with the Navajos?” Miranda asked, dimly aware that she sounded like a trained parrot.
“Why, bless you, this is the day they come in to get their rations. Thousands of them! The line goes all the way from the issue house to the road and beyond. With so many Indians about the place, a strong military presence is needed.”
Miranda glanced down at the bowl of gluey oatmeal laced with canned milk that had appeared on the table before her. “And my father couldn’t be spared for a single morning?” she asked, stirring the grayish mess with her spoon.
“The commanding officer of the fort is required to be in attendance.” Violet dabbed at her little rouged mouth with her napkin. “With the care of the Navajos passing from the army to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, this fort has come under a good deal of public scrutiny, my dear. If there’s trouble and some impulsive young soldier fires at unarmed Indians, it could make the army look very bad. Do you understand?”
“I do.” Miranda remembered the rifle butt crunching into Ahkeah’s skull. Evidently it was all right to hit Navajos but not to shoot them.
“It’s the major’s responsibility to make sure nothing happens that would open the army to criticism,” Violet said, brushing away an imaginary crumb from the lace edging on her bodice. “That’s why your father couldn’t delegate the job to anyone else, not even to be with you.”
“I see.” Miranda forced herself to eat, knowing she would be hungry later. Questions about the Navajos—and the disturbing man she had held in her arms last night—milled in her mind, clamoring for answers, but she cautioned herself to hold her tongue. The last thing she wanted was to trigger unpleasant gossip by showing too much interest in a man she had no business knowing.
“Will I be allowed to go to the issue house and watch?” she asked casually.
“I suppose so.” Violet’s patrician nose crinkled with distaste. “But don’t expect to like what you see. The Navajos are a filthy, treacherous lot, far worse than the slaves on my daddy’s plantation ever were. Their young girls hang around the fort and offer themselves to the soldiers for a few crusts of bread! Some of our boys have caught the most dreadful diseases from them! A gentlewoman isn’t supposed to know about such things, but one can’t help hearing talk!”
She frowned, then brightened as her eyes fell on Miranda’s empty teacup. “Would you like me to read your fortune, dear? My old mammy back in Louisiana taught me how, and I’m really quite good at it! I read for all the officers’ wives before they left.”
“Then, by all means, go ahead.” Miranda set little store by fortune-telling, but she had no wish to be rude. She watched skeptically as the small woman took the cup and stared intently into it, studying the pattern of the tea leaves in the bottom.
“Please don’t tell me I’m going to fall in love with a tall, dark stranger,” Miranda said, striving to keep things in the spirit of fun. “I’m getting married in June, and my fiancé is neither dark nor particularly—”
“Hush!” Violet whispered urgently. “Something’s coming to me!” She lifted the cup closer to her face, knitting her brows and pursing her small mouth. “It’s not terribly clear,” she said, “but I see a great change coming into your life.”
“Of course,” Miranda said with a little smile. “As I told you, I’m getting married, and after that Phillip and I will be living in London.”
“No.” Violet’s fragile voice rasped with conviction. “The change I see is one you’re not expecting and can’t prepare for. This change will shake your very soul. It will challenge all the things you’ve ever believed in!”
Miranda forced a good-natured laugh. This was all nonsense, she reminded herself. No one could look into a scattering of soggy tea leaves and read the future.
“And how will I deal with such a change?” she asked, humoring the woman. “Do the leaves tell you that?”
Violet’s eyes seemed to darken. Then she sighed and shook her head. “No. But be careful, my dear. I see danger in the leaves…and death—the death of someone close to you, perhaps, or even your own!”
“Oh, come now, my future can’t be as bleak as all that!” Miranda crumpled her napkin, tossed it down beside the half-finished bowl of porridge, and rose to her feet. “Look through the window. The sun’s come out. It’s going to be a fine morning, and I want to see the Navajos!”
“Very well, my dear.” Violet set the cup on the table, stood up, then bent to straighten her ruffled skirts and snatch up the parasol she’d left propped against a chair. “But don’t forget what I told you. When my old mammy read tea leaves, she was never wrong. She even foretold that one day I’d elope with a Yankee and be disowned by the whole family, right down to the Georgia cousins! I didn’t believe her at the time, but two years later her prediction came true!”
Miranda’s gaze lingered on the sad little figure as they crossed the mess hall and walked toward the door. Yes, the puzzle of Violet Marsden was slowly coming together. Had her marriage been worth the pain of losing her family? Glancing at the woman’s careworn face, Miranda could only wonder.
Sunlight dazzled her eyes, warming her face as they stepped onto the porch. Violet opened her parasol, frowning as she noticed that Miranda had not brought a parasol for herself.
“And no bonnet, either!” she clucked disapprovingly. “You really must take care of your skin in this desert climate, my dear girl, or the sun and wind will shrivel you like a raisin!”
But Miranda scarcely heard the well-meant advice. Her gaze was already leaping across the parade ground to the long, dark line that was forming up outside the doors of the issue house. Deny it though she might, she knew she was searching—first casually, then urgently—for a single tall, proud figure. She needed to know that he had survived the terrible night and that her interference had done him no permanent harm.
With growing desperation she scanned the line. Where was he?
Where was he?
Chapter Four
Miranda was halfway across the parade ground, holding back her stride to keep pace with Violet’s mincing steps, when she caught sight of him.
He was standing near the front of the line, his height towering a full head above the Navajos around him. A strip of crimson cloth bound his temple, more like a badge of defiance than the dressing for a wound.
Had he seen her? Miranda’s pulse skipped erratically at the thought of that sharp obsidian gaze following her across the open ground. But what did it matter? she berated herself. Last night’s encounter had been humiliating for them both. He would not welcome the sight of her—no more than she should welcome the sight of him.
“Violet, where are the other officers’ wives?” she asked in an effort to make polite conversation. “I thought we might be meeting some of them this morning.”
“Why, bless you, they’re gone. What few there were could not abide this place. They transferred out with their husbands when the garrison was cut back here. Now there’s only me. And, frankly, my dear, I’m counting the days until those filthy Navajos are shipped off to the Oklahoma Territory so Mr. Marsden and I can leave, as well.”
“And
