The Beloved Woman Read online

  “Mr. Gallatin?”

  Justis looked back at her. She had her head tilted to one side, and her deepset eyes examined him from beneath a luxurious ruffle of lashes. He caught his breath.

  “Yeah?”

  “You were rubbing your neck and frowning. Are you too hot?”

  He laughed softly. He was way too hot, and if he told her why, she’d get the scalpel out again.

  “I’m fine, thanks.” He caught the edge of her skirt and idly fingered the shiny gray satin. “Lady like you belongs back in Philadelphia.” Where he wouldn’t be tempted by her.

  “No, I’ve come home for good.”

  When he saw the happy anticipation in her face, he almost choked. “Frontier’s going to be mighty boring after a big city.”

  She smiled and shook her head, then nodded toward the window. “This land’s in my blood. When I was little, my mother fed me a spoonful of soil mixed into some corn mush. She said the land was part of me now, and I’d never stop loving it.”

  He grimaced. “What kind of husband are you gonna find around here? Some buckskinned feller with a log shanty back in the woods? Nah, you wouldn’t be satisfied.”

  She raised her chin and said calmly, “That’s no problem, Mr. Gallatin. I don’t intend to marry.”

  More odd notions. She had a ripe, dusky pink mouth that ought never to be wasted on such talk. “You’ll marry,” he told her with confidence.

  “I won’t. I swear it. I’ll be owned by no one but myself.”

  He tugged playfully at her skirt. “I bet some pearly-faced dandy up in Philadelphia broke your heart and busted your pride. Told you he wouldn’t marry an Injun gal.” Justis paused. “He allowed that he might fancy you as a mistress, though. Hmmm?”

  The quick flare in her eyes told him that he was probably right. “I’m certain that you could write sonnets about romance, Mr. Gallatin, but I’d prefer not to hear your opinions. I assume you’re not married.”

  “Not yet. Been plannin’ on it for some time, though.”

  “Oh?” she said quickly. “Are you betrothed to one of the local she-bears?”

  He laughed again. “I’m an important man hereabouts. Got ambitions to be more important, and I need the right kind of wife to make me look respectable. I might even go up to New York and hunt for one in high society.”

  “Trap one,” she corrected him dryly.

  He grinned, fascinated by her. Behind that sweet smile was a sharp tongue. He’d wager that six years in Philadelphia hadn’t tamed the free spirit of a Cherokee upbringing.

  “Your mama told me how you ran buck-wild when you were little,” he said cheerfully. “Said you got into more trouble than a Cherokee elf. I disremember the details, but there was a story about a big powwow, some sort of festival. Seems little Katie had a girl-size blowgun for hunting rabbits, but she went huntin’ trouble instead. Slipped into the woods and snuck up on an old chief and his wife who were enjoyin’ a particular sort of entertainment at the moment …”

  “My mother told you that?”

  “Gospel truth.” He solemnly held up a hand. “She said you made that old chief nervous for the rest of the festival.”

  Her mouth crooked up at one corner. “I’ll have to speak to my mother about her tall tales.”

  “She was … she’s a fine woman, your mother.”

  “Yes.” Nodding, Katherine smiled pensively. “I’ve missed her so much. I wanted to come home a long time ago, but she and Papa wouldn’t let me.”

  Justis knew why—they’d have gone crazy worrying about her safety. Jesse and Mary had feared for their other three daughters as well, and that was why the girls had all been enrolled up at the mission school in Tennessee. If they hadn’t come home to visit, they’d still be alive.

  Justis cleared his throat and pointed out the window. “Look. We’re on the edge of town.”

  She clasped the window ledge and gazed out intently. “The creek’s nothing but a ditch between mounds of dirt! Somebody cut down all the trees! There are stumps everywhere! And all those shanties—how many people live in Gold Ridge now?”

  “About five thousand,” he said carefully, watching her reaction.

  Stunned, she was silent for several minutes, studying the ugly overflow of a booming gold town. Pigs and chickens roamed among the shanties, searching for food through piles of garbage. Men sat on canvas stools, using tree stumps for tables as they played cards or drank from umber-colored bottles.

