Pure Sin

by Susan Johnson

  Adam hesitated for a second, not absolutely sure of the Bonhams’ plans, not sure he wasn’t above going back into his bedroom and saying, “Don’t leave,” to Flora. Not certain, either, of Cloudy’s intent. “You might suggest they stay on for a time if you think Lucie would like it. My return depends very much on circumstance.”

  “Put a bullet in one of those ‘circumstances’ for me, and God go with you.”

  Adam grinned. “I’m surprised your Methodist God’s so bloodthirsty.”

  “Presbyterian, my lord, and he’s not above smiting those of evil intent now and again.”

  Lucie gazed at her father from a drowsy half sleep when he picked her up and held her in his arms, and she sleepily murmured with that open acceptance of children, “Bring me back my own cradle-board for Baby DeeDee.” Familiar with her father’s occasional abrupt departures, she took no alarm from his nocturnal appearance.

  “I promise. Now, you help take care of Cloudy while I’m gone.”

  “And Georgie and Flora too. Can I give them tea in the drawing room?”

  “I’ll tell Mrs. O. you’re to be hostess when I’m gone,” he said, smiling at his daughter.

  “Hurry back, Papa, because you promised to take us swimming in the river pool and you never did and Flora and Georgie are just dying to see it.” Her child’s agenda ignored volunteer militia and their evil intent.

  A comfort to her father. “I’ll ride back as soon as I can. Now, give your Papa a kiss.”

  After Adam and White Otter had crossed the boundaries of his ranch, after they’d discussed all the necessary details of escorting the camp to safety, hours later when they were still riding north, Adam found his mind dwelling on unbidden vignettes of Flora Bonham in his river pool—the images so vivid, so potent, he shook his head once in an attempt to dispel them. But his subconscious wasn’t so easily deterred, and Flora in the dappled sunlight of the willow groves, lushly nude as she rose from the sparkling water, smiling, opening her arms to him in welcome—any number of variations on the theme—moved through the internal landscapes of his mind.

  It occurred to him only moments before they crossed the river to the dismantled camp that Flora might be pregnant—the strange, unsanctioned thought forcing itself into his consciousness with eleventh-hour impact. As if it could be no longer repressed.

  Normally, the women he took pleasure with were experienced and as disinclined as he to deal with any consequences of their heated passion. But Flora had made no use of the customary precautions, he suddenly recalled, while his libido had never cooled sufficiently to consider possible ramifications.

  Which he did now with a keen, stabbing shock.

  As his pony splashed through the shallows, throwing up water, his mind grappled with the notion of Flora Bonham pregnant with his child. Outside of Isolde, he’d never dealt with the phenomenon. And with Isolde the news had been presented with permanent shackles attached. Curiously, he found the possibility of Flora having his child … agreeable.

  Welcoming shouts broke into his reverie as their mounts forded the deep water in the center of the river, children called out greetings from the opposite bank, women waved and hallooed, some young bucks rode into the water to meet them, the dogs yelped in a steady, overriding din.

  “Welcome, Tsé-ditsirá-tsi,” a young warrior cheerfully said, swinging his mount around to ride beside Adam. “We’re ready to fight at your side.”

  “If we have to,” Adam replied with a smile. “And then we’ll see how Meagher stands against a well-armed war party. Is Esh-ca-ca-mah-hoo still here?” And felicitous speculation of Flora Bonham and babies was replaced in his thoughts by the more pressing demands of survival.

  Chapter Seven

  Adam had left a hastily scrawled note addressed to the earl on the table in the morning room. And at breakfast, before Lucie came down to join them, Flora’s father said, “Adam left last night for the summer camp. Here,” he went on, handing the crested paper across the table. “He says good-bye to you too.”

  Flora had known when she woke to an empty bed that James had called Adam away, but the flow of black words on the cream stationery finalized his leaving. He was truly gone from her life.

  My apologies for leaving so precipitously, but I’m needed in my village. If I can be of any further assistance in your studies, please call on me. My best regards to you and Lady Flora.

