A Many-Splendoured Thing

by Margaret Pemberton

  Dart thanked his maker that none of his men could see him cavorting around with an eighty-year-old woman in his arms when he should have been holding the most beautiful belle of St Louis.

  Polly suppressed an unkind smile at his discomfiture and returned to her wagon to check on Tom Marriot.

  He was sleeping peacefully and Lucy explained that she thought the fever had broken, but that she would prefer to stay by his side and not exchange places with Polly, even for a little while.

  When Polly returned to the camp fire Nephi’s fiddle was well into ‘The Minstrel Boy’and Lydia Lyman was dancing as well as she was able with the disability of her greatcoat. Her partner was Susannah Spencer and their cheeks were as flushed as those of young girls.

  Polly’s eyes were fixed firmly on the chestnuts roasting at her feet. She sensed the Major rise and begin to approach her. Her pulse began to race. She would not dance with him. She would not. He didn’t ask her. He simply drew her to her feet and despite the encumbrance of her cloak, his hand seemed to burn as he placed it on her waist, his eyes holding hers, an unreadable expression in their dark depths. For a long second he held her, not moving, and then, with practised steps, he whirled her away from the light of the fire and into the shadows beyond.

  ‘Do you always behave in such a cavalier manner, Major?’ she asked, holding herself as stiffly as possible.

  ‘Always,’ he said, and there was amusement in his voice as he looked down at her.

  She averted her head, but he did not take his disturbing gaze from her.

  ‘I find you insolent, Major Richards,’ she said, aware only too well of the appraisal in his near black eyes and the unfortunate effect it was having on her. Her cheeks were beginning to flush. She told herself it was from the heat of the fire and the exertion of the dance. Nephi showed no sign of stopping. ‘The Ash Grove’ merged, without pause, into ‘Yankee Doodle’. Brother Cowley was on his feet again and the look of constant strain that had been on his wife’s face since they had left Nauvoo, was replaced by one of carefree happiness.

  ‘I find you infuriating, amusing and intensely desirable,’ the Major said and Polly gasped. ‘What’s more …’ His hold around her had tightened, ‘… I think the feeling is reciprocated.’

  ‘Then you think wrong!’ She would have delivered a stinging blow to his cheek but could not, for he was holding her hand in a grip like steel.

  He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘When I kissed you last night I found it a great temptation to continue.’

  ‘Brother Spencer would take his whip to you if he knew how you had treated me or how you were speaking to me,’ Polly hissed.

  His black eyes gleamed. ‘So you will not come and sit by me tonight when the others have gone to bed?’

  Polly tried to kick him, but he moved adroitly and swung her round with panache.

  ‘Not if,’ she said, sparks flaring in her eyes, ‘not if you were the last man on earth!’

  ‘Where we are going, I probably will be,’ he said, and as the music ended and he returned her to her place by the fire, he was laughing.

  Lydia Lyman looked across at Polly’s furious face and raised her steel-grey eyebrows quizzically. When Nephi began again to play, she gracefully accepted the Major’s offer of a dance. Brother Cowley twirled a reluctant Polly round and round, and for the first time in her life Polly could not wait for a dance to end. Why, oh why, wasn’t Jared here? Why had the Merrills fallen sick and needed his help? If he had been here she would never had been subjected to the Major’s impudence or ridicule.

  When the dance ended she excused herself with dignity. Shortly afterwards she heard Sister Spencer calling in her children and the sound of Major Richards’deep, resonant voice as he escorted Sister Fielding and Sister Schulster back to their wagons.

  ‘Do you have a sweetheart waiting in St Louis?’ Sister Schulster was asking with her usual forthrightness.

  ‘One or two,’ the Major replied carelessly. Polly fumed. She had been right. One woman alone would not be enough for a man of such carnal appetites!

  There was the sound of more wood being thrown on the fire, of goodnights, of the low murmur of family prayers and then silence. Polly lay in her bed and seethed. Any other man would have apologised for his earlier behaviour—not exacerbated it by making fun of her.

  She smiled grimly to herself in the darkness. His day-long trek had done him little good. No one was returning. In the morning Major Richards would set out for St Louis alone and she hoped the waiting sweethearts had grown tired and bestowed their affections elsewhere.

