She looked to her father. “He’s made free with me, sir,” she cried. “He took advantage of my innocence.”
“Elizabeth!” Sir John thundered. “What are you saying?”
“I’m with child.” She covered her face with her hands to hide her laughter. “He promised to wed me. Now, he means to flee and leave me to face the shame alone!”
Avery swung a fist at Hunt. He ducked the blow, seized her brother by the shirtfront and lifted him off the floor, holding him at arm’s length. “What did you say?” Hunt shouted at Elizabeth.
“I’m four months gone with your child!” It was a lie. She’d had a showing of blood only a few days ago. But it was the only thing she could think of to stop him from getting away. Hunt would probably be angry with her, but difficult situations required strong solutions.
“Elizabeth!” Gwendolen gasped. “How could you? One bastard is forgivable, but three?”
Someone began to pray aloud, and a maid leaned out the window and shrieked for the law. “Sheriff! Sheriff! For God’s sake, fetch the sheriff!”
A footman dove for Hunt’s legs while a second one snatched up his rifle. Joseph came running with a broom, and Graham removed his coat and rolled up his sleeves to join the fray.
“No!” Elizabeth screamed, flinging herself against Hunt and clinging to his neck. “Don’t hurt him. He has to marry me!”
Hunt dropped Avery and threw his arm around her as they crashed to the floor under the weight of the servants. One man caught the edge of the linen tablecloth and a ham and a cascade of crystal crashed onto the floor.
Hunt glared at Elizabeth. “Is this so, woman? Are you pregnant with my child?”
She crossed her fingers behind his neck and hung her head. “Yes, Hunter,” she whispered.
Hunt twisted around and sent a footman spinning with the back of his hand. “Get the hell off me,” he roared. “I’ll marry her.”
“You will?” Elizabeth murmured.
“You’ll do no such thing,” her father snapped. “We’ll have him arrested. Hung! We don’t allow such—”
“Stop this shameful bickering at once!” the vicar proclaimed. “Sir John, remember your position.”
Hunt got to his feet, pulling Elizabeth up with him. She pressed close, trying to appear repentant and firm at the same time.
“It would be best if you let him wed me, Father,” she said.
“And do what? Live in the woods like an animal?” Sir John demanded. “He doesn’t even have a job.”
“I’m an agent for Ross Campbell and Sons,” Hunt answered stiffly. “I’ve been licensed to open a trading post west of Lake Michigan. William Bennett of this town will vouch for me. He is the agent for Ross Campbell and—”
“I know who William Bennett is,” her father said. “What will you expect in dowry, if I give you my daughter’s hand in marriage?”
“Nothing,” Hunt said. “I told you that—”
“Nothing but my mother’s inheritance to me,” Elizabeth put in. “And Mr. Campbell will take responsibility for my Indian children, won’t you?” She smiled up at Hunt.
“You’ll pay for this later,” he whispered in her ear. To her father, he said, “I may not be what you’d want for Elizabeth. I know I’m not of her social class. I didn’t think it would be honorable to take her from this.” He motioned to indicate the house and all it stood for. “But I love her, and I came here to ask your permission to marry her. Her condition is as much a surprise to me as it is to you, but I assure you, I will do right by my children, all three of them.”
“They’re all yours?” Gwendolen fanned at her face and sank into a chair. “All?”
“The shameless jade!” Pieter exclaimed. “I wouldn’t marry the baggage if she had twice the dowry. And neither will any other respectable gentleman in Carolina.”
“Good for you that I’m no gentleman,” Hunt said wryly. He glanced at the vicar. “I take it you’re a man of God?”
“I am, but—”
“I said I am ready to leave Charles Town. If you want me to wed this woman, let’s do it here and now.”
“What?” Elizabeth’s head spun. “Right now?”
“Now or never,” Hunt said.
Elizabeth looked helplessly at her father. “Father?”
“Give her to him, John,” Gwendolen urged. “They deserve each other.”
“Highly irregular,” the minister grumbled. “Banns to be cried, procedures to—”
“Now or never,” Hunt repeated.
