spoiled by this treachery of
Pierre's.

A squaw and a redskinned mongrel. Raoul wouldn't want Indians on the
estate even as servants. Now Pierre was talking about these savages
living in Victoire as part of the family.

He felt a sudden, stinging bite down near his rear end, under the
covers. Angrily, he slapped at himself. Damned fleas and bedbugs. Levi
Pope's wife made a piss-poor job of laundering the bedding for the inn.

_If I had a wife I'd make sure she kept the bugs out of my sheets._

Clarissa set the candle down on the table and climbed back into bed. She
ran her hand over his back.

She brought her face close to his, and he decided that, though he liked
her arms and legs and hips and breasts, he didn't care for her weak
chin, her washed-out blond hair and light blue eyes and the brown stain
on one of her front teeth.

She said, "You've got scars all over your back. Somebody beat you. Your
paw?"

"My papa?" The thought made him smile. "No, the old man's not that
sort."

_But he's the kind of man who might forget about me for a while. Who
might let me be captured by Indians in 1812 and not manage to find me
and ransom me till 1814._

_The kind of man who might actually let my brother bring Indians into
our home._

The scars. The scars reminded him every day of Fort Dearborn, August
1812. The memories left scars inside. Memories of being ten years old,
cowering in an Indian encampment with the other white captives from Fort
Dearborn while the warriors with their clubs and tomahawks approached,
grinning.

It hadn't happened the way he dreamed it. The Potawatomi had pulled a
man, an army private, to his feet, while he begged for his life, and
dragged him over to the campfire. In an agony of terror Raoul had
pressed against Helene, seated beside him on the ground. She put her arm
around his shoulders and held him tight.

His sister Helene had seen her husband's throat cut and his scalp
slashed away that very morning, when the Indians fell upon the
retreating soldiers of Fort Dearborn and the civilians fleeing the tiny
village called Checagou. But somehow Helene kept herself calm and strong
after witnessing Henri's terrible death. Raoul knew it was for his sake.

Raoul had shut his eyes, and heard the clubs thud into the head and body
of the soldier at the campfire, heard his screams, heard the silence of
death when the screams stopped. A man's life had ended, just like that.
Raoul trembled, hidin