done to rescue the governor’s family.
As Bass shoved in between the shoulders of Isaac Simms and Rufus Graham, his palms began to sweat something fierce, especially when he looked up from the toes of his muddy moccasins to find the soldiers glowering at him and the others beneath their dark eyebrows. Quickly he turned away, glancing over the rest of the room, finding hate flickering in the eyes of so many males, adoration glittering in the eyes of so many of the females. Old and young. Especially the young who held hands and fans at their breasts, that rounded, dusky flesh half-exposed in their bloodred, black, sunset-blue, or buttermilk-yellow gowns that barely clung to their bodies.
At that moment he couldn’t remember ever seeing a woman out in public in so provocative a manner, her clothing exposing so much of her neck, her shoulders and arms, even unto the top half of her breasts. Swallowing hard, Titus wondered how the dresses stayed up. But then he figured those firm, soft-skinned mounds were what held everything in place. So much of those breasts exposed that it wouldn’t take much at all for a man to just reach his hand right in there and—
“Titus Bass! Step up there, nigger!”
“Uhh?”
“Matthew just called your name,” Rufus said in a harsh whisper. “He’s calling out our names for this here party to clap for us.”
Glancing quickly to his left, he found Isaac Simms and the others beyond him grinning sheepishly, motioning him up with them. He immediately took a step to join the others as he heard Matthew call out Graham’s name. Rufus was there at his right shoulder a heartbeat later, so that all eight of the Americans stood before the group as the governor, his wife, and daughter stepped off the platform and right up to Rufus Graham. There the governor held out his hand, shaking it before he moved on to Bass.
As Titus released Mirabal’s grip, he had but a moment before the governor’s wife stepped up to him, her hand suspended between them.
“What’m I to do?” he whispered to Isaac, frantic.
“Bow your damned head, nigger!” Simms said in a husky whisper.
Nervously shoving his hairy chin against his chest, Scratch watched Manuela Mirabal give a short curtsy before releasing his hand and stepping on to do the same with Isaac. But the moment the woman moved on and relief began to wash over him, he discovered the pretty, cherry-eyed daughter stopping right in front of him, toe to toe, staring up at him as soft-eyed and wet-lipped as a young fawn.
“Bow again, goddammit!” Rufus reminded him with a growl.
As Manuela Mirabal moved by Isaac, he nudged Bass with an elbow. “This’un’s sweet on you, Titus, ol’ boy! Better give her hand a kiss too.”
On the other side Graham chuckled softly. “Just like them proper Frenchmen do in St. Louie!”
“Kiss her h-hand?”
“Do it!” Isaac ordered.
As instructed, Titus bowed his head and brought the small, smooth hand to his lips obediently, brushing it with his parched lips, embarrassed that his entire mouth and throat had just gone dry. Raising his head, he found Jacova’s eyes brazenly locked on his. Instead of immediately removing her hand from his once he had completed his bow, the girl held on to his hand as he straightened. Her mother reached out and gently nudged her young daughter, as if to remind Jacova she was to continue down the receiving line. Just as she was about to step aside, the young woman squeezed Bass’s hand, lingering for a heartbeat longer.
While she turned to present her hand to Isaac, Bass felt both ears growing hot beneath his long curls.
Barely able to breathe, Scratch found he couldn’t take his eyes off her—helpless as he studied the way Jacova held out her delicate fingers to Simms, how she curtsied politely, the way she spoke to Isaac as she furtively glanced at Titus. He suddenly realized just how quickly she pushed her limp hand into Isaac’s, allowed Simms to bow, then immediately yanked her hand away while she had let it linger in Bass’s grip.
Was he crazy? Or had she really sought to hang on to Bass until the very last moment they might have to share, the last moment they would have to touch, to gaze into one another’s eyes?
As he watched Jacova float back across the front of the room to rejoin her parents, Titus suddenly became aware of the hateful glare in the eyes of all those young soldiers arrayed just behind the governor, his wife, and daughter as the Mirabais stopped before Matthew. Mirabal motioned for Rosa to join her husband. While she shyly stepped to Kinkead’s side at the center of the
“Maybeso that young’un’s got the idee to make herself your wife,” Rufus whispered, leaning into Bass’s shoulder.
With a reflex jerk Titus jabbed back with his elbow, planting it deep into Graham’s belly. Giving a noisy
“What’s he saying now, Matthew?” Gray asked.
Kinkead translated in a whisper, “Says they’re gonna bring in the lamb and the calf now. I don’t figger there’s gonna be a empty belly in the whole house!”
At the far end of the room the crowd parted as four men stepped through the cordon, on their shoulders a large pewter platter atop which lay the roasted carcass of an entire lamb. Right behind them came four others, these carrying a roasted calf. Whistles of approval and cheers arose as the fragrance of the steaming meats washed over the room.
With his mouth already watering, Scratch had his knife halfway out of its scabbard before Kinkead locked his hand around Bass’s wrist.
“You’ll get your turn, pilgrim,” Matthew warned. “Let the women get their meat first.”
Suddenly shamed and remembering the long-ago social manners his mother had worked so hard to teach him, Bass dropped the knife back into its sheath. “I’m sorry, Matthew.”
With a wink the big man replied, “Don’t you need feel sorry, Titus. Folks like us, we ain’t got much call to show our proper manners what with the life we have in the mountains.”
When, if ever, had he gone and bowed to a gal … much less kissed a woman’s hand? But in the last few minutes, here in a foreign land, he had just done both! Right in front of a whole room filled with gawking folks watching him as his face grew hot and his eyes smarted with embarrassment.
This was all something so different, so completely new to him. Oh, to be sure, many of the women he’d known could be brazen in their own way, usually when he found himself alone with them. Amy Whistler, even Abigail, the Ohio River whore. And Marissa wasn’t shy at all about letting him know exactly what she had on her mind when she came sneaking out to where he had his blankets laid in her father’s barn.
Now, those Injun gals, Fawn and Pretty Water, they had never appeared to worry about the niceties of preliminaries nor concerned themselves with social appearances. Behind the dropped door of their lodges, neither had a problem showing Titus just what they wanted from him of a sexual nature. There was no clutter of polite manners to get in the way of man and woman taking what they needed most from one another.
So it struck him as all the more flattering that this young woman had made her thoughts abundantly clear through nothing more than that steamy look in her eyes and the way she gripped his hand until her mother demanded she move on down the line.
Through the early part of the evening Bass had danced one lively
“Don’t you know Jacova’s mama is gonna keep a close eye on that girl now, Scratch,” Kinkead warned hours later after the lamb and calf were no more than greasy platters heaped with bones, long after the musicians were beginning to tire and the room had grown unbearably warm from all the heated bodies pulsing to those most ancient rhythms of the courtship ritual.
Bass turned to Matthew. “Whose mama?”
“Jacova’s mama,” Kinkead chided. “The governor’s wife. It’s his daughter you gone and got all moon-eyed over.”
“I ain’t moon-eyed,” he snapped.
