The Colonel's Lady

by Laura Frantz

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  © 2011 by Laura Frantz

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  E-book edition created 2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-3264-9

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

  Scripture quotations marked ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  For Wyatt and Paul

  May you grow to be godly heroes.

  And a special dedication to the men and women of our country’s armed forces, who, since 1776, have given of their own lives and liberties to ensure ours.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Author

  Back Ads

  Author’s Note

  When I visited Locust Grove in Louisville, Kentucky, and came face-to-face with a portrait of George Rogers Clark, I knew I had to create a hero like him. After I read James Alexander Thom’s epic Long Knife, Colonel Clark was firmly etched in my mind and heart as a true American legend. Only he had a tragic life. After researching, I felt compelled to give him a happier ending. Colonel Cassius McLinn is loosely based on Clark and his heartbreaking struggles as a soldier and private citizen. Roxanna Rowan, while entirely fictitious, is the woman I wish George Rogers Clark had met. If he had, I like to think his life would have turned out a bit differently.

  The life of a soldier in any century is difficult. We owe an enormous debt to those who serve. But a soldier who served two hundred or more years ago had very special challenges. Conditions for the army in that era were extremely taxing. The water was often polluted, thus the reliance upon alcohol or spirits. To make this story true to history, I had to include its use and show how detrimental it truly was. The political situation on the American frontier was also quite complex. I have dealt with it only superficially in my story, as it was ferocious.

  George Washington is credited with saying, “I have heard the bullets whistle, and there is something charming in the sound.” This so describes the fortitude and courage of the Revolutionary War soldiers that I had Colonel McLinn echo the words.

  The maxims used in this novel were taken straight from the eighteenth century and were then titled Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation. These were the very rules George Washington learned at an early age and followed his entire life. Perhaps this is why he became one of the finest soldiers who ever lived.

  Although the Purple Heart did not come into being until 1782, I made use of it earlier in this story. Only three men are known to have been awarded this prestigious honor during the Revolutionary War.

  As a novelist, I find it a joy to take the historical record and bring to life the lovely, lost, bittersweet things of the past and breathe new life and hope into them. I attempted to do this with The Colonel’s Lady. I hope that you, dear reader, enjoy the story.

  1

  Kentucke Territory, November 1779

  This is madness.

  Roxanna Rowan leaned against the slick cave entrance and felt an icy trickle drop down the back of her neck as she bent her head. Her right hand, shaky as an aspen leaf, caressed the cold steel of the pistol in her pocket. Being a soldier’s daughter, she knew how to use it. Trouble was she didn’t want to. The only thing she’d ever killed was a copperhead in her flower garden back in Virginia, twined traitorously among scarlet poppies and deep blue phlox.

  An Indian was an altogether different matter.

  The cave ceiling continued to weep, echoing damply and endlessly and accenting her predicament. Her eyes raked the rosy icicles hanging from the sides and ceiling of the cavern. Stalactites. Formed by the drip of calcareous water, or so Papa had told her in a letter. She’d never thought to see such wonders, but here she was, on the run from redskins and Redcoats in the howling wilderness. And in her keep were four fallen women and a mute child.

  They were huddled together further down the cavern tunnel, the women’s hardened faces stiff with rouge and fright. Nancy. Olympia. Dovie. Mariah. And little Abby. All five were looking at her like they wanted her to do something dangerous. Extending one booted foot, she nudged the keelboat captain. In the twilight she saw that the arrow protruding from his back was fletched with turkey feathers. He’d lived long enough to lead them to the mouth of the cave—a very gracious gesture—before dropping dead. Thank You, Lord, for that. But what on earth would You have me do now? A stray tear leaked from the corner of her left eye as she pondered their predicament.

  The Indians had come out of nowhere that afternoon—in lightning-quick canoes—and the women had been forced to abandon the flatboat and flee in a pirogue to the safer southern shore, all within a few miles of their long-awaited destination. Fort Endeavor was just downriver, and if they eluded the Indians, they might reach it on foot come morning. Surely a Shawnee war party would rather be raiding a vessel loaded with rum and gunpowder than chasing after five worthless women and a speechless child.

  “Miz Roxanna!” The voice cast a dangerous echo.

  Roxanna turned, hesitant to take her eyes off the entrance lest the enemy suddenly appear. Her companions had crept further down the tunnel, huddled in a shivering knot. And then Olympia shook her fist, her whisper more a shout.

  “I’d rather be took by Indians than spend the night in this blasted place!”

  There was a murmur of assent, like the hiss of a snake, and Roxanna plucked her pistol from her pocket. “Ladies,” she said, stung by the irony of the address. “I’d much rather freeze in this cave than roast on some Indian spit. Now, are you with me or against me?”

