Their skills as cartographer and naturalist astounded Blade. Gone was their aura of inexperience and naivete. With the advent of the precise technical work, they set aside their carefree, youthful exuberance and became trained experts.
Once the scientific work was in progress, Blade relieved Theodora of a large part of her camp duties. Though she still assisted Julius with the evening meal, a private was detailed to gather firewood and wash the dishes, giving her time to organize and enter in her journal the botanical specimens she collected during the late afternoons.
One evening when Blade saw her making an entry in her personal diary, he stopped and watched her. He wondered with curiosity what denunciation of his character she was penning with such ruthless energy.
Theodora refused to be intimidated and continued writing, ignoring the mocking half-smile on his lips. Let him worry a little, she thought. She brushed the soft end of the quill back and forth under her chin and watched his retreat. There was no need to admit to him that her first entry had told in glowing words about his rescue of her from the flooding river. But her feelings about the bold captain were changing, and the memory of his strong hands on her unclothed body ignited a fire inside her.
The days became longer and hotter after they crossed the Big Sandy River during the second week of their journey. After the heavy rains, the prairie was blooming, mile upon mile covered with thick grasses. Wild roses were scattered across its endless expanse, mixed with clumps of sagebrush, the narrow leaves glittering silver in the warm wind. The fragrance of the blossoms drifted on the breeze. At every opportunity Theodora gathered wildflowers and compared them carefully with the many species described in Nuttall’s catalogue, one of the few books she’d been allowed to bring.
Blade frequently rode back from the front of the column to make sure she had seen the sights—a wild turkey proudly spreading its feathers before its mate, or a mockingbird calling to its fellows, or a kingbird feeding its young. One morning he halted the caravan and called her forward. With a finger to his lips he pointed to a mother quail dragging her wing along the ground as though injured. He dismounted and lifted Theodora down. Quietly, he led her to a nest of bobwhites, and together they knelt and watched the newly hatched babies scrambling among the twigs and fluff and broken eggshells.
“They’re so tiny and helpless,” Theodora said softly. “How can they possibly survive in this savage country?”
“Savage is a harsh word, Miss Gordon.” Blade stood and looked out over the open grasslands. “It’s often used to describe things one doesn’t understand. The plains provide a bountiful life to those who respect its power and accept its challenges. With its incredible variety of plants and animals, it has a magnificence all its own. But to the newcomer this land can be very unforgiving.”
As she gazed up into his midnight eyes, Theodora read the depth of feeling behind his words. She rose and stood beside his tall form, remembering the time she’d fitted snugly under his arm. “You love this land, don’t you, Captain Roberts?”
“How could a person love anything so savage?” he quipped, the barbarous hoop in his ear flashing and a devilish grin spreading across his bronzed face.
Upon reaching the Little Blue River, the atmosphere among the soldiers changed dramatically, for they knew they were entering Pawnee country. The men were constantly on the alert, for the Pawnee were known to be hostile to the white man. The camp was startled awake one night by the heart-stopping battle cry of an Indian warrior. Knowing that Tom was on picket duty, Theodora raced from her tent straight into the arms of a bare-chested Blade Roberts. Together they joined the small crowd gathered on the edge of the bivouac and watched as Baptiste Lejeunesse carried what seemed to be a body into camp. He flung it dramatically at Tom, who dropped it on the grass like a handful of burning coals. The men burst into howls of laughter when they realized that the supposed corpse was only a scarecrow: an army overcoat draped over sticks and purposely left to flutter in the night breeze and frighten the young, inexperienced picket.
With the power of a grizzly bear, Lejeunesse enveloped Tom in a headlock, his curly black beard nearly covering Tom’s eyes. “You should have seen him, Capitaine. He offered to go with me to investigate! What a little banty rooster he is!” Lejeunesse ruffled Tom’s hair.
