The Dakota Cipher

‘Please don’t make me call my cousin for help.’

‘I must have reason to hope!’

Silence.

‘Some small measure of pity!’ I hate grovelling, but it occasionally works, and the more I thought about her, the hornier I became. Yes, I know I was addled as a loon.

Finally she answered. ‘Very well. If you teach me to truly use that remarkable firearm you’re so proud of, perhaps I will relent. I am quite fascinated with shooting.’

‘You want to fire my gun?’

‘We can hunt together in the morning. Sport gets my blood up.’

I considered. Did the girl simply want more privacy? A roll on the forest moss away from the others? I could impress her with my accuracy, bag some game, massage her delicate feet near a clear forest stream, try to remember a sonnet or two … So off I crept, thwarted but not yet ready to surrender.

I came back into the firelight and a circle of drunken men.

‘You look frustrated, my friend!’ Pierre cried, taking another swig of rum. ‘Having been baptized, are you impatient to be immortalized in the bark of a tree?’

‘I was seeking distaff company.’

‘Ah. Women wound.’ Heads around the fire nodded with sympathy.

‘Ethan, haven’t you realised that your worldly success is in inverse proportion to your romantic success?’ Magnus said. ‘We’ve got better things to discover than Aurora Somerset!’

‘But she’s here. Discovery is out there.’

‘Forget about the fancy lady,’ Pierre agreed. ‘That one is like trying to carry berries in your cheek and not lose any juice. More care than it’s worth.’

‘She’s so beautiful.’ My plaintive tone embarrassed even me.

‘So are half the dusky wenches at Grand Portage, and they are a hundred times more appreciative. Forget the fancy one and pick yourself a squaw.’

‘I don’t want a squaw.’

‘How do you know when you haven’t met her yet?’

But I was tired of the jocular insults and advice, so I moved away to restlessly wait for the morrow’s hunt beneath a canoe, knowing Aurora was making a fool of me but not particularly caring. The best way to regain my equilibrium was her conquest. Perhaps it would be easier away from camp. I wouldn’t even mind babbling about Norse hammers, but she’d just think us lunatics and leave us on the beach.

I lay sleepless as the voyageurs exhausted the rum and collapsed, and then there was a crunch of gravel by my makeshift garret and I saw a boot. Sir Cecil bent down to look at me under the rim of the boat.

‘Lord Somerset.’ I was afraid he was going to warn me off.

‘Mr Gage.’ He cleared his throat. ‘We’re a small group, and I heard of your disappointment. My cousin is moody, like all women. She breaks hearts like crockery and thinks little of it. Don’t be too sensitive.’

‘We’re going shooting tomorrow, while the party rests.’

‘You’ll find her a crack shot. And tameable, if you meet her halfway.’

‘Then you’re not opposed to our friendship?’

‘I’m not opposed to our partnership.’

The gravel crunched as he walked away and I realised he’d included himself in any union. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered why Cecil Somerset cared at all about his cousin’s romance with a wastrel like me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

While the voyageurs slept off their shrub, Aurora prodded me awake at dawn. She was dressed in boots, breeches, and a sky-blue, short-tailed hunting coat. Her luxuriant hair had been tied back and her hands were sheathed in doeskin gloves. ‘Let’s try this rifle of yours!’ she said, brisk as a chipmunk.

I groaned to myself, having not had enough sleep, but sprang up like a toy on a spring, my groggy instinct to impress her. Perhaps the chipmunk’s brain was mine.

Far from being the prim and helpless female she posed when whim took her, Aurora soon had me trailing and panting as she led the way up a granite ridge, Lake Superior a blue ocean below. Her slim legs were spry as a deer, and she had a good eye for the best path and signs of game. I didn’t mind following, having plenty of time to get a good eyeful, but it was clear that Lady Somerset’s comfort in the wilderness was not entirely due to parasols and trunks of clothes. Every time I tried to woo her with some witty or soulful remark she silenced me with a hand and stern look, pointing as if dinner were certain to appear. And sure enough, we did manage to sneak up on a yearling buck. She took my longrifle and felled it at seventy-five yards with a single shot through the neck, sighting and squeezing like a marksman and displaying no difficulty holding the heavy weapon steady or absorbing its kick.

‘Splendid shot!’

‘Your gun shoots slightly high and to the left.’

She gutted the deer with her own ivory-handled knife, giving me pause at her efficiency in slitting around the testicles. Then she sliced off its head and heaved up the haunch to place it on my shoulders. ‘This is too heavy for me.’ Back down the mountain she led.

My regal, delicate woman had been replaced overnight with a regular Boone, independent and laconic, and I realised that despite the delectability of her slim form, I didn’t much care for this new guise. It’s odd how one falls under a spell, and odder still when one begins to wake from it. I finally realised how little I understood her, or our relationship. I had not seduced but instead been seduced, and not by an English lady but by some kind of huntress – as dangerous, possibly, as Magnus had warned. I remembered his tales of Loki, the Norse trickster god, who could assume many shapes and eventually triggered Ragnarok, the end of the world.

But then we did stop at a stream to rest and cool our feet. Hers, when I offered to massage them – a tactic that seems to work with all manner of women – were indeed more callused than I expected, or remembered. Nor did she swoon at my touch.

‘I’m beginning to suspect that you’re more at home in the wilderness than I imagined.’

‘Really?’ Her eyes were half-lidded as she leant back, regarding me. ‘I’ve learnt some things in travels with my cousin. And Cecil and my father taught me to shoot in England. It’s ever so satisfying to kill things, don’t you think?’

‘Your skill at shooting makes us even greater soul mates than I’d guessed,’ I tried. ‘We have the camaraderie not just of the bed but of the target.’

‘We’re simply having some sport, Mr Gage.’

‘There are sports other than shooting we could still teach each other, I’m sure.’ I do have a dogged persistence.

‘Like why a French spy and a Norwegian revolutionary want to go into fur country?’

‘I’m no spy.’

‘You keep secrets like one. You come from Bonaparte, Astor, and Jefferson.’

‘I’m simply scouting Louisiana, as I told you. For elephants.’

‘No. Bloodhammer is after more. It’s obvious that the pair of you have a wicked secret, and I’m beginning to suspect even you don’t fully know what it is. You follow anyone with a strong will, and he’s playing you.’ She drew her feet back and put on her boots. ‘We could help if you’d let us, but it seems you enjoy blind conspiracy. No matter. Everything will come out at Grand Portage.’

I was annoyed by her scorn. ‘So let’s enjoy our companionship now.’

She sprang up. ‘I gave you a sample, but I form relationships only with men I trust.’ And taking my rifle in her own fist, she started down again.

I wearily stood, shouldering the meat and suddenly not liking the way she held my rifle so tightly and not me. I thought she had the politeness to wait on an outcrop, but instead she was paying me no attention, instead looking intently down at the bay below.

‘They’ve come,’ she said.

A canoe was making for shore, its wake a widening V of silver. Indians were the paddlers, but the central figure wore the red coat of a British soldier. Voyageurs waded out to pull it to shore and the occupants leapt out and disappeared into the trees.