Maddie hung back as Clay moved forward. Taking a cue from the former captive, he lowered himself to the floor just beyond one woolen edge. Only then did she look up. And in that fleeting, lantern-lit instant, Clay understood the Indian agent’s concern.
Flawless.
Mesmerizing azure eyes. Braids of woven white-gold. Bone structure a bewitching blend of lofty lines and pleasing angles, lips full and unsmiling. Even seated, he could tell she was tall and lithe. Yet bosomy and narrow-waisted. And dressed as a Lenape down to the thunderbird and tortoise design on her moccasins. On each high cheekbone was a dot of red paint gotten from the bloodroot plant. Her parted hairline bore a telltale red streak.
He swallowed past his astonishment and gave the customary Lenape greeting. “Hè, kulamàlsi hàch?”
She looked away from him, and he sensed her surprise though she did not show it. And then her attention returned to her handwork. Nary a word did she speak.
Reaching out, he took a cluster of wampum beads in hand. He’d always been partial to purple. Small baskets were scattered around her, each holding the decorative items the Indians were so fond of. Dyed quills. Glass beads. Small, metal tinkling cones. Bright ribbon. Trade silver. Feathers. Even a small pot of vermillion, the prized color of every tribe. How long had she been with the Lenape? The artistry of her handwork bespoke years.
He continued quietly in Lenape. “Tomorrow when the sun is two fingers high we will follow the Monongahela south to the back settlements. Just you, me, the woman you see behind me, and a man named Jude. You’ll ride a mare with your belongings. My intent is to return you to your white kin.”
Her slender hands stilled.
“The Indian agent here believes you are called Miss Braam. Your people settled along the Buckhannon River in western Virginia prior to the raid that took you away from them years ago. If you know different, you need to tell me, else we’ll begin a fruitless chase.”
Her lips parted. Would she speak? A voice seemed the very soul of a person. Much could be had by its pitch and tone, its peculiar resonance. Like a moccasin print, no two alike, a voice was one’s own unique possession. And if it was as fetching as all the rest of her . . .
He released the wampum he held, the beads making a faint tinkling sound. His last look at her before he pulled himself to his feet left him gut-wrenched.
A single tear slid down her pale cheek, trailing to her jawline, then falling to a dark splotch on the coarse weave of her blue duffel skirt.
All at once, Maddie was beside him, holding out a brightly dyed Philadelphia handkerchief. But would the woman take it? Lashes lowered, she reached out gracefully, even gratefully, and accepted the offering.
A good beginning.
Clay paused. Repeated the hour of their leave-taking, this time in English. Best get used to the white man’s talk if she was to live among them.
Miss Braam, if that was who she was, did not look his way again.
5
Two days the siege wore on and then the shooting sputtered to a slow stop on both sides. Sleepless, Tessa grew winded in running hot bullets in her apron to waiting guns, finally replacing a man at the wall whose elbow had been shattered by a musket ball. Sighting and firing, she ignored the thudding of a headache determined to crack her skull. A smoky haze lay about Fort Tygart, not all of it from the discharge of black powder. The Indians had set ablaze a few outlying buildings, namely the corncribs, which held the little sustenance left to them at winter’s end. Till the gardens came in, the settlers would live on game and more game till their whole being cried out for bread.
Parched, she took a long swallow from a gourd dipper and piggin that Ruth brought round.
“It’s finally dying down.” Ruth looked as beleaguered as Tessa felt. “Maybe by morning we’ll shed this place.”
If so, Fort Tygart had done its namesake proud. Not one man had fallen and only a few injured. Spirits stayed high, and a good deal of talk during the lull was about the coming of the war hero. Scraps of it returned to her now as she resumed her place at the loophole, her gaze on the still, smoky clearing.
Tall, Tygart is . . . From fine Philadelphia stock . . . English Quakers . . . Acquitted himself well in the Battle of the Wilderness by using Indian tactics, even war paint, during ambushes . . . Rescued valuable papers and a military chest containing thirty thousand pounds from the French . . . Known to shoot a man at 250 yards, the enemy fleeing like chickens before a fox . . . A devilish brave fella.
All thought of a pretty petticoat was pushed aside.
Then came the hour that wreaked the most havoc in Tessa’s spirit, the pall after the siege, that chancy hour when the newly hewn gates of the fort were cautiously opened. First a crack as they waited for a flicker of opposition, then flung treacherously wide to allow the unshaven, exhausted, bleary-eyed settlers out. The hair on the back of Tessa’s neck rose at such times, though her brothers surrounded her, some afoot and some on horseback.
She missed Jasper, the eldest, with a soul-clenching fierceness. Was he on his way back to them, laden with salt and needful things from parts east? Circling her and Ma were Ross, Lemuel, Zadock, and Cyrus, each reminding her of Pa in different ways. Jasper, possibly the most fearsome of the Swans, was sorely needed.
She tensed for a sudden commotion—outright ambush—during the league home, as wary fellow settlers sought their own outlying farms. Once at Swan Station there’d be animals to tend, the ferry to check, supper to fix. All within easy reach of a rifle. For now, the woods were downright boastful, bedecked in blossoming dogwood and redbud at every turn.
“Tessa,” Ma remarked when they broke the silence within view of their cabin, “Hester asked about you coming to the fort for a spell.”
“What for?” she asked, dismounting.
“I expect she has courting in mind. Way out here . . .” Ma left off.
The age-old concern weighed on Tessa’s spirit.
