The Beloved Woman Read online

  “You okay under that war paint?” he asked gruffly.

  She stared up into a youthful face already tending toward rugged squint lines and creases, thick, wickedly arched eyebrows, eyes the color of new green leaves, and that infernal mustache.

  “I’m unhurt, thank you, sir. Thank you very much.”

  Mr. Bingham hung over the side of his seat atop the coach, watching them. “I’m sure sorry about all of this mess, Miss Blue Song.”

  She forced her gaze up to the driver’s. “Are those drovers typical of the men roaming the woods in Cherokee country now?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “My father will send the Lighthorse patrol after them.”

  “Nope,” Justis Gallatin interjected.

  She swiveled her gaze to the man, who was now watching her with a different kind of intensity that made her feel increasingly uncomfortable. His eyes drooped a little at the corners, giving him a sleepy, satiated expression when he smiled. But he wasn’t smiling now—he seemed far from it—and his hooded scrutiny was guarded, perhaps even angry.

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  “There’s no more Cherokee courts. The state of Georgia took over the law a few years ago. I figured your folks wrote you about it.”

  “I read about it in the Philadelphia paper. But my father said it wasn’t so.” She frowned. “My name’s Katherine—Miss Blue Song. Do you know my family?”

  He hesitated, his wide, generous mouth tightening under the mustache. Then he said, “Your pa sent me to meet you on the road. I’ve been waiting for you the past week.” The green eyes were shuttered now, half closed. “He’s working a new field and couldn’t come himself, but he was a little worried that you’d run into trouble—just like you did.”

  She tilted her head and looked at him curiously. “You’re employed by my father?”

  “No. Friend of his.”

  “Your name is Mr. Gallatin, is that right?”

  “Justis Gallatin.”

  She inched back in wary consideration. “My father wouldn’t send a stranger. This isn’t like him.”

  “Lots of things have changed since you went north.” Abruptly he took the scalpel from her hand. “Never seen anything like it,” he said again. “Swiping at those boys like a cat with one mean claw. Damned good.” He pulled her hand to him, jerked the long tail of his shirt from his trousers, and wiped her bloody fingers.

  Katherine was angered by his familiarity, surprised by the gentleness in his big, lethal hands, and flushed from the thought that her fingers were being cleaned by material that had recently been tucked against his thighs—and more.

  “You obviously share the drovers’ opinion of me,” she said in a crisp but genteel tone. It had taken years of practice at the Presbyterian Academy for Young Ladies to acquire that soft, ice-cold voice.

  He stopped ministering to her fingers and looked up in surprise. “Huh?”

  “You wouldn’t be so forward with a white woman,” she said, pulling her hand away.

  He frowned, sincerely puzzled. “Yes, I would.”

  “Well, that’s honest.”

  Amused despite herself, Katherine pivoted gracefully and climbed back into the coach. Dust puffed around her as she sat. Her heart still thudded painfully from the encounter with the drovers, and she wasn’t in any mood for Mr. Gallatin’s unsettling brand of chivalry.

  “You may ride along behind the coach if you like,” she told him. “And when we arrive at my home, you’ll be welcome to stay for supper.”

  She tried to ignore the anger rising in his face and nodded toward the huge gray horse that waited beside the road. Its gear gleamed with care, and there was gold plating on the bridle. “Close the coach door and go to your mount, sir,” she ordered as calmly as she could.

  “I’m not some hired jerktail you can steer any way you like. I told you, I’m a friend of your pa’s.”

  She raised her chin and stared stubbornly at a speck of peeling paint on the coach’s inner wall. “My father doesn’t have many white friends, and he never mentioned you in his letters.”

  “Be that as it may. Don’t take on airs. You’re in no position to be choosy.”

  “I appreciate your help, Mr. Gallatin, but your manners leave a lot to be desired.”

  “Yes’m, I know, but you’d better get used to ’em.” With that unsettling remark he turned and whistled for his horse.

