“I am certain, madam, that you are quite capable of flying, if you so desire, but in this case it is not necessary. I said I would get you to St. Louis, and I mean to do it with you still in one piece. Lie down, wrap yourself in quilts, and hold on. We’re taking the falls.”
Travis slammed the door and stalked away.
With the aid of his right-hand man, Travis poled the keelboat into the river’s current, relying on his instincts and his experience to gauge the narrow channel that would take them past the treacherous rocks to the lower river. The falls were actually no more than a gradual downgrading of the river over stepping stones of wide rocks that created rapids of rushing water as the river tumbled over them. When the river was high, they created little problem. After a dry summer they made a dangerous trip. Travis gambled on the rain and his own knowledge to avoid collision with jagged ledges in shallow waters.
Normally the thrill of the wild ride as he flew over the white water and navigated to safety exhilarated Travis. This day he only suffered a nagging worry every time the boat shot into the air and landed with a jolt. He kept seeing Alicia’s pale face growing paler with every tumble, and her wide eyes growing larger and more luminous with each frightening lurch. When the boat finally reached the more placid waters above the landing, he locked his pole in place and literally ran back to the cabin.
The weak cry of pain beyond the door was sufficient to propel Travis into the cabin without the niceties of knocking. He nearly fell over the bundle of blankets and quilts on the floor before realizing the moan came from there and not the bed. Cursing, he dropped to his knees and tried to unwrap the tangle, searching for Alicia’s pale face and chestnut hair.
When he encountered the sticky wetness of blood, the truth hit him with the force of a hammer blow, and Travis cried out his anguish and rage. Wasting no time, he fled to the bow. With the city behind them, he knew only one place to go.
Under his curt commands, the keelboat shot past the landing filled with his wagons of cargo and the startled faces of his men as he sailed on past, downriver, without them.
The woman in the bed tossed restlessly in the oppressing heat. Propped in a chair beside a crude fireplace, Travis jerked awake. He rose to stand over her, but she still slept. The wide, wet paths of tears down her cheeks told the tale of her dreams.
He wandered to the window, pushing aside the coated paper to stare into the moonlight at the two tiny white crosses outlined on the hillside. He shouldn’t have brought her here. He should have tried to pole her back upstream toward town. He should never have brought her downstream at all.
The cold emptiness of his friend’s cabin laid a chill upon his heart. Out of all the men he knew, LaRouche and Robert were the happiest. Both had deserted the wandering life for homes and families. He had left LaRouche safe and content in Cincinnati, and he had expected to find the friendly aid of Robert and his wife here. The sight of those carved and whitewashed crosses spoke tales to haunt his already empty heart.
Remembering other deaths, other families destroyed, victims of war and disease, Travis felt the pall of loneliness enshroud him. Returning to the chair, he leaned back and willed sleep. Maybe settling down wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe he was better off dying with his boots on, his knife in hand, instead of in small, agonizing pieces, as each tormenting loss ripped out another bit of his heart.
He wished Robert were here. Anything would be better than sitting here listening to Alicia’s helpless cries, hearing her fevered breathing, knowing she was beyond his help.
Alicia shivered and sought her blankets. They covered her in heavy stacks, weighing her down, pushing her back against the cushions . . . stealing what was hers alone.
She screamed, shoving against the imprisoning weight, kicking frantically at the beast holding her, entrapping her in the tangle of clothes. A man’s voice spoke above her, and she screamed again, screamed as she had not dared to before, screamed as if her life depended on it. She would not let him do it again! She would not!
The weight lifted and the drowsiness returned. He left her alone. Good. Maybe he would stay away. She would have the maids call the sheriff if he came again. Just because she was alone now did not mean she was unprotected.
Alone. Tears crept down her cheeks, squeezing out from beneath her lashes despite every attempt to hide them. All alone. They all had left her, one by one, all had gone away. Even the hated thing growing inside her had gone. She sensed the emptiness like a hollow place where life had once been. She hadn’t wanted to admit it, had refused to acknowledge life, fearing another loss. She was glad it was gone, so now she could be all alone again. She didn’t deserve better than that. She was a wicked whore, a wanton woman. He was right. She deserved what he had done. She deserved to lose the only thing she had left….
The lady’s sobs tore at his heart, but Travis had learned better than to approach her. She screamed at the sound of his voice, fought the touch of his hand. He could only watch her waste away with fever and wish he knew a woman to bring to her.
If he ever met the man who had done this to her, he would kill the bastard with his bare hands.
A jay cackled in a bush outside. No sunlight reached the room, but Alicia sensed it was not far away. Her body ached. When she moved, the soreness tore open the unhealed walls of grief, and she choked back sobs of anguish.
She heard movement, and she forced her eyes open. The embers of a fire glowed in the dirt hearth across the room. Her eyes widened, not recognizing her surroundings. She glanced around, finding the rough-paneled door in a frame of logs, the papered window, the tilting shelf above her head. She had never seen this place before. Where was she?
