Susan Johnson (22 page)

It took Trey less than ten minutes to find where she’d backtracked and headed upcountry.

At the base of the Elbow Pass, Empress reached down for the tenth time to check that Genevieve’s doll was still unbroken in the small package tied to her saddlebow. And a happy smile crossed her ruddy-cheeked face. The children would be ecstatic with their Christmas presents. Genevieve was eight and hadn’t had a real doll for as long as she could remember. Empress recalled her own array of porcelain-faced mademoiselles, left behind in haste when her family had fled the château.

The last appeal had been abruptly lost, and Papa was to be sent to prison for shooting Rochefort’s son. They’d left with very little: what money they could gather at short notice; a few prized possessions hurriedly packed; Mama’s jewelry. All gone now after five years of flight … the first two in Montreal, and then when word reached them that Rochefort’s detectives
had been asking for the Comte de Jordan in Montreal, they fled west to the raw frontier where a man could hide for life. As a precaution, they moved over the border into Montana and, with their much depleted funds, bought the mountain homestead two years ago. The site was beautiful, majestic, and wild, but none of them were familiar with hard work, none were skilled in farming, and although Papa tried, he never acquired the necessary talents.

With the gold in her saddlebags, she’d have money to buy the extra horses they needed for the spring plowing. One horse wasn’t enough to plow the sod, and they’d all had to help push the plow with only Clover in harness. With all of them pushing and Clover pulling, they’d broken six acres the previous spring and seeded it. But in a country where four- or six-horse teams were the rule, their attempts at plowing were pathetic. And six acres would never keep them alive.

The money in her saddlebags would do more than simply buy enough horses. It would give them back their life. “Thank you, Trey,” she murmured into the bracing air. “For everything,” she added gently. Then, pushing away the too sweet memories, she sternly set her mind on the future. Nudging Clover with her heels, she looked at the cloud banks coming in from the west. They were too high for snow, and if the drifts weren’t too deep in the intervening valleys, she would be home by dark.

They had seen her when she crested the narrow mountain defile, for Guy had set up watches during the last two days with a systematic logic he’d inherited from his father. He’d had to man the watch a great deal of the time himself, though, since the younger children were disinclined to sit still for more than a few minutes. The screams of delight filled the tiny cabin, and the two windows facing the valley framed happily chattering children watching their older sister returning home.

Guy came out alone to greet her, wearing Papa’s large boots and clasping Clover’s bridle, his eyes bright with tears although he tried hard to appear the man. There was only Papa’s boots left, and they were shared, so the other children crowded barefoot in the doorway, calling and shouting their
welcome. “You’re back! You’re back!” Emilie and Genevieve screamed, dancing up and down in their excitement, while Eduard clung to Emilie’s skirt calling, “Pressy! Pressy!” in a shrieking squeal that caused the chickens to begin squawking.

Empress noted the sound of the chickens with relief. Their food must have lasted. She’d given instructions, to kill the chickens if they had to. But only as a last resort, because they could live on the eggs longer.

Sliding off Clover, Empress gave Guy a big hug, then ran to the cabin door and crushed Emilie and Genevieve in her arms. Genevieve began to cry. “You didn’t forget us.”

Empress took her small face in her hands. “Hush, darling, I’d never forget you. I’ll always take care of you. Look, I’ve brought you a present.” She received a hiccuping smile then, and bent to swing a clamoring Eduard up in her arms. Her own tears of homecoming streamed down her cheeks while Eduard clapped his hands together and shouted into her ear, “Presents! Present! Me too!” He was still solidly chunky in her arms, and for the first time since she’d abruptly left Trey, she knew she’d done the right thing. She’d always taken care of them. The children needed her, the elder sister who comforted, teased, scolded, and loved them. They needed the food she was bringing home several days earlier than expected, and if she’d left Trey Braddock-Black a few days shy of her agreed three weeks, he could afford it a whole lot more easily than her young family out here in the wilderness. She closed her eyes for a moment and hugged her plump little brother.
Good-bye, Trey
, she said silently.
For all the joy you gave me, you were hard to leave.