  Au revoir,

  Adam

  She hadn’t expected anything more, but the impersonal words reminded her of the reality of their disparate lives. Adam Serre was riding out to ward off a threatened attack on his village, while she and her father were only transient visitors on this northern plain, foreign observers of a rare and vanishing world. Adam understood the ephemeral nature of their visit, and there had been nothing more he could say beyond the prescribed courtesies.

  “It was only a matter of time once James came,” she casually replied, handing back the note. “We’d already heard the rumblings about the militia raids in Virginia City, and your horse buying is completed. I’m ready to leave whenever you are.” It was amazing, she thought, how one learned to disguise all feeling—an encomium perhaps to the education acquired in the brittle milieu of fashionable society.

  “I’m going to leave the racers behind until I’m ready to ship them home,” her father declared, pouring himself more coffee. “Otherwise everything’s in order to continue our journey. Adam’s arranged for us to visit Four Chiefs’s village.”

  “I can pack in an hour,” Flora said with a spurious calm. She felt suddenly cut adrift—a novel sensation for a young woman who prided herself on the mobility of her life.

  Mrs. McLeod entered the morning parlor at that moment, bringing Lucie down for breakfast, and, standing beside her small charge as they reached the table, she formally said in mannered accents, “Lady Lucie would be vastly pleased if you would extend your visit during her father’s absence.”

  A reprieve! Flora’s ungovernable emotions crowed, neither logic nor rationale a consideration in her instant response. Nor that it was a reprieve from, to, or for what didn’t bear contemplation. She could possibly stay and that was enough. That she might see Adam again was an overwhelming expectation of hope. She understood such unrestrained excitement couldn’t be publicly expressed, so she smiled at Lucie, swung her gaze to her father, and serenely said, “I think it’s a capital idea. What do you think, Papa?”

  “We could stay on for a short time, Lucie,” the earl answered with a genial smile for the expectant young child. “But your father might be gone for some time. In that case we would have to go on with our plans to visit the other clans.”

  “When Papa woke me up to say good-bye last night, he said he would be back as soon as he could,” Lucie said with firm, absolute conviction. “He’s never gone very long. And,” she went on with a new excitement in her voice, “Papa said I could be his hostess when he’s not here. I can serve tea and everything—he was going to tell Mrs. O. before he left and he did, and I can—and won’t it be fun?”

  Adam had said good-bye to Lucie but not to her, Flora sadly thought. And she suddenly wished for a portion of that affection.

  “If you’re going to be hostess,” the earl cheerfully said, interrupting Flora’s winsome musing, “we must certainly stay. Will you have strawberry cakes for tea?”

  “If you want them, Georgie, we’ll have Cook make lots and lots. Then let’s go to the track after breakfast?”

  “Your lessons first, Lady Lucie,” Cloudy reminded her.

  But between Lucie’s morning and afternoon lessons, they went to the track. And later in the day they rode to the river pool with Tom as escort and admired the sylvan setting. A curve in the river slowed the water flow, the eddies over time having carved out a deep backwater pool framed by willows. The tranquil setting, the tall, waving grasses bordering the rim of the pool, the weeping willows like lacy curtains shading the water, the melodic birdsong alive on the air, and flitting, co
lorful butterflies dancing in the sunlight rendered an idyllic picture of a prairie paradise.

  “I’ll race you to the water,” Lucie exclaimed, jumping down from her pony with the finesse of a skilled rider. And she flew through the tall grass with screams of delight.

  The adults followed pell-mell, and while Lucie waded and splashed in the water, the rest of the party lazed in the sun-warmed grass. It was a pastoral scene of great beauty and peace, and had Adam been present, Flora wistfully thought, the afternoon would have’ been perfection.

  Flora rocked Lucie to sleep that night, although to an almost four-year-old resisting sleep, it was instead a time of conversation before bedtime. They told each other stories and exchanged favorite nursery rhymes and songs. Lucie was fluent in French, English, Absarokee, and the Dublin patois of Mrs. O., so her repertoire of music was a blend of cultures, her accent flawless with the perfect ear of childhood.

