The Northern Devil

by Diane Whiteside

  THE NORTHERN DEVIL

  THE NORTHERN DEVIL

  DIANE WHITESIDE

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  For Kate

  Fierce-throated beauty!

  Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night,

  Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all,

  Law of thyself complete, thine old track firmly holding, (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)

  Thy trills and shrieks by rocks and hills return’d, Launch’d o’er the prairies wide, across the lakes, To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.

  —Walt Whitman,

  “To a Locomotive in Winter,”

  Leaves of Grass, 1876

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Boston, Christmas 1867

  The party was magnificent—if one enjoyed weddings or the company of respectable women.

  Lucas Grainger took another swallow of excellent champagne and counted the hours until he could catch a train back to Kansas, the cavalry, and dependably uncivilized Indians.

  Anglesey Hall’s great ballroom was full of Boston Brahmins, swooping and swirling across the dance floor under the glittering chandeliers, chattering from the gilded chairs along its edges, or making a hundred deals in the corridors just beyond, which would shake America’s business world in the months to come. Even the rich fragrances of fir, balsam, and roses from the wreaths and garlands couldn’t hide the reek of money and ambition—especially the thwarted avarice behind the polite congratulations given to the married couple.

  But Lucas had never seen anyone happier than Elias Davis in his life, nor one who deserved it more. Congressional Medal of Honor winner and the man who’d taught Lucas everything about being a cavalry officer, Davis should be looking forward to life with a beautiful, young bride—no matter how few years that would be.

  Of course, that was the real reason for this enormous party. Child of his father’s old age, Davis had always been given what he wanted, including a West Point education and military service. After a Rebel’s bullet had torn Davis’s lung during Sherman’s last great wartime battle, nobody had expected him to live more than a few months. But his wealthy, powerful father had brought him home, where he’d been nursed back to this approximation of health—and fallen in love with a senior servant’s daughter. Rather than arguing the choice, Old Man Davis had clearly recognized he had very little time to waste if he wanted to see his grandchildren. So he’d chosen to invite Boston’s most snobbish members to the wedding, calculating that if they attended the ceremony they’d be unable to attack the union later.

  Now Davis stood proudly next to his Rachel, whose cameo-pure beauty—even at seventeen—was enough to make great portrait painters stop in their tracks. They were clearly physically comfortable together, something Lucas wasn’t accustomed to seeing in a married couple. Rachel was forever tweaking Davis’s coat or shirt or stroking his cheek, touches that made him beam fondly. She was intelligent, too; she’d conversed quite sensibly about the new railroad bill at dinner last night. Its fundamentals were so coated in bribery as to defeat all but the most perceptive.

  Their union was almost enough to make Lucas rethink his objections to falling in love. Certainly not to marriage—never that!—but love might be worthwhile if it brought joy and physical comradeship like that.

  The music changed into another dance. Two matrons immediately collected their daughters and bore down upon him from opposite directions, their intentions clear. Lucas snorted silently in derision at the matrons’ poor choice of tactics; they wouldn’t have lasted an hour against Bedford Forrest or the Indians. He straightened and strolled toward Davis and Rachel, his dress sword clanking softly at his side.

  He caught Davis and Rachel during a temporary lull in the flow of guests. The crowd shifted around them, forming a wall of backs and an illusion of privacy.

  Davis was chuckling. “My apologies. I can assure you from personal experience that Bostonian matrons are not always so blatant. Pincer movements like that have been old hat for centuries.”

  Lucas joined in the laugh, although he mistrusted its febrile quality.

  Rachel smiled and moved closer to her husband on his left, the side that hadn’t been wounded. Unfortunately, he was very dependent on his right hand and had never learned to do much with the other, even to shoot.

  “I’m glad you stopped by now, before we all leave,” Davis said quietly enough not to be overheard. “There hasn’t been time for the three of us to speak together privately.”

  Lucas inclined his head, the old wartime habits of obedience and respect coming back. He’d only been eighteen the first time he’d followed Davis into combat. Their company had been one of the very few to survive that bloodbath.

  “As you may have noticed, my handwriting lacks—a certain elegance.”

  The younger man kept a straight face and Davis chuckled again. “I thought you’d enjoy that description of it. In any event, my darling Rachel has graciously agreed to serve as my secretary especially for my private correspondence, copying out my letters to ensure their legibility.”

  He coughed and she came alert, snatching up a glass of water and watching him warily. But the spasm was over in seconds and he went on, after taking a sip of the proffered drink. “She has my full confidence. But if you would prefer that our conversations remain strictly entre nous, then say so and you may continue to decipher my scrawl.”

  Lucas glanced at her, wondering what she thought of all this. Would the reminder of her husband’s ailment be a painful burden or something to be forgotten?

  Her eyes were shining and hopeful.

  He looked back at Davis. “Of course.”

  “Excellent.”

  “If I may ask a personal favor of you, Lieutenant Grainger?” She had a very gentle, melodious contralto voice.