Blade shook his head at their crazy antics. The good-natured joke had brought relief to the atmosphere of dread that had permeated the campaign since leaving the Big Sandy. Placing his hand on Theodora’s elbow, Blade guided her toward her tent.
“Is Tom going to be all right out there, Captain?” she asked.
She hated to leave her brother alone after such a scare.
The concern on her upturned face touched Blade. “Your brother just proved his mettle tonight, Miss Gordon. He’s earned the respect of every man in camp. He’ll be fine.” He stopped and took her small fingers in his. “How about a cup of coffee, since we’re both wide awake now?”
Theodora smiled. His kindness was like a candle in the evening dusk, bringing a warm glow. “That sounds like a great idea. I know I couldn’t go right back to sleep. I’d just lie there and worry about Tom.”
He retained her hand and led her to a log that had been pulled up to the fire earlier that afternoon. He regarded her thoughtfully as she sat down. “You and your brother are very close, aren’t you, Miss Gordon?”
“Yes, I guess we are. She glanced up in surprise to see an expression of sincere concern on his face. “You see, our mother died when we were born, and we were our parents’ only children. Tom wasn’t strong when he was young. I’ve always felt responsible for him, even though he’s the older. She shrugged. “By three minutes, anyway.”
Blade lifted the large coffeepot from the fire with a folded cloth and poured coffee into two tin cups. He handed one to Theodora and sat down beside her. Silently, they watched the others return to their tents, some still chuckling over the practical joke.
Blade regarded her over his steaming cup. “How is it that you’re so well educated? You must admit, it’s unusual for a young woman to receive any formal schooling.”
Theodora smiled. She knew he was trying hard not to give offense. “When Tom and I were children, we were often housebound due to his frequent illnesses. So tutors came and went through the years, and I was always allowed to keep Tom company and take part in his lessons. We had a nurse, of course, but when Tom was very ill I always stayed close by.” The warm, rich aroma of coffee drifted from her cup. She leaned her elbows on her knees and gazed into the flames. “I can remember standing beside my father’s desk in his study when I was no taller than his chair, as I watched him catalogue plant specimens and waited for word that I could go up and see Tom after a particularly bad spell. As I told you before my father and uncle are both members of the Harvard faculty. What I didn’t mention was my maternal grandmother, who taught me at an early age to question the dictums that the outside world considered absolutes. She’s a Quaker minister. All my life she has encouraged me to question ‘Why’ and, even more shockingly, to ask ‘Why not.’ Do you find such upbringing of a female child scandalous?”
Blade admired her finely sculpted profile in the glow of the firelight. “Not considering you were born a baby bluestocking,” he teased.
But he thought about his own childhood. He’d been raised in a culture that accepted the importance of women as a fact of life. If a young warrior was treated with special regard, it was because everyone knew he faced the possibility of a very short life. But in the Cheyenne camp it was the women who made the decisions regarding the tribe—when to move camp and when to follow the proscribed rituals. In the privacy of their lodges, the women spoke their minds freely and their husbands listened.
He looked at Theodora and sensed her need for reassurance. “It’s always difficult when you feel different from those around you.”
“Yes.” Theodora smiled at his understanding words. “When Tom went to Harvard and I attended the ladies’ seminary, I
soon learned that the outside world didn’t approve of a female scientist. Most of my teachers at Mount Holyoke were appalled that I would stay up all night poring over books. They feared it would ruin my complexion, and nothing, I was told, was more fatal to a woman’s chances than that!”
“It doesn’t seem to have done you any harm,” Blade affirmed cryptically, for her words had reminded him of her engagement.
Surprised at the sharpness of his tone, Theodora saw the criticism in his ebony eyes. “What do you mean by that, Captain?”
“You are engaged to be married, are you not? How did you ever talk your fiance into allowing you to come on this journey?”
“There wasn’t any question of allowing me. I was going on this expedition. Besides, Martin is very interested in my scientific studies.” At his look of surprise, she continued. “He has agreed to publish my journal when I return. He’s also promised to help me continue my research after we’re married. He has a fine personal library and will be expanding it while I’m gone, so that I can do much of my work at home.”