“Do it,” her father said. “The sooner done, the better.”
“No-tha!” Rachel and Jamie burst from the hall with squeals of excitement. “My No-tha!” Rachel repeated, squirming between her grandfather’s legs.
“I don’t believe you came here to marry me,” Elizabeth whispered to Hunt. “You told me you were going west to the mountains.”
“Hunter!” Jamie dodged around a footman and threw himself at Hunt. “Take me with you. I don’t like Charles Town.” Rachel escaped her grandfather’s grasp and grabbed Hunt’s other leg.
Gwendolen motioned to the maids. “Get those children out of here! At once!”
Hunt grabbed Rachel and swung her up on his shoulder. With his other hand, he pulled Jamie tight against his side. “They stay right where they are,” he told Gwendolen. Then he turned his fierce black eyes on Elizabeth. “I was planning on crossing the plains to Cheyenne country, but a man’s got a right to change his mind, doesn’t he?”
She nodded. He was angry with her, but he wouldn’t stay angry for long. His ire was as easy to see through as Jamie’s. Once they were wed and far away from here, it would be time to tell him that she’d stretched the truth a little. “A man has that right,” she agreed, “but a woman has a right to make certain that man does what will make him happiest.”
“Sir John,” Polly called. “The high sheriff is at the door. Shall I let him in?”
“Yes! Let him in,” Elizabeth’s father replied. “Let in the whole town. If my daughter’s going to make me a laughingstock, why shouldn’t everyone be in on the joke?”
“Shall we at least adjourn to the parlor?” Gwendolen asked. “A dining chamber is hardly the proper place for a wedding—”
“Say the words, preacher,” Hunt said.
Nervously, the little man thumbed through the pages of his Bible. “Let us begin with a reading from the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, chapter three, verse two. ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’ ”
Hunt reached out and yanked his rifle from the footman’s hand. “Faster, Your Reverence. Get on to the part about ‘Do you take this woman.’”
Sir John mumbled something about a ring, and Hunt reached up and pulled the silver circle from his own right ear and slipped it on Elizabeth’s finger.
The minister hurried through the ceremony, but Elizabeth paid little heed, hearing only snatches of what the man of God was saying. She stared into Hunt’s eyes as she imagined what it would be like to wake up every morning and see him smiling back at her.
“He asked you a question, Elizabeth,” Hunt said. “Do you or don’t you?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Is this the sex part?” Jamie asked loudly. “Polly says sex be the best part of marriage.”
“Do you or don’t you take me as your lawful, wedded husband?” Hunt’s husky voice was deep with emotion.
“And me, too,” Rachel chimed in. “Don’t forget me!”
“Yes, yes, I do,” Elizabeth said. “I take you all forever and ever and ever.”
Hunt grinned and squeezed her hand. “You’ll not mind my taking you from your home?” he murmured.
“Wherever you are is my home,” she answered.
He kissed her tenderly. “Elizabeth Campbell, you are the most beautiful sight I’ve ever laid eyes on,” he murmured.
She clung tightly to his hand, welcoming his strength, feeling waves
of golden happiness ripple through her. “Truly?” she whispered.
His devil black eyes narrowed. “I thought so the first time I saw you, and I’ve never had reason to change my opinion since.”
“I love you with all my heart,” she said. He grinned, and the twinkle in her eyes told her that she’d said what he’d been waiting to hear.
Epilogue
Wolf River, Wisconsin Wilderness
Summer 1769
Four years later, Elizabeth paused by the window and looked out at the throng of children and ponies gathered in the meadow. Jamie was leading a little gray, barely taller at the withers than the watchful dog pacing close beside them. Red-haired Gordon clung to the pony’s flowing mane and drummed his heels into the round, shaggy sides, but the patient animal never broke out of a walk.