  With the Saints in their wagons, Dart Richards’thoughts were moving along very much the same lines as Polly’s. Alone, he hunched around the camp fire. They would not turn back. Only an angel from heaven could persuade them to do so, and whatever else he was, he was certainly not that. Richardson Point was fifty-five miles from Nauvoo, and when he had left it some five days ago, several hundred Saints had been camped there. Once at Richardson Point the Spencers, Cowleys and their friends would be safe. There they could wait with others of their faith for the snow to melt and the rains to cease, and continue West in a stronger and safer convoy.

  At the speed they were now making it would take them three or four days to reach it. By that time, he thought ironically, his leave in St Louis would be curtailed by more than a week. He stared broodingly into the flames, and wondered if it mattered. If he had really wanted to, he could have been in St Louis now, enjoying the comforts of Bella Carling’s notorious house with its pretty girls and excellent bourbon. And when he returned he might very well have passed the arrow-filled bodies of those he had so recently eaten and drunk and danced with.

  If he decided against his weeks in St Louis and rode instead after Brigham Young, he could form the Mormon battalion even before his fellow officer, Captain James Allen, reached them. Captain Allen’s orders were to reach the thousand-strong company of Mormons sometime in June. If he continued with Nephi and Josiah he would beat him to it and Captain Allen would be furious, which would please Dart as he had an old score to settle with James Allen.

  The naive evening entertainment on the camp site had appealed to him. The Mormons, with their strange religion and stubborn obstinacy, accepted a man as he was. The antagonism between himself and Nephi had developed into firm friendship. Josiah Cowley was as pleasant a companion as he had ever met. The women suffered and did not complain. The children made him laugh. And Polly … He frowned. Polly Kirkham was a complication he could do without. When he was with her his firm intentions of ignoring her went with the wind. She was parentless, and he was. She did not fit in with the people she lived with. They knew it and she knew it. Nothing was ever said, but he could sense it. He was well attuned to such vibrations. He, too, had never fitted in. Not even in the army. He knew the way the men in the barracks spoke behind his back. The rumours that circulated about his birth and upbringing. The epithet ‘half-breed’that was never uttered to his face, but was spoken often in his absence. It had been a long time since any man had said it within earshot and none who remembered the occasion was likely to do so again. For the first time in years he thought of Caroline Manningham.

  He had been a Captain then, handsome and sought after by the daughters and sisters of fellow officers. But not when it came to marriage. When it came to marriage he was a half-breed: the result of a Pawnee raid on an isolated homestead. Whether it had been his mother or her husband who had wrapped him in blankets and left him, hours old, on the outskirts of a Pawnee encampment, Dart never knew. Nor did he care. The Pawnees had shown more charity than the whites. Recognising the result of one of their forays, they had taken him in and reared him for the first eight years of his life. His Richards surname came from a fur trapper who had bartered guns and whisky for him. The trapper had been a kind man. His sister even kinder. During the next few years he had led a completely different lifestyle. He no longer ran barefoot with his Indian friends, but learned to read and wri
te: at first with great objection and then with reluctant interest. As a young man he had entered the army and risen rapidly to the rank of Captain. He had fallen in love with Caroline Manningham who had made no secret of her feelings for him. Dutifully, he had asked her father for her hand in marriage. Her father had been outraged. So, to his complete stupefaction, had Caroline. He was a half-breed. How could she possibly marry him? From then on those who knew him were aware of a definite change in Captain Dart Richards’manner.

  He was a courageous soldier and was soon a Major, but he did not mix. He kept himself to himself. He was a man, feared not only by the enemy, but by his own men as well. Nephi Spencer would not have cared if he had been a full-blooded Sioux. Nor, from her remarks, would Lydia Lyman, and he believed her. Without friends and family, he had enjoyed the carefree friendliness of the Mormon camp fire more than he would admit. No friends were waiting for him in St Louis. Only painted, perfumed and mercenary women. He threw another branch on to the fire.

