New Frontier of Love (American Wilderness Series Romance Book 2) Page 20

  “As we retreated, we started hearing explosions breaking out everywhere. It took us months to stock up those provisions and in one afternoon they destroyed all of it. The grenadiers threw one hundred barrels of flour into a millpond and took five hundred pounds of lead and powder. Gun carriages were set afire. But that wasn’t all they destroyed.”

  A sudden thin chill filled his heart. Sam hesitated, then despite his best efforts not to continue, more came pouring from him, like a swollen river surging out of its banks, rushing where it was forced to go, but didn’t belong. “Weeks later, I learned that during their attack they also burned the general store down, and a beautiful young woman got caught in it. No one could reach her—there were just too many flames and explosions. Her father, the store owner, tried hard but he could not save her. The poor man died trying to get to her as she burned alive right before his eyes.”

  Sam stared down at the ground, shaking his head, trying to regain control of the slight quiver in his voice. “I’ve often imagined her horrible screams.”

  Opening his eyes, he came back to reality. The group stood in silence, the haunting echoes of a young woman’s terrible death cries nearly audible in the heavy air between them.

  Old pains clawed their way up within Sam. When they reached his heart, it clenched with his effort to keep them at bay. His whole body tightened, like a bow with its string drawn tight, ready to fire a lethal shot, as he remembered kneeling before a grieving mother. He had grasped the woman’s hands, moist with the tears she’d just wiped away, as she mourned both her husband and child, and swore an oath to her. “I promised her mother that I would search for the traitor that led the British to their store and that I would never forget her daughter. I’ve kept both promises.”

  Why couldn’t Foley have been Frazier? It would have ended it all. It would have been so simple. But it wasn’t simple any more. He wanted to scream with the suppressed anger amassing at the back of his throat. His hand squeezed the deer horn handle of his blade.

  He glanced at Bear, who understood the meaningfulness of his death grip on his knife. Bear’s expression twisted in fiery outrage and he started toward him, but Sam shook his head. He didn’t want Bear’s sympathy. He just wanted to kill.

  But the man he needed to kill wasn’t Foley. It was Frazier.

  “As much as I wanted Foley to be Frazier, he wasn’t. And I won’t bear false witness,” Sam hissed. “Foley is a vile human being that doesn’t deserve another breath, but he is not the man I sought all these years.”

  Bear stood there, tall and incensed, and they exchanged a long deep look. Bear understood.

  “Don’t worry Sam. I won’t let the son-of-a-bitch go,” the Judge pronounced. “Tomorrow, Constable Mitchell and I will escort Foley to Logan’s Fort. Colonel John Byrd has militia from all over Kentucky, including Fort Boonesborough’s, mustered there right now. A good number of those men served in the Continental Army. Hopefully there will be someone there who will recognize him and serve as our second witness. With luck, he’ll soon face hanging or a firing squad—both too good for the likes of him for damn sure. I wish I could give him the kind of punishment he deserves—being burned alive like that poor young woman.”

  “I imagine God has in mind that exact type of punishment,” Catherine spat, her eyes blazing and face flushed.

  The Judge and several others shook their heads in agreement.

  Foley wasn’t the one Sam sought, but he was a traitor. A damn traitor, just like Frazier. They were two of a kind.

  Sam couldn’t speak as he struggled for control. His breaths came faster. He turned and slowly stepped away from the others. He needed to be alone with his struggle. With the heartache that had sprung back to life despite his efforts to bury it.

  He checked the sharpness of his knife and replaced the pain with anger.

  It was easier to feel anger.

  CHAPTER 25

  Sam thrust his knife back into its sheath, picked up his rifle and powder horn and marched towards his horse. If the law couldn’t do something about traitors, he could. He wouldn’t leave justice to luck as the Judge had suggested. If no one at Logan’s Fort recognized Foley as a traitor, the man would go free. Free to wander Kentucky murdering and raping.

