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Kentucke Territory, November 1779

This is madness.

Roxanna Rowan leaned against the slick cave entrance and felt an icy trickle drop down the back of her neck as she bent her head. Her right hand, shaky as an aspen leaf, caressed the cold steel of the pistol in her pocket. Being a soldier’s daughter, she knew how to use it. Trouble was she didn’t want to. The only thing she’d ever killed was a copperhead in her flower garden back in Virginia, twined traitorously among scarlet poppies and deep blue phlox.

An Indian was an altogether different matter.

The cave ceiling continued to weep, echoing damply and endlessly and accenting her predicament. Her eyes raked the rosy icicles hanging from the sides and ceiling of the cavern. Stalactites. Formed by the drip of calcareous water, or so Papa had told her in a letter. She’d never thought to see such wonders, but here she was, on the run from redskins and Redcoats in the howling wilderness. And in her keep were four fallen women and a mute child.

They were huddled together further down the cavern tunnel, the women’s hardened faces stiff with rouge and fright. Nancy. Olympia. Dovie. Mariah. And little Abby. All five were looking at her like they wanted her to do something dangerous. Extending one booted foot, she nudged the keelboat captain. In the twilight she saw that the arrow protruding from his back was fletched with turkey feathers. He’d lived long enough to lead them to the mouth of the cave—a very gracious gesture—before dropping dead. Thank You, Lord, for that. But what on earth would You have me do now? A stray tear leaked from the corner of her left eye as she pondered their predicament.

The Indians had come out of nowhere that afternoon—in lightning-quick canoes—and the women had been forced to abandon the flatboat and flee in a pirogue to the safer southern shore, all within a few miles of their long-awaited destination. Fort Endeavor was just downriver, and if they eluded the Indians, they might reach it on foot come morning. Surely a Shawnee war party would rather be raiding a vessel loaded with rum and gunpowder than chasing after five worthless women and a speechless child.

“Miz Roxanna!” The voice cast a dangerous echo.

Roxanna turned, hesitant to take her eyes off the entrance lest the enemy suddenly appear. Her companions had crept further down the tunnel, huddled in a shivering knot. And then Olympia shook her fist, her whisper more a shout.

“I’d rather be took by Indians than spend the night in this blasted place!”

There was a murmur of assent, like the hiss of a snake, and Roxanna plucked her pistol from her pocket. “Ladies,” she said, stung by the irony of the address. “I’d much rather freeze in this cave than roast on some Indian spit. Now, are you with me or against me?”

The only answer was the incessant plink, plink, plink of water. Turning her back to them, she fixed her eye on the ferns just beyond the cave entrance, studying the fading scarlet and cinnamon and saffron woods. With the wind whipping and rearranging the leaves, perhaps their trail would be covered if the Indians decided to pursue them. They’d also walked in a creek to hide their passing. But would it work? Roxanna heaved a shaky sigh.

I’m glad Mama’s in the grave and Papa doesn’t know a whit about my present predicament.

At daylight the women emerged like anxious animals from the cave, damp and dirty and wild-eyed with apprehension. One small pistol was no match for an Indian arrow. But Roxanna clutched it anyway, leading the little group through the wet woods at dawn, in the direction of the fort they’d been trying to reach for nigh on a month. By noon the women in her wake were whining like a rusty wagon wheel, but she didn’t blame them a bit. They had lost all their possessions, every shilling, and hadn’t seen so much as a puff of smoke from a nearby cabin at which they could beg some bread.

Were they even going the right direction?

The dense woods seemed to shutter the sun so that it was hard to determine which way was which. When the fort finally came into view, it didn’t match the picture Roxanna had concocted in her mind as she’d come down the watery Ohio River road. The place was dreary. Lethal looking. Stalwart oak pickets impaled the sky, and the front gates of the great garrison were shut. Drawing her cape around her, she stifled a sigh. It needed fruit trees all around . . . and a hint of flowers . . . and children and dogs running about, even in the chill of winter.

But not one birdcall relieved the gloom.

