Merline Lovelace

by Untamed

  A few students had begun trickling back, released by their parents from the onerous tasks of the fall harvest and hunt. Most of them were of Indian blood, interspersed with a few towheaded boys and two freckle-faced girls sporting shockingly red hair. The children sat elbow to elbow on smooth-planed benches. Vera was teaching the youngest simple sums at the back of the room while the serious young schoolmaster labored with the elder students at the front. They all turned and stared with some surprise when Barbara entered.

  “Can I be of any assistance?” she asked of no one in particular.

  Vera blinked in astonishment. John Harris fairly goggled before stammering out a reply. “Yes. Yes, of course. That is, if you’re sure you wish to…”

  The choice was simple. She could either putter about in a drafty schoolhouse with a motley collection of urchins or join Louise in the counting house. The children were infinitely preferable to the stink of the half-cured buffalo hides and the constant clack of Mr. McRoberts’s wooden teeth.

  “What subject should you like to instruct?” young Mr. Harris asked politely.

  Barbara hadn’t thought that far. She wasn’t particularly qualified to instruct anything.

  “I could read to them from Shelley or Shakespeare, I suppose.”

  “We prefer to teach them to read to us,” Vera said gently.

  “Oh. Yes.” She gave the scrubbed faces a dubious glance and searched her repertoire of skills. “I have some knowledge of gemstones. I suppose you might term that a natural science. I might show your students the best cuts for emeralds and rubies.”

  Too late, Barbara remembered her jewel case now contained only sapphires. Hastily, she backtracked.

  “But then, your students would have no use for such knowledge, would they?”

  She saw at once she’d said the wrong thing. Vera’s chin lifted, and a cool expression came over her delicate features.

  “Our students are not such rustics as you might suppose, Lady Barbara, although a knowledge of gemstones is not required in our curriculum.”

  “How are you with charcoal?” Mr. Harris said a little desperately.

  Barbara’s glance flew to the potbellied stove in the center of the schoolhouse. Indignation stiffened her shoulders.

  “If you’re asking whether I’m qualified to carry coal,” she said on an icy note, “I must confess a lack of ability in that regard.”

  “No, no!” Horrified, the minister made haste to explain. “We’re in need of a drawing master. How are you with charcoal sticks and watercolors?”

  “I’m told I have a fair hand,” she replied, still somewhat stiff.

  “Excellent! We’re well supplied with drawing paper and colors. Perhaps… Perhaps you might take the middle class on a nature walk. Have them sketch the orchards or a view of the river.”

  “Yayyyy!”

  Theo’s whoop of joy rang through the schoolhouse. Spurred by the tantalizing hint of freedom, he and three other lively youngsters scrambled from their seats and danced around Barbara. She was seriously reconsidering her rash offer of assistance when Mr. Harris restored order.

  “Children!” he admonished sternly. “Fetch your drawing pencils and sketchbooks and form a single file.”

  A hasty scramble ensued. Once the art supplies were gathered, the four lined up as instructed. Mr. Harris introduced each.

  “Theo, you know. These are Samuel Fulton, Mary Claremont and Che-ko-tah Williams.”

  Barbara looked them over with some trepidation before starting for the door. The four followed in her wake like eager ducklings.

  “You must mind Lady Barbara,” Vera instructed the small formation as it passed. “And don’t sully her skirts too badly.”

  Considerably alarmed by that final admonition, Barbara led her charges outside.

  In the next few hours Barbara gained a profound respect for schoolmasters. She couldn’t imagine how in the world they managed to engage the attention of four rambunctious children, much less an entire classroom.

  She led them to a sunny spot on the hill overlooking the river. Once there, her students displayed a lamentable tendency to turn cartwheels, run about and assault each other.

  “Theo, do stop whacking Samuel with that branch!”

  “I’m not Samuel,” the recipient of the whacks replied cheerfully. “I am Che-ko-tah.”

  “Yes, well, I wish you would sit down. You, too, Theo.”

