Paige located her towel, a bar of soap, her hairbrush, and then, with a wry grin at herself for playing the part of the dutiful female, she unfastened the bedrolls and spread them close together on the soft buffalo rugs that covered the floor.
Maybe here, she thought wistfully, in one another's arms in an Indian camp on a night when the harvest moon promised to turn the prairie molten silver, maybe here she and Myles could somehow mend whatever it was that had gone so wrong between them.
Now and Then: Chapter Seventeen
Hesitantly, Paige approached the noisy gathering grouped around the cooking fires.
While she and Tahny had been talking with Lame Owl, two other visitors had arrived at Poundmaker's village. They were dark-skinned, longhaired men in buckskin trousers, each wearing the distinctive red sash around their middles that labeled them Métis.
They were passing around a bottle of whiskey, and their laughter was raucous and bold.
Feeling shy, Paige stayed on the outskirts of the group until Myles noticed her. He came and led her near the fire, close beside him, his arm looped protectively around her shoulder.
"Ahhh, le docteur, he 'as found himself a beautiful woman," one of the Métis men called out in a good-natured fashion. He was a good-looking young man, tall and dark haired, with startling light blue eyes.
He came toward Paige, bowing in a courtly fashion and holding out the whiskey bottle. "A little drink, madam?" Paige smiled and shook her head. "I think I'll stick to tea, thanks." She felt Myles's hand on her shoulder, drawing her closer to his side as the man looked at her with admiration in his sparkling silver blue eyes.
"Introduce me to this so charming lady, Monsieur Docteur Baldwin. Or do you keep her all to yourself, eh?" The handsome man's tone was teasing, and he gave Paige a huge wink. He was flirting outrageously, and Paige couldn't help smiling back at him.
"Pierre Delorme, Dr. Paige Randolph." Myles's voice was curt and cold.
The blue eyes widened in surprised recognition, and he stretched out a hand in greeting. "Ahh, so you are the bonne femme from far away that Armand LeClerc has spoken of."
Paige put her hand in his, and with a courtly bow, Pierre brushed his lips across the back of it.
"Armand LeClerc is my cousin, Madame, and because of him, your fame has spread across the land. It is indeed an honor to meet you." He turned and hollered at his friend, still talking and laughing with the group of braves nearby, "Gabriel, come over here."
The other man, shorter and much stockier than Pierre, extricated himself from the Indians and came walking toward them.
In the rapid-fire burst of French that followed, Paige understood only her name and the repeated docteur. Her high-school French was sadly lacking, but it was obvious Pierre was telling the other man all he knew about her.
"Madame la docteur, this is Gabriel Dumont, mightiest of our Métis buffalo hunters," Pierre introduced proudly. "We call him Prince of the Braves."
Prince or not, Paige felt that Dumont had none of Pierre's physical charm. He was shorter than Paige, about five seven. He was thickset and heavy-chested, with high Indian cheekbones, a full beard, stern dark eyes, and rather thick lips. He made no move to shake her hand, only nodding his head in acknowledgment when she said hello, studying her with his intent dark gaze.
Paige, in turn, stared at him. She was certain they'd never met before, and yet there was something familiar about Gabriel Dumont.
Myles spoke to him. "Hello, Gabriel. How are things at Batoche?"
Dumont shrugged his massive shoulders. "We survive," he said, his baritone voice heavily accented. "Da crops, dey 'ave been poor dis year. And you know well"—
He fixed Myles with an accusing look—
"dere are no more buffalo. Maybe a few only, but the mighty herds we knew, dey are gone forever. And now our farms, even, are in danger of being taken from us. You know of this, yes?"
Myles nodded. "Armand tells me things are bad for you. I'm sorry."
Myles knew all too well about the Métis problems.
Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's prime minister, envisioned a railroad linking the Atlantic to the Pacific, and he was ruthlessly pursuing that dream. The railroad was pushing ever further westward, and the strip farms the Métis depended upon for survival were being conscripted by Eastern land speculators. The Métis, like the Indians, had also depended heavily on the buffalo herds to feed their families.
