Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

Darien, Georgia

“ M iss Tabitha, you cannot go in there.” Cyrus sought to deter Tabitha from entering the weathered gray building with sky-blue trim by planting his considerable girth between her and the door.

“Well, good thing for me, neither can you!”

Cyrus clenched his fists. Of course, he would never dream of physically deterring her. A black man touching a white woman? He did not even presume to stare her in the eyes as Dulcie was now wont to do. But he stood his ground. “No ma’am. We should wait for Mr. McMullan to come out and head home.”

“Which will be what time, the middle of the night?” Tabitha placed her hand on her hip. Already, the long wait for the timberman outside his favorite watering hole would force her to procure lodgings for herself and Cyrus. The tang of salt and marsh drew her eye toward the rigging of schooners poking up above the river bluff, seagulls cawing as they circled overhead. She could not add the danger of lingering this near the dock after twilight fell.

“A lady cannot go into a taproom, an’ that be where the owner told me Mr. McMullan is meetin’ with his crew.”

“Then I will merely go into the hall and wait there while the owner fetches him for me.”

Cyrus’s bottom lip turned down on the sides, and he tilted his head. His expression put Tabitha in mind of that stubborn steer he’d herded to Fort Howe.

But she was more stubborn than a steer when it came to their survival. She had not ridden thirteen miles from River’s Bend to return emptyhanded. At one time, she had been able to bend any man to her will. The common laborers of Darien were a far cry from Lord Riley. Surely, if she mustered a show of confidence, enough of her charms remained to gain her an audience. She would follow that with the logic of a sound business proposition. She squared her shoulders and trod past Cyrus to the door.

Raucous voices accompanied by the scents of unwashed bodies and hard liquor hit her the moment she crossed the threshold. The next second, conversation ceased. Tabitha gazed past the slack-jawed proprietor standing in the walk-up bar to the taproom where a long tableful of roughly garbed men paused with pipes clenched between their teeth and tankards halfway to their lips, all staring at Tabitha in her blue riding habit and cocked hat. Suddenly, she felt like the brightly plumed hummingbirds that had whirred around the tubular red flowers of the buckeye tree outside the parlor window at River’s Bend. She ought to be wearing black in public. She ought not to be here at all.

Her courage almost failed.

“Madam,” said the owner, a gangly man with wispy silvery hair who appeared to be in his sixties, “you cannot be in here.”

And unescorted—the words he did not say but clearly thought. Tabitha cast a furtive glance toward the exit. Cyrus wavered in the open doorway, then stepped inside, seemingly deciding that supporting her was more important than his safety.

She could do this. Tabitha lifted her chin a notch. “I have urgent business with Mr. Jack McMullan. If you would be willing to fetch him, I will wait here in the hall.” She did, however, step out of view of the taproom.

“And just who might you be?” The man put down the glass he had been cleaning.

“Mrs. Henry Gage, wife of Lord Riley.”

Whether the owner had heard of the death of Tabitha’s husband or not, speaking his title did the trick. He dropped his polishing cloth and opened the gate in the bar, passing through the portal to the taproom.

“Well, now.” Tabitha forced a smile at Cyrus before she took a seat on a hard wooden bench against the wall. He remained standing. Her hopes plummeted when the proprietor returned alone.

He tucked his fingers into the bib of his stained apron. “I regret to say, Mr. McMullan is unavailable, madam.”

She stood with a swish of petticoats. “Nonsense. He will want to speak with me. Go back and tell him I am here on important business. I wish to hire him to log my land.”

Drawing a slow breath as if to quell his impatience, the man dipped his head and pivoted once again for the next room. Tabitha remained standing this time, tapping the toe of her buckled black leather shoe.

Please, God. Please.

Then he was back, frowning and firmer. “Mr. McMullan sends his apologies, but he is not acceptin’ new jobs.”

She could not be defeated this easily—before she even got a chance. “Did you tell him who I was?”