  The boys dropped cross-legged onto the grass beside their peers. Barbara then spent an exasperating twenty minutes attempting to illustrate perspective, a concept she vaguely understood but had never been called on to explain before. Five minutes into her lecture, her students were squirming and rustling the pages of their sketchbooks. Finally, she abandoned her professorial role.

  “Just draw the scene as you see it.”

  They attacked the task with abandon. More charcoal ended up on trousers and blouses than on paper. And, as Vera had predicted, on Barbara’s skirts. Oddly, the smudges didn’t annoy her as much as she would have imagined.

  The children’s exuberant spirits lifted her own. She was soon smiling at their lively chatter and sketching away with them. She hardly winced when Mary, a small, dark-eyed girl, tugged on her skirt with a grubby hand.

  “Yes, Mary? What is it?”

  Silently, the girl held out her drawing. The paper contained only a few lines, but the bold strokes captured the river’s curve with stunning accuracy.

  “Goodness. Wherever did you learn to draw like this?”

  “From my grandmother. She paints horses and buffalo and running deer on the tents and tepees in our village.”

  “Your grandmother should be the instructor here, not I,” Barbara observed dryly.

  She echoed that same refrain to John Harris when she showed him the girl’s drawing later that evening. They were in the parlor, awaiting the others before going in to dinner.

  “Look at this,” she said, smoothing out the sketch on a piecrust-edged table. “It’s really quite amazing.”

  “It certainly is.”

  He bent to examine the drawing more closely. Admiration shone in his eyes when he turned them on Barbara.

  “And you’re a remarkable instructress to have coached Mary to such artistry.”

  She responded to the flattery with a trill of flirtatious laughter that came as naturally to her as breathing.

  “La, sir! You give me more credit than I deserve. The girl has been coached by her grandmother.”

  “That may be so, but this is the first time she’s demonstrated her abilities. No, you must let me sing your praises as an instructress.”

  Barbara’s mouth curved in a smile that was as sensual as it was instinctive.

  The young minister’s glance dropped to her lips. A flush rose in his cheeks. Wrenching his gaze up to meet hers, he swallowed convulsively.

  Barbara hid a smile as his Adam’s apple bobbed above his linen cravat. How reassuring to know she hadn’t lost her touch after all these weeks of rusticating.

  If only the lieutenant were here instead of this gangly young minister. The game would take on a definite spark then. Her thoughts filled with Zach, she had to wrench her attention back to Harris.

  “You are, uh, really quite remarkable, Lady Barbara. Or did I say that already?”

  “You did. A woman never tires of hearing compliments from handsome gentlemen, however.”

  She’d play with him for just a while longer, she decided. Tilting her chin to a more provocative angle, she slanted him a smile from beneath lowered lashes. To her secret amusement, his Adam’s apple went wild once more.

  Gulping, he leaned toward her. Their shoulders brushed. Neither of them realized they’d acquired an audience until a strangled gasp sounded just inside the door to the parlor.

  “John!”

  Popping upright, the minister turned a fiery face to the young woman standing stiff with shock.

  “Vera! I didn’t hear you come downstairs.”


  He scrabbled for the drawing and held it out with all the desperation of a murderer offering evidence that might save him from the gallows.

  “Lady Barbara was just showing me Mary’s artwork. But look! It’s quite, er, remarkable.”

  Vera’s throat worked. As her swain had done just a few seconds before, she swallowed several times before pride came to her rescue.

  “Yes,” she said, lifting her chin. “It is.”

  Turning on her heel, she swept out of the parlor

  Dinner that evening was a distinctly chilly affair. Vera refused to look at Mr. Harris and answered every question put to her in a polite monotone. Louise, who’d evidently had the story from her daughter, favored her guest with disapproving looks. The young minister spooned his soup in silent misery.

  Barbara was unused to explaining her actions, but the barrier she’d thrown up between the young lovers nagged at her conscience. She caught Vera alone the next afternoon and attempted to mend matters.

  “You shouldn’t view what you saw last night in the wrong light,” she said with one of her most charming smiles. “Mr. Harris and I were merely indulging in a bit of light banter.”

