M. Donice Byrd - The Warner Saga (9 page)

“Lieutenant Sheehan from Fort Ridgely and your Reverend Michelson were supposed to break the news. I volunteered to see that the children made it to relatives. I’m sure I’ve botched this up terribly.”

She blew a shaky breath out of her mouth. The sight of her so torn up shook him to his core and conjured up all the painful memories of when his mother died.

“I’m sure your relatives will be a great comfort to you. Do they live nearby?”

She shook her head and tried to calm her sobs enough to speak. “My mother’s sister and her husband live in the
Nebraska territory. They moved there after they had a big fight with my parents. I don’t know if they’ll take me in. Can’t I stay here?”

He took her small hands in his and gave them a gentle squeeze. “By killing your parents, the Sioux upped the ante. This is not the same as stealing horses. The cavalry are going to go after them and it’s all going to escalate. It’s a real powder keg. I’ve already heard the soldiers saying, ‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian.’ The Sioux are not going to just stand there and let the army butcher them. I have a feeling this is going to get really scary.”

“I’ve lived here my whole life.”

“Maybe you can come back someday. But you need to go to your relatives’ home. I want to know you’re safe.”

Blake reached into his pocket and pulled out a wedding band. “This was removed so a positive identification could be made from the family.”

He handed it to her. She only glanced at it briefly before closing her fist around the ring. “It’s hers,” she whispered.

Meredith broke down again and Blake pulled her into his embrace. “I’ve got you. Let it all out,” he soothed. “I know what you’re going through. I’ve been there.” He held her and slowly rubbed her upper back, whispering all the words of comfort he wanted to hear when his mother died. After her tears began to wane, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to bed. He doubted she even weighed a hundred pounds. Her small stature evoked his desire to pound on his chest like a gorilla in the zoo and protect her.

Never in his life had he regretted his actions as he did this night. Criminy! If it wasn’t bad enough that he took her virginity but finding out she was the person he needed to break the news of her parents’ death made it doubly bad. No doubt a special place in hell awaited him. “I’m going to stay with you until you fall asleep and I’ll be back tomorrow with the others. Maybe it would be best if we acted like we don’t know each other.”

It was a lousy thing to say but her neighbors were not going to let him take her to her family if they knew he’d already acted inappropriately with her.

He could feel the warm, humid heat of her breath upon his chest as he held her.
“Sleep, my little treasure. It won’t feel so raw in the morning.”

Anders Broberg arrived at the Vande Linde’s farm with his son, Johannes, before breakfast. Reverend Michelson and a cavalry officer had visited just after sunset the night before to inform him of the terrible tragedy that befell the Vande Lindes and he decided the best way he could help was to come early in the morning and take care of the chores so Meredith wouldn’t have to. The house showed no signs that Meredith was awake yet and he secretly hoped she would sleep until Reverend Michelson showed up because he doubted she’d get much sleep after she learned of her parents’ fate.

“Go up in the loft, Johannes,” he said to his son as they entered the barn. “Throw down some hay and see if the chicken feed is up there.”

Johannes took the pitchfork up with him and immediately opened the shutters to let in more light. “Papa, look what I found,” he said as he bent to pick up the item in the hay.

Anders climbed up the ladder and stopped near
the top. “Let me see that.” He examined the razor Johannes put in his hand. It was ivory with the initials RK inlaid in gold in the handle. “RK?” he puzzled aloud. It was very old looking and the blade, he found, when he unfolded it slightly, was worn down from many sharpenings. For the life of him, he couldn’t think of anyone with those initials.

“Papa, someone’s here.”

From where he stood on the ladder, Anders could hear the horse approaching at a fast clip but he could not see out into the yard. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before.”

By the time Anders climbed down the ladder and reached the barn doors, the man had dismounted his black horse and was at the door of the cabin. He saw him try the knob and finding it unlocked entered without an invitation.

It took Anders only a few seconds to cross the yard but when he entered, he used catlike grace to hide his presence.

The man stood just inside Meredith’s bedroom with his hands on his hips looking around the room as Meredith, who had obviously just been roused from sleep, climbed out of the bed. She did not seem frightened by the man or embarrassed for him to see her dressed in her sleeping gown.

“What are you doing?” Her voice didn’t sound at all harsh.

He glanced at her, his eyes raking her scantily clad form, “I’m sorry I woke you, I know you need your sleep.” He put his crooked finger under her chin and tilted her head up and kissed her softly on the cheek. “I lost something.” he said and bent to look under the bed. He picked up two buttons.

“You found it, now you better go.”

“I would hardly come all the way back here for buttons. I lost the one thing I own that I would risk coming back here for. It must have fallen out of my pocket when you put my clothes in the chair.”

He stood and began searching the room with his eyes again and swore under his breath when the razor did not immediately come into view. “Do something about that,” he said motioning with his hand to the bed. “Either
make the bed or burn the sheet.”

For the first time, Meredith noticed the blood stain. “Oh!” she gasped and moved to the bed.

As she began stripping the sheet she asked, “Maybe you lost it in the barn when you changed clothes. What did you lose?”

Before he could answer, another male voice asked from behind them, “Perhaps this?”

6

Blake stood with his arms crossed and his weight shifted to his back foot as if he could not stand far enough away. He closed his eyes as the man in the cavalry officer’s uniform endlessly lectured using words like military justice, brig and marriage. His stomach churned as his mind frantically tried to come up with a solution that didn’t involve marrying the girl.

