“Dunno. Got red skins an’ paint on their faces. I’m ridin’ to Fort Klamath to report ’em.”
“Nez Perce, most likely,” Brand said. “They head south from Canada about this time every year.”
“Oh. Well, I gotta report ’em anyway.” Without another word the boy reined away and kicked his mount into a gallop.
“Brand? What should we do?”
“Nuthin’. If it was a war party, you wouldn’t see hide nor hair of them until it was too late. If it’s the Nez Perce on the way to their winter camp, nuthin’ to do but watch ’em.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. Don’t you trust me?” he added with a chuckle. “Mount up.”
He rolled up the blanket behind his saddle, kicked dirt over the fire and pulled himself onto the horse next to her, still laughing.
Chapter Eighteen
At noon two days later, they rode past the sentries into Fort Klamath. Despite being one of the oldest forts in the northwest, it was well preserved, with white-painted buildings, a well-maintained, grassy parade ground and a prosperous-looking sutler’s store.
Brand walked up the wooden steps to the corporal’s office with Suzannah at his heels. The officer behind the battered desk leaped to his feet and saluted him. Guess he was still known out here.
When the man laid eyes on Suzannah, the cigarette he was nursing almost fell out of his mouth. “Ma’am. Miss. Uh, Missus—”
“Don’t go there, Corporal,” Brand said. “Miss Cumberland isn’t married. Yet.”
Brand took her aside. “You want to find your intended right away?”
“Oh, no,” she whispered. “I need to bathe and don fresh clothes first. I would never want John to see me like this. I have a dress in the bottom of my saddlebag.”
Brand turned back to the officer. “Corporal, Miss Cumberland will be staying with Colonel McLeod and his wife.”
“Very good, sir. Shall I—?”
“No, I’ll escort her over myself.”
“Colonel McLeod’s hosting a Christmas Eve ball for officers and their wives this evening, Major. I’m sure Miss Cumberland would be an honored guest. And you, too, sir,” he added hastily.
Brand gave the man a long look. He hadn’t been an honored guest at any social gathering for years, ever since he’d knocked out an overbearing soldier for pawing a young woman guest.
“Could someone see to our horses?”
“Of course, sir.”
Suzannah tugged his arm. “Brand, I need my saddlebag.”
He grabbed it off her mare before the young soldier led both mounts off to the stable. It was the same young man who’d warned them about the Indians, and he sent Brand a sheepish smile.
Brand walked Suzannah over to Colonel McLeod’s quarters, a white-painted house with a wraparound porch and red roses climbing up a trellis. A wreath of dark green holly hung on the front door. At the bottom of the wide wooden steps, Suzannah again tugged his arm.
“Brand, will you stay?”
“Stay? You mean at the colonel’s house?”
“No, I mean for the ball tonight? You see, I don’t know anyone.”
“Except for John.”
“Oh, please, Brand. Just for tonight. Now that I am really here, for some reason I am feeling very unsure of myself.”
Brand looked down into her moss-green eyes. The last thing he wanted to do was ride away from her. He’d dreaded it ever since that first night on the trail when he’d dropped her into the creek. Somehow he’d known even then that this was different, that she was different.
And the first time he’d kissed her and felt her heart flutter against his chest, he’d felt something move deep inside him that had never been there before. Every hour since that moment, he’d been lying to himself. Now that it was here, now that he had to leave her, he was damn sure he didn’t want to. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to.
“All right, Suzannah. I’ll stay. Just for tonight.” He turned her toward the colonel’s front door.
“Will you come to the ball tonight?”
“To be honest, I don’t want to. Hate crowds of people in stuffy rooms and—”
“Can you dance?”
“What? Oh, sure, but—”
“Then I will see you tonight, Brand.” With that she walked up the steps to the front door. Brand knocked, and when the door swung open he found himself instantly enveloped in a floury embrace.
“Brand! What in the world are you doing here?”
“Delivering someone.” He gestured to Suzannah. “Violet, this is Suzannah Cumberland.”
Mrs. McLeod’s bright blue eyes widened. “Why, my dear, I took you for a boy in those duds! My heavens, wherever did you come from?”