  Vera’s eyes flashed with something that looked very much like contempt. “You must excuse me if I find such banter distasteful. Not that one should expect more of you, I suppose.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You told us the night you arrived at Morgan’s Falls a woman should employ every weapon in her arsenal to get a man to… How did you phrase it? To lift her handkerchief for her.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake!” Stung by the girl’s disdain, Barbara snapped back. “I don’t want him lifting my handkerchief. Or anything else, for that matter.”

  “Don’t you?” Abandoning her dignity, Vera poured out her hurt. “I don’t know how I could have thought so. Perhaps because you allowed my brother to get under your skirts so easily.”

  Barbara’s breath escaped on a hiss. Reminding herself that her flirtation had caused this girl pain, she grudgingly conceded the field.

  “I may have toyed with Mr. Harris, but he could never care very deeply for a featherhead who hasn’t read so much as a page of Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s treatise on… on…”

  “On the education of women,” Vera supplied through gritted teeth.

  “It’s you he respects. You he admires.”

  “Ha!”

  Out of patience with the chit, Barbara delivered some stern advice. “If you would stop scraping your hair back in that spinsterish bun and indulge in a bit of silly banter with the man once in a while, you’d have him on his knees.”

  “If he doesn’t love me for my mind, I don’t want him.”

  With that ridiculous pronouncement, she marched off.

  Barbara spent the next few days enduring the silent displeasure of Louise, the icy politeness of her elder daughter and the embarrassed glances of Mr. Harris. As if that weren’t enough, Theo became positively impish and resisted Barbara’s every attempt at instruction in the use of colored pencils. So it was with profound relief that she greeted the news that Zach’s ranger company was due to return in a few days.

  “Colonel Arbuckle’s note indicates they’ll be back in time for the Cotton Balers’ Ball,” Louise related to the family that evening.

  Urice instantly brightened. Although not yet fourteen, she was desperately eager to taste the delights of womanhood.

  “How wonderful! You can’t say I’m too young to attend the ball now that Zach will be there to partner me. When do we leave for Fort Gibson? Mama? Papa?”

  Louise’s glance lingered for a long moment on Barbara before shifting to her husband. “When do we leave?”

  Daniel Morgan smiled. “That depends on how long it will take my ladies to pack all their ribbons and bows.”

  They settled on a date two days hence. With an overnight stop at the Jolly farm, they would arrive at the fort the day of the ball.

  The following evening, with the relief of one freed from the worst sort of drudgery, Barbara directed Hattie to pack her bags.

  “No, no, I won’t take that one.”

  She stopped the maid before she could fold the much-worn lavender kerseymere into her valise. The hem was almost in tatters from the pesky vines and Barbara’s jaunts about the plantation with her rambunctious students.

  “Do you wish to have it?” she asked the maid. “You’re much shorter than I. You could turn up the hem and take in the waist.”

  She smiled as Hattie held the gown against her front and peacocked in front of the mirror. The woman’s bruises had finally faded and repeated brushings had given her brown hair a lustrous sheen. With her tiny waist and small-boned features, she was quite attractive.

  “You might cut the sleeves at the elbow,” Barbara suggested, feeling quite generous now that she was all but on her way to Bermuda. Her only regret was that she’d say goodbye to Zach at this ball or very soon thereafter. Those hours in his arms had been the one thrilling diversion in this otherwise endless sojourn.

  “Perhaps you should lower the neckline a trifle,” she said with another glance at the preening maid. “I understand every female at the post attends the ball. You might well collect a beau or two.”

  Hattie nodded, her gaze on her reflection. “You’re right. The neckline needs to be lowered, but then I’d need a ribbon or bit of jewelry to wear at the throat.”

  “You may look through my jewel case and borrow a pin or necklace, if you wish. Not the sapphires, though.”

  Swishing the skirt of the gown, the maid smiled at the image in the mirror.

  A small cavalcade set out from Morgan’s Falls the next morning. Daniel and three well-armed men rode guard. Louise, her children and her guest were also mounted, as was a glum Mr. Harris, who’d decided to give his students a brief holiday and accompany the Morgans. Hattie and two other servants occupied the wagon, along with an assortment of bandboxes and valises.