With her answer, Blade at last found the final piece to the puzzle, a piece he’d been searching for since he first met her. What kind of man would allow his fiancee to embark on a perilous journey of unknown duration, even financing it so generously that every man jack of the expedition had one of the newly invented percussion rifles? Only a fool, desperately in love, or a shrewd businessman willing to pay the price—one measured in thousands of dollars—for her hand in marriage. Blade’s anger almost choked him. He stood and poured his coffee onto the fire. That Theodora would value herself so cheaply that she’d bargain her hand for this trip merely to gain the notoriety, the so-called prestige of being the first white woman to cross the continent, enraged him. “Then it was either that or no engagement, I take it.”
Theodora rose and set her tin cup down on a rock near the fire. “That’s putting it rather strongly, Captain Roberts. Placed in that context, it sounds as though I’m not in love with the man I plan to wed.”
“Are you?” His dark eyes flashed. The muscles on his bare chest rippled as he hooked his thumbs into his belt and moved to stand directly in front of her.
Theodora tilted her head to stare up at him. “I refuse to answer such a personal question, and you have no right to ask it.”
“It’s hardly a complex question. Just a simple yes or no would suffice.”
With her hands on her hips she glared at him. “Of course I love Martin. Why else would I agree to marry him? What kind of a person do you think I am, Captain Roberts?”
They were mere inches apart. His voice was low and husky. “I think you are a very naive young woman, who doesn’t have the slightest idea what it means to really love a man. To love him so much you wouldn’t dream of leaving him to go traipsing off across the country with forty strangers.”
“We’re hardly strangers anymore, Captain,” Theodora said through clenched teeth. She moved to go around him; but he forestalled her with a sideways step.
He was silent, his mouth set in a thin, compressed line. Then, as he followed her train of thought, the sudden merriment in his dark eyes glistened in the fire’s glow. He grinned his slow, mocking grin. “No, we’re certainly not. Are we, Miss Gordon?”
For a moment Theodora thought he was going to kiss her. It was the horrible sense of disappointment, when he turned and walked away, that made her mad enough to want to grab the coffeepot and pour its contents down the back of his neck.
Despite all their fears, they saw not a single Indian that night, and the next morning Blade declared a well-deserved rest day. Although Theodora had forgotten his promise to teach her how to swim, he had not. A short distance downriver, he’d spied a fine running stream feeding into the Little Blue the previous day, and it was there that he led her. The spot offered privacy, surrounded as it was by leafy brush and tall cottonwoods.
Dressed in a yellow cotton frock that she saved for the days when they didn’t travel, Theodora followed Blade, torn between a reluctance to place herself so completely in his hands and a desire to learn the mysterious art of swimming. The close call with drowning had left her determined to learn how to stay afloat.
When he reached the protected spot, Blade turned and smiled his encouragement. He seemed to sense her apprehension. He quietly dropped the cape he was carrying to the ground. Then he stripped off his boots, socks, and shirt. He stood beside the wide stream, dressed in a pair of old buckskin breeches that had been slashed off in a jagged edge at the knees. He laid his carbine on the pile of clothing, but retained the sheathed knife strapped to his muscular thigh.
Remote and dignified, he spoke like a tutor to a young pupil. “You’ll need to take off your dress and petticoat, Miss Gordon. You can’t learn to swim in them. Or your shoes and stockings, either.”
Theodora peered suspiciously up at him beneath her lashes and tried to find a hint of lascivious intentions. There was none.
Blade waded out into the clear, bubbling water until it reached his waist, then dove underneath and surfaced well out in the deep stream.
Coming to the top, he spread his arms and tread water. With a smile hovering on his mouth, he flicked his black hair from his eyes. “Get undressed and get in here, Miss Gordon. You’re going to have a swimming lesson, whether you want one or not.”