"It's a bad business," Myles said.
Paige was aware of the tension in his body, although his voice was relaxed and friendly. "I understand your people have sent a petition to Ottawa."
Dumont snorted. "A waste of time. What do politicians care about us ignorant Métis?"
He gestured at the noisy crowd surrounding the fire, and there was bitterness and resentment on his bearded face. "Or about our brodders, de Indians? Dey, too, are hungry now. No longer do dey 'ave freedom to travel where dey like, or buffalo to eat."
"I wish you luck with your petition, you and all your people," Myles said in a quiet tone.
Dumont frowned at him, trying to sense, Paige thought, whether or not Myles was sincere. At last he nodded again, turning back without another word to the fire where his friend Pierre was laughing and joking at the center of a noisy group of young braves.
After that, the party seemed to go on for hours. Everyone ate, drums pounded, and both men and women danced in the firelight.
Paige sat beside Myles, and soon she had to struggle to stay awake. The scene became surreal as she slipped in and out of dreams, and at some point, Myles took her hand and together they slipped away from the boisterous scene, making their way by moonlight to their tipi.
Inside, it was musky smelling and still hot from the sun. Myles knelt and undid her boots and tugged them off, then gently unbuttoned her clothing and stripped it away along with his own.
Sleepy and limp, her body deliciously naked, Paige sank down into the welcoming softness of the bedrolls she'd arranged earlier, and Myles's strong arms encircled her.
At first, his lovemaking was gentle, and the remoteness that bothered her was still there. Half dozing, she returned his kisses, passive as his lips and tongue touched and teased.
Her muscles were lax, her thoughts unfocused. She could hear the drums, and it took a long, slow time before they became part of her own heartbeat.
Gradually, her skin became sensitive, her breasts aching for Myles's caress. Her pulse skittered, her hips undulated as his fingers searched for and found all the right, familiar places.
He was still going slow, holding back. She could feel his restraint in each labored breath, in the muscles that quivered at her slightest touch, and something deep within her wanted him to let go of whatever constraint there was between them. She wanted him to possess her, to claim her as his own.
His kisses were deeper now, hot and wet, drugging her. She shuddered as pleasure coursed through her. Suddenly she was greedy for him. Her hands slid along his body, her lips following, down his chest and across the flat planes of his stomach.
She took him in her mouth, and the drums became part of her, thundering in her blood.
At last, when he could bear no more, he pulled her up, covering her with his body, his bare skin with its rough patches of hair enveloping her in the darkness, teasing but not yet fulfilling.
He was breathing hard, as if he'd been running, but still he waited.
She moved beneath him. "Myles, please, I want—"
"What? Tell me what it is you really want." His voice, thick and slow and sweet, choked with need, was still insistent. 'Tell me, Paige."
"I want you—I need you—to love me," she gasped.
"Why?" There was something remorseless in his tone, something he needed from her before he would go on.
"Because I love you. Because I'll always love you," she breathed. "Forever, now, always—"
"My darling." The last of his control fled then, and with a low cry, he parted her thighs and entered her at the same
instant his mouth came down and swallowed her cry of fulfillment. And their joining was the way she remembered, wild and passionate and free. Relief mingled with rapture.
She must have slept for some time, afterward. It was still black dark when she came out of a floating dream, aware that he was awake and still holding her close to his body.
"Myles? What time is it?" She was groggy, and it seemed important to know the time. "Why aren't you sleeping?"
"It's about three. The party only died down an hour ago and everyone's gone to bed."
"The Métis must have finally run out of whiskey," she mused, turning a little so she rested more comfortably against his side.
She closed her eyes again, floating, thinking of the scene around the campfire, and somewhere between waking and sleeping an image stole into her mind, of a long ago class on some hot afternoon at the university. She heard the instructor's voice droning on, she saw a blurred photograph in a textbook, and without any further effort on her part, she suddenly knew where she'd met Gabriel Dumont.