  A few women and children squatted around campfires, waving away flies in the warm April sun. Between two lopsided tents a pair of men punched at each other drunkenly until one fell backward and brought his home down in a heap around him.

  Finally Katherine turned away, her face drawn with worry. “Is it all like this?”

  “Nah, there’s a real nice square with a new brick courthouse. Got some decent homes, couple of churches, some respectable hotels. That’s where we’re going—to a hotel just off the square.”

  She unpinned a pearl brooch from her bodice and took the handkerchief that it had held. Dusting herself delicately, her eyes clouded with thought, she murmured, “What do all these new people think of their Cherokee hosts?”

  Justis was saved from answering that question when a man trotted his fat bay horse alongside the coach. Slouched over the saddle, his white coat flopping in rhythm with the brim of his white hat, he tried to steer his mount, smile, and stick his face as close to the coach window as possible.

  “Welcome to Gold Ridge, mister,” he said to Justis. “You need land? I got land bought directly from those lucky souls who won it in the lottery. Forty-acre gold lots, hundred-and-sixty-acre farm lots, some with improvements the Injuns made on ’em. Good prices—Well, I’ll be damned!”

  He stared at Katherine, then looked back at Justis. “You taking this squaw to one of the cathouses? Which one?”

  By the time Katherine’s sharp gasp hit the air, Justis was already leaning out the window, and a second later he’d jabbed the barrel of his pistol into the man’s fleshy throat. With a squeak of alarm the man reined his horse around and galloped back toward the shanties. Justis swore softly as he settled back in his seat and put the gun away. He finally looked at Katherine and saw the horror in her expression.

  “These people really believe that they can have Cherokee land and anything else they want,” she said with soft torment. “They’re convinced of it.”

  Justis sighed. She looked so stricken, he reached over and cupped her face in both hands. Her skin felt fantastically smooth to his callused fingers, and desperation gave her eyes a wide, limpid appeal that sank into him like a knife. She might be tough, but she was scared too.

  “Everything’s gonna be just fine, Katie,” he said soothingly. Then, telling himself that he needed to distract her from further questions, he kissed her lightly on the mouth. She tasted like sweet cologne and dusty sweat, a unique combination that he found wildly provocative.

  “Oh, dear,” she said, trembling.

  His mouth brushed hers again. “You stick with me, Katie, and I’ll fight any man who looks crossways at you.”

  “Why are you like this?” Her breath came in soft, ragged puffs. “Are you as wicked as you act, or as sweet as you sound?”

  “Both.”

  Because she made a murmur of amusement, he ran his tongue over her lips before he sat back. He held her shoulders and nodded solemnly. “Now you got clean lips.”

  Jesse, I promised to take care of her, but I didn’t count on this.

  She blinked a couple of times and shivered. Her eyes filled with tears of shame as she shoved his hands away. “I’m sorry for letting you do that. I feel very confused right now.”

  “It was just a friendly kiss.”

  “And the Alamo was just a skirmish.”

  “Hullo, down there,” Mr. Bingham yelled. “Where to in town?”

  Justis stuck his head out the window. “The Gallatin-Kirkland Hotel. It’s on the edge of the square.
”

  “The Gallatin-Kirkland Hotel?” she repeated. With her handkerchief she dabbed quickly at her eyes, then brushed the material over her mouth, shooting him a reproachful look as she did.

  “Me and my business partner own it,” Justis explained. “Sam Kirkland. He and his wife live there.”

  “What else do you own in the Cherokee Nation?”

  “Besides the mine I already told you about, a store, a stable, and a saloon.” Plus two hundred acres of the prettiest land in this part of the state. Blue Song land.

  She arched a black brow. “Is there anything left for anyone else to own?”

  “Plenty.” He pointed. “Take a look-see. Yo, Bing-ham! Take us around the courthouse once!”

  The coach rolled into a neatly kept square, at the center of which stood a majestic two-story brick building with a pair of white colonnades framing the entrance. Saddle horses and mules hitched to heavy wagons stood lazily in the shade of a massive oak tree by the courthouse steps.

