The Beloved Woman

by Deborah Smith

  He groaned in disgust. “My loyalties ain’t ever gonna be decided by what other people think. To hell with ’em.” He met her gaze fiercely. God, he thought, in one way she was just like other women. She might not care for him very much, but she sure wanted to know that he was arse over teakettle for her. He wouldn’t give her that pleasure.

  “You and me are stuck with each other,” he said flatly. “We didn’t ask for it, we may not want it, but it’s done.” He reached for her doctor’s satchel sitting on the ground nearby. “Don’t waste your time trying to figure me out. I swore I’d take care of you, and I never break my word. Just get back to work. I’ll help you.”

  His harsh words made her stiffen. She let go of his hand and sat back on her heels. “You’re right. We’re stuck with each other. And I can use your help.”

  HAVING JUSTIS BESIDE her for the rest of the day gave Katherine a deep sense of happiness she couldn’t deny. She tried not to think about him leaving.

  He joined her in the dirty, hot work without much comment but with great effect on her patients. They stared at him at first—the ultimate insult in a culture where it wasn’t polite to look at someone directly—and muttered to Katherine that they didn’t want the hands of a hairy a-Yu-ne-ga on them.

  But they couldn’t resist his gentleness or his lack of qualms about doing whatever was needed. Nothing repelled him, not blood nor vomit nor worse, and by the end of the day word had spread through the stockade that this a-Yu-ne-ga was a good man.

  An elder, lying weakly on a pallet of blankets, motioned for Katherine to bend her head close to his. He nodded toward Justis, who was holding a poultice on the man’s arthritic knee. “That one watches you with sad eyes,” he whispered in Cherokee. “He is longing for you. You stand in his soul.”

  It was wrong to correct an elder, so she merely smiled.

  When the sun sank behind the stockade walls and long shadows began to ease the heat, Katherine’s heart twisted with bleak anticipation. Justis sat with his back against one of the walls, holding a child who was sick with fever. He patiently let the little boy tug at his mustache.

  How could she help but want him? she thought wistfully. She shook the idea aside and went to him, kneeling down and holding out her arms for the child. “Let me take him. You should ride back to town before dark comes.”

  “I’m not goin’. I’ve decided to stay with you until General Scott gets here.”

  “That could be several days!”

  He glowered at her. “I reckon you need my help even if you don’t need me. Now, don’t jaw at me. Go find me some supper.”

  His bluster worked well. She was able to nod brusquely and leave without kissing him.

  CHAPTER 8

  SAM AND Rebecca drove a wagon filled with clothes and supplies to the stockade the next morning. After it was unloaded they received permission to take Katherine to the small river nearby, with a soldier’s accompaniment. Justis went along, taking the fresh clothes and shaving gear Sam had brought.

  Katherine welcomed the chance to wash, even if it was accomplished in icy water while Rebecca held a blanket around her. Justis simply called, “Turn your eyes, ladies,” stripped off everything, and waded into a waist-deep pond with a bar of soap in one hand.

  Katherine ducked her head behind the blanket and laughed. “I suspect he wouldn’t have been so inhibited if you weren’t here,” she told a blushing Rebecca. “He’d have dared me to look at him.”

  “Would you have?”

  Katherine felt a rush of sensation through her breasts and stomach that had nothing to do with the scrubbing she’d given them. “Probably.”

  After they dried and dressed, Katherine watched in amusement as Justis sat in the sun-dappled shade beneath a willow tree and tried to shave himself without a mirror. “You’ll whack your mustache off if you’re not careful, sir,” she called. “Horrors! You might look civilized.”

  One of his chestnut brows arched wickedly. “The mustache stays.”

  She sighed and sat down beside him. “I suppose I’ve grown used to it, anyhow. But here, let me have that razor before you need my stitchery on your throat.”

  With a small flourish he handed it to her. “I reckon you can be trusted. It’s not as mean a blade as you’re used to.”

  He tilted his head back and shut his eyes. Katherine got on her knees and bent over him, chuckling fiendishly but scraping at his beard stubble with great care. Rebecca claimed female illness and went off to sit at the river’s edge with her bare feet in the water. She told Sam, in a firm voice, to come with her. The soldier stayed back by the wagon, lolling in the cool haven of the trees.