As if she had spoken the question out loud, a tall figure rose out of the corner beside the stone chimney, where he had been whittling a loose piece of kindling. She scarcely recognized the shadowed face with several days’ growth of beard, but the gold ring in his ear caught a flicker from the fire, and Alicia relaxed. Travis was here. Lonetree. What a terrible name. Lonetree Travis. Travis Lonetree. Lone Travis Tree. Lone Travesty. She giggled and slept again.
Travis studied the sleeping face surrounded by a heavy tumble of chestnut curls and wondered if he were imagining things. The giggle had caused an inexplicable surge of hope. But her face was still pale, drained of the artificial color of fever.
The next time Alicia woke, it was day, and she was in full command of her senses. She could smell something delicious cooking, and her insides told her she was starving.
Spying the tall man poking at the kindling in the fireplace, she persuaded her dry tongue to speak. “Travis?”
He swung around, then relaxed as she struggled to sit. “The doctor said you would be needing some meat broth. Will you try some?”
“Please.” She watched as he spooned the broth into a bowl.
She found it amazingly difficult to sit. With dismay she watched as he set the bowl on a table beside the bed. She would spoon it all over herself from this position. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and her dry, cracked lips barely produced a sound.
“Water?”
Travis nodded and went outside. When he returned, she was struggling with the covers. She plucked the awkward quilt while she tried to raise up on one elbow. At his entrance she nervously tucked loose hair behind her ears, and he chuckled.
“The lady is back,” he said, insensibly. Setting the pitcher down, he leaned over and lifted her shoulders and tucked pillows and blankets behind her. Every muscle in Alicia’s body knotted at his touch, but she was in no position to refuse.
Travis sat on the bed and helped her drink from the water ladle. So great was her thirst, she ignored his proximity. Hunger replaced her embarrassment when he began to feed her from the bowl. She did not dare think about what had gone before, when she had no consciousness of his presence.
And after she had eaten, she slept. Sleep was so much easier than facing the appalling facts. She had lost a baby, and this man—not eve
n a physician—had tended to her. She could not deal with that reality, not yet.
In the days that followed, however, Alicia discovered how much she had to rely on Travis, and the struggle with her pride collapsed beneath the burden. He had the decency to leave the cabin so she could use the chamber pot without fear of interruption, but she had not yet the strength to empty it. This task he performed without comment, as he provided her with clean linens and rags that he must have washed himself. The embarrassing intimacy of these chores made it easier to accept his help in managing the smaller tasks of eating and washing.
He brought her trunk up from the boat, and she watched with some amusement as he sifted reluctantly through the feminine garments inside to find the clean nightgown she requested. At the hint of laughter in her voice, he held up a pretty garter of blue satin and lace.
“Is this what you wear beneath those grim gowns of yours?” he inquired boldly.
“That’s for ballrooms, Mr. Travis,” Alicia informed him, hiding a titter as one dark eyebrow arched at this piece of information. When he produced a pair of lacy pantalets, an extravagant new fashion she had indulged in, she could no longer hide her grin. She never thought there would come a time when she could watch a man handling her most intimate garments and laugh, but these past days had taken her past the barrier of his sex to see him as a friend.
“Now, I’m not entirely ignorant of a woman’s under-pinnings, madam, but I’ve never seen the like.” Travis held up the long pantalets admiringly. “If it weren’t for all the furbelows, they might even be practical.”
“That’s what I thought, but my maid almost died when I threatened to wear them. Now do give me my gown, Mr. Travis, before you embarrass me further.”
He scooped up the long blue cambric and lace hidden at the bottom of the trunk and carried it to the bed.
Alicia read the determined glint in his eye and hurriedly scooted herself to a sitting position so she did not feel quite so intimidated by his greater height. He had been gentle beyond belief these past days, but that small grain of distrust had planted itself deeply. Men were too unpredictable.
“I can’t wear that one,” she protested.
“Are you going to tell me you wear black even in bed, Mrs. Stanford?” Travis asked mockingly.
“Of course not,” Alicia replied, glaring at his self-satisfied smirk. “You will have to keep the fire well stocked if I’m not to freeze in this thing. It’s meant for summer nights, and it must be nearly October.”
“A good, hard freeze and the trees will put on a spectacular show for the remainder of your journey, Mrs. Stanford. Maybe a few chilly nights will help you to rise from that bed a little sooner.”
He grinned and walked out, leaving Alicia to the task of struggling out of her old gown and into the new. Just pulling off the gown made her blush, remembering how it got there. Travis had burned the bloodstained gingham she had worn the last day on the river. He had undressed her and dressed her again in this old lawn shift he must have found in the cabin. He had seen all of her there was to see and never said a word. His tact endeared him to her more than anything else he could do.
Travis seemed somewhat pensive later, when he served her the stew he had prepared. Alicia watched furtively as he moved with lithe grace about the cabin. He wore his usual garb of open-necked linen shirt and buckskin breeches and boots, but he had abandoned the bandanna and the earring. His black hair was pulled back from his sharp cheekbones with a rawhide thong, and he looked more than ever the Indian in the firelight. Only the slight hook in his nose marred the perfect evenness of his strong features.
“Has the boat gone on without us?” she inquired as he stared into the fire.
