CHAPTER 1
November 1863
Colorado County, Eastern Texas
Morning Fawn “Beth Logan” did not want to be here. She sucked in a breath and blew it out hard. Despite the chill in the air, sweat dampened her palms. All around her, families, mostly mothers and their children, stopped to greet each other as they headed into the double doors of the weathered church. Black, gray, and deep purple, the colors of mourning and half-mourning, reigned amongst their apparel. Too many deaths from this war, but these were not her people, and it was not her war.
A few elms and scattered oak trees dotted the pebbled yard. Above their heads, the bell clanged in its wooden tower. Empty of welcome for her, the sound scraped her nerves.
She looked up, placing a hand to her straw hat to keep it from falling off. Aunt Judith had wanted her to wear a proper bonnet, just as she’d wanted her to wear a hoop beneath her dress. Morning Fawn had silently placed the straw hat on her head, tied the ribbons under her chin, and walked out to thewaiting four-seat landau with her skirt flat against a single petticoat and chemise.
On the way to church, Cousin Thea had prattled on and on about her visit to Robson’s castle the day before. Who cared about a limestone monstrosity in the middle of the prairie where all the folks who considered themselves high society could go to put on airs? Morning Fawn had escaped the stuffy carriage as soon as they arrived at the church.
“Beth, hurry along.” Aunt Judith adjusted her fox stole across her shoulders as she turned toward the clapboard building. Her broad-rimmed bonnet with lace trim did little to hide her displeasure. “We’re going to be late.”
“Never mind her.” Cousin Thea smoothed her flounced taffeta skirt after its crunch through the narrow carriage door. “If Beth wants to stay out here with the servants and the drivers, let her.”
“She’ll do no such thing.” Aunt Judith extended her gloved hand. Morning Fawn grimaced and stepped to her aunt’s side, avoiding her clasp. The woman’s touch was as far from comfort as a prickly pear.
Nothing like Morning Fawn’spia, her adopted Comanche mother. Would she ever see her again? For nine years, Morning Fawn had lived with the Comanche only to be ripped from her home and family by two-bit ruffians her uncle had hired to kidnap her.Rescued. That’s what they called it. Destroying her life was more like it.
Thea tossed her head with a familiar scowl marring her otherwise pale, smooth complexion. Ringlets of auburn hair jiggled beneath her high-brim bonnet. “Cousin Beth has the manners of a fishmonger,” she muttered and waved to the middle-aged man at the hitching post. “Mr. Henry?”
Mr. Henry handed his reins to his slave and tipped his stovepipe hat, revealing graying temples and a receding hairline. “Good morning, Miss LeBeau, Mrs. Lebeau…Miss Logan.”
Morning Fawn turned away as Thea curled a hand around the portly man’s bulging arm. Let her cousin set her cap at a man twice her age. There was no light in their eyes when they looked at each other. Nothing like the glow between Morning Fawn’s sister, Eyes-Like-Sky, and Dancing Eagle. That was love, regardless of her sister’s marriage to a soldier after Dancing Eagle’s death. A love she, herself, had never known.
Thea gushed as Mr. Henry guided her past. “Thank goodness, there’s still a few men around these parts to look after us womenfolk.”
Any man worth his snuff was out fighting. Not that Morning Fawn agreed with these Texans and their Confederacy, but if there was fighting to be done, a man did it. He didn’t hide behind his servants and his acres of cotton. And he didn’t ruin someone’s life for three hundred dollars, like the blue-eyed, dark-haired weasel warrior who had helped kidnap her from the Comanche and thwarted her best escape attempt. She clenched her hands.
“Please try to behave yourself,” her aunt whispered at her side.
“Don’t I always?”
“Most certainly not. We’re going to Cedar Crest plantation after church. Mrs. Brown has invited us for tea and dinner.” Worry lines across her brow and at the corners of her mouth deepened. “Try not to slurp your tea, and if you’re not for sure which fork to use, follow my lead. A young lady is judged by her manners.”
Morning Fawn rolled her eyes. “In East Texas, women are judged by nothing that matters.” She jutted out her chin. “I can ride faster and hunt better than any woman in this county.”
“You’re not on the frontier anymore. Hunting won’t?—”
“I wish I was.”
“Excuse me, young lady.” Aunt Judith bit off her words. “You interrupted me. I was about to say that hunting won’t get you a husband. That you need?—”
“Last thing I need.” Beth gathered her bothersome skirt and marched ahead, sidestepping two little boys playing jacks in the middle of the pathway.
She wanted nothing to do with citified men. Besides, she’d had more than her share of lectures from her aunt on proper behavior. Better to sit in church and hear the preacher than to listen to another dose of her aunt’s disapproval.
Despite the wool stockings, her rock-hard leather shoes pinched her feet, rubbing her big toe raw. She was going to find a way to go hunting, kill a deer, and make her a pair of moccasins and leggings. She’d learned to pick the lock on her door. It was just a matter of getting access to a shotgun.
But it’d be simpler to persuade Mr. Nicholas Moyer, the administrator in charge of the cotton warehouse in Alleyton, to take her hunting. She’d seen the way he looked at her, and the way her uncle’s jaw had clenched when she’d flirted openly with the man at dinner the other night. There was more than one way to show her uncle he couldn’t control her.
Flirting was one thing. Finding a way to use Moyer’s resources for an escape was another. Seventeen months since her kidnapping, and she’d failed to make it back to her Nokoni Comanche home. Even if she found a way to return, it would never be the same. She wasn’t the same. What if she didn’t belong anymore?
Head down, as though buffeting a wind, she clomped up the wooden steps and past an elderly gentleman at the door. The whispers and stares of the congregants, muted now compared to the roar they had been months earlier, trailed behind her.
“‘Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…’” played from the piano as Morning Fawn walked down the aisle, past the pews of families of storekeepers, tradesmen, and overseers. Only a couple able-bodied men under fifty sat among them. She slowed near the front row of padded seats where the planter-class families sat and entered the LeBeau pew. As if one needed a special pew or four stuffy walls to worship the Creator. It was show, all show, except for the way the preacher’s eyes lit up when he spoke, and a few of the voices from the back which usually sang out with gusto.