"Oh my God, that's it. That's him." She shot bolt upright.
"What?" Alarmed, Myles propped himself on an elbow, his hand straying toward his gun, close to his pillow. "What's the matter?"
She shivered. It was chilly in the tipi in the predawn morning, but it wasn't the cold that made her shiver. "That Métis man you spoke to tonight. Gabriel Dumont? Well, I just realized who he is."
Myles lay back down. His voice seemed to come from far away. "And who is he, Paige? What do you know about Gabriel Dumont?"
"He's Riel's general. He was Riel's general," she corrected. "He masterminded the battles that were fought in the rebellion. He came very near defeating an entire British army with only a handful of soldiers. I remember Professor Wood going on and on about it, how this one man was a genius at tactical warfare. And I know his name was Gabriel Dumont. It was very sad, because after the rebellion he escaped to the United States, and ended up in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. That's what stuck in my mind. I remember thinking that it must have been humiliating for a man like him to end up as a sideshow attraction. There was a picture of him."
"Come here, lie down beside me." Myles reached for her and drew her down into the warmth of the bedrolls. "You're trembling. Your shoulders are freezing."
"Myles, do you believe me?" She was suddenly terrified that once again her traitorous memories would cause problems between them.
He sighed. "Yes, I believe you. And it doesn't surprise me at all that Dumont would be the one in charge of Riel's battles. Gabriel's illiterate, he can't talk English worth a damn, but he's a brilliant man all the same, a leader of his people." Myles was quiet for some time, and then he added, his voice somber, "He's here tonight for a purpose, Paige. Dumont and Riel are uniting the Indian tribes, rallying them behind the Métis cause, which is really the Indians' cause as well."
"But I thought you told me Riel was in a mental hospital."
Myles nodded. "He was, for a time. When he got out, he went to Montana and got work there as a schoolteacher. Around the fort, rumor has it that Dumont went down to Montana this summer and asked him to come home and be the political voice for the Métis people. He agreed. He's been at Batoche for several months now."
Frustration and anger were both evident in his voice. "I don't blame the Métis. There's no question their demands are legitimate. But damn it all, Paige, there's a bloody uprising in the making, and those idiots in Ottawa are paying not one single bit of attention."
She felt like saying I told you so, but good sense prevailed. Instead, she asked softly, "Is that why you can't sleep?" She cuddled against him, aware of the tension in his long, strong body.
"That's why. I keep feeling that I should be able to do something to prevent it."
She sighed, her hand stroking the familiar contours of his chest. "I don't think it's possible to change history, Myles." She thought for a moment. "When I first got here, I used to rage about things, the lack of conveniences, the fact that there weren't the medications I used to use. I used to think, there's a better way than this, I know there is, I've seen it. But as time went by, I started thinking differently. Now is now, and the things that happen here, the way people are, that's how it's meant to be now."
"There still must be something we can do."
She noticed that he'd gone from I to we. He was including her in his plans, and it made her irrationally happy, in spite of the circumstances.
"We can prepare, I guess. We can stock up on medical supplies, get extra food, blankets, clothing stored at the fort."
"You think this rebellion happened in the spring?" She'd given it a great deal of thought. "In the spring of eighteen eighty-five. I'm almost certain."
"About five months from now."
They talked on and on. The constraint that had been between them was gone.
Most of it, anyway. Paige was aware that Myles still didn't mention marriage, but perhaps that would come with time. She didn't bring up the conversation with Lame Owl, either. Why rock the boat just when she'd gotten it back in the water?
It was almost dawn before they slept, curled in one another's arms.
Summer became winter that year with no slow transition between the seasons. Barely a week after the trip to Poundmaker's reserve, the unusual September heat changed to icy rain from one day to the next, and shortly after that, to snow.
The sudden change brought flu, a virulent strain that kept both Paige and Myles so busy tending to its victims all through October that they had little time to spend with one another.
November came, and the flu epidemic still raged through the community and the surrounding countryside. Several old people and two young children died from the disease.