  Katherine watched in consternation as he tied the horse to the back of the coach. Then he climbed in and sat down, pressing himself close to her in the narrow seat, his shoulder and thigh firmly welded to hers. The intimate contact made her feel like covering her torso with both arms, as if he had just undressed her. He flicked the door shut with a quick movement of one long arm.

  “Move on, Mr. Bing-ham,” he called loudly. “And make it fast.”

  The coach lurched forward just as Katherine, quietly furious, rose to move to the seat facing him. She tottered and he latched one hand into the back of her skirt. Through skirt, petticoat, and drawers she felt his fingers brush the cleft of her hips. She’d never been touched by any man there, much less a white, mustached gold miner.

  She twisted around, wrung the skirt from his grip, and saw from the gleam in his eye that he knew exactly what he’d done. She sat down hard on the opposite bench, and dust poofed up like some kind of boudoir powder she’d used too liberally. He grinned.

  “Give me my scalpel, sir,” she said. He had tucked it behind his ear.

  “I don’t attack women, Katie. I coax ’em. Rest easy.”

  “It’s Miss Blue Song.”

  He looked down, saw her satchel, and dropped the knife into it. “Who’s the sawbones?”

  “I am.”

  The disbelieving look he gave her was no more than she expected. “A lady doctor?”

  “Not certified in any way, of course. But then, there are quite a few men practicing medicine who have no claim to formal training at all.”

  “There’s no such thing as a lady doctor. Nobody’d teach you.”

  Katherine smiled grimly. She’d have to put up with this blunt rascal only until she reached home. “If you’re an Indian, people don’t expect you to act like a lady. They aren’t shocked when you do eccentric things.”

  “But what doctor had the gumption to risk his reputation by trainin’ you?”

  “My guardian in Philadelphia, Dr. Henry Ledbetter. A friend of my father’s. Dr. Ledbetter is a progressive. He let me assist him—with female patients only, of course.”

  “Oh. You’re a midwife, then.”

  “No, I’m a doctor. I don’t see why not.”

  He thought for a second. “Well, I reckon I don’t see why not neither.”

  To her surprise, Katherine found sincere admiration in his eyes. Then he gave her a solemn, lopsided squint. “But you got enough trouble just bein’ an Injun. Don’t tell people you’re a Yankee free thinker too.”

  She took several slow breaths, a technique that always served her well, then gave him a hard look. “Sir, get out of my coach and ride behind it.”

  He shrugged his answer and picked up the slender leather-bound book he’d wedged into a corner when he sat down. Though he tried to be nonchalant, from the way he frowned at the title she doubted he could figure it out. Not many people in these regions could read or write.

  “Romeo and Juliet,” she offered with a polite smile.

  “Shakespeare, huh?” He nodded smugly, a gleam of triumph in his eye. “I saw it acted once, down in Savannah. A boy played Juliet. Romeo couldn’t marry him, so he killed himself. Seemed unreasonable to me.” He tossed the book down. “Waste of time.”

  “How nice. You saw a play once. With a little more culture you’d reach the level of a barbarian.”

  His eyes snapped. “You didn’t care about my lack of culture when I was savin’ you from those hog-kissers.”

  Remorse mingled with undeniable gratitude. “Mr. Gallatin, you’re entirely right. I apologize
for offending you. You saved my honor, and possibly my life. And you risked your own safety to do it.”

  He frowned, studying her raptly, then said in a slow, thoughtful tone, “I guess I’ve rescued myself a real lady. The kind that makes a man want to fight dragons for her.”

  A shiver ran down her spine. Had she discovered some remarkable brand of backwoods cavalier, a white man and gold miner who fancied himself a crusading knight? He leaned forward, spit on his fingertips, and began cleaning her face. She drew back so quickly, her head thumped the coach’s wall.

  “Sir!”

  “Easy, gal, easy. Katie Blue Song, full of vinegar.”

  He pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, took her chin in one hand, and went on about his cleaning while she sat in transfixed silence.

  “You and those drovers,” he murmured, shaking his head. “I never saw a woman defend herself with so much courage before. Not a squeak, not a tear, just laid into ’em. Weren’t you scared at all?”