Closer to the river, Rachel reined her pinto close to Star Girl’s bright bay. The two ponies nibbled grass as the girls waved to friends coming from the direction of the Shawnee village. Nearby, Elizabeth recognized Fox’s youngest son kicking a leather ball to another boy. The temptation was too much for Badger; barking excitedly, he abandoned Gordon’s riding lesson and ran to snatch the ball in his teeth and run with it. Rachel and Star Girl laughed and cheered the dog on as the two boys ran after him trying to recover the stolen ball. Three more youths joined the chase to the obvious delight of the girls.
“Elizabeth?” Hunt said. “Are we having a conversation or not?”
“Oh, yes.” She turned from the window and smiled at him. “I was watching the children. Gordon’s proud as he can be on that pony. I just hope he doesn’t take a tumble.”
Hunt drained his mug of cider and rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “Jamie’s leading him, isn’t he? I only said he could ride if Jamie was with him. Rachel’s a good rider, but she’s only seven. She’s not old enough to teach Gordon.”
“You know Jamie. He adores his little brother. He won’t trust Gordon to anyone else. But I think it’s Badger that’s giving the riding lessons.”
“Between the two of them, even Gordon ought to be safe.” Hunt sighed and set his cup on the table. “We were discussing something important, Elizabeth.”
“I told you what I had to say. You just don’t believe me.”
His eyes narrowed. “I didn’t say I didn’t believe you. You know how pleased I’d be if it were true, but after the way you lied to me over Gordon—”
She untied her apron and draped it over the back of a chair as she went to him. “I didn’t lie to you about Gordon, honey. I said I was pregnant, and I was.”
“You told your father and half of Carolina that you were four months gone with my child. You nearly got me hung.”
She caught his hand and brought it to her lips. Strange how a husband’s hand could be so familiar and still give her butterflies in her stomach every time she touched him. She smiled at him. “I wasn’t lying to you, and I’m not lying now,” she said softly. “Gordon is the proof of it, isn’t he?”
“If you were four months gone, he’d have been born just after the New Year, not in May. You tricked me, woman. You forced me into a shotgun wedding.”
He was right, of course. But the trick had been on her. She’d thought she was lying to him, but she had been pregnant—with Gordon, their auburn-topped bundle of mischief. “An error in calculation, nothing more.” She nibbled at his knuckles. “Are you sorry?”
“Sorry I wasn’t hanged? Hell, no.”
“Hunter Campbell!”
He grinned and stood up, pulling her into his arms. “How many times do I have to tell you, Elizabeth? I stayed away until I could figure out how to offer for you. I came to your father’s house that day to ask you to be my wife, not to say good-bye.”
“How was I to know that?”
“I sent you a note, telling you how stupid I’d been and asking you to wait for me.”
“I didn’t get any note, Hunt.”
“I gave it to a serving wench wearing slippers. Pansy, I believe her name was.”
“A serving girl in slippers? I suppose they were satin slippers.”
“They were, but they had the heels cut out.”
“Polly was her name. I never got a note.”
“I sent one.”
“Now who’s covering his tracks?” she teased.
He bent his head and kissed her tenderly on the lips. “No matter who made the bargain, it was the best one of my life. You’re trouble, Elizabeth Campbell, always were, always will be, but I wouldn’t trade you.”
“Or I you.” She stared into his eyes. “Are you sorry I kept you from your far mountains?”
He shook his head. “They aren’t going anywhere. And who knows, we may get there yet—when the children are grown and settled with families of their own.”
She looked around the spacious room and sighed contentedly. Hunt had built her a two-story log home with four rooms down and four up, the first year they’d come to the Lake Country. Since then, he’d moved the store to a separate building, built a barn and sheds, and added three more rooms to the house and planted an orchard. A French family had come to work for them at the trading post, and the older Dechenaux girls did most of the housework and helped with Elizabeth’s children.
But it wasn’t the solid house or the green forests and meadows that had brought her the most joy in her marriage. She had been welcomed by her old friends the Shawnee, and by the Indian people new to her, the Menominee, whose bountiful land they’d come to live on. All those things brought her happiness and peace of mind, but always it was Hunt who was the flame of her life. Hunt had proved to be a loving husband and a good father to Rachel, Jamie, and little Gordon. Each day, it seemed to her, they grew closer, and each time they made love, it seemed like a new and wondrous thing.
