The Heart's Stronghold

by Amanda Barratt

  For there, on the blood-soaked grass, lay the prone body of Jeremiah Whiting.

  Her husband.

  Arrows riddled his body, their feathered tufts and long straight shafts sticking up from the blood soaking his fine linen shirt. He’d been brutally scalped, his fine blond queue hacked in an act that could be termed nothing but savage. His brown eyes stared skyward. Empty. Glassy. Rolled back into his head with stark terror.

  Rosina bent double and retched into the grass, just inches from where her husband’s body lay. Bile burned her throat. She fought for breath.

  Almighty God, deliver me …

  She straightened, wiping a hand across her mouth. Sweat dribbled down her back, dampened her brow. Forgotten, on the grass a few feet away, lay the basket of yarrow she’d set off to gather, her rifle and powder horn beside it.

  The former now unimportant. The latter useless.

  She shivered, the sticky summer air no match for the chill driving into her bones. A chill that had nary a thing to with the weather and everything to do with the danger that, even now, might still lurk within the dense foliage.

  Whoever had slaughtered her husband might still seek to quench their thirst for bloodshed with her.

  She needed to flee.

  Her limbs trembled, her mind swam. She crossed the grass and snatched up the rifle, its wood and metal pressing into her fingers, then slung the powder horn over her shoulder.

  Could her weapon thwart the arrow of an Indian?

  She wouldn’t linger over what little remained of their cabin—the two-room structure that had been complete with real glass windows and puncheon floors, a lace coverlet to cloak their bed.

  Jeremiah had been able to purchase most anything with his money.

  Except exemption from death.

  Everything in the cabin was either burned beyond repair, smashed, or stolen. The rifle and her life were the only prizes she’d be lucky to escape with.

  She turned away from the smoldering remains. Her gaze fell once more on the body of her husband. Now wasn’t the time to relive the sixteen months of their marriage, nor regret the past. She steeled herself, bent, and laid a hand against his unsullied right shoulder, his flesh strange and cold beneath her fingers. His eyes seemed to follow her. Possessive, even still.

  She jerked away, straightened.

  “Rest in peace, Jeremiah Whiting.” Her fractured whisper emerged from dry lips.

  She didn’t look back again. Just let the forest swallow her, trusting the path would lead to safe harbor.

  If she survived the journey.

  An eerie stillness dogged her steps. She’d learned to be fleet and silent of foot, walking in such a way that her worn moccasins made nary a rustle.

  Her gaze slid downward to her middle, rounded beneath her indigo skirt.

  She’d carried the child nigh on six months, as far as she could reckon. Doubtless she sounded like a lumbering buffalo as she trod the trace.

  Onward she walked in the late afternoon heat, feet aching and throat crying out for water. Her slender arms ached from the weight of the rifle. Her sweaty bodice clung to her skin.

  Kentucke. A place of beauty, some might call it. Those of Boone’s ilk, who lusted for adventure and craved the satisfaction that came with carving out a life against all obstacles and odds.

  But her heart did not thrill to the task.

  To her, every tree sheltered some attacker, every sunrise bespoke another day of uncertainty. The high call of a bird might not be a bird at all, but a warrior’s prelude to attack.

  To her, the wilderness of Kentucke meant death.

  It was a five-hour walk from her cabin to Fort Boonesborough, if she kept a steady pace. Darkness would set in by then. Would hide the trace, the trees wide of girth and dark of foliage, the swirl of clouds in the sky that now owned the blue of turquoise trade beads.

  Darkness. A friend to those who sought to harm her. The Indians who slipped through the forest, owning the land and all its secrets in ways the settlers did not.

  A persistent kick beneath her rib cage assured her of the child’s safety. She paused, freed one hand from around the rifle, and placed it against the swell of her growing babe. Part of herself and encompassing the whole of her heart.

  Rosina lifted her chin.

  She must survive. For the life within, if not for herself.

  Guide my steps, almighty God.

  The hours dragged by, blurring together in a haze of putting one weary foot in front of the other, keeping to the trace, and praying her sense of direction wouldn’t fail her. Her breath came in jagged gasps. She wet her lips, tasting salt.