“South Carolina, Mrs. McLeod.”
“Oh, surely not!” She inspected Suzannah’s wrinkled shirt and dirty jeans.
“She started off in Missouri,” Brand volunteered. “On a wagon train. We came from Fort Hall on horseback.”
“I have come out west to marry my fiancé, Lieutenant Walters.”
The older woman’s face changed, but she quickly recovered. She turned to Brand, whose attention just at that moment had been caught elsewhere. “Brand, I haven’t seen you in years.”
Mrs. McLeod led the way to her front parlor, where a huge decorated Christmas tree stood in one corner. Both Brand and Suzannah declined the offer of a velvet-covered chair.
“Trail dust,” Brand explained.
“Oh, of course. My dear, I’d wager you would like a bath?”
After the colonel’s wife had shown Suzannah upstairs, Brand went off to the sutler’s for a bottle of good whiskey and then headed for the officers’ barracks.
* * *
Violet McLeod patted Suzannah’s cold hand. “Why, of course we know your lieutenant, my dear. Would you like to reunite with him now? Or would you prefer to freshen up some first?”
All Suzannah could do was nod. She must look sadly trail weary—filthy, even. She wanted to look beautiful for John. That was one of the things he had complimented her on.
Oh, if only she didn’t feel so alone! If only Brand...
If only Brand what?
An hour later she sat up in the tin bathtub and buried her face in her hands. If only Brand could stay forever.
But I will be married soon. I will have no need of Brand.
The thought of her marriage brought her no comfort. She sat motionless in the tepid water for a long half hour, then busied herself scrubbing her sun-browned skin and washing her dirt-encrusted hair.
Just as she finished combing out her wet curls, Mrs. McLeod poked her head into the guest bedroom. “Miss Cumberland, your young lieutenant is downstairs in the parlor waiting to see you.” The older woman’s smile made her wrinkled face seem almost youthful.
Suzannah’s thoughts flew into a frenzied jumble. “Oh! I— Well, I did not expect him so soon.”
“My dear, the corporal on duty sent word to him. I am quite sure the moment your fiancé heard you had arrived he lost no time in—”
“But I am not ready! I brought only one dress, and I was saving that for my wedding. All I have to wear is what I wore on the trail, my jeans and a boy’s shirt.”
“I think Lieutenant Walters will not mind when he sees you at last. It has been many months, has it not?”
“Almost six months, yes.” Six long, unsettling months. She scarcely felt she was the same person she had been before she left South Carolina.
“I will ask him to wait, shall I?” Mrs. McLeod pursued.
“Y-yes. Tell him...tell him I will be down directly.”
The instant the door closed Suzannah dashed to the mirror over the maple chest of drawers and peered at herself. A stranger looked back at her. A stranger with tanned skin, a sun-reddened nose and strands of wet hair hanging to her shoulders.
Heavens, her hair! Should she braid it, as she had while traveling? Or perhaps pile it up on top of her head, as she had w
orn it at home? She grasped a handful of her shiny blond mane and studied it. It was too long to pin up. Quickly she plaited the thick tresses into a single fat braid and secured it with the yellow ribbon she’d hidden in her saddlebag.
Then she pulled on her jeans and a clean blue-checked shirt, pinched her cheeks and drew in a shaky breath. She was terrified, and she had no idea why.
Lieutenant John Walters, here I am at last.
She walked slowly down the staircase to the McLeod’s parlor and tapped on the open door. The slim young man in an army uniform jolted to his feet and stood staring at her with his mouth open.
“Miss Cumberland?”
“Yes, John, it is I.”
He swallowed audibly. “Miss—Suzannah, is it really you? You look, well, you look an awful lot different.”
“That is not at all surprising,” she said, hoping she sounded calm and dignified. “I have been traveling for the past six months to reach you.”
“Have you?” His gaze moved from her shirt to her jeans. “You’re dressed kind of strange.”
“Well, yes. I have been traveling, as I said. A dress was not practical on the trail.”
He glanced down to the hem of her jeans. “You’re barefoot!”