  Katherine was greedy for the private moment, knowing that another busy, brutal day lay ahead. She put sorrows aside and enjoyed the excuse to brush her fingertips over Justis’s skin and to study, up close, his boldly drawn features.

  Looking at him always stole her breath, but she’d never thought of him as handsome. That description was reserved for sleek-faced men with aristocratic noses and delicate mouths. And yet she wouldn’t change him. He was like the gold nugget that lay over his heart—unpolished, birthed from harsh elements, and incredibly special.

  “This crease beside your mouth could be called a dimple,” she said as she eased the razor over it. “I thought only dandies had dimples. There. Done.”

  He made a comical sound of disgust and opened his eyes. “I guess you like it, then, since you like dandies.”

  She was very close to him, and his taunt made her reckless. His head was still tilted back, his lips slightly parted. She lowered her mouth to his and kissed him slowly, catching him so much by surprise that he simply sat still and let her savor him with little flicks of her tongue.

  She nuzzled his mustache and drew away just enough to break contact. Her pulse raced. “Thank you for yesterday,” she whispered, gazing down into his heavy-lidded eyes. “And everything else.”

  He blinked languidly as she sat back. “I must be addled. I couldn’t think fast enough to grab you.”

  She laughed, but when he leaned forward and his face came into a streak of sunlight, she grew quiet and frowned. “Let me look at you.” She caught his chin and turned his face fully into the light. “Oh, it’s just my imagination,” she said finally. “I thought your skin was a little pale.”

  “I’m a paleface.”

  She shook her head. “Tanned like a nut, you are. But stay healthy, or I’ll pour a foul-tasting tonic down you.”

  “I do feel a little strange,” he said dramatically, laying a wrist on his forehead. “Put some tonic on your lips and I’ll kiss it off like honey. Put it somewhere else and I’ll—”

  “You’re most definitely not sick!” Laughing, she got up and hurried away.

  KATHERINE WOKE UP with dew on her face and the unpleasant sense that something was wrong. She turned over on her blanket and studied Justis, lying next to her with an arm flung behind his head.

  Like her, he was fully dressed, and the night was too hot to warrant any other covering. Moonlight showed that he had pulled the tail of his shirt from his trousers. In sleep he had wrenched the shirt up, revealing a swath of bare skin above his belt. She watched the rise and fall of his stomach.

  The rhythm was abnormally fast, she thought. She eased her hand onto the lean, muscled terrain covered in soft hair. His skin was damp, but whether from dew or sweat she couldn’t tell. Worried, she slid closer to him and laid her hand on his forehead. He jerked awake and grabbed her wrist, twisting it in a deliberate attempt to hurt.

  “Let go, it’s Katherine!” she said in his ear.

  “Katie.” He brought her mauled wrist to his mouth and kissed it. “Sorry.” Then he exhaled with a long, weary sound. “Strange dreams. Can’t remember ’em.”

  “Do you feel all right?” She touched her fingers to his forehead again, then to his jaw. The skin was cool.

  “Yeah. Sure.” Abruptly he slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “N
ow I feel even better.”

  Katherine debated for a few seconds, then gave up and rested her head on his shoulder. But she tucked her uppermost arm between his side and her breasts and kept her legs pinched together at the knees and ankles, not touching his.

  He chuckled, the sound rumbling warmly under her ear. “I’m gonna sleep a helluva lot better than you do, unless you relax.”

  “Oh, be quiet, scoundrel.” She sighed with disgust but draped her arm over his chest and edged one knee atop his thigh. Then she sighed again, this time with pleasure. Nature must have designed women to sleep next to men this way, she mused, because it was perfect.

  Barely three paces from them a husband and wife stirred sleepily. Katherine could see them without raising her head. She lay in breathless dread as they nuzzled each other and whispered love words in Cherokee.

  The woman lifted her skirt and the man pushed his trousers to his thighs. He got to his knees and raised the hem of his hunting shirt. Katherine could see the dim outline of his jutting arousal. He stretched out on his wife and she circled him eagerly with her legs as he thrust into her, groaning softly.

