Ashes in the Wind

by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

  Alaina chuckled as she leaned back against his encircling arms and watched his gaze sketch the limits of her décolletage with an ogling leer. “Are you sure, sir, that you didn’t have this all planned from the beginning?”

  He lowered his head and tantalizingly caressed her lips with his tongue, while he pressed her hips closer to his, letting her feel the firm pressure of his manhood. “The idea did flit through my head whenever I thought of leaving you. Two weeks is a long time.”

  “An eternity,” she sighed and ardently answered his stirring kisses.

  The next morning the heavier sleigh was loaded and waiting when Alaina and Cole came down the front steps of the cliff house. The hour before dawn was moonless and crisp, and though no hint of a wind stirred the barren limbs of the trees, the air was piercing, numbing the fingers with its cold and tingling the face with its icy touch. Cole settled his boyishly dressed wife into the heap of furs that lined the seat and, tucking his case-bound shotgun in the rear, whistled for Soldier and thumped the place left for the beast on the canvas-and-rope-lashed supplies that had been loaded behind the seat. Lowering himself into the place beside Alaina, Cole nodded assurances to the servants’ admonitions to be careful and lifted the reins.

  The sleigh bells echoed in the still air as Cole turned the horses onto the lane. For Alaina, warm and cozy beneath a hooded fur coat that closely resembled Cole’s, the ride was much like passing through the blanketing wreaths of a dream. Everything about them was hushed and motionless, frozen in a frigid stance, waiting for the magic of spring to release them from the enchantment of winter. Alaina cuddled closer to Cole. At the moment she could think of no words that could express her contentment or her love for him.

  The first light of dawn tinged the eastern sky a soft. magenta hue as they passed through St. Cloud. They climbed the low bank from the river and headed out Government Road, which followed the Mississippi northward. Late in the afternoon a long, low log structure came into sight. A sloping roof along the back would provide shelter for the horses, and a few yards away a tiny cabin squatted in solitude. It was here they would spend the night, and by noon of the next day, they would reach their destination.

  Wrapped in a warm cocoon of furs, they made love by firelight and, with the dawn, rose to resume their journey. Soldier loped alongside the sleigh for a spell, but found the game so sparse that he soon took shelter in the rear with the baggage where he dozed.

  Franze Prochavski was chopping firewood beside his cabin when the baying hound and the sleigh came in sight of the small farm. Smiling and calling a greeting, the young man stopped his labors and ran to greet them as Cole halted the team before the house. In a moment Gretchen’s animated face appeared at the door. Laughing and waving, she bade Franze to quickly bring them in out of the cold.

  “She knew you would come,” Franze informed Cole as he helped Alaina from the cutter and with genuine sincerity, the young man added, “And I’m greatly relieved to see you.”

  Franze gustily pushed them through the open door of the cabin into the warm interior, while Gretchen rushed about putting a kettle of water on the fire for tea and laying out sweet breads and cold meats on the table. Cole knelt to help Alaina off with her boots, and when the fur coat was doffed, Gretchen’s quick, assessing gaze found the slight roundness of the girl’s belly. The woman nodded in satisfaction, and her face glowed as she came forward to affectionately embrace Alaina.

  “It’s good that you and Cole make a baby together. It will bind you close to each other.”

  For Alaina it was a time of renewing the acquaintance she had begun several months before, and Gretchen’s cheerful, bubbling personality had an uplifting effect that made the secluded cabin seem as busy as a society gathering.

  Cole toured his lands and was much satisfied with the lumber operation. It was what he had started with the hopeful thought that someday Alaina would bear him heirs for his holdings. While married to Roberta, he had felt no driving ambitions to enlarge his wealth. Now, all that was changed, and behind every business transaction was the idea that it was for Alaina and their offspring.

  In deference to Gretchen’s encumbered agility, the Prochavski’s bed occupied the far corner of the cabin’s lower room. In the attic beneath the sharply sloping roof, another bed had been prepared near the ever-warm chimney. It was a simple affair of boards with ropes stretched taut between, but the many thick down-filled ticks made it a heavenly trysting place for enraptured lovers, and there the visitors were wont to spend many a blissful hour.