  There was no way was he would let that happen.

  As the other men said their goodbyes, he tightened Alex’s cinch and untied the reins.

  Catherine put a hand on Sam’s back. “Sam, hold up. What’s wrong?” she asked quietly.

  Sam stopped but didn’t turn around.

  “Sam, you knew her, didn’t you? The young woman burned alive. You knew her well.”

  He turned quickly and faced her, fixing his eyes on hers with a hard stare. “I didn’t just know her, I loved her. She was the only woman I ever loved…until,” unsure of his true feelings, he stopped himself. He turned aside. “But she was stolen from me. I never had even one chance to hold her in my arms, but I’ve carried her around inside of me all these many years. I never stopped feeling the anguish of losing her—maybe because of how horrifically she died, or perhaps because I never had a chance to tell her that I wanted to marry her and that I loved her. And I never stopped loving that sweet girl. So instead of using my savings to buy her an engagement ring and to start a home, I used it to buy this knife. I’ve been looking for that traitor ever since, most of my life. Looking for retribution. I made a promise to myself never to forget her and never to love again until that man was dead.”

  “That promise explains a lot,” Catherine said.

  “Now, I’m wondering if I can keep that promise.” Guilt rippled up his spine until it reached the back of his head and surged through his mind. He was not a man to break a promise, especially one he made to himself.

  “If I can’t kill Frazier, then Foley will just have to do. They’re two of a kind anyway.” Even as he said it, Sam doubted that he could kill Foley in cold blood. Foley would have to give him reason to.

  “Sam, the past is the one thing even you can’t fight. You cannot change the beginning of your life, but you can change the ending. The only way to stop the hurt is to love again. You’ve tortured yourself with that ill-gotten promise long enough. She’s gone. You can’t go on living with only that deep hatred and the past in your heart. As you said, you need to truly live.”

  “If I stop, I’d be turning my back on her and disavowing the promise I made to myself.”

  “If you don’t stop, I promise you something—you’ll never really live again, much less love.”

  Unnerved, Sam crossed his arms and pointedly looked away.

  “You’re afraid to love again, because the last time you did, it brought you only terrible unending pain.”

  Her accusing tone stabbed the air between them. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “You thought you had to be the bravest man every place you went because you were protecting your heart. You were terrified that your heart would be wounded again.”

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” he repeated. It was a lie.

  He knew no fear, except the fear of her love.

  “Prove it.”

  Her passionate challenge went too far. He stared at her for a moment. “No. I don’t have to prove anything. What I have to do is end these feelings I have for you. I’m sorry.” He felt himself receding into a past only he understood, unable to part with it. He gripped the saddle horn with his left hand, but then he hesitated for just a moment. He did want his life back—to rid himself of a past that held him hostage. That was why he came to Kentucky to begin with.

  Catherine quickly stepped between the stirrup and Sam. “I won’t let you end those feelings,” she said, forcefully. She looked up at him with love on her face and resolve in her fiery eyes.

  She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned her head gently against his chest.

  Sam’s heart thundered within his breast, and he felt her heart reach out to calm his.

  She placed a gentle kiss on h
is chest. The intimate gesture nearly overwhelmed him.

  She gazed up into his eyes and whispered, “I love you.”

  Sam’s hand left the saddle horn. Had he heard her right? Slowly, tentatively, he put his hands on her. Something he had done only once before, and then it had scared him as nothing else had before.

  Now, as he physically touched her, felt the reality of her, it seemed possible that she really could love him. And he could love her back. He ran his hands slowly down her back. He wanted her to fill the terrible emptiness in him, push the pain away, smother the embers of old anger. Next to her, he could almost physically feel the healing beginning.

  But then his stubborn mind threw up a familiar wall of doubt.

  “You can’t possibly love an old warrior like me.” He wanted desperately to confirm this miracle, to let her affection feed his hungry soul.

  But he couldn’t.

