the cove. “The ship, it sails.”
“What?”
“The ship from Russia. It sails with the tide. They have gone...”
Josh didn’t wait to hear more. Spinning on one heel, he raced for the east gate.
He halted just outside, his heart hammering. Below him, the sea sparkled with a thousand points of light. A crowd was gathered in the small cove that edged the sea. Every resident of Fort Ross was present, it appeared, except the washerwomen and the sentry. Josh spotted Helena’s blond curls, and Mikhail Pulkin’s thin, angular form. But he caught no sight of Tatiana among the crowd.
He started for the stairs leading to the cove. At that moment, the three-masted schooner raised sail. Ropes rattled. Timbers creaked. Barked orders in Russian carried across the cove. Josh gripped the wooden handrail as the sheets caught the wind and bellied. The schooner’s prow dipped, rose and dipped again. Slowly, then with gathering speed, the prow cut through the blue waters.

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