  She must needs make it to Boonesborough.

  Finally, finally, her head aching near to bursting, limbs scarce holding her, she glimpsed the fort.

  The fortification bearing the name of the great Daniel Boone was anything but grand. She could make out little of it in the twilight fast turning ebony, save for the stout picket walls in the stages of completion and the nearby cornfields—though few settlers felt brave enough to risk leaving the safety of fort gates to till the land that would bring them needful sustenance.

  Grand or not, the fort gates beckoned her as darkness claimed the sky. A footsore, bedraggled girl of nineteen, bearing nothing but a rifle, an unborn child, and a tale of tragedy.

  She hastened her steps, the sounds of baying dogs and lowing cattle welcome as any music, luring her toward the gates, toward the Kentons and Callaways and Boones—friends all. The stark aloneness haunting her since she’d first emerged into the clearing and witnessed the devastation of her husband’s life would ease. Dissipate like an unwelcome downpour in their presence, though all may not welcome her.

  Aye, Fort Boonesborough spelled safety, a thing both bitter and sweet. Sweet, because it meant security for her babe. Bitter, because it also meant her fight for survival would lapse, leaving her long hours to think.

  Right now she’d rather not dwell on the space Jeremiah Whiting had occupied in her life.

  Right now? Mayhap never.

  Twilight was a chancy time. One could never be sure just what brewed.

  Safety or danger?

  Captain Silas Longridge rolled his shoulders, easing out the kinks, and strode from the blockhouse, leaving men sitting among stubby candles, tepid mugs of coffee, and talk of rebellion. He didn’t want to listen. What good did words do? Words were leaves, flung into the air to flutter down weightless. Action—now action was lead, heavy and powerful.

  The familiar stock of his rifle resting against his shoulder, he made his way through the shadows, scanning the distance. He knew the fort, with its encirclement of cabins, picket walls in final stages of repair, scents of cooking smoke, and settlers busy at their evening tasks, as well as he knew the grooves of his own hands. Better, mayhap.

  He climbed the crude ladder to the upper level, pausing to speak with a couple of the men who stood guard, swatting mosquitoes and keeping an eye out for anything that might give cause for concern. They greeted him with smiles easing across their leathery faces.

  “See anything?” he asked Zeke Wainwright, who stood within viewing distance of the fort gate.

  “Nay, sir.” Zeke rubbed a hand marked with mosquito welts through his grizzled beard. “Pretty quiet this evening.”

  A rustle, faint enough to be a squirrel, even a field mouse. Silas’s gaze sharpened, closing in on the clearing swathed in purple twilight. His heart kicked against his rib cage, his muscles tensing.

  “Then you haven’t looked close enough,” he muttered.

  Someone approached the fort, a sure sign of danger or unrest. A tilting of the kilter of Boonesborough life. At least they came alone. He made out the cadence of one step, not two. Not an Indian party …

  The figure emerged from within fast-lengthening shadows.

  But a woman.

  Silas stilled.

  Nay. It couldn’t be. He sucked in a breath. Feminine faces were enough of a rarity to
make each one stand out as something distinct. But not like this.

  Hers was a face that had long dwelt in hushed remembrance within his heart, encompassing so large a space he could not decipher its beginnings or its end.

  Rosina.

  She came toward the fort, trudging under the weight of a rifle … and the burden of an unborn babe.

  But no husband walked at her side.

  Need drove him toward her. Need to ascertain if this was a fiction of his overworked mind, or reality. To relieve her of the load she struggled under, chest heaving with shallow breaths, steps stumbling.

  And to discover the whereabouts of Jeremiah Whiting.

  “Remain at your post.” He flung the order over his shoulder at Zeke as he climbed down the ladder and strode toward the front gates. The other guards had noted the new arrival, and their low ripple of voices turned into a tide. The stout log gates moaned open.

  His strides ate up the distance between them as he brushed past the men on guard duty, past a cadre of fort dogs near the entrance, and past a trio of women carrying water pails.