  It was late in the evening on the fifth day after their arrival, while the four of them were seated about the table, that Franze attempted to teach the others a new card game, a tangled travesty of misbegotten rules called whist, which he swore had been brought by the latest arrivals from Germany. In the middle of his sixth try at explaining the details of the game, Gretchen suddenly gasped and laid down her cards. After the pain passed, she gave them all a reassuring smile and verified their concern with a simple statement.

  “I think it has begun.”

  The pains were irregular and uneven throughout the night, but it was not a time when rest came easily to anyone. An hour or so before dawn, the contractions stabilized, and as the sun began another day’s chapter, a new voice filled the cabin. It was a normal birth, a boy, strong and healthy with lungs that boded that he would never speak in a low voice and a greedy lust for his mother’s breast where he smacked loudly in contentment.

  Cole’s mere presence had given Gretchen the confidence she needed, and though Franze protested, she was up and about by the third day. When time came for the Latimers to leave, Alaina reluctantly laid the sleeping babe in his mother’s arms and gathered her belongings into the venerable wicker case.

  The next morning was brittle and gray and after partaking of a sumptuous breakfast farewells were said. Cole whistled Soldier into the back of the sleigh and headed the horses southward. They had barely made the river when a fine, white powder began to fall, and the world narrowed down upon them until the dark shapes of the pines along the banks became nearly indistinguishable. Cole and Alaina nestled deeper into the furs, but even there the cold wind reached in to nip at them.

  By midmorning the snow swirled fetlock deep, and the sleigh wallowed in the powdery drifts. In the treetops high above them, the wind howled and moaned like a tribe of banshees on a frenzied warpath. Twisting sheets of snow slashed down upon them, and the horses stumbled and slid on the uncertain ice.

  Shortly after noon Cole guided the team off the river and into a twisting gulley that cut through the north bank. “There used to be a trapper’s cabin here,” he shouted above the fury of the storm. “We’ll have to take shelter until this blows over.”

  It was still there, a low, log-walled, sod-roofed cabin that huddled against and seemed part of the embankment behind it. A protected corner, formed by the cabin and bank, had been roofed over and still bore poles that shaped a crude corral. Soldier left to survey the surroundings, while Cole and Alaina investigated the cabin. The rock fireplace was in some disrepair, but proved still usable, and as soon as a fire was flickering on the hearth, Cole ventured out to put away the horses. When he returned, he bore the large basket of food and the encased shotgun. The huge black dog was close at his heels and made a circuit of the interior, sniffing out every corner before he plunked down before the fire.

  Their situation, though not without hazard, proved to be not uncomfortable. A small heap of well-weathered hay would augment the bag of grain in the back of the sleigh. A fair stack of firewood was near at hand, and a rusty ax thoughtfully laid in the rafters would provide more if that dwindled. Their supply of food would last several days, and a trip out with the shotgun or pistol would extend it several more. The only thing left was to make themselves comfortable and try to find some way of filling the passing time.

  Armfuls of furs from the sleigh secured the first requirement, and the warm, laughing light in Alaina’s eyes promi
sed that the second was hardly a cause for worry. The blizzard shrieked over them, and the small, sturdy cabin became a world unto itself. Soldier was let out for an evening romp, and what ensued in his absence was a most thorough christening of the cabin in a completely marital sense.

  In the warm afterglow of the moment, they lay on their sides facing each other, their thighs entwined, their breaths mingling into one as they exchanged slow, languid kisses. Against his hard, flat belly, Cole could feel the fluttering movements of his child stirring within Alaina’s womb, and he marveled at the wonder of it. Though a doctor who had just recently experienced the miracle of birth, he counted this moment special. It was something created out of their love, and he prayed that all would go well so that in years to come, they would have much to show for their devotion.

  “You have bewitched me, Alaina Latimer,” he sighed against her lips.

  Alaina rubbed her slim nose against his and whispered as if there were ears to overhear. “How so, my love?”