Suzannah gulped. In her haste to dress, she had forgotten her boots. And her socks. Her bare toes curled under on the polished wood floor.
“John, are you not glad to see me?”
His expression changed. “Yes, yes, of course I am. Of course. But...” He peered at her face. “I didn’t expect you to look so, um, different. Your face is all suntanned.”
“My hands and arms, too.” She extended them for his inspection. “I wore a hat, but it didn’t help all that much.”
“I see. Yes, I do see. Your nose is sunburned, too. Women should not be allowed to be out in the hot sun.”
Allowed? A flash of irritation poked at her. Why did he not ask if she was in good health? Or if the journey had been comfortable? Or if she were well rested?
Why does he not kiss me? Or at least take my hand?
“You look just the same,” she said. “Just as I remember you.” In truth he was shorter than she remembered, but he had the same crisp uniform and the same reddish-brown hair and brown eyes.
He said nothing, just kept staring at her.
The door opened and Mrs. McLeod set a tea tray on the low table, then retreated without a word.
“Would you care for some tea?” Suzannah asked in her most polite, entertain-her-guest voice.
“What? Oh, sure. Tea. Of course.” He sank down onto the settee. Suzannah moved forward, settled herself beside him and lifted the teapot. At least she had not forgotten her manners.
“Would you care for milk? Or sugar?”
“What? I, uh, Miss Cumb—Suzannah, you look quite...different.”
“I will look more like myself tonight at the ball. I will be wearing a dress, one you may remember. Yellow, with flounces at the hem.” She waited.
He looked blank.
As calmly as she could manage, she poured a delicate blue-flowered cup full of tea, settled it on the matching saucer and handed it to him. Her hand shook.
“Men don’t, uh, remember dresses,” he said at last. “Men remember mountain trails and Indian villages they’ve burned. And other things like that. Not dresses.”
Suzannah blinked. Did he not remember the night he had proposed? The night she had worn her favorite yellow dress? He had said she looked beautiful—“pretty as a jonquil” were his words. Surely it would all come back to him tonight when he saw her at the ball?
“These garments I am now wearing must look odd to you, John. I had to wear them because we—that is, Major Wyler and I—traveled from Fort Hall on horseback.”
“Fort Hall, huh? You rode all the way from Fort Hall?”
“Yes.” She poured herself a cup of tea and took what she hoped was a ladylike sip. How she wished she could add some of Brand’s whiskey! “It took us almost ten days to reach Fort Klamath.”
“I see. I didn’t know you even rode a horse, Suzannah.”
“Well, to be truthful, I didn’t. At least not at first. So I learned.”
“A woman’s proper place is not on a horse. It is in the parlor. Or the kitchen.”
In the kitchen? Whom did he think he was marrying?
He hadn’t touched his tea, she noted. The flowered china saucer sat balanced on his knee, held in place with a forefinger touching the cup.
“John, you are pleased that I came, are you not?”
His cup rattled. “Oh, sure. Sure I am.”
“Are you surprised?”
He looked stricken. “I am, yes. Actually I’m...in shock, I guess.”
“But you did expect me, did you not?”
“Uh, sure I did.”
She felt a little sorry for him. She guessed it wasn’t every day a man’s fiancée turned up so unexpectedly. She rescued his cup and saucer and offered him the plate of iced Christmas cookies.
But he had invited her to come out west to marry him! When she assumed the duties of an officer’s wife, he would be glad she had come.
Tonight she would make sure he remembered her yellow dress. And her. They would dance together again, as they had on that moonlit night back in South Carolina, and he would realize...everything.
She rose. “I must retire and rest.” She turned her most gracious smile on his reddened face and smiled. “Until this evening, John.”
Chapter Nineteen
Brand shook his head to clear away the whiskey-induced fog in his brain. After dropping Suzannah off at Colonel McLeod’s, he’d downed more than a few, and now he had to pull himself together to attend Charlie and Violet’s Christmas Eve ball. He rolled off the cot and stood up.
The china pitcher and basin on the bureau across the room beckoned. Sure would like a bath, but he guessed he’d have to make do with sponging off. He shrugged off his tan shirt and began to unbutton his trousers.