A smacking, wet kiss intruded, and she opened her eyes, sweeping aside the memories. “I have presents!” she cried cheerfully, and the level of squealing rocketed skyward. The chickens, deciding that some calamity was about to transpire, added their squawking to the merry din.

“Hush, they won’t lay,” Guy warned sternly, their depleted food supplies a constant source of worry to him.

“Let them cackle all night,” Empress replied joyfully, giving Eduard another kiss, which was sloppily returned an instant later. “It’s all right now. I brought food.”

A sudden silence settled over the small, jubilant group, and it made all she’d gone through to get the money a thousand
times worthwhile. But it saddened her, too, to realize how important simple food had become to these young children.

Handing Eduard to Genevieve, she turned to Guy. “We’ll unload the horses. Emilie, set the table and take out Mama’s silver candlestick.” It was the only thing of value they hadn’t sold; the only reminder the family had of Mama. The candlestick had become their reliquary of hope for better times, their symbol of celebration, a remembrance of their former life. Only little Eduard was too young to have no memories of the château near Chantilly.

Empress carefully untied the gold-ladened saddlebags herself, and placed them under her bed, then she and Guy carried everything else into the cabin. While Guy took the horses to the barn to wipe them down and feed them, Empress unpacked the food. Almost reverently the children helped her put it away, arranging the bundles and packages on the open shelves near the stove and dry sink. Then, washing their hands, Empress and Emilie set to cooking while Genevieve entertained Eduard with a story from the much-used book of fairy tales. They were singsonging their way through a silly rhyme, the smells of bacon and biscuits, stewed apples and creamed potatoes wafting through the room when Guy tramped in from the barn with a warm bucket of milk.

In short order they were eating amid much chattering and laughter, each trying to describe the events of the intervening days to their sister.

“Guy was bossy,” Genevieve complained, and before Guy could utter the reply he’d opened his mouth to express, in the next breath Genevieve said, “May I have more applesauce?”

Empress smiled at her eight-year-old sister, whose mop of black curls, so like Papa’s, suited her gaminelike face and turned-up nose. “You may have all the applesauce you want. And there’s oranges for dessert, too, and chocolates.”

“Chocolates!” they all exclaimed in a clamor of astonishment.

“With a pink bow on the box.”

“Show me,” Emilie demanded impatiently, closer to Empress in looks with the same tawny hair.

“Has everyone had enough supper?” Empress asked calmly while four pair of eyes watched her intently.

“What’s orange?” Eduard asked, standing on his chair. “Me see orange.”

So they all ate oranges and exclaimed over the beauty of the chocolates, before they slowly ate the treat with much discussion of everyone’s favorite flavors.

Later they sat on the floor around the fireplace while Empress handed out the presents. Shoes or boots for everyone, and new coats and mittens, the necessities they’d all gone without. Empress brushed a swift hand across her eyes and swallowed the lump in her throat when she heard their happy cries of delight. And then the special gifts: a clown with movable arms and legs for Eduard; the doll with real hair and a painted procelain face for Genevieve; a mirror, comb, and brush set in silver gilt for Emilie. Guy couldn’t hold back his tears when he opened the packet with the Colt revolver. Papa’s gun collection had been left in his study at Chantilly, and only the utilitarian rifle had been purchased on the frontier. “The handle’s carved,” Guy whispered, running his fingers lightly over the polished wood.

“You must promise to be careful,” Empress warned, only to be treated to a scornful, sixteen-year-old glance for her effort.

“I can shoot,” was all he said, sounding very grown-up. Guy had stretched out a startling number of inches the last year and towered over Empress now. It was time, she thought, struck by his resemblance to Papa, to consider going back to establish Guy’s claim to Papa’s title and property. Now that Papa was dead, the threat of prison was over. And had their finances permitted, she might have taken the family back to France after Mama and Papa. died. With the gold in her saddlebags, maybe they should consider it now. Or perhaps it would be more sensible to stay another few years in this peaceful valley, where Guy could grow to manhood before attempting to reclaim his title of Comte de Jordan.

Her reflections were cut short by Eduard tugging on her arm and wanting his new shoes untied. “Tight,” he pronounced emphatically, sitting next to her on the floor. “Pressy, shoes tight.”