  After a night spent at John Jolly’s plantation, they arrived at Fort Gibson to find every building crammed to overflowing. As Barbara soon discovered, the Cotton Balers’ Ball was the highlight of the social season in Indian Country.

  Apparently the soldiers had issued invitations to every female on the frontier. Young ladies from as far away as Fort Smith in Arkansas Territory had stuffed their ball gowns into saddlebags and traveled the ninety miles by horseback with the hope of snaring a handsome young lieutenant just out of West Point. Maidens from the various tribes in the vicinity had also been invited and could be seen walking about the fort on the arms of their beaus. Two enterprising females of questionable character had set up an establishment outside the gates. The wheezy notes of a hurdy-gurdy issued from inside their tent and there were long lines of troopers waiting to get in.

  The parade field inside the palisade was a sea of pitched tents. The bachelors, Barbara was informed, had vacated their quarters to make room for guests, while the married officers and sergeants shuffled children and servants to do the same. Colonel Arbuckle had graciously invited the Morgan family to stay in his quarters, but the arrival of another commissioner and his party had taken up every spare room. The Morgans availed themselves instead of Sallie Nicks’s generous hospitality.

  “I shall have to fit you all into two rooms,” the widow apologized as she escorted them up the stairs. “A steamboat docked yesterday and discharged half the unmarried women of New Orleans, I swear. It left again this morning—carrying an acquaintance of yours,” she added, addressing Louise and Daniel. “He was most disappointed to have missed you, I can tell you. Unfortunately, the steamboat captain could not adjust his schedule to await your arrival.”

  “Who do you speak of?” Louise asked.

  “Mr. Irving.”

  “Washington Irving?”

  “The same.” The widow rattled on gaily, unaware that Barbara had almost tripped over her skirts. “He arrived unexpectedly with Commissioner Ellsworth and has spent the past month out on the prairie
with the rangers. Zach will give you a detailed report, I’m sure.”

  12

  Barbara spent what was left of the afternoon swinging wildly from nervousness to bravado. Zach sent a message to his parents that his duties kept him at the ranger camp and he’d see them at the ball. He didn’t include so much as a postscript for Barbara. Nor did he make any mention of the weeks he’d spent in the company of Washington Irving.

  By the time Barbara retired to the room she shared with Vera and Urice to dress for the ball, anticipation of her reunion with Zach had left her a jumble of nerves. Thank goodness neither of his sisters had as yet come upstairs. She had a few moments, at least, to collect her thoughts. Shedding her traveling gown, she wrapped her dressing robe around her and took the pins from her hair. The last one came out just as Hattie returned from the kitchens with oil to heat the curling tongs.

  “It’s all sixes and sevens downstairs,” she announced, pouring the oil carefully into the kidney-shaped lamp pan. Once the pan was full, she closed the lid, lit the wick, and set the curling iron on the U-shaped prongs. The flame danced merrily under the iron.

  “Do you want side curls or a topknot?”

  “A topknot,” Barbara replied distractedly.

  She tried to convince herself it was unlikely her name would have come up in a chance conversation between Zach and the American author during the month they’d spent out on the prairie. If it had…

  Well, she’d met Irving only that one time in Bohemia. To be sure, the occasion had included some unpleasantness. The furious baroness had flung rather rude accusations at both Barbara and Harry, accusing the sister of enticing a diamond bracelet out of her corpulent husband and the brother of manipulating the cards at the whist table. Both charges had been true, of course, but were vehemently denied.

  She’d hold to those denials, Barbara decided. Whatever Irving had told Zach, she would assume her haughtiest air and shrug off the charges as the ranting of a jealous woman, just as she had so many years ago in Bohemia. She couldn’t let Zach think Harry a cardsharp. Nor could she allow him to believe her brother guilty of the scheme that had landed him in prison. If Zach knew the truth, Barbara might never see so much as a penny of the money she needed to free Harry.