  Katherine trembled. She wasn’t shocked—there was no privacy in the stockade, and people were forced to love as well as die in public. It was also true that no matter what the missionaries had taught them, Cherokees simply weren’t prudish about sexual matters. Men and women were meant to enjoy each other.

  No, she wasn’t shocked, but she wasn’t certain this was a wise thing to watch with Justis. He was likely to think the pastime worth copying.

  She would not, she told herself, take him with her back against the hard earth and hundreds of people around them. Not for their first joining, at least.

  Katherine bit her lip. Oh, no, no. She couldn’t think in hopeful terms such as those. They were a dream with no future, even if General Scott said she could stay in Gold Ridge. She was sure Justis had rethought his impulsive offer of marriage, and she couldn’t bear to become his mistress while knowing that one day he’d take someone else as his wife.

  Even if he did make his reckless, dutiful offer again, she wouldn’t take it. A white man could never be fully accepted by his own people as long as he had an Indian wife. Justis’s devotion might turn to regret as time passed. That possibility was too tormenting for her to risk it.

  The husband curled his wife’s hands above her head and held them as he arched into her faster. Her cry of delight was muffled against his shoulder, and he buried his face in her hair as his body curved in one last, nearly violent lunge. Then he slumped atop her, and she stroked his shoulders affectionately.

  Within a minute they lay side by side again, asleep. Katherine realized that her hand was stroking Justis’s chest through his shirt and that her leg had inched farther across him. She was rubbing her thigh against his.

  She raised her head to look at him. To her amazement he was asleep, too, though he frowned harshly and his breathing was still too fast. Even in the moonlight his face looked drawn with fatigue, and when she felt the moisture on his forehead, she knew this time it was sweat, not dew.

  Don’t let him fall sick with a fever, she prayed. She moved up and put her arms around him, then cradled his head against her chest. He stirred, burrowing his face into the soft valley of her breasts. She fell asleep holding him that way.

  KATHERINE WAS TOO frantic to ask anyone’s permission. The guards lazed on the ground in the broiling afternoon sun, but as soon as she strode boldly through the gate they leapt up and surrounded her.

  “I need to see Captain Taylor immediately,” she told the lieutenant in charge.

  “He’s gone to town, miss. He probably won’t be back until after dark.”

  “Mr. Gallatin is very ill,” she said as calmly as she could. “I thought I could treat him here, but I can’t. He needs to be taken out of the heat.”

  “I can’t authorize that until the captain returns.”

  She drew her chin up and gave him a commanding look. “Do you want one of Gold Ridge’s leading citizens to die in a Cherokee stockade because you refused to help? What will General Scott say when he hears how you’ve treated a white civilian?”

  The lieutenant paled beneath his sunburn. “I’ll send a messenger for Captain Taylor right now.”

  Katherine went back inside the stockade and wound her way among the lean-tos until she reached the one she’d rigged, with the help of friends, for Justis. He lay sleeping restlessly in the sparse, hot shade, his face flushed an unnatural color.

  He’d insisted all day that he felt fine, despite the fact that he had no appetite and was noticeably tired. Stubborn! she thought now, sinking to her knees beside him. Her throat clogged with tears.

  He’d followed her around the stockade, doggedly helping her as he had during the other days, until finally he’d leaned against a wall, remaining there until he had slumped to the ground, half conscious.

  Even then, when men were carrying him to a shady spot, he kept muttering that he wasn’t going to leave her. Katherine cupped her hands into a tin bucket and smoothed water over his forehead. His eyes fluttered open.

  “What’s wrong with me, gal?” he asked.

  “Oh, not much,” she said lightly. “You’re a white man who’s caught an Indian fever, that’s all. As soon as I get you back to town you’ll be fine.”

  “Feel like I’m roasting from the inside out.”

  She clenched her teeth. The damned captain had better hurry or she’d show his men how much war a Cherokee woman could wage. She bent over Justis and wiped sweat from his neck. “I’m going to undress you. Nobody here will care whether you’re clothed or not, and at least you’ll be cooler.”

  He smiled weakly. “So I have to get dog-pukin’ sick to make you undress me?”