  He knew the moment their gazes met when her eyes—blue as the indigo dress she wore—widened. They’d closed the front gates after she entered, and he met her just inside them.

  “Mistress Whiting.” The words emerged steady, a stark contrast to the melee of emotions churning through him.

  “Captain Longridge.” At this proximity, no detail of her person escaped his notice. Haggard shadows lined her delicate cheekbones, a streak of something dark spotting the right side of her oval face. Her thick mahogany hair straggled down her back, wrinkles and dirt marring her gown.

  And her eyes … her eyes told a tale all their own. Twin pools of mingled relief and misery.

  She ducked her chin, hiding her gaze from his view. Despite her rounded middle, her slight shoulders gave her the appearance of something fragile on the point of breaking.

  So he did the only thing he could. Placed a hand on her shoulder and led her away, heedless of whoever stood by and watched. Which was doubtless half the fort. Mutely, she let him, keeping her eyes on her dusty moccasins as they crossed the parade ground.

  No doubt madness besieged him when he guided her toward his cabin. ’Twas the only place he could think to take her where they could talk privately. Unseemly or nay, he needed to hear what had happened, because he was one of the commanding officers at the fort and because …

  Try as he might, struggle though he did, he’d been unable to disentangle his heart from hers since that day when her summer-sweet smile had first lured him to join the dancing at a fort frolic. Not even when, in spite of that day, more than a year ago, he’d entered the Boone cabin and found her standing by the fireplace speaking vows to another man. Forcing him to consign their hoped-for future to a grave in his heart.

  They entered the cabin, and he propped his rifle near the door. It was a goodly cabin, as far as fort homes went. He’d constructed it himself and striven to make it a home. Suddenly self-conscious, he wished he could hide the worn sheets flung haphazardly over the straw tick mattress, the socks drying near the fire, the crumbs on the puncheon floor.

  But as Rosina sank, nay, collapsed, into a chair without invitation, housekeeping worries fled his mind. She leaned her rifle against the table, set her powder horn on it, and gripped both hands together in her lap.

  He pulled the other chair close to her side, the legs scraping against the floor, and sat.

  She looked up, her gaze piercing his.

  “My husband is dead.”

  He swallowed, absorbing the news. Jeremiah Whiting dead? Jeremiah, with his acreage and kingly cabin, bounty aplenty, and pride to match.

  “How? By whose hand?”

  “Indians. I don’t know … didn’t see them. I left the cabin to gather some yarrow to dry. I must have wandered farther than I realized. I started home an hour later. ’Twasn’t long before I noticed the smoke, so I ran. When I entered the clearing, I found him.” She shuddered, eyes falling closed, lashes dark against her ashen skin.

  He almost reached out to touch her, to comfort her with a hand on her shoulder. But she opened her eyes, sucking in a tremulous breath, and continued. “He’d been scalped. Shot with arrows also, three or four. The cabin burned. Ashes are all that’s left.”

  Silas had seen more than one mutilated victim of an Indian attack. ’Twas a grisly sight for a frontiersman, let alone for a solitary young woman to come upon. Especially when the target was her husband.

  He didn’t want to contemplate the outcome had she not decided to gather yarrow. A curl brushed her delicate cheek. A shiver spidered down his spine.

  “What then?” he asked. Talking was better than letting the memories boil inside her chest. One of the many lessons experience had taught him.

  “There was precious little left, so I took the rifle and fled here. I knew I couldn’t stop till I reached the fort.”

  “You did right.” Had she paused, had her sense of direction failed her, Heaven knew what or whom she’d have come upon on the trail. ’Twas a miracle she’d arrived at all.

  He stood, moving to the makeshift cupboard against one wall, pulling out a tin plate and mug. He bent in front of the fire’s dying remains and scooped out the last piece of corn bread—the leavings from his evening meal. Grateful there was coffee left in the pot, albeit lukewarm, he filled the mug and placed both before her.

  She turned her head, giving him a look of thanks over her shoulder, then set upon the meal, gulping down the liquid with little decorum. As she picked up the corn bread, he took the empty cup from beside her elbow and moved to the fireplace to make a fresh pot.

