He stilled, catching Jude’s bemused expression before the genteel voice turned him around. All thoughts of the journey ahead vanished.
“Miss Penrose.” Of all the women who’d graced his host’s parlor, she was, like the Monongahela, most memorable. Not that he’d tarried on that fact.
“Pardon the surprise, but you left the other night before I could bid you goodbye.” Her smile was coy beneath her wide-brimmed, beribboned hat. In her mitted hands she held a folded paper. When his gaze landed on it, she held it out to him.
Full of the wilderness as he was, he easily caught the fragrance of some cultivated scent he couldn’t name. Lavender?
“I’m hoping we can keep a correspondence. You are a man of letters, and I . . .” She paused, the intensity of her green gaze not lost on him. “I am not impartial to the post.”
“Obliged.” He stifled a rueful smile, the fragrant letter betwixt his callused, dirt-brown fingers. “But lest you wait too long for a reply, a reliable post is yet to be had where I’m headed.”
“How many months will you be away?”
His shoulders lifted in a slow shrug. He rarely talked details and dates. The wilderness wouldn’t let him. “As the good book says, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live, and do this, or that.’”
“Are you a Scripture-abiding man, Colonel Tygart?”
“I purpose to be.” The half-truth stung, but she gave him a smile nonetheless.
“I shall pray for you then, in the hope that we shall meet again.”
He gave a noncommittal nod, loosening the subtle cord she’d attempted to tie him with.
“Godspeed, Colonel Tygart.” She turned away with her maid and swept down the cobbled street, skirts trailing.
The shop merchant stood on the top step and guffawed, having surveyed the exchange with no small amusement. “Are the flowers of the frontier so much fairer than our city sirens, gentlemen?”
“Best ask Colonel Tygart, sir.” Jude’s grin widened, a flash of brilliant white in his dark face. “Seems like he attracts attention where’er he goes, even in buckskins.”
“Oh?” Kneeling, Clay resumed checking and tying and buckling. “I’ve been too preoccupied with staying alive to notice.”
“Truth.” Jude ran a hand down a packhorse’s withers. “Besides, there’s precious few frontier flowers beyond the mountains, and too many menfolk.”
“Glad I am of the comforts of the city then.” With another cackle, the merchant stepped aside as Jude’s wife stepped out the mercantile door, arms overflowing.
Jude gave a good-natured groan as Maddie approached, pleasant determination on her face. But Clay felt a warmth and appreciation for any feminine graces she brought to the grit of the trail. Maddie was, in her own way, as necessary as Jude. Owned by an English officer who’d fallen during Braddock’s defeat, they’d aligned themselves with Clay soon after. Maddie had been a laundress, Jude a hostler. When Clay had almost died from a case of fever, Maddie had nursed him back to health. In turn, he’d saved her and Jude from a deadly ambush. Together they’d returned to eastern Pennsylvania with the tattered army, having formed a lasting if unusual friendship.
“Looks like you raided the shop, all right. Anything left?” Jude took an accounting as she began tucking things into saddlebags. “Thread. Scissors. Hairbrush and dressing glasses. Tea leaves. Loaf sugar.” He lowered his voice discreetly. “Ribbon garters. Petticoat. Hooper’s Female Pills.” He opened a small sack. “Candied . . . ginger?”
Maddie smiled patiently. “Husband, don’t you want something else to chew on besides that foul tobacco?”
With a chuckle, Jude returned to his own packing.
“Saved this one just for you.” Clay gestured to a well-fed mount, a young mare that nickered softly as Maddie approached.
Maddie thanked him, her pleasure plain. Despite her frontier garb and manly felt hat, she was decidedly feminine. Childless, she and Jude preferred the wilds just as Clay did but for far different reasons. Clay didn’t have the worry of slave catchers on the prowl for freed blacks to seize and then sell into captivity. At least on the frontier, dodgy as it was, they owned their personal freedom.
By the forenoon, they’d left Philadelphia far behind. Farms and fences spread on both sides, but only occasionally did they have to maneuver around a fence line. ’Twas like a long march, a drill he knew by heart. The Forbes Road, cut into the lush Pennsylvania landscape by General Braddock, led west to Fort Pitt. But first countless waters to cross, mountain ranges that tested stamina and sanity, signs of life diminishing as the wilderness opened up, crowned by the magnificent Alleghenies.
His stallion, Bolt, settled into a steady rhythm once they were free of the city. Clay couldn’t deny the stirring in his own blood the closer they came to the borderlands, the farthest reaches. No matter the wood gnats or the spiking heat or the prospect of eating pemmican for endless days and nights, the wilderness was in his marrow, pure and simple. Bone deep.
Maddie yawned an hour past dusk, drawing Clay’s notice. “Look to make camp,” he said.
Men had little care for where they bedded down, at least in warm weather and free of danger. Maddie had a gift for choosing a winsome spot. They spent a good quarter hour unpacking what was needed for the night, the hiss of a kettle and sizzle of a frying pan accompanied by the spring chorus of tree frogs.
Feet to the fire as spring’s chill crept in, Clay cleaned his rifle, thoughts adrift till Jude said, “Been a while since we saw Fort Pitt. Wonder if it’s as wild and raw as ever, what with the Indian traders and the like.”
“No doubt,” Clay said.