“I did. And he replied very clearly that he does not work for women, no matter who their husband was .”

Tabitha’s chest clenched at the words.

The man extended his arm toward the door. “Now, madam, I beg you take your leave before the men get the wrong impression about your presence here.”

Tabitha blinked at him, frozen in a paroxysm of dismay.

“Come, Miss Tabitha,” Cyrus murmured close to her side. He took a step toward the exit.

“Fine.” Heat flooded her face and neck, and she jerked her chin at the tavern keeper. “But you can tell him he will regret not meeting with me. I shall find someone else to log my land.” As the man’s brows rose and a skeptical smirk twisted his thin lips, Tabitha pivoted and stalked to the door.

Outside, her shoulders sagged. Who was she to make threats? A woman alone, with no money, no title, and no family. Well, not exactly no family…

Cyrus removed his hat and slapped it against his leg. “What are we to do now, Miss Tabitha?”

She inhaled a painful breath, then let it out in a huff. “Tomorrow, we go back and get Dulcie. And then we must journey to Savannah.”

Near the Nassau River, Florida

May 17, 1777

“ Y e’re awfully quiet this morning.” Dougal’s observation from atop his stallion next to Maximus drew Edmond’s attention from the lush green forest encroaching the path along Thomas Creek. “Not still thinkin’ of the widow, are ye?”

“Not just her.” Edmond had dismissed his friend’s suggestion that Edmond send a note to Tabitha before leaving Fort Howe. “No, if she didn’t reach out in the two weeks since I bid her farewell, she does not want my aid.”

A mind like Tabitha’s ’twould not be easily swayed. But somehow, that did not lift the sense of responsibility that insisted on settling over his shoulders whenever he thought of her. It had not helped that Muscogee Indians had harassed their expedition just the other side of the Altamaha, far too close to Tabitha’s cabin.

Dougal shifted and readjusted his hat, which had already left a sweaty ring around his bright hair, even before nine in the morning. Whatever sultry breezes the residents of Florida’s coast enjoyed must never penetrate these tangled bogs. “I found with me sweet Faith that she is most like to let me into her life when I share my mind with her. You know, talk to her?” Dougal shot Edmond a lopsided grin, almost apologetic. “Did ye tell the widow why you wished to help?”

“Of course.” Edmond scowled. Of all times to discuss such matters… “I told her my family ran afoul of Hugh Jackson in matters of business.”

“Ah, but that told her nothin’ of the real story, did it?” Dougal cocked an eyebrow.

“It told her all she needed to know.” He was regretting taking the private into his confidence, even though he now considered the well-meaning Scot a friend…and even though Dougal did not know all the details. This sort of prying was the very reason he preferred to keep personal matters to himself.

“Is that so?” When Edmond did not reply, Dougal rode on in silence, the creaking of leather, snort of horses, murmur of low conversation, and cries of exotic birds filling the lapse between them. “Ye should go see her when we return. If she knew how ye wished to spare her the hurt that befell your betrothed, ’twould soften her heart. And I wager, it doesna need much softening.”

“Why would you think that?” Edmond cut him a glance.

Dougal laughed. “A woman doesna fight a man with that much fire unless she has feelin’s for him.”

Edmond frowned. Surely, the private mistook Tabitha’s independent streak for attraction. Even if she was attracted to him, what did he bring to the table, besides his youth and strength, things which most every other man under forty could offer? He had no fortune to lift her out of her difficulties, and only her isolation had kept her from knowing his name was tarnished. His one chance at making something of himself came from this army. This war. He would do well to stay focused on that. “I am more concerned about the proximity of the enemy and the anger the men may have stirred with what they did to the Seminoles they killed.”

“Aye. A bad business, that.” Dougal scanned the forest with fresh vigilance.