  She was warm and soft in Flora’s arms, her small body cuddled close, the sensation of contentment beyond Flora’s previous experience. That she was an irresistible child nurtured Flora’s curious sense of happiness; that she was Adam’s child fostered feelings of unalloyed bliss. And for the first time in her life, Flora regretted not being able to have children. She’d never considered it a deprivation before. But, then, she’d never held Adam’s daughter before, nor realized she could miss someone so. A sense of irreclaimable loss crept into the fullness of her joy.

  “You should stay with us,” Lucie said, her eyes gazing up at Flora, miniature versions of her father’s, the fluffy cloud of her lavender-scented nightgown pale in the half shadows of the room.

  “I’d like that,” Flora replied, as honest as the little girl in her arms, “but we have to continue our studies.”

  “Papa could have the clans come here, and you wouldn’t have to travel anywhere.”

  “I think your Papa has a busy enough life without having to take care of our schedule too.”

  “He’d do it because he likes you. I can tell. Papa hardly ever has company; he doesn’t have time, he says. But he laughs with you and smiles a lot and he’s happy when you’re here. So you should stay.”

  How tempting the offer in the quiet of the nursery with Lucie in her arms and Adam’s spirit lingering in the twilight of the room. “Perhaps we’ll come back to visit,” Flora kindly declared, not wishing to distress the young child.

  “You must come back,” Lucie insisted, “and stay a long, long time. Even Cloudy likes you,” she went on, her sunny smile artless, “and she doesn’t like very many people. Only Papa and me and maybe some of the servants who ‘know their places,’ she says. Cloudy disapproves of Papa in shirtsleeves at dinner and the servants chatting with us and any number of other things she calls proper rules,” Lucie rattled on. “Did you know a lady can’t go to a play except in a black or blue dress? Although Maman knew all the proper rules, and Cloudy didn’t like her at all. But, then, Maman didn’t like Cloudy either, so they were even there. I heard Papa tell Maman in the sternest voice one time long ago that Cloudy stayed while he still had breath in him. I think that means till the very last.”

  Flora forced back a smile at Lucie’s explanation and said in a voice schooled to neutrality, “I think you’re right.”

  “Cloudy says you’re an independent woman,” Lucie continued in her open, guileless narrative, “and she thinks it’s just grand that you had a paper read somewhere in England to a bunch of old men, and more women should be educated like you, she says. She’s going to teach me Greek and Latin too and ever so many subjects that she says only gentlemen get a chance to study. Papa says she has free rein. I think she likes that, and she’s a good teacher too because I can already read, and Papa says lots of almost four-year-olds can’t.”

  “You’re very lucky to have Cloudy. My Papa let me learn all kinds of things other little girls didn’t get the chance to know too. I was raised out on the frontier like you, although the countries were always different.”

  “Papa said I can go with him this year when he travels, if I want. Cloudy doesn’t like to travel, but I’m old enough now not to need a nanny, so I’m going to go. Papa races his horses everywhere. Maybe we’ll see you in Paris.”

  “That would be fun. And you must come to visit me in London sometime too.”

  “We will,” Lucie adamantly replied, with the confidence of a favored child. “And we’ll watch Aleppo race on your tracks.”

  It was past midnight when the small Absarokee camp made their way into the isolated mountain valley. Travel had been slow at first through the river bottoms, but no trail was left to trace their journey, the rushing water obliterating any evidence of their passage. When the band finally came ashore miles downstream, scouts destroyed any evidence of their passage over the river bluffs.

  Despite the hour, the camp was bustling with activity, everyone helping to erect the lodges. And before long, enough dwellings were standing to shelter everyone from the cool mountain night. Small fires burned inside the lodges, food was being prepared, children put to sleep, the events of the journey discussed with a general sense of satisfaction.