  “I’m a doctor. I’ll try not to gape.”

  “Go ahead. Gape.”

  She removed everything except his shirt, which covered him to mid-thigh. “I’ll leave you some dignity.”

  “Hope you’re impressed.”

  She glanced down at long, muscular legs and thought of the soft but amazingly large bulge her hand had brushed as she unbuttoned his trousers. “You’ll do.” She touched the fiery skin of his face. “I’m going to rinse you off. You’ll feel better.”

  He shut his eyes and nodded. “Couldn’t feel worse.”

  She dipped a rag into the bucket and wiped his head and neck, then did each leg from thigh to foot. When she was through she sat back on her heels and gazed at his cotton shirt for a moment. If he didn’t mind, why should she? She lifted the shirt hem to his waist and quickly covered his groin with a cloth.

  “Well, that’s no howdy-do,” he mumbled, his voice faint. “Didn’t you like the looks of it?”

  She laughed miserably. She hoped his bawdy teasing meant he was stronger than he seemed. “I’ve not had anything to compare it to, but I’d say you deserve your vain Cherokee name, Stud.”

  “It’s a prizewinner.”

  “Here, lift your arms so I can get the shirt off.” When it was a struggle for him to obey, she felt like crying. She finally got the shirt and wiped it across her damp eyes. “You are indeed the hairiest a-Yu-ne-ga I’ve ever seen. But it’s a very beautiful pelt.”

  She smoothed a wet rag over his chest and stomach, watching their erratic movements as he breathed. Water pooled in his navel and in the slight indentations of several small scars on his abdomen. She brushed it away with her fingertips.

  “Playin’ in my fur, are you?” he murmured, his eyes still shut.

  “How did you get these?” she asked, touching the scars.

  “Man tried to carve me with a rusty old sword.”

  “I assume you broke the sword and the man’s neck.”

  He managed a faint look of amusement. “Nope. I was only half growed at the time. Maybe eight years old.”

  She fought the whimper of anguish that rose in her throat. “Rest,” she whispered. She sat down by his side and fanned him with
a paddle made of reeds from the riverbank. “I’ll have you out of here soon.”

  “Don’t let ’em steal my heart and eat it,” he said, his voice trailing away in sleep. “The Cherokee witches.”

  She cried and smiled. “I’ll keep it safe. I swear. I’ve got my hand over it.”

  IN ALL HIS weeks of watching Katherine Blue Song wrestle with death and sickness at the stockade, Captain Taylor had never seen fear in her eyes. But now he saw it—stark, almost wild. And mixed in with it, as she looked up at Amarintha Parnell in the wagon Amarintha had hastily commandeered, was hatred.

  “He’s no good to you dead, Miss Parnell,” she said fiercely. “The doctor in town doesn’t know half what I know about treating these fevers.”

  Amarintha pursed her mouth and fluttered a hand over her heart. “You want your freedom, and this is a very convenient way to demand it, isn’t that so? Well, Justis will be perfectly fine as soon as someone other than a heathen Indian woman is caring for him.”

  Taylor shifted awkwardly as Miss Blue Song shot him a desperate look. Damn, he was hot for Amarintha—even if she had her eye on Gallatin—but he hated to play the villain. He could probably let this determined squaw go back to town with Gallatin; he could overlook the governor’s orders under the circumstances and no one would care, not even the general. Well, no one but Amarintha would care.

  “I’m sorry,” he told Katherine. “You can’t leave the stockade. But I assure you that Mr. Gallatin will get the finest attention. In fact, wouldn’t you feel better if a real doctor looked after him? If he died while under your care, there might be trouble.”

  “He’ll die under that fool’s care in town!”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Blue Song,” he said again, watching her warily. She seemed very close to violence. “You can discuss your case with General Scott tomorrow.” Taylor motioned to several men. “Go get Mr. Gallatin and bring him to the wagon.”

  She latched a hand onto the wagon and looked up at Amarintha. “You’re jealous for no cause. I’m not interested in Mr. Gallatin for personal reasons. He’s been a good friend to me and I don’t want him to die. You can have him, Miss Parnell, after he’s well. I’ll be going west. But please, please, don’t take him out of my care right now.”