  “Certainly.” The heel of his hand brushed her cheek; his fingertips outlined every bone in her face, or so it felt. Katherine had never cast her gaze down before any man before, but now she did it to keep from studying him with the same fascination he directed toward her.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said in his low, breath-stealing way. “I knew that Jesse and Mary had three pretty daughters, ’cause I saw ’em each time they came home from the mission school up in Tennessee. But I never figured the fourth one was the prize.”

  In her mind’s eye Katherine saw the slow, easy journey of a man’s hand along the length of her bare stomach, and then lower. She knew exactly whose hand it was. No. There was no way that could come true.

  She twisted her face away from Justis Gallatin’s touch. “If you’re really a friend of my father’s, why are you trying to trifle with me?”

  “When you’ve got a lot of gold, you don’t trifle with women,” he told her solemnly. “You lure ’em into wicked, wicked sin, just like the dime novels say.”

  “You have no manners or education, but you do have a lot of gold. So you think gold gives you the right to do as you please.”

  He sat back, propped one foot on the opposite knee, and smiled calmly. “Done some mining. Done all right at it. Now I’m trying to get respectable. Or at least learn to act respectable.”

  “You’ve mined Cherokee land—stolen from it—just like all the other white men.”

  He looked out the window, and his jaw worked a little. She could almost see the tension rising in him, and it made the coach feel much too small for the two of them.

  “Your pa’s one of the best friends I ever had … have,” he said finally, still staring out the window. “I’ve mined his land, but I’ve put half of the profits aside for whenever he wants to claim ’em.”

  Shock sliced her breath in two. Her father had never been interested in large-scale mining, and especially not with a white man as partner. He and her mother had scooped gold out of the creeks occasionally—Cherokees had traded gold among themselves for centuries—but they had kept the locations secret. They knew that showing them to white men would only cause trouble.

  “My father would never willingly help a white man find Cherokee gold,” she told Justis Gallatin.

  “Times have changed, I keep tellin’ you. Your father changed.” He gestured impatiently. “Look, gal, it wasn’t no big deal, all right? I set up a dredge on a little bitty creek in the middle of the woods. Closed the operation down when the vein ran out three years ago. ’Cept for some piles of dirt, you can’t hardly tell anybody was there. Now I got me a big mine in the hills east of town.”

  “Not far from a little spring surrounded by laurel?”

  He looked at her cautiously. “Yeah.”

  “My parents were the only people who knew about that spot! They led you there. Admit it.”

  He swore under his breath. “All right. But half the profits from that mine was … are theirs too. Waitin’ to be claimed.”

  Katherine tried not to raise her voice, but she felt angry and confused. “Why haven’t they claimed them already?”

  “Too risky. It’s illegal for Cherokee and white to have a business deal.”

  “What? Are you saying that everything I’ve read is true? The Georgia courts are trying to force us out?”

  He gazed steadily at her, his expression tight and hard. “Times have changed a lot since you went off to Philadelphia, gal.”

  She clenched her hands into fists. “Mr. Gallatin, if you say that to me one more time—”

  “Hullo,” Mr. Bingham called. He pulled the horses up. “Miss Blue Song, is this the road toward your homeplace?”

  Katherine grasped the edge of the coach window and looked out. Everything else was forgotten as she gazed lovingly at the wagon trail that disappeared into shadowy forest. “It is, sir, it is. Turn onto it, Mr. Bingham!”

  Justis Gallatin called out, “Whoa, Bing-ham! Straight on, to Gold Ridge.”

  Katherine looked at him in exasperation. “I have no business to conduct among a passel of log cabins filled with gold miners.”

  “Your pa said for you to meet him there.”

  “But my mother and sisters are at home.”

  “I was told to make sure you went into town and waited for Jesse there. Don’t cause me any trouble. You’re goin’ to town.”

  He spoke with an authority that stunned her. Gone was the teasing rogue, and in his place was a man who gave commands easily and expected them to be obeyed.

  Katherine straightened, feeling angry but also worried. “What’s the truth? Tell me. Please.”