  “From the first night we knew each other as man and woman, I was caught in your spell and thereafter did I yearn for you. Call it love if you will, for I cannot deny that I was enamored with a woman I could put neither name nor face to.”

  “But did you not say that love has to grow with the passage of time?” she inquired warmly. “And that you were suspicious of any emotion which flared overnight between two beings?”

  “Aye, I said all that,” he admitted. “But that was a time when I was very cautious of my love and most reluctant to admit its existence.”

  Alaina chuckled softly as she kissed his lips. “There was a time, my love, when you were an ogre.”

  He grinned at her, his eyes shining in the firelight. “I still am, but I manage to hide it better.” He brushed her hair back from her cheek as he whispered, “But I’ve given up many of my old ways in favor of something new and bright and shining. And with each day’s passing, my love for you has grown untold measures.”

  “You really loved me from the moment we first made love?” she asked timidly.

  “Aye, my sweet. You haunted my dreams. Though I could put no face to you, you were a white ghost in the back of my mind. It was that hope which led me to accept Roberta. The dream faded and came back as a nightmare when I found out who you were. There was cold steel in my leg which tortured me, but there was white hot steel in my mind every bit as painful.”

  “And what do you dream of now?”

  Cole laughed and held her close in his arms, pressing full length against her warm, naked body. “I have changed my ways, madam. I have given up the steel. It flays me no longer, in my mind, or in my leg. My dream comes to me when my eyes are wide open and when I close them, it is in search of rest, not of the vague wraith.”

  Her body trembled against him, and his lips found hers, and passion stirred anew.

  The snow stopped the next day, but the sun was an indistinct glow in the sky as the winds continued to shriek, sweeping the whiteness into unearthly sculptures across the landscape. They stayed in the cabin another day, and that night a bitter cold set in as the driving storm abated to a mere gale.

  Cole gathered Alaina into the curve of his body, and they combined their warmth against the persistent chill of the cabin that not even the blazing fire could banish. Soldier had found a soft place on an aged pelt by the fire and, after turning around several times, settled down once again. The small cabin grew still as the wind howled in the pines that sheltered it.

  Sometime later Cole’s eyes came open, and he was suddenly tense and alert. Soldier was prowling the room, pausing now and then to sniff at the door. The hackles made a ridge down the hound’s spine, while the horses snorted and stamped their feet nervously in the corral. Then the sound came again, an eerie moaning that rose above the wind. Soldier crouched with a snarl on his lips, and outside, one of the horses whinnied in fear.

  Alaina roused as Cole left her side, Without stirring, she watched quietly as he pulled on a pair of hide britches and donned a woolen shirt, leaving it open down the front. He lifted the .44 from the holster and checked the caps with a quick spin of the cylinder before raising his gaze to find her eyes open and resting on him.

  “Wolves,” he answered her silently questioning look and struck a sulfur match to a lantern’s wick. “They’re worrying the horses.”

  As Alaina hurriedly wrapped a fur about her, Cole stepped to the door. He threw it wide and squinted beyond the glow of the lantern. At first sign of the light, a half dozen or so gray shapes retreated from the area of the stable, but the bright reflections from their eyes revealed that they had gone no farther than the edge of the pines and were crouched there, still threatening. He took a step outside and, raising the pistol, fired shots into the night until he emptied the piece. The glowing eyes disappeared, but in a brief moment were back, fewer in number than there had been, yet ominously persistent.

  Soldier shot past as Cole jammed new charges into the gun. Recognizing a foe they could challenge, the wolves came to meet the dog, snarling viciously as they pressed the attack. Soldier took the first wolf with his shoulder and dipped his head, his huge jaws savagely crunching the available throat, then the still-thrashing wolf was hurled high in the air over the mastiff’s back. Soldier had his second adversary by the throat as Cole saw Alaina’s shadow pass behind him. A second later a heavy blast deafened him as she let fly with both barrels of the shotgun. One of the charges flipped one of the wolves in an oddly graceful head over heels tumble and plowed him into a drift where he lay still. Cole raised the pistol and shot as a gray form dodged behind Soldier in an attempt to hamstring him. Instead, the wolf was hurled back onto his haunches and, dripping blood from slack jaws, sank into the snow. Cole fired two quick shots at the last intruder he could see, just as Soldier shook the life from the one who dangled limply from his jaws. The dog gave the carcass a last twisting jerk before dropping it disdainfully. He checked each still form for life, then returned to the cabin with deliberate slowness.