  “The bricks were made by a local man,” Justis told her proudly. “There’s flecks of gold in ’em. And after it rains hard, you can go out in the street and pan nearly a pennyweight. There are fortunes just waitin’ to be found here.”

  “Too much to resist,” she murmured.

  The buildings around the square were a variety of styles, everything from an old log cabin to clapboard stores with canvas awnings and nicely painted houses complete with rocking chairs on the porches. Even though the sun had barely reached noon, raucous piano music filtered out the open doors of the Buzzard’s Roost Dance Hall and several similar establishments nearby. A half-dozen drunks lay in the alleyway between the rather grand Gallatin-Kirkland Saloon and the ramshackle Golden Lady Billiards Emporium. They were piled up like sleeping puppies. Flies circled them in the shadows.

  Men hunkered around dice games on the porches and in the street. A mud-covered gent in overalls danced a jig with a woman wearing an overstuffed carmine-red dress, the perfect color to match her hair. They had no musical accompaniment, at least not any that matched the rhythm of their feet. They did, however, have a nanny goat and her nursing kid for an audience.

  A wide variety of people traveled the street—miners carrying pans, picks, and shovels; businessmen in snug cutaway coats and top hats; barefoot farmers wearing coarse homespun; women in gingham and women in silk. They had one thing in common—except for a black slave or two, they were all white and seemed very much at home.

  “Why didn’t anybody write me about this?” Katherine asked in desperation.

  Justis shrugged elaborately. “It was hard for them to put into words, I reckon. And they didn’t want you to get worried and come home.”

  “Can you send someone for my father right away?”

  “You bet.”

  He’d tell her the truth as soon as they got inside the hotel, he told himself. He wasn’t very good with words and even worse with hysterical women. Thinking about her reaction made him feel sick.

  Mr. Bingham finished his circuit and headed off the square toward a handsome white building set not far from where thick forest closed in on a trail leading out of town. Double galleries ran across the top and bottom levels, flowers formed a colorful border out front, and a small garden flourished beyond the limbs of a stately beech tree near one side of the building. A sign hung from the edge of the bottom gallery, with “Gallatin-Kirkland Hotel, Est. 1835” scrolled in large gilt letters.

  Dread pooled in Justis’s stomach as he stepped from the coach. Bingham jumped down and went to remove Katherine’s trunks at the rear. Justis followed him there.

  “You been paid in full?”

  “Yes, sir. Miss Blue Song took care of it in Nashville a few days ago. Look, I don’t feel right, going off and leaving her with strangers …”

  “Here.” Justis planted a ten-dollar gold piece in Bingham’s hand. “Get going soon as you unload. I’ll take care of her from now on.”

  When the driver looked at the coin his eyes bugged. “Yes, sir.”

  Justis heard a sound and strode to the coach door too late to do more than watch Katherine shut the door behind herself. She looked around anxiously while she set a black bonnet over her hair.

  “Don’t wear that thing,” he told her. “Makes it hard to see you.”

  She peered at him from under the bonnet, her face like the center of a darkly exotic flower. “I just want to be ready when my father gets here.”

  “You think he’s gonna know by magic the second you set foot on the ground in Gold Ridge?”

  “Perhaps.” She removed the bonnet and gave him a mild look of exasperation.

  “Mr. Justis! Is this the Injun?”

  A robust black boy, barefoot and shirtless but dressed in good trousers, ran up and grabbed Justis’s hand, then gazed at Katherine in awe.

  “This is Miss Blue Song.” Justis shifted awkwardly. Introductions were one of many social graces he hadn’t mastered yet. He gestured from Katherine to the boy. “Meet Noah.”

  She could have ignored the boy, nodded silently to him, or reproached Justis for introducing her to a house servant. Any of the three would have been acceptable. Instead, she smiled gently and said, “How do you do, Noah?”

  Justis watched her with a troubled heart. She was a real lady, he thought, and after that kiss he knew he’d do whatever it took to keep her.

  Noah ducked his head in a vague sort of bow. “You be an orphan like me, huh?”

  Justis hurried him to the stallion pawing impatiently at the back of the coach and shoved the reins in his hands, along with a nickel. “You take Watchman over to the stables, you hear? And don’t get trampled.”

