Texas Divided (Lone Star Redemption #2)

Chapter 1

Colorado County, Eastern Texas

Morning Fawn “Beth Logan” did not want to be here.

She sucked in a breath and blew it out hard.

Despite the chill in the air, sweat dampened her palms. All around her, families, mostly mothers and their children, stopped to greet each other as they headed into the double doors of the weathered church.

Black, gray, and deep purple, the colors of mourning and half-mourning, reigned amongst their apparel.

Too many deaths from this war, but these were not her people, and it was not her war.

A few elms and scattered oak trees dotted the pebbled yard. Above their heads, the bell clanged in its wooden tower. Empty of welcome for her, the sound scraped her nerves.

She looked up, placing a hand to her straw hat to keep it from falling off.

Aunt Judith had wanted her to wear a proper bonnet, just as she’d wanted her to wear a hoop beneath her dress.

Morning Fawn had silently placed the straw hat on her head, tied the ribbons under her chin, and walked out to the waiting four-seat landau with her skirt flat against a single petticoat and chemise.

On the way to church, Cousin Thea had prattled on and on about her visit to Robson’s castle the day before.

Who cared about a limestone monstrosity in the middle of the prairie where all the folks who considered themselves high society could go to put on airs?

Morning Fawn had escaped the stuffy carriage as soon as they arrived at the church.

“Beth, hurry along.” Aunt Judith adjusted her fox stole across her shoulders as she turned toward the clapboard building. Her broad-rimmed bonnet with lace trim did little to hide her displeasure. “We’re going to be late.”

“Never mind her.” Cousin Thea smoothed her flounced taffeta skirt after its crunch through the narrow carriage door. “If Beth wants to stay out here with the servants and the drivers, let her.”

“She’ll do no such thing.” Aunt Judith extended her gloved hand. Morning Fawn grimaced and stepped to her aunt’s side, avoiding her clasp. The woman’s touch was as far from comfort as a prickly pear.

Nothing like Morning Fawn’s pia, her adopted Comanche mother.

Would she ever see her again? For nine years, Morning Fawn had lived with the Comanche only to be ripped from her home and family by two-bit ruffians her uncle had hired to kidnap her.

Rescued. That’s what they called it. Destroying her life was more like it.

Thea tossed her head with a familiar scowl marring her otherwise pale, smooth complexion. Ringlets of auburn hair jiggled beneath her high-brim bonnet. “Cousin Beth has the manners of a fishmonger,” she muttered and waved to the middle-aged man at the hitching post. “Mr. Henry?”

Mr. Henry handed his reins to his slave and tipped his stovepipe hat, revealing graying temples and a receding hairline. “Good morning, Miss LeBeau, Mrs. Lebeau…Miss Logan.”

Morning Fawn turned away as Thea curled a hand around the portly man’s bulging arm.

Let her cousin set her cap at a man twice her age.

There was no light in their eyes when they looked at each other.

Nothing like the glow between Morning Fawn’s sister, Eyes-Like-Sky, and Dancing Eagle.

That was love, regardless of her sister’s marriage to a soldier after Dancing Eagle’s death. A love she, herself, had never known.

Thea gushed as Mr. Henry guided her past. “Thank goodness, there’s still a few men around these parts to look after us womenfolk.”

Any man worth his snuff was out fighting.

Not that Morning Fawn agreed with these Texans and their Confederacy, but if there was fighting to be done, a man did it.

He didn’t hide behind his servants and his acres of cotton.

And he didn’t ruin someone’s life for three hundred dollars, like the blue-eyed, dark-haired weasel warrior who had helped kidnap her from the Comanche and thwarted her best escape attempt. She clenched her hands.

“Please try to behave yourself,” her aunt whispered at her side.

“Don’t I always?”

“Most certainly not. We’re going to Cedar Crest plantation after church.

Mrs. Brown has invited us for tea and dinner.

” Worry lines across her brow and at the corners of her mouth deepened.