  Cole glanced down at the gun in his hand. He had heard no report from his last shots. He had felt the pistol jump in his hand and had seen the flash and the beasts that had fallen. But even now, there was only a thick buzzing in his ears. He called to the mastiff and was again amazed that he did not hear his own voice, though the dog responded with a lolling tongue and trotted past his master to flop in satisfied self-confidence in front of the fire.

  Cole raised his gaze to Alaina as she rubbed her right shoulder. The still-smoking shotgun lay on the floor where it had fallen from her numbed grasp. Putting an arm about her shoulders, he held her trembling body close to his. Ruefully she shook her head as tears of relief tumbled down her cheeks, then gradually calming, she sniffed and urged him to see about Soldier.

  The dog bore a long gash on his chest and several nicks on his head and legs, but was otherwise unharmed and unperturbed. The fire was restoked, the guns reloaded, and the lantern’s light doused.

  Alaina sat upright in the midst of the furs, waiting for Cole with a glowing softness in the translucent gray of her eyes as she watched his every movement. Cole slipped the pistol into its sheath and knelt beside her. She winced as he examined her shoulder. The bruise was already darkening. She sat pliant beneath his ministering touch as he applied a soothing salve to the silken skin. Her head turned slowly, and her eyes met his with open invitation in them. She was suddenly in his arms, and he forgot the bells in his head as their lips met and mingled, tasting, testing—

  A time later Alaina lay sleeping in the crook of his arm as Cole observed the shifting shadows on the roughbeamed ceiling, knowing the special kind of peace that only a loving woman could give her husband—and he could once more hear the gentle sigh of the wind in the pines.

  Chapter 40

  IN March the winds brought a slow warming trend, and by its end, open stretches of water began to appear on the river. The lake ice grew gray, and the last week in the month brought a refreshing sprinkle of rain
. But alas, when darkness fell, it turned into more of the white powdery stuff and blanketed the landscape anew.

  April brought warm days and fluffy clouds and the river rose above the ice, widening with the open spots until they connected, and, then, only a thin fringe of ice along the shore remained.

  Patches of earth began to show, and the hills took on a dirty, grayish look. The April moon waxed and waned. Geese and swans came honking in the night, and ducks fluttered along the river, seeking the sloughs, potholes, and other nesting places.

  A flash of lightning and a peal of thunder in the dead of night brought Alaina upright in the bed. She rose and went to the windows to watch as a thunderstorm marched ponderously toward the cliff, then, with a crashing crescendo, sent driving sheets of rain against the leaded panes. Alaina flinched and stepped back from the bright flash of light.

  Cole’s arms came around her, and he bent to kiss her soft, white shoulder as his hand caressed the growing roundness of her belly. She turned in his arms and rose to find his lips with hers. He lifted her in his arms and bore her to the bed, and the spring thundershower rolled on across the cliff house, leaving in its wake a soft and tender peace, a warm gentle night wherein two lovers twined at rest in each other’s arms.

  May brought the promise of spring flowers, and as no gardener could be found, Peter was drafted to conduct a deep spading of the rose garden. Cole had just finished seeing a patient, one of many who had in the last months been admitted into the doctor’s study, and Alaina was in the parlor with Mindy when she saw Peter rush past the open doorway in search of Cole. She stepped out into the hall just in time to be nearly knocked askew by her husband and Peter who charged past her on the way out. Curious, she followed out onto the porch but was even more bewildered when she saw both men digging at a hole in the garden. She was about to descend the steps when she felt her skirts suddenly seized from behind. Surprised, Alaina turned to find Mindy desperately clutching two handfuls of her gown as if afraid to let her go.