Empress smiled at her baby brother, who’d run barefoot all his life, and decided she should have bought him something more practical for his feet, like moccasins. The thought of moccasins, of course, brought vivid images to mind of a tall,
bronze-skinned man with long black hair like satin, and with a shiver she turned to Emilie and quickly asked, “Are there any chocolates left?”

Much later, when the younger children were all tucked into their beds with their new presents clutched in their hands, Guy and Empress sat near the fire, relaxing after the hectic, noisy evening. Guy had checked the animals an hour before, to see that they had food for the night. “It’s going to be cold tonight,” he’d said, stamping in with his new boots. “The sky’s clear, with brilliant northern lights. It’s at least twenty below right now. Going to be worse by morning.”

If the moon hadn’t been nearly full, he wouldn’t have been able to follow the track at night at the speed he’d been traveling. She hadn’t been cautious at all, except around Cresswell’s store, her track open and easy to see after that, with the heavily loaded horses.

The cold was dry and windless, the kind of night the temperatures would drop into the bottom reaches and you wouldn’t notice your face freezing until it was too late. If he didn’t come upon her destination soon, he’d have to find some shelter for Rally or lose him. In his buffalo coat over the Hudson Bay capote and his fur-lined moccasins, he could handle any temperature, but the journey was beginning to tell on his paint; frost clung to his nostrils where his breath froze. Luckily Empress’s two horses had broken trail through the snow, but in places it had drifted over—on the high ridges where the winds always blew.

Trey wouldn’t admit to his own exhaustion, rancor sustaining his fatigued body. How many times in the last hours had he talked himself into an acceptance of her actions—of her sneaking off in the middle of the night like a thief? Empress had some good reason, he’d told himself. Of course she did. But then the niggling doubts intruded. Why hadn’t she told him? And next, the litany that had been repeating itself without discrimination or disclaim resumed: A woman who’d sell herself in a brothel can’t be trusted … can’t be trusted … can’t be trusted.

But his anger generated from purely selfish motives. He had been deprived of something he wanted. A novel experience
in a young man’s life that had been, to date, exceptionally favored.

Rally stumbled, caught himself, and Trey swore. Damn Empress, there was no reason they should be out in the middle of the mountains in the dead of a winter night, freezing, fatigued, his fingers numb since five miles back. He chose to ignore the fact that no one forced him to follow her.

His mood was foul when the trail reached the crest of the next rise, foul and hot-tempered and inclined to blame first, then ask questions later. He saw the lights of the small cabin nestled in the bowl of the narrow mountain valley. His mount sidled as his gloved hand crushed tightly on the reins. “Eureka,” he said with a quiet grimness, his eyes narrowed against the gleaming, moonlit snow. There was no doubt in his mind that he’d found his quarry. Reaching forward, he rubbed Rally soothingly between the ears in apology for his inadvertent reaction. The beaded black-cougar design on his fur-lined gloves flashed in the moonlight Raising his hand, he briefly touched the glistening talisman to his lips. “We have her,” he said.

Trey carefully surveyed the homestead, taking his time like he’d been taught as a scout, checking the contour of the land, listening for the sound of a watchdog, trying to determine whether this was a ranch with armed men. Sliding his Colts from their holsters, he checked to see that the chambers were turning easily in the intense cold. He lifted his rifle from its scabbard and broke it open to check the full magazine. Then his heels touched Rally lightly, and they started down into the valley.

Guy had just asked Empress where she’d gotten all the money. He’d wanted to ask any number of times since she’d returned with the lavish array of presents and food, but when she’d not offered an explanation, he’d been afraid of inquiring … she had left with such somber determination.

Empress gazed at Guy, seated opposite her and near the fireplace in one of the sturdy chairs Mama had brought halfway around the world, and paused before answering, even though she’d rehearsed the answer a hundred times on the way home. He’d blurted out the question, an embarrassed
flush burning his cheeks. “I was going to hire myself out in Helena to earn enough money for food and seed,” she began, telling half the truth, not mentioning where she had planned on hiring herself out, “when a man was shot. I happened to be near at the time …” Another half-truth. No need to explain how near and in what state. “… and was able to help him live. His family is wealthy. They gave me the money as payment for saving his life.”