As they came closer, she could see the Virginia colors flying on the tall staff just beyond high, inhospitable walls. And then something else came into view—something that matched her memories of home and made a smile warm her tense face. A stone house. She blinked, expecting the lovely sight to vanish. But it only became clearer and more beguiling, and she drank in every delightful detail.

Solid stone the color of cream. Winsome green shutters with real glass windows hiding behind. Twin chimneys at each end. And a handsome front door that looked like it might be open in welcome come warmer weather. Situated on a slight rise in back of the fort, the house was near enough to the postern gate to flee to in times of trouble, though she doubted even the king’s men could penetrate such stone. Who had built such a place in the midst of such stark wilderness?

Papa never mentioned a stone house.

Roxanna was suddenly conscious of the company she kept—or rather was leading. It wasn’t that she was afraid to be seen with these women in their too-tight gowns and made-up faces, or that she felt above them in some way. Glancing at them over her shoulder, she pulled her cloak tighter as the whistling wind of late November blew so bitterly it seemed to slice through her very soul.

Her skittishness was simply this—she feared the reaction of her father. Stalwart soldier that he was, what would he think to see her arrive in such flamboyant company? He hadn’t an inkling she was coming in the first place. But to see her roll in unexpectedly with doxies such as these, and a pitiful child to boot . . .

“Is that Fort Endeavor, Miz Roxanna?” The weary voice was almost childlike in expectancy. Dovie, only fifteen, had attached herself to Roxanna with the persistence of a horsefly in midsummer’s heat from the moment they’d met on the boat.

“Yes, that’s the fort, or should be,” she replied as the girl clutched her arm a bit fearfully. “Best keep moving lest the Indians follow.” Roxanna looked to her other side and grabbed hold of Abby’s hand. The child glanced up, ginger curls framing a pale face buttonholed by bluish-gray eyes, her dimpled cheeks visible even without a smile. “We’ll soon be warm and dry again—promise.”

At the rear, Olympia laughed, and the sound tinkled like a tarnished chime in the frozen air. “I aim to be more than that, truly. Or I reckon I’ll turn right around and find me another fort full of soldierin’ men—or an Indian chief.”

Ignoring the babble of feminine voices, Roxanna looked over her shoulder warily as they emerged from the woods. How in heaven’s name had it come to this? She realized she was running from discomfort to danger. Virginia no longer felt like home, and she was desperate to leave its hurtful memories behind. But this was far more than she’d bargained for.

Oh, Lord, was it Your will for me to leave Virginia . . . or my own?

Every passenger on the flatboat they’d just forsaken seemed to be running from something. Even Olympia had confessed she’d left her life at the public house because she was tired of the lice and the stench of the river and the men who manhandled her. Her sister who had worked alongside her had died, leaving a child behind. To her credit, Olympia wanted a better life for little Abby. The girl hadn’t spoken a word since her mother’s death a few months before, and Roxanna wondered if she ever would.

“I’ve heard that in Kentucke, women are so scarce even a fallen one like myself can take my pick of any man I please,” Olympia had announced aboard the vessel one evening. “And he’ll treat me decent too.” She smiled with such satisfaction that Roxanna almost envied her.

“I just want me a little cabin with some chickens and a plot of corn. Seems like that ain’t askin’ much,” Mariah added.

Beside her, Nancy arranged her tattered skirts and purred like a cat with a pot of cream, “I’m partial to a soldierin’ man myself.”

Dovie’s faded blue eyes lingered on each woman, her round face full of expectancy. “Why, Miz Roxanna, you ain’t said a word about why you’re travelin’ to the wilderness.”

A hush fell over the group as they huddled about the shanty stove. Roxanna expelled a little breath. “Well . . . my father’s at Fort Endeavor serving as scrivener. He’s always writing letters telling me how beautiful Kentucke is, how you can see for miles since the air is so clear, that even the grass is a peculiar shade of blue-green, and the forests are huge and still. Not leaping with Indians like some folks say.”

“Sure enough?” Mariah murmured as the other women huddled nearer.

“My coming to Kentucke is a surprise. Papa’s enlistment is near an end, and we’ll be going somewhere to settle, just the two of us.”