  Damn it to hell. He had nothing to lose. He would continue with the Mormons to Richardson Point and he would have his Mormon Battalion formed long before Captain James Allen put in his appearance.

  Polly stealthily lifted the corner of the canvas sides of the wagon. He was still sitting there, staring moodily into the flames. The silver flask was not in evidence. She wondered when he slept. Perhaps he was waiting for her. He had the arrogance and utter assurance to believe that she would join him. She folded her arms tightly across her chest, and tried to shut out the deep, caressing voice with its undertone of laughter. He had told her he found her infuriating, amusing and intensely desirable. Polly tossed and turned. He had not meant it. He had been making fun of her. Or, worse still, attempting to seduce her. Treating her as he would treat the compliant ladies of St Louis. She closed her eyes tightly. He could wait till the Second Coming, but she would not join him at the flames of the camp fire. She would not be as easily flattered as the rest. Only utter weariness eventually brought on sleep and Lucy, hearing her cry out something unintelligible, wondered fearfully if she had caught Tom’s chill.

  Chapter Five

  Nephi and Josiah were delighted at the Major’s change of plan. Their wive’s relief at having an experienced soldier at their side was unconcealed. Sister Fielding was indifferent. They would reach the Promised Land, Major or no Major.

  Sister Schulster poked her shawl-covered head out of the back of the Spencers’ wagon and called, ‘What about the ladies in St Louis, Major?’ and received a chastening jab in the ribs from Susannah Spencer.

  It was impossible to call a woman of eighty-four immodest, but sometimes Sister Spencer could think of no other way to describe her elderly companion.

  Dart grinned at the wrinkled face and its wicked twinkling eyes. ‘The ladies will have to learn patience,’ he called back good-humouredly.

  ‘Rogue!’ Sister Schulster retorted, and was pulled back into the interior of the wagon with undignified haste by Sister Spencer, before she could commit any more indiscretions.

  Polly pretended not to hear and kept her eyes firmly averted from the broad, straight back of the Major as he rode to the head of the small column and began to lead the way to Richardson Point.

  Why had he changed his mind? Why was he retracing his steps? Surely not out of human kindness. That hard, strong face was not the face of a man given to such self-sacrificing gestures. He turned in the saddle and looked directly at her. She tilted her chin and kept her eyes straight forward, flicking the reins with unnecessary vigour, uncomfortably aware that the two high spots of colour on her cheeks were occasioned by his impudence and not by the cold.

  Nephi’s wagon headed the column, followed by Sister Lyman’s and then the Cowley’s. Polly, as in the day previous, brought up the rear. The snow fell steadily, but the sky had lightened and Nephi announced confidently that by afternoon they would be free of the blinding flurries that flew in their faces and made discerning their way so difficult.

  At the Major’s insistence, they stopped at midday and built a fire.

  ‘Surely we should press on?’ Nephi asked worriedly as the flames took hold and Lucy and Susannah hurried forward with pans and provisions.

  ‘The women and children need warm food inside them if they are to survive the trek. An hour for food and rest is worth two on the trail.’

  Nephi nodded. The man was right. He was the kind of man who would always be right.

  ‘How is Brother Marriot?’ he asked Lucy, as the stone jars were refilled.

  ‘Better,’ Lucy said, the strain of the last few days showing on her face. ‘The fever has broken, but he’s still weak.’

  Polly poured hot barley-water into a mug and together with a plate of steaming ham and beans, turned to carry the food to the sick man. The snow was deep and with both hands occupied she could not lift her trailing skirts.

  He did not speak. He simply took the plate from her hand and proceeded to walk along by her side.

  Her pulse quickened. Throughout the morning she had been aware of his eyes returning to her and resting on her with disquieting frequency. She had not responded to his gaze. She dare not. She was unused to hiding her feelings and at the moment they were in tumult. He had treated her disrespectfully and she was justifiably indignant about it. He had laughed at her and her fury at his laughter had still not abated. He was not a gentleman and she had firmly decided to having nothing further to do with him. Yet she was continually aware of his presence. Whether he was at the head of the column, taking over the reins from Brother Cowley, reconnoitering; however near or far he was, however determinedly she did not look in his direction, she was painfully aware of where he was and what he was doing.