Hardly a day passed without more snow falling, and Paige had trouble keeping her house even moderately warm—she was called out night and day to tend to those who were ill, and her fires had a tiresome habit of going out while she wasn't there to shove more wood on them.
Then, in the middle of December, both the snow and the flu subsided almost overnight. A warm wind began to blow, a Chinook, and a substantial amount of snow melted in a single day. The wind continued, and soon the weather was almost balmy.
Two days, and then three, went by without an urgent call to someone's bedside, and Paige woke up one morning feeling rested for the first time in weeks. She looked at a calendar and realized that Christmas was only ten days away.
It was her second Christmas in Battleford, and on impulse, she decided to celebrate by having all her friends for Christmas dinner. Before she could change her mind, she scribbled notes to the Fletchers and the Quinlans and Abigail Donald, inviting them for Christmas Day—as long as the weather held, of course. She told Myles to invite Armand as well.
Eight people, plus baby Ellie. That number of bodies would stretch her tiny house until it was bursting at the seams, but after all, she told herself, that was what Christmas was all about.
Between patients, she spent the remaining time cleaning the house, planning the dinner, and wrapping gifts. Her own cooking was still hit-and-miss, so she bought whatever was available.
She ordered a large ham from the butcher. A small bakery had opened recently in town, and from the plump woman who owned it she ordered fragrant loaves of rye bread and a savory meat pie as well as mince and pumpkin pies.
From the Hudson's Bay Company store, she splurged on dried fruit and nuts and fresh oranges, a rarity in Battleford. She bought a bottle of sherry, and another of whiskey for the men, and more small gifts for everyone.
By Christmas Eve she was a nervous wreck, aware of just how much cooking she'd still have to do to feed eight people. She'd somehow overlooked the fact that she'd never in her life cooked an entire meal from scratch for a large group.
Nervous about cooking the ham, she decided to have a turkey as well. No one in the area raised turkeys, so she bought a goose. Fortunately, the farmer agreed to chop the bird's head off, and for a small
fee, his wife plucked and cleaned it. But now Paige was faced with the daunting task of stuffing the huge, ugly carcass. Abigail had offered, but Paige stubbornly insisted she'd manage on her own.
The evening before the big day, she cursed herself for being an optimistic fool. Sitting at the kitchen table with the corpse of the goose spread-eagled beside her, she was trying to figure out the vague instructions Abigail had written out for her when Myles arrived.
He came in, stamping his feet on the rag rug at the back door.
"Thank God you're here." Paige leaped to her feet and kissed him, brandishing the stuffing directions in one hand. “Take off your coat and help me with this, Myles. Removing somebody's gall bladder has to be a cinch compared with this procedure," she moaned. "How many onions do you figure qualify as a few?"
"About six, maybe?" Myles was as confused as Paige. Together, they studied the recipe and did their best to follow it. Soon, the table was littered with utensils and dishes and spices.
Myles went out for wood and restocked the fire, and the cook-stove turned the entire kitchen into an oven.
He stripped his tunic off, revealing gray underwear and wide suspenders. Sweating, swearing under his breath, he chopped onions and wiped his eyes with the dishtowel.
It seemed to Paige that every time she turned her back, the concoction they'd put on the stove to "fry lightly" started to burn.
By the time they finally had the goose stuffed, bussed, and ready to go in the oven, both Paige and Myles were exhausted.
"God, I smell like a fried onion," Paige complained. "We both do. I've got to get someone to put a bathroom in this house with a shower. When the hell were showers invented, anyhow? Oh, Myles, I hope we didn't go overboard on the pepper."
Myles was washing a stack of dishes in the dish-basin, his underwear sleeves rolled to his elbows. "It said a good quantity of pepper, we added a good quantity. Don't fuss about it, love. It'll taste fine."
"Did your mother ever stuff a goose, Myles? Can you remember if this is the way it ought to look?" Paige frowned at the trussed bird.
Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 26