  The only answer was the incessant plink, plink, plink of water. Turning her back to them, she fixed her eye on the ferns just beyond the cave entrance, studying the fading scarlet and cinnamon and saffron woods. With the wind whipping and rearranging the leaves, perhaps their trail would be covered if the Indians decided to pursue t
hem. They’d also walked in a creek to hide their passing. But would it work? Roxanna heaved a shaky sigh.

  I’m glad Mama’s in the grave and Papa doesn’t know a whit about my present predicament.

  At daylight the women emerged like anxious animals from the cave, damp and dirty and wild-eyed with apprehension. One small pistol was no match for an Indian arrow. But Roxanna clutched it anyway, leading the little group through the wet woods at dawn, in the direction of the fort they’d been trying to reach for nigh on a month. By noon the women in her wake were whining like a rusty wagon wheel, but she didn’t blame them a bit. They had lost all their possessions, every shilling, and hadn’t seen so much as a puff of smoke from a nearby cabin at which they could beg some bread.

  Were they even going the right direction?

  The dense woods seemed to shutter the sun so that it was hard to determine which way was which. When the fort finally came into view, it didn’t match the picture Roxanna had concocted in her mind as she’d come down the watery Ohio River road. The place was dreary. Lethal looking. Stalwart oak pickets impaled the sky, and the front gates of the great garrison were shut. Drawing her cape around her, she stifled a sigh. It needed fruit trees all around . . . and a hint of flowers . . . and children and dogs running about, even in the chill of winter.

  But not one birdcall relieved the gloom.

  As they came closer, she could see the Virginia colors flying on the tall staff just beyond high, inhospitable walls. And then something else came into view—something that matched her memories of home and made a smile warm her tense face. A stone house. She blinked, expecting the lovely sight to vanish. But it only became clearer and more beguiling, and she drank in every delightful detail.

  Solid stone the color of cream. Winsome green shutters with real glass windows hiding behind. Twin chimneys at each end. And a handsome front door that looked like it might be open in welcome come warmer weather. Situated on a slight rise in back of the fort, the house was near enough to the postern gate to flee to in times of trouble, though she doubted even the king’s men could penetrate such stone. Who had built such a place in the midst of such stark wilderness?

  Papa never mentioned a stone house.

  Roxanna was suddenly conscious of the company she kept—or rather was leading. It wasn’t that she was afraid to be seen with these women in their too-tight gowns and made-up faces, or that she felt above them in some way. Glancing at them over her shoulder, she pulled her cloak tighter as the whistling wind of late November blew so bitterly it seemed to slice through her very soul.

  Her skittishness was simply this—she feared the reaction of her father. Stalwart soldier that he was, what would he think to see her arrive in such flamboyant company? He hadn’t an inkling she was coming in the first place. But to see her roll in unexpectedly with doxies such as these, and a pitiful child to boot . . .

  “Is that Fort Endeavor, Miz Roxanna?” The weary voice was almost childlike in expectancy. Dovie, only fifteen, had attached herself to Roxanna with the persistence of a horsefly in midsummer’s heat from the moment they’d met on the boat.

  “Yes, that’s the fort, or should be,” she replied as the girl clutched her arm a bit fearfully. “Best keep moving lest the Indians follow.” Roxanna looked to her other side and grabbed hold of Abby’s hand. The child glanced up, ginger curls framing a pale face buttonholed by bluish-gray eyes, her dimpled cheeks visible even without a smile. “We’ll soon be warm and dry again—promise.”

  At the rear, Olympia laughed, and the sound tinkled like a tarnished chime in the frozen air. “I aim to be more than that, truly. Or I reckon I’ll turn right around and find me another fort full of soldierin’ men—or an Indian chief.”

  Ignoring the babble of feminine voices, Roxanna looked over her shoulder warily as they emerged from the woods. How in heaven’s name had it come to this? She realized she was running from discomfort to danger. Virginia no longer felt like home, and she was desperate to leave its hurtful memories behind. But this was far more than she’d bargained for.

  Oh, Lord, was it Your will for me to leave Virginia . . . or my own?

  Every passenger on the flatboat they’d just forsaken seemed to be running from something. Even Olympia had confessed she’d left her life at the public house because she was tired of the lice and the stench of the river and the men who manhandled her. Her sister who had worked alongside her had died, leaving a child behind. To her credit, Olympia wanted a better life for little Abby. The girl hadn’t spoken a word since her mother’s death a few months before, and Roxanna wondered if she ever would.

  “I’ve heard that in Kentucke, women are so scarce even a fallen one like myself can take my pick of any man I please,” Olympia had announced aboard the vessel one evening. “And he’ll treat me decent too.” She smiled with such satisfaction that Roxanna almost envied her.