The memory of the way they’d touched each other so intimately the day he’d rescued her from drowning rose up before her, and for a second Theodora debated walking away—just leaving him there in the water. But she knew he’d be out of the stream and beside her long before she reached camp. He seemed to read her thoughts.
“I wouldn’t try running away if I were you.” His voice was as sweet as treacle. “Your brother agreed that you needed to learn to swim, and that I should be the one to teach you. So even if you made it to camp before I caught you, you’d only be sent back here like a naughty child.”
“I’m not a child, Captain,” Theodora corrected with a wrathful glance, indignant at his mocking. Fortified by her anger, she unbuttoned the yellow dress and slipped it off. Her camisole followed. Sitting on the grassy bank, she pulled off her shoes, stockings, and garters and set them neatly by her dress. Then, standing and untying the bands at her waist, she dropped the frilly petticoat to the ground and stepped out of its circle. Dressed in lacy chemise and pantaloons, she waded into the water.
Blade caught his breath at the sight of her. Her blond hair fell in a long braid over her shoulder and lay on one firm, full breast. Above the thin batiste of her undergarments, her bosom rose and fell in her agitation, causing the shadow of her cleavage to show dark against the smooth alabaster of her skin. Her tiny waist was encased in the satin ribbons of the chemise, and a graceful ruffle trimmed with little bows followed the curve of her hips in a tantalizing, swaying motion above her long, slender legs. He didn’t know where to look first, his previous determination to keep the lesson on a purely altruistic plane fleeing like a herd of frightened pronghorns before a raging prairie fire.
Her words brought him back to the task at hand.
“Oh, no! It’s too cold!” She stood knee-deep in the water, her arms clutched to her chest.
He moved toward her and smiled. “You’ll get used to it. Come on. All the way in.” Without warning, he grabbed her fingers and gently pulled her into the water.
As she felt her feet leave the sandy bottom, Theodora reached frantically for his shoulders, and as his arms moved slowly in the water, she clung to him.
He held her up as easily as a child holds his favorite toy. “The first thing you need to learn,” he said into the pink shell of her ear, is how not to sink like a rock, the way you did the other day. You can keep yourself afloat, Miss Gordon, by moving your arms and legs the way I am.”
He spanned her slender waist with his hands and started to push her away from him.
She resisted his gentle shove with determination, and clutched his shoulders, the tip of her cold nose touching his g
old earring.
“You’re going to have to trust me, Theodora. You do just what I do. If you start to go under, I promise I’ll catch you.” Gently, he pried her fingers from around his neck and slowly moved her in front of him, while he retained hold of one trembling hand.
Theodora watched his legs churning the clear water and imitated his movements.
“That’s it, Now move your arms like this.”
He started to release her hand, and she lunged for him, clinging desperately to his shoulders. “No, don’t let me go yet.”
“Try it, Theodora,” he instructed. He firmly thrust her away once more and held her up with one hand on her waist. “Just move your arms and legs like me, and keep your chin above water. Go on. I won’t let you drown. Trust me.”
As she looked into his raven-black eyes, Theodora felt his strength of will reach out to her. She did trust him. She had, ever since he’d saved her life in the flooding river. She knew he sincerely wanted to teach her how to swim for her own protection. Her eyes never leaving his, she slowly released her desperate hold on his forearm and moved her hands in circles, following his example. “Like-like this? she asked, as she tilted her mouth up above the water.
“You’re doing great!” he exclaimed. He kept his arms on either side of her, ready to catch her if she started to go under. “Don’t forget to kick your legs. That’s it. You can do it.”
Thrilled, Theodora looked at him, brimming with excitement. “It feels wonderful. Now show me how to swim like you.”
Blade grinned. “Let’s get in a little closer to the shore and I’ll give you your first swimming lesson. But don’t think you’re going to swim like me in one session. And don’t go trying anything foolish when I’m not around. Understand?”
Cherish the Dream Page 10