Earlier in the month, and again a few days ago, Indians who had attacked their party had been not only killed but mutilated by the Georgians. And they called the Muscogees, the Creeks and Seminoles, the savages. If only Edmond had possessed sufficient rank to stop the desecrations the rangers committed.

But then, things had not gone according to plan ever since they set out. After crossing the rain-swollen Satilla and St. Mary’s rivers, they had reached the point where they were supposed to rendezvous with Lt. Col. Samuel Elbert’s flotilla at Sawpit Bluff near the mouth of the Nassau River on May twelfth, as scheduled, but the militia had not been there. Neither had the supplies Colonel John Baker’s horsemen had counted on. They had proceeded cautiously south, morale wilting and tempers shortening in the oppressive heat.

The morning of the fifteenth, they had awakened to about forty of their horses missing. They followed the tracks about four miles to find the mounts hobbled beside a swamp. Suspecting an ambush, Colonel Baker had left some men in plain sight and sent two other parties around to cut the hobbles. When the natives had popped up from the brush with their chilling war cries, the Georgians had held firm, driven them back, and recovered the horses, but the body of another Indian had been left mutilated. The Indians had set fire to the woods to conceal their retreat. Baker had ordered his men to head back to Georgia and moved them to the banks of Thomas Creek, a tributary of the Nassau, where they had camped the night prior.

“The colonel heard from a local man that the authorities knew we were coming.” Edmond tipped his head toward their superior officer, rounding a bend near the sandy creek bank just ahead. “That means the East Florida Rangers are probably not far away.”

“We can take them.” With a straightaway before them, Dougal relaxed in the saddle. “The sooner we do, the sooner we get out of this swamp.”

“I would rather do so with Colonel Elb?—”

Cries from the front of the column cut into Edmond’s sentence. Past the line of mounted men, a flurry of movement drew his eye. Then a flash, a volley of musket fire, and a cloud of smoke. Shouts. Screams. Horses neighing, rearing, their owners turning them back—toward Edmond and Dougal. Ambush!

“Dismount!” Colonel Baker waved toward the forest floor, urging the rangers to take a stand and fight on foot according to their training rather than flee. He set the example by swinging down, followed by one of his lieutenants and several rangers close to them.

Pulse racing, Edmond drew his dragoon pistol and kneed Maximus off the path, Dougal beside him as their compatriots fled past. Edmond remained astride in an attempt to rally his handful of men. “Stand and fight!”

But when he glanced back …three columns of British Regulars in red and white appeared, muskets leveled in their direction. Gunfire and smoke exploded from the front and the rear. Men fled into the forest on either side.

War cries whooped from the underbrush. They were surrounded! A pop to Edmond’s left, and a lieutenant sagged on his horse, a red spot blossoming on his shoulder. A tomahawk in the chest halted another man running into the woods. Chaos broke loose on the path, some rangers firing back, some fleeing, some dismounting, others taking whatever horse they could find. Shouts and conflicting orders mingled with the rattle of rifles and muskets.

A roached head popped up behind a fallen tree, the muzzle of the Indian’s gun aimed at Edmond. He fired his dragoon pistol. The man jerked and fell.

Laid low over his stallion’s neck, Dougal yelled in his direction. “We should dismount.”

“No!” Their horses were their only chance of escaping this disaster. Edmond urged Maximus into the heavy curtain of the forest and drew his other pistol. A movement behind a tree signaled a foe ahead, which he dispatched with another click of the trigger. Holstering that weapon, he slid his long rifle from its sheath on his saddle.

A painted Seminole took aim from behind a massive stump to Edmond’s right—at the lieutenant who had attempted to make a stand with Colonel Baker. Edmond fired a millisecond before the brave did. The native’s shot went wide, clipping the officer’s arm, and the Indian sagged over the stump.

“With me!” Edmond waved to Dougal and rode hard for the lieutenant who stood stunned, clasping his wound. With no chance to reload, Edmond fired his first prayer in over a year. Cover us, God .