  A recent buffalo hunt had filled the larders; the clan could remain comfortably in this valley until the militia were driven back into the towns for the winter. No one but the young bloods wished to fight the volunteer army. Since the white men had come pouring into their lands four years ago with the discovery of gold, only the most obtuse or militant considered combat a solution to their problem.

  The Crow were a small tribe, their population no more than four thousand if both divisions of Mountain and River Crow were totaled. As long ago as 1825 their leaders had understood the need to survive with the white man. Today was simply another passage in the long journey of survival.

  Adam, James, and White Otter rested around the fire in Adam’s lodge. The others had gone back to their own lodges some time ago, and only the young men who’d grown up together as brothers remained. They’d eaten and smoked and argued the various possibilities of Meagher’s route; they’d retold stories from their youth and laughed at their escapades. Their voices had taken on a husky lassitude as the night had passed, their weariness visible.

  But their journey was safely done. The clan was out of harm’s way.

  A sense of satisfaction overlay even the inevitable problems of the future.

  The door flap lifted and a woman entered, carrying a bowl of small cakes. “If you’re not going to sleep, I thought you might like some hazelnut cakes.” Spring Lily smiled at the men.

  “I should be sleeping,” James said, taking one of the small fried cakes from the bowl. “And if you’ll excuse me now, I’ll do just that.”

  “I’ll join you,” White Otter said. “I didn’t realize how late it was.” He cast a knowing look at Adam.

  Within seconds only Adam and Spring Lily remained.

  “My friends aren’t very subtle,” Adam said with a smile.

  “Maybe I’m not either,” Spring Lily said, placing the bowl down.

  “You never were.” Adam grinned. “But I can fend you off. I’ve had lots of practice.” He lounged against his willow backrest, wearing only his leggings and moccasins, his weapons put aside.

  “But White Otter says your wife’s gone now.”

  “You’re still my brother’s wife. His memory touches me.”

  “What of the yellow-eyes woman at your ranch?”

  “She wasn’t staying long. You’re a member of my family. I’d feel an obligation I couldn’t honor.”

  “You already care for me and your brother’s children. I wouldn’t be demanding. You need a woman, Tsé-ditsirá-tsi. You slept with me when we were young, before I married your brother. I know I can make you happy.”

  “We were all without cares in those days,” Adam softly said, remembering the days before the gold discoveries. “It’s not the same now.” In his youth Adam had taken part in the amorous play between the young warriors and pretty girls, but with hi
s marriage he could no longer honorably offer himself as a prospective suitor to a young maid. Since then he’d resisted numerous seductive overtures, unwilling to father a child he couldn’t properly raise. In the elastic clan structure of multiple relationships, his child wouldn’t have suffered, but he would have felt an obligation he couldn’t properly sustain. His time was no longer exclusively spent with his mother’s clan as it once had been in his youth.

  “I don’t expect you to stay in camp, Tsé-ditsirá-tsi. Just let me give you pleasure.”

  “Tell me of my brother’s children. Give me that pleasure. And don’t tempt me with what I can’t have.”

  “What you won’t have, you stubborn man. I could attack you. I’m very strong.”

  Adam laughed. “Tonight you might be. I’m tired.”

  “Because of the yellow-eyes woman. James said you hadn’t slept in days because she wouldn’t let you go.”

  “James talks too much,” Adam said with a small sigh. But he wondered at the tantalizing lure of Flora Bonham that he would set aside everything in his life for the sweet taste of her.

  “He speaks the truth, Tsé-ditsirá-tsi. Tell me her name.”

  “She’s gone.”

  “Forever?” she quietly asked, having seen his eyes when he uttered the two words. “How will you live?”

  A small silence descended in the firelit lodge. “As I always have, Lily,” he said at last. “With my daughter and my clan.”

  “Are you rid of your countess?”

  “I hope so,” he said with a small grimace. “And you ask too many questions for a man with no sleep. Go and care for your children now, and bother me tomorrow when I’m rested.”