  “I just want me a little cabin with some chickens and a plot of corn. Seems like that ain’t askin’ much,” Mariah added.

  Beside her, Nancy arranged her tattered skirts and purred like a cat with a pot of cream, “I’m partial to a soldierin’ man myself.”

  Dovie’s faded blue eyes lingered on each woman, her round face full of expectancy. “Why, Miz Roxanna, you ain’t said a word about why you’re travelin’ to the wilderness.”

  A hush fell over the group as they huddled about the shanty stove. Roxanna expelled a little breath. “Well . . . my father’s at Fort Endeavor serving as scrivener. He’s always writing letters telling me how beautiful Kentucke is, how you can see for miles since the air is so clear, that even the grass is a peculiar shade of blue-green, and the forests are huge and still. Not leaping with Indians like some folks say.”

  “Sure enough?” Mariah murmured as the other women huddled nearer.

  “My coming to Kentucke is a surprise. Papa’s enlistment is near an end, and we’ll be going somewhere to settle, just the two of us.”

  “Don’t you want to find a man—get married?” Mariah asked.

  The innocent question stung her. Roxanna lifted her shoulders in a show of indifference. “I’m not so young anymore—spinster age, some say.”

  The women exchanged knowing glances and began to titter.

  “Seems to me you’re comin’ to the right territory, then. A frontiersman ain’t gonna let a gal who’s a little long in the tooth stop a weddin’, ” Olympia said, her smile smug. Reaching into the bosom of her dress, she withdrew a Continental dollar and waved it about. “I bet Miz Roxanna with her fine white skin and all that midnight hair won’t last five minutes once she sets foot in that fort.”

  There were approving murmurs all around. Roxanna smiled ruefully as Nancy reached over and snatched the bill out of Olympia’s hand, tossing it into the stove. “That dollar’s worthless and you know it. Show me somethin’ sound.”

  Still chuckling, Olympia lifted her soiled calico skirt and took a pound note from her scarlet garter. “Now, who’s to wed after Miz Roxanna?”

  “I say Nancy ’cause she’s so sweet.” Mariah sneered, rolling her eyes.

  This brought about such feminine howls a riverman stuck his head in the shanty doorway.

  “I ain’t sweet but I’m smart,” Nancy said, tucking a strand of flaxen hair behind her ear. “I’ll take the first man who asks me, so long as he ain’t wedded to the jug and don’t beat me.”

  Mariah rubbed work-hardened hands together, the backs flecked with liver spots. “I’ve got a hankerin’ for a cabin in the shade of a mountain with a spring that never dries up, not even in summer. If a man won’t take me, I’ll make do myself, just like I’ve been doin’ since I was nine years old.”

  Roxanna felt a stirring of pity for every scarred soul around the hissing stove. “Why don’t we pray for husbands—for all of you?” she said on a whim, watching their faces.

  Olympia smirked and shook her head. “With all due respect, Miz Roxanna, the only experience I’ve had with prayin’ women is the ones wh
o’ve prayed me and my ilk out of one river town after another.”

  “I ain’t never prayed before,” Mariah confessed.

  “I like the idea. It ain’t gonna hurt none,” Dovie said quietly. “Maybe it’ll help.”

  Reaching out, Roxanna squeezed her hand. Despite their worldly ways, these women could be surprisingly childlike, and they responded to any compliment or scrap of kindness like a half-starved cat.

  “Praying isn’t hard,” she told them. “Sometimes when I can’t think of what to say, I just remember the words I learned as a little girl.” Opening the door of the stove, she added some dry willow chunks. “It goes like this. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.’ ”

  Nancy nodded. “I learned that a long time ago in settlement school back in Pennsylvania.”

  “Well,” Mariah urged, “keep on a-goin’. Might as well add that we’re all needin’ husbands.”

  “Maybe we should hold hands,” Dovie suggested, reaching for Nancy’s. “Once I peeked in at a prayer meetin’ and it seemed that was what they did.”

  Self-consciously they bowed their heads. Roxanna stayed silent as they made their petitions before adding her own at the very end. “Father, You know what we have need of before we even ask. But we ask anyway, knowing You are patient and kind and the giver of all gifts. I ask that You send each of these women a husband—but only men who are honest and kind and good. Help them to be the women You made them to be. Help them to know You.” She looked up, eyes searching the shadows. Curled up on a cot against a far wall, Abby was fast asleep. “And please bring Abby’s voice back—let her speak again. Amen.”

  Dovie didn’t let go of her hand. “Why, Miz Roxanna, you left yourself out.”

  Swallowing down a sigh, Roxanna dredged up a half smile.

  Truly, some things are past praying for.

  “I ain’t goin’ to bed till you’re prayed up,” Olympia said, crossing her arms.