  “I do love you Sam. I promise I will make you happy. And I trust you. Please trust me.”

  Sam jerked his hands away from her body and tightly gripped the reins instead. “I trust you. I just can’t love you. Not yet.”

  “Yes, yes,” she whispered. “Yes, you can. I can show you how to love again.” She ran her fingers over the dark stubble on his cheek.

  As he studied her face, Sam felt near tears for the first time in many years. His eyes begged her for the truth while his mind denied what she just said. He simply could not believe a gentlewoman like Catherine, so refined, could want him. “You don’t know what it’s like on the frontier. It’s a long way from the easy life you knew in Boston, and I don’t mean in miles. You have no business here. A woman as fine as you should go back to that way of life. Marry someone with wealth and prestige.” Even as he said it, he wished he hadn’t.

  “I’ve learned what it’s like on the frontier and I know it won’t be easy. But every day I’m learning more and more about how to cope with it. If I go back, I won’t be allowed to marry for love. My father will force me to marry someone to further his own fortune. And that husband will expect me to be the dutiful wife and the perfect society woman. Do you want that for me Sam?”

  “No.” Marrying another man was the last thing he wanted her to do.

  “Neither do I. That’s not me and never will be. We both lost our old lives Sam. But we’re young, on a new frontier. So let’s leave those lives behind us. Put aside old wrongs and your old love. I haven’t fallen for an old warrior. I’m in love with you—a man with a brave strong heart.”

  “But I am a warrior Catherine. That’s me and it always will be.”

  And, he realized, the hardest battle he would ever fight might be this one—the one with his own heart.

  “Sam, it’s time for you to lay your armor down. Let yourself be vulnerable for once in your life. Open yourself up to love.”

  He tried to resurrect the anger her words suppressed. He was far more comfortable being angry than talking about love. But for the moment, the tenderness in her words and her gaze snuffed the flames of his rage like rain on fire.

  “Everyone needs love Sam, just as surely as we need to breathe. A life without love is just as suffocating as lungs without air. We both know that.” She stepped closer to him.

  “My life is suitable for only one thing—the one thing I’m good at—fighting.”

  “Then fight for a new life—for both of us. Fight for a chance to live Sam. Please give us a chance.”

  He studied the blazing determination in her eyes for a long time. He did see love there. How he yearned to lay his armor down—to not feel the unceasing weight of it on his shoulders. And on his heart. Perhaps she was right. Her courage inspired him. Maybe there was a chance her love could make him whole again. Something deep inside flared, then spread, blazing through the fortress around his heart.

  He clenched his jaw to stop the sob in his throat. “In the ‘Land of Tomorrow’?” he asked, his breath ragged, as he struggled for both air and love.

  “No, in the land of today, starting now.” She spoke with quiet firmness and the sense of conviction that was part of her strong character. She stared with longing at him. The implication sent a wave of excitement surging through him.

  The fire rising in his loins did make him want her now.

  His gaze dropped from her eyes to her long neck to her breasts. His jaw was near cracking with the effort to control his growing desire. When he looked up, a rush of pink stained her lovely face. Her closeness was euphoric, drawing him in, until he was helpless to resist. She smelled like falls fresh water and he drank in the scent like a man dying of thirst. And like water rushing over a falls, his blood surged from his head to his toes and places between.

  He quickly gave her the reins to his horse and started saddling hers. When he finished, he took both reins and led the horses behind them while they walked a short distance from camp. Then he stopped abruptly and pulled her against his chest.

  Clutching the reins against her back, he kissed her, roughly and hard, like the man he was. Then he kissed her again, softly and tenderly, like the man he wanted to be.

  In an instant, her embrace changed something within him as a spark of hope kindled his heart.

  He felt her tremble in his arms and her heart race wildly against his own heart.

  He struggled to pull himself away from her luscious full lips. He wanted to cover her in kisses, head to toe, and back again. He wanted to love again. He wanted to love her.