  There was no way to shut out the remembrance of his lips upon hers, and the feeling his kiss had evoked in her. She had wanted to circle his neck with her arms and press herself closer and closer to him and it was useless to try to believe otherwise. Now, as he strode at her side, she was finding it harder and harder to hold on to her feelings of anger and indignation.

  ‘I’ll drive the team for you this afternoon. You must be exhausted.’

  They were at the foot of the wagon steps. For the first time she allowed herself to look up into his face. She saw concern in his eyes and noted that his mouth was even more attractive when it was not set in a tight line of anger. His hand brushed hers as he handed her the plate. She felt herself tremble. Where was her anger? Her indignation? She remembered the ladies in St Louis and his careless reference to them. No doubt the Major believed she could be cuckolded just as easily. That an hour at the reins would arouse in her such gratitude that she would permit liberties to be taken with her person. Sparks glared in her eyes.

  ‘I am not exhausted, Major, and I require no help. Least of all from you.’

  The smile that had been curving his mouth vanished. The concern was replaced by studied indifference. He merely shrugged dismissively and returned to the fire. She found she was near to tears as she climbed into the wagon. He would not ask again, and even though it was of her own doing, she felt an overwhelming disappointment. It would have been pleasant to have sat beside him and allowed him to take the reins. To have talked as they had that first night, to have felt again the strange rapport that had existed so briefly between them.

  ‘St Louis,’ she said aloud to Tom Marriot’s mystification, as she handed him his plate and mug. Instead of feeling better at the utterance she felt worse. She wondered what the unknown ladies in St Louis looked like. No doubt they were powdered and painted; sure of themselves and experienced in love.

  She had no desire for powder and paint, but she envied the unseen city girls their confidence and knowledge of a world that she was so far ignorant of. Pride would not allow her to return to the warmth of the fire. She stayed with Tom Marriot and when Lucy arrived with the hot jars, helped wrap them in flannel and place them strategically around his weakened body.

  ‘The Lord knew of our need when he sent the
Major to us,’ Tom said, finishing his meal and sinking back thankfully into the warmth of his blankets.

  ‘Indeed He did,’ Lucy agreed fervently.

  Polly wondered what they would say if she told them of the Major’s true nature. Of the kiss he had forced upon her. Of the ladies in St Louis.

  Nephi’s wagon began to creak as it pulled away from their resting place and back on to the trail. Polly clambered back into the teamster’s seat and wondered why it was that none of them seemed offended by the Major’s occasional blasphemies. Was it because he was a soldier and such things were accepted from soldiers? Or was it because he had charmed all of them as he had so nearly charmed her?

  She had never known any other man take the Lord’s name in vain and not suffer Nephi Spencer’s wrath, and yet Nephi spent hours talking to Major Richards and had never once remonstrated with him. Only Jared had been impervious to the commanding attitude and strange charm of the Major. Jared … She must think of Jared. Perhaps they would meet up with him and the Merrills later that day, or early the next. Jared loved her and respected her. Jared would never seek diversions in a city as sinful as St Louis.

  Nephi had been right. The snow dwindled and soon only an occasional flake settled on Polly’s cape. The Saints began to sing hymns, and ahead of her the Major rode, straight-backed, talking to Lydia Lyman. After a few minutes he swung down from the saddle and vaulted up into the teamster’s seat beside Lydia, his horse continuing to keep pace alongside.

  Polly felt slightly sick. The Major could not possibly be contemplating seducing the grey-haired, tart-voiced Lydia, yet he was giving her a respite from the reins just the same. The thought that she had made a bad misjudgment entered Polly’s head and was immediately quashed. It was a too-painful one. Whatever the Major’s intentions towards Lydia Lyman, they were not the same where she was concerned and she had acted quite rightly and properly in refusing his offer of help. All the same, her arms ached and the cold pierced her cape and dress as if they were non-existent. If the Major had been beside her she could have warmed her mittened hands on one of the hot jars. She blinked away a threatening rush of tears. Let Lydia Lyman enjoy a rest. She did not care. Soon Jared would be back and they could be married any time she desired.