“Try not to slurp your tea, and if you’re not for sure which fork to use, follow my lead. A young lady is judged by her manners.”

Morning Fawn rolled her eyes. “In East Texas, women are judged by nothing that matters.” She jutted out her chin. “I can ride faster and hunt better than any woman in this county.”

“You’re not on the frontier anymore. Hunting won’t—”

“I wish I was.”

“Excuse me, young lady.” Aunt Judith bit off her words. “You interrupted me. I was about to say that hunting won’t get you a husband. That you need—”

“Last thing I need.” Beth gathered her bothersome skirt and marched ahead, sidestepping two little boys playing jacks in the middle of the pathway.

She wanted nothing to do with citified men. Besides, she’d had more than her share of lectures from her aunt on proper behavior. Better to sit in church and hear the preacher than to listen to another dose of her aunt’s disapproval.

Despite the wool stockings, her rock-hard leather shoes pinched her feet, rubbing her big toe raw. She was going to find a way to go hunting, kill a deer, and make her a pair of moccasins and leggings. She’d learned to pick the lock on her door. It was just a matter of getting access to a shotgun.

But it’d be simpler to persuade Mr. Nicholas Moyer, the administrator in charge of the cotton warehouse in Alleyton, to take her hunting.

She’d seen the way he looked at her, and the way her uncle’s jaw had clenched when she’d flirted openly with the man at dinner the other night.

There was more than one way to show her uncle he couldn’t control her.

Flirting was one thing. Finding a way to use Moyer’s resources for an escape was another.

Seventeen months since her kidnapping, and she’d failed to make it back to her Nokoni Comanche home.

Even if she found a way to return, it would never be the same.

She wasn’t the same. What if she didn’t belong anymore?

Head down, as though buffeting a wind, she clomped up the wooden steps and past an elderly gentleman at the door. The whispers and stares of the congregants, muted now compared to the roar they had been months earlier, trailed behind her.

“‘Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…’” played from the piano as Morning Fawn walked down the aisle, past the pews of families of storekeepers, tradesmen, and overseers.

Only a couple able-bodied men under fifty sat among them.

She slowed near the front row of padded seats where the planter-class families sat and entered the LeBeau pew.

As if one needed a special pew or four stuffy walls to worship the Creator.

It was show, all show, except for the way the preacher’s eyes lit up when he spoke, and a few of the voices from the back which usually sang out with gusto.

“‘Amazing grace…’” It had been her settler mother’s favorite song.

How did she know that? She couldn’t remember her mother’s face aside from the portrait in LeBeau’s library, but she recalled the song.

Her throat tightened as she shuffled to the far end of the pew. She would not think of her mother.

Face frozen in a scold, Aunt Judith pulled in alongside her, taking a seat almost a foot away.

Cousin Thea, Mr. Henry, and Aunt Clarey followed close by, leaving Morning Fawn hemmed in between them and the wall on the other side of her.

Stupid mistake to bolt ahead and be the first one in. Her heartbeat thrummed in her head.

Dressed in a dark suit and a white cravat, the slender preacher with spectacles stepped up to the pulpit. The music stopped. Thank God. Hungry for air, Beth trained her eyes ahead and swished her fan. Couldn’t they open a window in this place?

The preacher’s voice rose and fell as he read a few verses. God help me. Did He listen? Did He care? A portly woman whose girth dominated the piano bench struck the chords of a hymn on the ivory keys.

The congregation stood. Beth followed suit, gripping the back of the pew in front of her. Then came “Amazing Grace.” The first time had only been the prelude. They’d sing all the verses this time. “‘I once was lost…’”

A snippet of memory. Her mother brushing her hair. Morning Fawn squeezed her eyes shut and tried to swallow, but the acid stuck in her throat. Her mother. Oh, Lord...

The spells, which had started shortly after she’d come to the Comanche and often struck at night, had dissipated after a couple of years.