Travis helped himself to a bowl of stew and sat down in a chair beside the bed, leaning it against the wall and propping his boots upon the pallet. “They can’t go anywhere without us. They’re terrorizing Louisville until you get better.” He fished a piece of meat from the stew with his finger and savored it.
Alicia stared at the dregs of her own bowl. “What have you told them?”
“I’ve simply told them you are ill. They think Robert and his wife are still here, but I daresay they will allow their romantic fantasies to stray a little. I have acquired something of a reputation, I fear.”
“As have I by now, I suppose.” Alicia pressed her eyes closed against the heat of her tears. The night was the worst, when she had nothing to do but think of the utter failure she had made of her life, and of the child’s. She could not think too much of the child yet. It had not been real before. It was even less real now. Only the horror and the pain remained.
“Are you going to tell me about it?” he inquired.
“What is there to tell?” she asked. “I’m not a widow, I’ve never been married, and I cannot even successfully carry a child. I don’t seem to be capable of doing anything right. I had hoped to save my reputation by coming out here, but even that is to be denied to me, it seems.”
Relief at learning no avenging husband followed her was replaced by his earlier rage at the man who had done this. Travis knew enough about women to know this haughty creature would never succumb to passion without the proper ceremonies. Her fear of him led him to believe an even greater crime had been committed, and a knife of anger twisted in his gut. Never would he have suspected the extent of her fragility that first day he had seen her—tall and proud and courageous, combating the evils of the world with her ladylike tongue. But he knew it now, and he suffered an insane urge to protect her from further harm.
“I will see that you arrive in St. Louis with your reputation untouched, if we have to hire a maid and a duenna in the process. Your only task is to get better so I can take you there.”
Alicia threw him a quick, grateful look. “You spoke of a Robert and his wife. Is this their cabin? Where are they?”
The change in subject did not relieve the heaviness of his thoughts. Travis set aside his bowl and shoved his hands in his pockets, staring at the toes of his boots. “Dead, most likely. At least Eleanor is, I imagine, and probably the child she carried. Robert’s probably drinking himself into an early grave. I never saw two people more in love than they, the last time I was through here.”
Travis rose abruptly and stared out the window at the two tiny crosses. “He brought Eleanor from back East. She was his childhood sweetheart. When he got tired of the roving life, he staked out this place and went back to marry her. She had actually waited for him and followed him out here willingly. I used to be so jealous of his luck that I could scarcely stand to see them together. She was a delicate little thing, like a woods violet. He should never have brought her here. Anyone could tell she wasn’t strong enough.”
Alicia stared at his broad back in amazement. She had thought him self-centered, overbearing, and arrogant, but he spoke with a wistfulness and anger that gave evidence of another Travis/Lonetree. What man ever considered the inconveniences a woman suffered to follow her husband through life? That this half-savage keelboatman contemplated the perplexities of such a life opened her eyes.
“I think, perhaps, she wouldn’t have been happy without him,” Alicia responded shyly, wanting to ease his pain but fearing to speak her thoughts. “Don’t you think it better to live briefly and die happy than to live long in misery?”
Travis turned and eyed her with curiosity. “Do you believe that?”
She answered slowly. “I am a coward, I fear, but I would rather act than suffer in silence. I’m not certain happiness can be obtained in this world, but if I thought it were, I would pursue it. Life is too brief as it is to endure it instead of living it.”
A rare smile of genuine warmth cracked Travis’s hard visage. “I believe you’re right. To suffer in pursuit of happiness would be much more gratifying than suffering for nothing. I don’t suppose you’d consider marrying me and ending both our miseries?”
Alicia laughed and slid down among the covers. “I greatly suspect that would only give
us a new assortment of miseries to suffer. You’re not the marrying kind, and heaven only knows, I don’t intend to try it. Good night, Travis.”
She closed her eyes and turned her back on him, but Travis continued to stare at the slender outline of her form beneath the covers for a long while afterward. He had every intention of marrying her, but there was a very good chance she spoke the truth. She might kill him before it was done with, but at least he’d die happy.
Grinning, he began to stoke the fire.
Chapter 7
Alicia met Travis at the cabin door wearing a light woolen gown the shade of spring violets, her hair loosely pinned upon the crown of her head and already spilling from its confines. Travis knew she brushed it in the darkness before dawn, before he rose to light the fire. It was the one piece of privacy she had managed to preserve, and he granted it without comment, though he often lay in the darkness wondering what she looked like with her hair down, curling about her shoulders and breasts.
He had the same thought now as she waited for him with the setting sun highlighting hair as lustrous as polished mahogany. She was still too pale and thin, but that did not stop his thoughts from straying to the loveliness he had glimpsed beneath the layers of clothing she contrived to wear. It would be a long time before she was ready for a man, though. He would have to find a woman soon or scare her off for certain.
She smiled with delight as he produced the pie hidden behind his back. “Wherever in the world did you steal that?” she exclaimed, moving aside so he could carry in the delicacy.
“The doctor’s wife sent it. Said you should be needing a little pampering now.” Travis slid it onto the crude table and began moving about the room, depositing the packages he had carried back from Louisville, stirring up the fire beneath the soup she had been simmering.
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