  “Certainly. If it is in my power to grant it, then it is yours.” The gracious words flowed from his mouth without conscious thought, the first time he’d ever offered any such gift to a woman.

  “Oh, this is nothing so very big or important, Lieutenant. But could you please slip in a few observations about the West into your letters to my husband?”

  He bowed, oddly touched. No one in his family had ever asked him that in their occasional letters, instead focusing solely on their doings and his failures. “It will be my pleasure to do so.”

  “You may also write directly to each other on the subject, if you’d like,” Davis approved. “My darling will be spending far too much time caring for invalids, between my father and myself. Visits to the outdoors, even if only on paper, will do her a world of good.”

  He lifted a finger and a servant immediately appeared with a tray of fragile champagne flutes, the golden wine shimmering within.

  Davis looked around the small circle, his skin the color of old parchment except for splotches of color burning high on his cheekbones. “To friends and comrades!”

  “Friends and comrades!” Lucas and Rachel echoed and they drank together.

  Now he could have Rachel as his friend, his only female friend.

  Fort Union, New Mexico Territory, September 1870

 
Lucas knocked politely before entering the house he’d rented for his mistress. He’d never fought with Ambrosia before, but he’d heard enough from other men to know that women should be approached very cautiously after a fracas—especially a major quarrel like this one.

  He’d thought that after two years together, she’d have realized he would never marry her, although he had said he loved her. That had been God’s own truth, too, even though they’d met in a New Orleans brothel.

  She’d sworn she loved him, too, enough to follow him to the edge of civilization, first to Kansas and then here—over a hundred miles from Santa Fe’s musicians, as she described it. He’d loved her all the more for it.

  Dammit, he’d enjoyed having a smile on his face when he looked at a woman. Davis had looked like that and the sound of it still came through in his letters.

  Last night, Ambrosia had said that she wanted a wedding just like her friend Sally Anne’s. He’d been too exhausted after a three-month patrol to guard his tongue, so he’d told her the truth: She’d have to find another man to give it to her. She hadn’t believed him at first but when she did, she’d started throwing things and he’d retreated to the bachelor officer quarters.

  This morning, he’d visited Erickson, the bartender—and unofficial banker and pawnbroker for most of the gamblers. Lucas had come away with a remarkably fine diamond necklace that should put a smile back on her face. Ambrosia was very fond of trinkets. Even if she was still furious, the stage back to Santa Fe didn’t leave until this afternoon.

  Coming out of Erickson’s, he’d noticed that Muldrup and Livermore were passing through Fort Union, probably to go hunting in the Sangre de Cristos. He’d have to privately warn the Provost Marshal to keep an eye on them, although Jones had probably heard about the old scandal. Court-martialing and convicting two officers of rape was extraordinarily rare.

  It was very quiet now in the tiny adobe house.

  The hairs on the nape of Lucas’s neck stood up.

  “Ambrosia? Ah, angel?”

  He took another step forward, his Colt shifting against his hip as if ready to be drawn.

  The main room was completely empty. The silence pushed at him, whispering of ghosts, telling him to hurry. But the threat didn’t seem to be aimed at him.

  Still, he twisted his wrist, bringing his dirk into availability. He’d spent months learning how to use knives, first when he was a common trooper, and from Little, his very good friend and an Indian scout. Recently, the top wagon master, William Donovan, had shown him some other tricks. God forbid he had to use them now.

  He went into the bedroom warily, prepared for anything except the sight that greeted him—a single sheet of paper, staked to the pillow with an enormous hatpin.

  Lucas,

  You are a fool. Did you really believe I was in love with you, a young man with little experience and no skill before I met you?

  He flushed angrily, resenting the description while acknowledging how much she’d taught him.

  I have stayed with you because you are rich.

  Ambrosia! He gave a low, ragged sound and sagged back, clawing the wall while his dreams shredded around him. Good God, how she must have laughed at his declarations of love.

  When he began reading again, he was standing stiffly erect, his chest filled with a cold rage that admitted neither tears nor hope.

  Elias and Rachel Davis were now the only happy couple he knew.

  If you will not marry me and give me your money, then I will return to New Orleans where I can have men who are both rich and charming.

  Do not follow; I will only spit in your face.

  Ambrosia

  Returning to New Orleans? When he’d visited Erickson, he’d walked past Smith’s, where civilians stayed while waiting for the stage. Nobody had mentioned Ambrosia and Jennie Smith was a notorious gossip.

  So where was Ambrosia?

  This wasn’t a safe town for a woman to be alone in—even though it was a very large military post—not with Muldrup and Livermore present. He knew damn well just how much those two bastards were capable of and how cleverly they could skirt the law, with the aid of their friends.

  Worse, there was nothing they wouldn’t do if they thought it would hurt him in any fashion.

  Where the hell was Ambrosia?

  And where the devil were Muldrup and Livermore?

  He dropped the note on the bed and headed out, his spurs jangling furiously.

  Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Colorado, October 1870

  A flock of dark-eyed juncos flashed across the forest’s edge, making Lucas’s big stallion toss his head. Lucas absentmindedly rubbed his old friend’s neck and crooned reassurances too softly to be heard even a few steps away. All the while, he scanned the valley below, looking for his prey and making sure they hadn’t spotted him and his companion first.

  They stood high on the steep mountainside within a heavy stand of fir trees. Below them, the little river wound its way down icy rocks and through snowy meadows. Its passage slowed at a still pond, glazed by early winter’s first crystalline coat of ice and bordered on one side by a long stretch of frosted, golden grasses. That meadow would be a perfect setting for what Lucas had planned.

  Downstream, the river gathered itself to race past a handful of huge boulders and hurtle over a knife-edged cliff in a torrent of roiling water. Even from a mile away and almost a half mile higher, Lucas could hear the river plunging into the abyss beyond.

  Old memories stirred, of when he’d stared at another waterfall and forgotten the pond behind it, with the girl he’d promised to guard. Cold slashed deeper into him, an ancient pain more profound than anything that had touched him in the past few weeks.

  He closed his eyes, his fingers opening and closing on his Colt. Inside his jacket, a velvet jeweler’s pouch rested over his heart.

  A horse whickered and pawed the trail behind him, its tack jingling delicately. It belonged to William Donovan—the one man he’d wanted with him on this hunt, who’d accepted immediately when he’d heard Lucas’s reasons. A friend, to whom he now owed a blood debt beyond measure.

  Lucas opened his eyes.

  “Campfire over to the west,” Donovan remarked calmly in his California drawl, an entirely fitting accent for the owner of one of the West’s great freighting houses. He carried a shotgun in his rifle scabbard, a bit of foresight that had made Lucas blink and then grin mirthlessly. “Just inside that aspen grove. I’d say they only recently lit it.”

  “They definitely haven’t spotted us yet,” Lucas commented, gathering up his reins. He shot a glance at Donovan, shaping his mouth into a smile’s travesty. “Shall we invite them to the party?”

  Donovan’s smile was as predatory as his own. “Definitely. After all, they are the guests of honor.”

  When Lucas and Donovan arrived at Muldrup and Livermore’s camp, they didn’t bother to make any pretense at amiability. They wore the rough clothes of hard men moving fast through difficult terrain in bad weather: Heavy wool coats, broad-brimmed hats, leather trousers, heavy gloves, and high boots. Their weapons were prominently displayed.

  Muldrup and Livermore looked like what they were: two Army lieutenants on a hunting trip in the high mountains. Their neat white tents, fir bough beds, wooden camp stools—everything bore silent testimony to years successfully spent under the roughest of conditions. But then Lucas had always known these two were good travelers and good fighters. They also had the forms of the perfect gentlemen they’d always claimed to be. Muldrup had dark hair and dark eyes, with the speed and agility of an expert dancer—or a back-alley knife fighter. Livermore was slightly taller, famous for his enjoyment of any pleasure offered, whether or not he’d paid for it. A neatly dressed elk carcass hung high in a fir tree, well back from the camp. It was probably Muldrup’s handiwork, not Livermore’s.

  Seven years earlier at the siege of Vicksburg, they’d appeared to be everything Union cavalry officers should be—until he’d caught them ra
ping a young Southern gentlewoman. They’d threatened to break him back to sergeant if he reported them, thus destroying his month-old officer’s commission. Driven by the need to protect all women, even a rebel, Lucas had called their bluff and seen them convicted by a military court-martial. But military necessity, in the form of a long campaign which needed every experienced cavalry officer, saw their sentences officially reduced to pre-war rank, time already served and, unofficially, to the loss of their so-called honor.

  Still, Army regulations, which forbade deadly combat between officers, had always stood between them—until now.

  The two men stood to meet Lucas and Donovan, Muldrup leaning against the tent frame with one hand resting casually on his hip. Livermore stood farther off to the side, making it difficult to take them both down with a single exchange of shots. Not that it mattered; that sort of party wasn’t at all what Lucas had in mind.

  “Good morning, Grainger.” Muldrup’s tone was polite, if not welcoming. He gave Donovan an abrupt jerk of his head, nothing more.

  “Grainger,” Livermore echoed, managing a nod.

  “And a good morning to you—murderers.” Lucas was finally free to let all the contempt he felt infuse his voice.

  Muldrup’s eyes narrowed briefly. “Watch who you’re talking to,” he drawled, as certain of his own superiority now as when he’d first left his family’s century-old South Carolina plantation fifteen years ago. He’d bragged for years about his kinship to John Lyde Wilson, governor of South Carolina and author of The Code of Honor, which provided the American rules for dueling. “If you weren’t a fellow Army officer, I’d challenge you to a duel for calling me that.”

  “Hadn’t you heard? I resigned my commission days ago.” Savage satisfaction flooded Lucas’s veins at Muldrup’s evident shock—and rapid reconsideration of the situation. “After seven years, you’ve finally gained the duel you wanted. Donovan, will you act for me?”