  He realized his life was floundering. He came to Kentucky looking for a new beginning. But maybe that new beginning wasn’t just a place. Maybe it was this woman. When he arrived here, he attributed his new sense of hope to the place—to the tranquil river, the verdant meadows, and rolling hills. But it wasn’t Kentucky that had reached his soul.

  It was Catherine.

  He handed her the reins to her horse. “Mount up. Let’s go somewhere where we can talk in private,” he said huskily and then helped her into her saddle.

  Maybe I can fight for love, he decided. He stepped into the stirrup and threw his leg over Alex’s big back.

  In that glorious moment, the moment between the past and the future, Sam felt braver than he ever had before.

  CHAPTER 26

  “I’ll not try another friendly pat on the back, but I’d be honored to shake yer hand,” Bear told Jonathan as the man prepared to leave.

  “And me knees are thankin’ you for that,” Jonathan replied with a broad smile.

  After Bear and the others thanked Jonathan, Judge Webb told the Irishman that he was free to leave and thanked him for his testimony. He assured the two brothers that Foley would never know who the witness was and that he would promptly turn the traitor over to the military for further investigation and hopefully prosecution as well.

  “Wait,” Stephen called after the O’Reilly brothers as they turned their mounts toward town. He grabbed a jug of whiskey and hurried back to the two waiting on their horses. “A small token of our gratitude.”

  “A jug of whiskey is never a small thing. May the Lord bless ye and may the roads ye travel all lead to happiness,” a smiling Jonathan said and then he waved goodbye.

  “I’ll wait here for a short while if you don’t mind, I don’t want anyone to see me with the O’Reillys,” Judge Webb said.

  Stephen handed the Judge a cup of coffee. “What’s your decision?” Stephen asked, wasting no time getting to the point.

  Judge Webb inhaled the fragrant aroma, took a sip, and then explained why it was imperative to get not only O’Reilly’s testimony, but another witness as well. “Treason under the constitution consists of either levying war against the United States or siding with her enemies. It requires two witnesses to the act of treason for conviction. I will personally deliver O’Reilly’s affirmation of Foley’s identity to the military at Logan’s Fort. Foley is clearly a traitor and probably a murderer and rapist as well. I just need more proof of his crimes. Consider the charges against you and Sam dismissed, of course. B
y the way, where is the Captain?”

  “He left a few minutes ago,” Bear said without further explanation. He realized Sam was suffering. The Captain was not a man easily hurt, but Bear had just seen angry waves of remembered heartache roll across Sam’s rugged face before he had turned away from the others. He was pleased when he saw Catherine follow Sam.

  He had already accepted that she belonged with Sam, not him. The two needed each other. Bear hoped Catherine could ease the Captain’s old heartache. Only a woman could cure that kind of wound. He just didn’t know if Sam would let her. A pain that deep was slow to ebb away. The Captain’s hurt had turned to scars that were long, deep, and ugly. And maybe permanent. He hoped Catherine could see past the scars. He had a good feeling that she would.

  Bear refilled the Judge’s coffee and then poured himself a cup, shaking his head in empathy for Sam.

  “I’ll take some of that too,” William said holding out his cup, “although I could use something stronger. We do have reason to celebrate. I’ve won my first case.”

  “I do na feel much like celebratin’,” Bear said sharply.

  They all looked puzzled as Bear sipped the lukewarm brew. Suddenly, the coffee tasted bitter and he threw the rest into the fire. “I’ll explain on the way to town,” he said, his voice matching the angry hissing of his coffee hitting the hot rocks circling the cook fire.

  They left, and took their time getting to town, passing stands of loblolly and Virginia pines so thick it would be difficult to ride a horse through. The humid air seemed even heavier with the thick scent of pine. Bear kept one eye on the gloomy woods as they rode their horses side by side. He explained that the young woman who died so tragically in the supply store fire had been Sam’s first and only love, and that Sam had never stopped loving her.