here, please?” Sergeant Rawlings called out again.
Really—men, Elizabeth thought to herself. She supposed it never occurred to any of them to let her die in peace and worry about the preserves later. That was men for you. Always thinking about their stomachs. Matthew had been like that, too. He had always expected her to have a meal ready even when he didn’t provide her with a scrap of meat or a handful of flour to use in the making of it.
But, oh, how she missed him and Rose. Matthew hadn’t been much of a provider, but he had treated her well enough. She had been learning to please him, too, and, if they’d been given a little more time together, she was sure she would have succeeded in making him happy with their marriage. He was the first family that was really her own. And he’d given her Rose. Her baby only had to be herself to melt everyone’s heart.
Elizabeth wrapped a blanket around her like a shawl and stepped out of the tent. The ground outside was slippery from frost and she felt the cold deeply as she walked toward the sergeant and the Indian. She had taken several steps when the man in the buckskin turned around and she saw him fully for the first time.
“Oh, dear, I’m sorry.” She stopped and stared. Why, he wasn’t an Indian at all. His eyes were blue and the skin around his eyes, the part that was wrinkled from squinting, was undeniably white. His nose wasn’t flat like some of the Indians she’d seen and his cheekbones were high. Even with that knowledge, though, she wasn’t quite sure about him. Up close, he seemed larger than she had expected. And more fierce than a white man should be. He looked like a warrior no matter what color he was.
“There’s no need to apologize,” Sergeant Rawlings said stiffly. “We’re sorry to trouble you.”
Elizabeth nodded and tried to think of something to say to cover the erratic beating of her heart. “It’s no bother. It just took me a while because—because I wasn’t prepared for company.”
She was still staring at the other man. She’d never had this kind of breathless reaction to the sight of anyone. Of course, it probably wasn’t really the sight of him that was causing her heart to continue racing. It was only that she had thought he was a savage capable of doing anything.
Even now that Elizabeth knew the man she was looking at was a white man, she was still uneasy around him. He was nothing at all like Matthew. Nothing like any man she’d ever seen before.
Oh, dear—whatever he was, he was looking straight at her and frowning.
Then he spoke. “There must be some mistake. She doesn’t look like a widow—just look at her.”
Elizabeth had expected his voice to be harsh, but it wasn’t. It sounded kind and, if she was hearing right, a little discouraged. Although why the man would be feeling that way was beyond her. If he was worried about the way anyone around here looked, he should be worrying about himself instead of her. The soldiers here dressed better than he did. And that wasn’t saying much.
She’d noticed right off that the dye in the men’s uniforms was poor and some patches of wool were a darker blue than others. The buttonholes were fraying, too. That’s what came of using indigo for dye; everyone knew it ate away at the cloth. She would have used dyer’s woad if she’d been charged with making the garments, although the leaves of the plant did take longer to prepare.
Even with all of that, though, none of the soldiers wore buckskin the way this man did. One army man she’d talked to said he’d gladly wear a buffalo coat in winter if he had one, but he’d rather wear the blanket from his bed than dress like an Indian.
Elizabeth looked at the man in buckskin. The furs the man wore over his shoulder formed a pack of some sort that he kept close to his chest.
Elizabeth let the blanket she wore as a shawl slip away from her. The air chilled her skin, but she didn’t want to feel she was hiding anything. In her childhood, she had learned that a soft answer would smooth away most unpleasantness and that she was the one always expected to give it.
“Please, don’t let my appearance concern you. I normally do better,” she said.
The wind blew a strand of brown hair across her cheek and Elizabeth knew what the men saw. The mosquito bites on her face had faded, but the freckles she’d gotten from neglecting to wear her sunbonnet on the dreadful journey here were still plain. By now, the icy wind would have drawn all of the other color from her face, as well, so the freckles would stand out like tiny pebbles scattered on a bank of fresh snow.
And she still wasn’t wearing a hat; the only one she owned was that worn-out yellow sunbonnet and she refused to wear it ever again. She might even burn it in the fire one night before she died. Everything about it reminded her of the journey here and she wanted no part of those memories.
Elizabeth lifted her head high. She’d grown weary of trying to please others. She’d been orphaned young and spent her childhood being passed from household to household whenever extra help was needed. She’d never been asked to sit at the family table in any of these places where she worked, but she’d earned a measure of respect with her cooking and with her clever ways of dyeing cloth.
She was wearing her best dress, even if there was dirt on her skirt after crawling to the opening in her tent. Her hands brushed at the folds of the gray silk garment that she’d been given by the last family she had worked for. It had been damaged when they had given it to her, of course, but it was still the only silk dress she was likely to ever own. And it was twilled silk. Elizabeth had put the dress on last week when she realized she could hardly expect Mr. Miller to change her clothes for her burial.
“I never said there was anything wrong with the way you look.” The man’s eyes softened. “I just expected someone older. And not so pretty.”
Elizabeth watched in horror as the man reached out and touched her chin as through she was a child to be consoled.
“I’m hardly pretty,” Elizabeth said, a little more sharply than she intended. She moved her face slightly to discourage him, although his touch on her chin had been gentle and, surprisingly, pleasant.
She’d heard enough warnings in her life to know handsome men couldn’t always be trusted, especially not when they were talking to females who had no protectors. And this man was certainly trying to turn her up sweet for some purpose of his own. Matthew once said she looked nice, but that wasn’t the same as saying she was pretty. No one ever called her pretty and Elizabeth was sensible enough to know not to expect it. It wasn’t true.
She wondered for a moment if the man was delusional and then she remembered the fever. She always did look better when her cheeks had some color in them. Maybe the fever was already on her and she just hadn’t noticed it. She put her hand to her forehead.
“Well, I can’t expect you to help me.” The buckskin man finally said before turning to the sergeant as though he hadn’t just been smiling at her. “There’s got to be someone else.”
Elizabeth was ready to leave when the sergeant spoke urgently. “There’s nobody else. You’ve got to ask her—for the baby’s sake.”
“What—” Elizabeth looked around. Her hand dropped away from her forehead. There was no fever heat unless, of course, she was the one who was delusional. “What baby?”
There were no babies at the fort. She had asked. Mr. Miller thought she wanted to save herself the pain of seeing a living baby, but that wasn’t it. Babies were so innocent. If there was a baby around she would have asked to look at it,