  Shaking his head in consternation, he leaned forward and took her hands. “I’m sorry for snappin’ at you. Your pa just wants to surprise you, that’s all.” Now the voice was friendly again, the eyes reassuring. “Don’t make me ruin it by telling you.”

  She exhaled slowly but couldn’t relax as long as his thumbs moved in slow circles across her palms. “I’ll have to have a talk with my father about his choice of messengers. You’re not very good at presenting surprises. And stop tickling me.”

  “I like to make a Cherokee gal blush. It takes more work, but when it happens, a man knows he’s really done something right.”

  Katherine realized that her face was burning. She pulled her hands away and rapped on the coach wall. “Onward, Mr. Bingham. To Gold Ridge, where a secret awaits.”

  Justis Gallatin lounged back in his seat and nodded with satisfaction. It puzzled her that for just a moment he looked so sad.

  CHAPTER 2

  JUSTIS asked enough polite questions to get her loosened up and talking without his help. She was still unnerved from the business with the drovers, and seemed grateful for any diversion. So he got her to tell him about railroad trains, something hardly anyone outside a big city had seen.

  Her talking left him free to curse his situation silently. What was he going to do with her? And how could he tell her that she had no family, no home, and no money other than what few dollars she might be carrying in the little satin purse anchored to the waist of her dress?

  She was part of a doomed tribe, and he couldn’t change that. In this part of Georgia, as in the states bordering it, the new settlers had long ago given up talk about sharing the land with Indians. Get the dark-skinned devils out and take the country God meant for white folks to own, they said.

  Most of the tribe still hung on to the old ways, spurning the missionary schools, avoiding the whites whenever possible, keeping to the riverside villages and little farms tucked deep in the hills. Justis couldn’t help but admire their stubborn pride and independence. Katherine Blue Song’s feisty nature didn’t really surprise him. She was one of the Principle People, and ages earlier the Great Spirit had told the whole world to kowtow to her tribe.

  Their lives were part of the land, and the ancient place-names had been born in the lilting songs of wind and water—Etowah, Chestatee, Chattooga, Hiwassee. Justis could only maul th
e names with a stiff tongue.

  But at least he respected them. Most people thereabouts were disgusted with the Indians for hanging on so hard, especially those who had adopted white ways, built prosperous businesses, and traded their war cries for fancy arguments supported by white laws.

  You mean them Injuns wrote up a constitution that calls their hunting grounds a nation? You sayin’ that they started a newspaper—a newspaper with that bastard scribble they use for writing? And they had the gall to send chiefs to Washington City to tell the President of these United States that his treaties weren’t no good? Lord have mercy, what kind of uppity notions will they get next?

  Justis watched Katherine Blue Song and felt a dull ache in his chest. Even if she were white she’d never fit in anywhere. She had too much education for a woman, not to mention that odd idea about being a doctor. Hell, if he had his way, she could doctor everybody from here to the Mississippi, but few folks in Gold Ridge would agree.

  It would’ve been better if Jesse and Mary had sent her to the mission school in Tennessee like their other daughters. The missionaries wouldn’t have let her get dangerous ideas, and they sure wouldn’t have turned her into someone so refined that every woman in Gold Ridge would feel jealous.

  Justis forced himself to stop looking at her. He stared out the window and thought, Refined and beautiful, and it’d be easy to stir up the fire behind those black eyes.

  What else did he want from her? Too much, he admitted. Friendship and trust. Good Lord, what he was thinking added up to a helluva lot more than a woman like Katie Blue Song would ever give to a slap-hazard renegade like him. He had grown up in a world that demanded he fight for his survival; she had been raised like some kind of royalty.

  How would she feel when she learned that he owned the Blue Song place? And where could he send her so that she’d be safe from men like those damned drovers? And if he didn’t send her away, how long would it be before he got her into his bed?

  Not long, if he could help it. He admitted that too.

  He’d never forget his first glimpse of her—backed against this carriage, glaring at the world; her thick onyx hair, which she wore braided around the top of her head, catching the sunlight like some sort of dark crown; her generously curved chest thrust out in defiance; and that skillful, slender hand moving with deadly accuracy. An enemy would do well to protect his throat around her.