Half an hour later he’d scrubbed off the worst of the sweat and grime from the trail, shaved and slicked back his dark hair. He hoped he looked halfway civilized; he wanted to leave Suzannah with a decent image of him.
Suzannah. Oh, damn.
Tonight would be the last time he’d ever see her, and the thought put a rock in his belly as big and sharp-edged as a craggy mountaintop. Funny how she’d grown on him in just ten days. Not so funny how much he wanted to keep her by his side. He’d never wanted to do that before with any woman; now he wanted it so much it made him ache.
Ah, hell, Wyler, what’d you expect? You let your guard down with a woman like Suzannah and wham! Your heart gets clobbered.
He stuffed his clean shirt into his jeans and gave himself one last look in the wavy glass over the washbasin. A damn fool stared back at him.
The ball was well under way by the time Brand entered the overheated, heavily perfumed room on the first floor of the officers’ quarters. Mistletoe hung from the ceiling, and the musicians’ stands were festooned with bright, shiny red ornaments. Two fiddle players and a cornet pumped out waltzes and reels, and a long cloth-covered table held cakes and pies and cookies shaped like Christmas trees. And whiskey, he noted. It wasn’t near enough for the thirst he was working up.
“Brand,” Violet McLeod sang. “How nice that you could join us.”
Brand inclined his head. “Mrs. McLeod.”
“Oh, for gracious’ sake, Brand, I’ve known you for at least a decade. Call me Violet. Charlie’s over there by the chocolate cookies.” She waved her hand vaguely toward the refreshment table and turned to greet a captain and his lady.
“Brand!” Colonel McLeod gripped his hand in his big paw. “Good to see you. Any time you want to come scout for me, you just say the word.” He nodded his graying head and slapped Brand’s still sore shoulder. “Any time.”
Brand tried not to wince. “Don’t think so, Charlie.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“I’m f
inished with army life.”
The colonel turned his lined face toward him. “What do you plan to do instead?”
Brand opened his mouth to reply, but just then he caught sight of Suzannah coming through the door. She wore a yellow dress with ruffles around the hem, and she looked so beautiful his heart turned a big fat somersault inside his chest.
“Brand?” the colonel said.
Brand tore his gaze away from Suzannah and focused on the man prodding his arm. “Sorry. What did you say, Charlie?”
“I asked what you plan to do.”
“About what?”
The colonel followed his gaze straight across the room to the vision in yellow silk. “About her, I’d guess. Brand, in all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you look at a woman like that.”
“Yeah?” He swallowed. “Well, in all the years I’ve known you, and Violet, and the army, I’ve never known a woman like Suzannah Cumberland.”
“Ah. You know that Miss Cumberland is engaged to marry one of my lieutenants?”
“Yeah, I know.”
The colonel coughed. “You want to meet him?”
“Hell, no. Well, maybe I do. Want to be sure the man deserves her.”
Charlie McLeod gave him a considering look and scanned the room. “He’s over there, by the musicians. Come on.”
Brand sized up the slim young soldier across the room in one glance. Not good enough. Not near good enough for Suzannah.
“Major Wyler, I’d like to introduce Lieutenant John Walters.”
Brand jerked his head up at the name. Walters! Was this the man Marcy had written him about? The man who’d stood her up at the altar? His name had been Jack Walters.
“Lieutenant,” the colonel went on, “meet Major Brandon Wyler. He’s with Colonel Clarke at Fort—”
“You got a brother named Jack?” Brand interrupted.
A frown crossed the young officer’s forehead. “No. Sometimes I go by Jack, though.”
“You ever know a girl named Marcy Wyler?”
“Yeah, I think so. Some time back.”
“Walk outside with me,” Brand ordered. He turned toward the doorway.
The minute Walters reached the wide front porch, Brand pivoted and laid him flat with one punch. “Lucky I’m not armed,” he said, “or you’d be a dead man.”
Dreaming of a Western Christmas: His Christmas BelleThe Cowboy of Christmas PastSnowbound with the Cowboy Page 10