“Thank you,” she whispered to him.
“For what?”
“For loving me.”
“You’re an easy woman to love.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “But what is this about another baby?”
“I’m not going to tell you, now. You said I lied to you about our Gordon.”
“Did I say that?”
“You did,” she accused.
“And when was Gordon born?”
“May sixteenth, 1766.”
“The prosecution rests.” He kissed her on the mouth again. “Admit your fault, woman. You lied to trap me into marriage.”
Warm tingles ran the length of her spine. She caught his hand and placed it on her belly. “I’ve a daughter growing here, under my heart,” she murmured. “Your daughter.”
“A strange place for your heart,” he replied. “I think this bears closer investigation.” He cupped a hand under her breast. “I need to see if these are any bigger.”
“Hunter! Not in the kitchen! What if the children should come in for—”
“You’re right,” he said. “You’re always right, even if you can’t add worth a damn. Come along, wench. We’re for the marriage bed.”
“In the middle of the afternoon? Your sister and Talon are coming for dinner and I’ve a goose to—”
“Let the goose see to its own fate.” He kissed her under the ear and ran a hand suggestively over her bottom. “Talon of all men would understand.”
Elizabeth laughed as he picked her up in his arms and spun around. “Don’t,” she protested. “You’ll make me dizzy.”
“Is there really another baby, darling?” he asked.
“I’ve missed three moon times.”
“Like I said,” he teased, “this needs careful investigation.” He put one moccasined foot on the stairs. “I’d fill this house with our children, if it was up to me,” he whispered to her.
She laughed and lifted her head for his kiss. “I suppose you lied to me when you said you couldn’t father children,” she said.
“It’s what I believed,” he replied, “but I thank the Creator that I was wrong.” He took the stairs, two at a time.
“What shall we call her? It will b
e a girl this time. I know it will.”
“Wrestle you,” he dared her. “Two out of three falls. Winner picks the babe’s name.”
“And what would you choose? Something awful, I’m sure.”
He pushed open the bedroom door, paused and kissed her with such tenderness and passion that tears came to her eyes. “Cheyenne Elizabeth Campbell,” he whispered.
“I think that’s a fine choice,” she replied as he laid her down on the heaped quilts of their high poster bed. Hunt stripped his shirt off over his head, and she wiggled out of her loose Indian dress and held out her arms to him. “I like the name Cheyenne,” she murmured. “We don’t have to wrestle. I’ll yield the match.”
He grinned, the lazy smile that always made her heartbeat quicken and her breathing come hard. “I’d rather wrestle,” he said.
“Have I ever told you that I love you, my precious Sundancer,” she replied softly.
“Not enough, green eyes,” he answered. “Never enough. But then, we’ve got a lifetime for you to try.”
Please keep reading for an exciting sneak peek of
Judith E. French’s
THIS FIERCE LOVING
Coming in February 2014!
Chapter 1
The Maryland Frontier
Winter 1751
Indians! Rebecca had dreamed of them again last night, and the vivid images of that terrifying nightmare raised goose flesh on her arms. She shivered. She’d not had a peaceful night’s sleep since an Ottawa war party had massacred the Johnson family and barbecued Clarence Johnson in his own fireplace.
Rebecca Brandt draped a worn homespun shawl over her shoulders and pushed open the cabin door a crack. Where in God’s name was that boy? A gust of icy wind whipped through the room, scattering ashes on the hearth and rattling the panes of the single barred window. “Colin!” she shouted. “Colin! Hurry up! I need that water if you want breakfast.”
With a sigh of exasperation, she shut the heavy oak door and thrust her stocking feet into high leather moccasins. She was not normally this skittish, but her dream had left her uneasy. If Colin was dawdling along the stream bank instead of bringing up the bucket of water she’d sent him for, she’d take a switch to his backside.
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