  “Okay!”

  After the boy left, leading the huge gray horse behind him, Justis sighed in relief. Katherine turned her attention from Bingham’s work with her baggage. “What did he mean by ‘orphan’?”

  “Some fool game of his. I don’t know.”

  “You own him?” The disapproval was obvious in her voice.

  “Yeah. But I didn’t buy him. Him and his sister were bartered for goods at the store. They were both sickly and bruised up. Wasn’t any other way I could get ’em away from their master.”

  “I’m an abolitionist, Mr. Gallatin. I just want you to know that. A free-thinking abolitionist.”

  Lord, why didn’t she just strip naked and do a dance in the road? he thought. That couldn’t make her any more controversial than she was already. He pulled a long Spanish cigar out of the band of his hat and jabbed it between his teeth.

  “I’m not really opinionated on the subject, Katie, but I don’t own slaves. When Noah and his sister are older, I plan to sign their manumission papers and send ’em up north to school. Good enough?”

  She looked remorseful. “Yes. I apologize.” He nodded, satisfied. When she was wrong, she admitted it. Not many women did that. But after a moment she added, “Please don’t call me by a pet name. It’s crude. A gentleman would call me ‘Miss Blue Song.’ ”

  Justis felt embarrassment creeping up his cheeks. One minute a smiling angel, the next a high-falutin’ queen. “I’m not a gentleman, Katie.”

  She clamped her lips tightly together and turned away. “Just put those trunks on the veranda, please, Mr. Bingham. I won’t be here long.”

  The sound of footsteps on a wooden floor heralded the appearance of Sam’s wife, her cheeks rosy from housework. She wiped her hands on a white apron as she pulled it from her calico dress. Rebecca Kirkland radiated the same wholesome sweetness as a pot of honey. She was made up of wheat-blond hair and buxom womanhood, with kind hazel eyes. When people wanted good chicken soup and tenderhearted treatment, they went to Rebecca. Justis had never looked at a female with brotherly affection before he met her.

  “Welcome home, Miss Blue Song,” she said kindly, and held out both hands. “I’m Rebecca Kirkland. My husband and I are partners with Mr. Gallatin.” She shot an anxious look toward Justis, and he shook his head.

&n
bsp; After a startled moment Katherine went up the steps and clasped Rebecca’s hands. “I’m sorry to intrude on you. I really don’t understand why Mr. Gallatin brought me here.”

  “Jesse’s supposed to meet her,” Justis called. This had to stop. It gnawed at his insides more with each second. As soon as Bingham pulled away, he’d tell her.

  White trash murdered your family. Your pa was full of bullets and the rest—well, they died in other ways.

  “Why don’t you fix Miss Blue Song some tea?” Justis suggested loudly. He bit his cigar in two and had to grab the front end before it fell to the ground.

  NOAH AND HIS SISTER, Lilac, were hiding beyond the arched doorway to the parlor, and they kept peeking at her. Katherine smiled at them, but they looked sorrowful in return. Rebecca Kirkland’s hands shook each time she raised her teacup. Justis Gallatin had quickly downed two glasses of whiskey from a cupboard in the corner. Now he lounged by the marble fireplace, scowling.

  Something was wrong, very wrong, and fear grew inside Katherine until she could barely sit still.

  “You know my family well?” she asked Rebecca.

  “Oh, yes.” Her smile was too wide, her voice too gay. “They trade at the store.”

  “And the people from the Talachee village? Do they trade with you also?”

  “They moved on a month ago,” Justis said. “Went to the Indian territory out west.”

  Katherine looked at him in bewilderment. “They deserted the settlement? They’d been there for generations.”

  He cleared his throat, stared at the carpeted floor, and said finally, “Settlers claimed their land. That’s the way it is now. Since the lottery. Man shows up with a deed, Indians got to move. The treaty said so.”

  “No chief of any importance signed that treaty. And it’s still being fought in Washington City.”

  He slammed a hand on the mantel. “Dammit, this isn’t Washington City! It’s over, you hear? There’s nothing you or I can do to change it.”