Blake shuffled uncomfortably. Criminy, he thought he was past the point in his life where his actions would cause embarrassment to his father if the truth of his parentage ever came to light. Getting kicked out of boarding school for fighting or kissing the headmaster’s daughter did not compare to this disaster.

Running his hand through his unruly hair, Blake was torn – torn between what society expected and the internal conflict inside him. The fact that he never wanted to get married was not a flippant way to continue his hedonistic lifestyle but a deep-seated need to protect
himself because if he didn’t grow close to any woman, no woman could hurt him like Beth had.

He hated this. To see her in a position of outcast like his mother and know the blame rested on his shoulders
, killed him. And yet, he could find no way around the inevitable. There had to be an answer other than marrying her. Why couldn’t he come up with an equitable solution? He could give her enough money to live out the rest of her days. Surely that would be compensation enough. But Lieutenant Sheehan would not be happy unless he agreed to wed her.

Meredith approached slowly. “Sir,” she said when
the lieutenant spotted her. “I knew when I agreed, we had no future together afterwards. He offered me several opportunities to back out but I didn’t want to.”

The officer’s face mottled with anger. “You’re not helping matters. You will get married or he’s going to spend a very long time in jail.”

“I don’t want to marry him. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“No. You could be with child.”

Meredith looked at him as if he lost his mind. “You can’t get pregnant your first time. Everyone knows that.”

Blake’s hands flew out in a defensive gesture as he took a step back. “I didn’t tell her that lie.”

“That’s not true?” she asked with wide-eyes searching Blake’s face.

The lieutenant pinned Blake down with a harsh look. “How can you possibly say you didn’t take advantage of her naivety?”

“Criminy!” Blake cursed running his hands through his hair. Under normal circumstances, he might have been able to argue that he had taken measures to protect her from pregnancy but not only did he leave his sheath at home, in the heat of the moment he forgot to pull out. Paling, he realized he could have indeed fathered a child. “Fine. I’ll marry her.”

“No! I don’t want to marry you.”

Blake took her by the elbow and pulled her aside. “Do you think I should go to jail for raping you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Thank heaven for that,” he said under his breath. “I’ve been racking my brain for a solution for twenty minutes. We are either getting married or he’s going to lock me up.”

“I’m not going to marry you.”

“They think I took advantage of you by manipulation – took advantage of your vulnerability
after
telling you about your parents and took advantage of your innocence.”

Meredith opened her mouth to protest but realized she would be protesting to the wrong person. “I need more time. I just found out about my parents. I don’t want to think about this now.”

He cast a sympathetic gaze at her. “I know, Meredith. This is unfair to put you in this position.”

“Please,” she said tears choking her.

“Women back home think I’d be quite a catch,” he said with feigned cheerfulness.

Her head jerked up to meet his gaze. Her gray
eyes were red and watery and dark smudges attested to the fact she had not slept well the night before. “Then marry one of them,” she snapped.

“That’s going to be a little difficult from a prison cell.”

Meredith crossed her arms over her chest. Her voice was small and tight, her lower lip and chin trembled. “I don’t want to marry someone who doesn’t want to marry me.”

“Criminy!
I want to marry you more than I want to be incarcerated.” He looked at her expectantly. “Do you want me to get down on one knee?”

“Hardly.”
She sniffled loudly and he handed her his handkerchief.

“Fine.
Let’s negotiate. What do you want?”

She thought about it, gnawing her lip. “I want to keep my horse.”

Blake looked surprised as if he’d expected her to say something outrageous, demanding a house and jewels and access to the moon on odd Thursdays. “Till death do you part,” he vowed. “What else?”

“I don’t want anything else from you.”

“What about the land?”

“How can I ever come back here when everyone knows what I did?”

Blake sighed. He bore a strange desire to bundle her up in his arms and protect her from the gossips. It struck him as odd but he dismissed it as some misguided sense of chivalry or guilt since he caused her downfall.

No, he understood this echoed his mother’s circumstances. Their neighbors knew she lived as the kept woman of a man who protected himself from their scrutiny but did nothing to protect her. Blake hated that he caused Meredith’s downfall and knowing the stigma
involved and knowing no other solution; he had to make an honest woman of her.

Criminy, he felt sick to his stomach.
Literally. Blake struggled to rebury every wayward memory that this situation pulled from the recesses of his mind. His whole body trembled in warning that he was in the greatest danger of his life. The hair on his arms and back of his neck raised. He knew if the connection he shared with Meredith in the bedroom continued to blossom, she would hold the power to hurt him as much as Beth had. How could he marry her and not form an attachment?

“There’s no reason you have to decide anything right now. I’ll talk to your minister and see if he can find out all the financial information and I’ll make sure it’s all kept up-to-date until you decide.”

Her face softened at his thoughtfulness. “Thank you.”

“So are we agreed?”

She hesitated a moment before nodding.

“Finally!” Reverend Michelson exclaimed upon hearing that they were in agreement.

A thin man of some forty years of age, Josiah Michelson combed his hair to cover up his bald head, his part moving further to the side every few months out of necessity.

“Miss Vande Linde, perhaps it is best your parents are not here to witness your shame. If I told them once, I told them a thousand times; letting you ride astride as you do would lead to your downfall.”