Shortness of breath, shivers, waking dreams. Her Comanche pia had wrapped Morning Fawn in her arms and held her until the terrors faded.

However, they’d returned full force since her arrival at the LeBeau plantation, the last home her family had stayed at before they’d headed for the Texas frontier and their deaths—except now, there was no one to hold her.

“‘I once was blind, but now I see…’”

She had to think of something else. The bronze and golden leaves of the pecan and cottonwood trees along the creek on the way here.

Had she finished peeling the apples in the basket this morning on the back porch?

How many apples were there? But when she started to count them in her head, they turned red, red like blood.

The song finished, and the congregation sat. She did not. Her aunt nudged her arm with a knuckle, nodding toward the pew.

Sweat beaded on Morning Fawn’s temples. Sitting with her mama by the campfire, the last calm moment before the night exploded with nerve-piercing howls, warriors charging, and shrieks.

Blood red. The fire and screams. The neighing of horses.

Too many horses. She mumbled, “I need to be excused” and squeezed out past half a dozen legs, trampling a shoe in the process.

Mr. Henry jumped to his feet to make room. Heads turned.

Morning Fawn kept going. Couldn’t she go to the privy without causing a commotion?

But the privy wasn’t what she was aiming for.

Out the door and down the steps, she willed her legs to take one step at a time until she’d made it around the front to the side of the church, away from the curious eyes of the drivers by the hitching posts.

Her head pounded. She had to get away. From the past. From everything.

Stumbling on a root, she bent down and yanked the deplorable shoes off of her feet. Ahead, Mr. Franklin’s chestnut Thoroughbred nibbled on grass, no owner in sight. She’d heard rumors it could beat any horse in the county.

A thought sizzled through her. Freedom. She broke into a run, her skirt flapping against her legs. Pebbles dug into her stocking feet. No walls. No people. Escape. She yanked the lead rope from the rail and grabbed the reins.

The horse snorted as Morning Fawn latched on to the pommel, stuck a foot in the stirrup, and heaved herself onto the saddle.

“Miss Logan—” A man came around the corner.

Morning Fawn snapped the reins and pressed her calves to the horse’s side. The chestnut quickened from a trot to a lope past the weathered fence and down the hill. Horse hooves tore through dried grass and onto the packed-dirt road.

Wind whipped the hat from her head, and her hair unfurled as they galloped past stubby brown picked-over fields, empty of cotton. The blood red faded, along with the screams.

Someone yelled behind her in the distance.

No. She would not, could not stop. She’d never get free. If they caught her, they’d lock her up.

When she’d first arrived at her uncle’s plantation, they’d promised to let her eat once she took off her buckskin garments.

She’d gone hungry instead. When they’d finally offered food, she should have suspected something.

Instead, she’d gobbled down the dinner and promptly fell into a deep sleep, drugged.

Her Comanche clothes were gone when she awoke, along with everything she owned.

She’d been livid. If she’d had her knife, she would have sliced LeBeau.

Instead, he’d had his men carry her to the attic, throw her on a mattress, and lock the door on their way out.

She’d spent a month there. And he’d threatened to send her to an asylum if she tried to run away again or refused to listen to their lessons on how to be civilized.

Her uncle wanted a porcelain doll, not a niece with a mind of her own.

The stink of manure assaulted her nose as she rode past a hog farm.

The horse’s muscles churned beneath Morning Fawn. She tightened her grip on the reins, digging her nails into her palms.

A slave boy, fishing pole across his shoulder, jumped out of her way as she swerved her mount around a corner.

Trees. She needed the cover of trees. A jerk of reins, and her mount left the road, pounding down the hill toward the creek.

Scatterings of cottonwood, pecan, and mesquite populated the banks.

They plunged through the gurgling water and up the other side.

She dodged a limb and bent down over the horse’s withers, her nose inches from the tousled mane.

It didn’t matter where she was going. Anywhere was better than here.

After her third failed attempt, she’d played it safe too long, waiting for a perfect plan. No more.