  He stoked the fire, coaxing a flame. By rote, his hands moved as he fixed the coffee, leaving his mind to turn.

  Unrest hung over the fort, a smolder tindered by a blaze of Shawnee anger after Boone escaped his Indian captors. They’d taken him in February, along with several other men who’d gone out one frigid day to the springs at the Lower Blue Licks to gather salt—a dear commodity and one they’d been precious low on at the time. Daniel’s face filled Silas’s mind, the sinewy frontiersman clad in a hunting shirt and fur-lined moccasins, his breath clouding in the bitter air as he instructed Silas.

  “Remain at the fort. Someone needs to.”

  Silas had wanted to join Daniel and the others on the salt expedition, but he’d stayed behind, following Boone’s orders. When news reached the fort of the capture of Boone and the other men, Silas had been pressed with heavy guilt … and ruled by the need to provide for the starving settlers, many who feared to leave the fort walls lest they be ambushed. Months passed. No one knew whether Boone and the others were even alive. Mistress Boone, accustomed to fending for herself during her husband’s many absences and supposing him dead, packed up and returned to her kin in North Carolina. Only their daughter Jemima remained behind, steadfastly waiting for her father to come home. In late June, Boone managed to escape from the Shawnee and return to the fort. He’d greeted Silas warmly, thanked him for his service, and spoken of his time with the Shawnees. Some of the settlers, Richard Callaway especially, had been chary of Boone upon his return.

  But Silas trusted him. Would trust him with his life, if need be. He reckoned Boone felt the same.

  With the relations between settlers and Indians growing in turbulence, his own life might be at the top of the list of things Silas would be required to forfeit in defense of the fort.

  He turned, the steaming mug of coffee warming his hand. He expected to find Rosina watching him with her large, expressive eyes.

  Instead, she slept, head pillowed on her elbows on the table, eyes closed in exhausted slumber.

  He placed the mug on the opposite end of the table and moved behind her chair.

  Gently, he placed a hand on her bowed shoulder, letting his fingers settle on the soft fabric of her dress, the warmth of her skin beneath.

  Looking up to the rafters, Silas breathed a prayer heavenwar
d. For strength. For wisdom.

  And for the woman he’d once loved with every fiber of his soul, every beat of his heart.

  Chapter 2

  Rosina turned on the mattress, supporting her growing babe with one hand. She pressed her face into the pillow, scooting over to the middle of the bed. Funny. Usually ’twas all she could do to cling to one side, Jeremiah’s bulky frame taking up most of the space.

  What was different about today?

  The quiet? She’d listened to Jeremiah’s ponderous snoring long enough to scarce heed it.

  Until silence took its place.

  Her eyes flew open. Remnants of yesterday flooded her. The morning, busy at her tasks, trying to keep out of Jeremiah’s way lest he fling harshness upon her in either word or deed. Gathering yarrow in the woods, both fearful and fearless at once.

  The return to the cabin. Jeremiah’s broken and bloodied body.

  With a start, she sat up, her heart a drumbeat in her ears. Where was she? She glanced down. In place of her dress, she wore a loose cotton shift. Sunlight filtered through the cracks in the cabin, rivulets of light streaming from the sole window. Not half as large or fine as the one now reduced to ashes. Nor as tidy.

  Then she remembered. Fort Boonesborough.

  And Silas Longridge.

  How well she recalled both the latter and the former. Ah, what sweet memories. Arriving at the fort with her father, being welcomed into the circle of Boone and Callaway girls, families large and happy and brimming with life. The fort frolic when she’d overcome her shyness to bestow a smile upon the quiet, steady frontiersman so often at Captain Boone’s side.

  One dance in the firelight. ’Twas all it had taken for her heart to cease to be her own. For three months they’d spent some part of nearly every day together. He’d made her laugh with his stories of life on the trace with Boone. Thrilled her with his dreams of what the wilderness of Kentucke might someday be. When he’d dared to hold her hand, it had been a reverent gesture, as if he cherished every part of her and could scarce believe she’d bestow her love upon him.