“Don’t you want to find a man—get married?” Mariah asked.

The innocent question stung her. Roxanna lifted her shoulders in a show of indifference. “I’m not so young anymore—spinster age, some say.”

The women exchanged knowing glances and began to titter.

“Seems to me you’re comin’ to the right territory, then. A frontiersman ain’t gonna let a gal who’s a little long in the tooth stop a weddin’, ” Olympia said, her smile smug. Reaching into the bosom of her dress, she withdrew a Continental dollar and waved it about. “I bet Miz Roxanna with her fine white skin and all that midnight hair won’t last five minutes once she sets foot in that fort.”

There were approving murmurs all around. Roxanna smiled ruefully as Nancy reached over and snatched the bill out of Olympia’s hand, tossing it into the stove. “That dollar’s worthless and you know it. Show me somethin’ sound.”

Still chuckling, Olympia lifted her soiled calico skirt and took a pound note from her scarlet garter. “Now, who’s to wed after Miz Roxanna?”

“I say Nancy ’cause she’s so sweet.” Mariah sneered, rolling her eyes.

This brought about such feminine howls a riverman stuck his head in the shanty doorway.

“I ain’t sweet but I’m smart,” Nancy said, tucking a strand of flaxen hair behind her ear. “I’ll take the first man who asks me, so long as he ain’t wedded to the jug and don’t beat me.”

Mariah rubbed work-hardened hands together, the backs flecked with liver spots. “I’ve got a hankerin’ for a cabin in the shade of a mountain with a spring that never dries up, not even in summer. If a man won’t take me, I’ll make do myself, just like I’ve been doin’ since I was nine years old.”

Roxanna felt a stirring of pity for every scarred soul around the hissing stove. “Why don’t we pray for husbands—for all of you?” she said on a whim, watching their faces.

Olympia smirked and shook her head. “With all due respect, Miz Roxanna, the only experience I’ve had with prayin’ women is the ones who’ve prayed me and my ilk out of one river town after another.”

“I ain’t never prayed before,” Mariah confessed.

“I like the idea. It ain’t gonna hurt none,” Dovie said quietly. “Maybe it’ll help.”

Reaching out, Roxanna squeezed her hand. Despite their worldly ways, these women could be surprisingly childlike, and they responded to any compliment or scrap of kindness like a half-starved cat.

“Praying isn’t hard,” she told them. “Sometimes when I can’t think of what to say, I just remember the words I learned as a little girl.” Opening the door of the stove, she added some dry willow chunks. “It goes like this. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.’ ”

Nancy nodded. “I learned that a long time ago in settlement school back in Pennsylvania.”

“Well,” Mariah urged, “keep on a-goin’. Might as well add that we’re all needin’ husbands.”

“Maybe we should hold hands,” Dovie suggested, reaching for Nancy’s. “Once I peeked in at a prayer meetin’ and it seemed that was what they did.”

Self-consciously they bowed their heads. Roxanna stayed silent as they made their petitions before adding her own at the very end. “Father, You know what we have need of before we even ask. But we ask anyway, knowing You are patient and kind and the giver of all gifts. I ask that You send each of these women a husband—but only men who are honest and kind and good. Help them to be the women You made them to be. Help them to know You.” She looked up, eyes searching the shadows. Curled up on a cot against a far wall, Abby was fast asleep. “And please bring Abby’s voice back—let her speak again. Amen.”

Dovie didn’t let go of her hand. “Why, Miz Roxanna, you left yourself out.”

Swallowing down a sigh, Roxanna dredged up a half smile.

Truly, some things are past praying for.

“I ain’t goin’ to bed till you’re prayed up,” Olympia said, crossing her arms.

They joined hands again, the only sound the stove’s popping and water sluicing under the hull beneath their feet. One by one they all prayed again, this time for Roxanna, and it seemed she’d never heard such sincere whispered words. But it was Dovie’s petition that lingered the longest.

“Help my friend Roxanna, Mister Eternal. Prepare her a man she can’t take her eyes off of and who can’t take his eyes off her. And let it be right quick, if it pleases Ye.”