Savage Beloved

Tears came to Candy’s eyes as she recalled her mother outside planting the beans, her skirt dirty with the black Kansas soil, and even some smudges of dirt on her cheeks.

Never in a million years would Candy have believed that her mother would soil even one finger to plant a garden.

But that had been a warning to Candy that things were not right with her mother, that she was bored to tears with military life. Filled with restless energy, she had found as many ways as possible to fill up the lonesome hours of her day.

“Even going as far as canning beans,” Candy whispered to herself, recalling, too, how patient their family’s black servant, Malvina, had been while teaching her mother how to do it.

Just as she was thinking about Malvina, the tiny black woman came into the room.

Malvina gazed at her in a troubled fashion, glanced at the table, where the food was cooling much too quickly for Malvina’s liking.

“Where is your father?” Malvina asked, going to the table and smoothing out a wrinkle in the tablecloth. “The food won’t stay warm forever, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Candy murmured, loving Malvina almost as much as she did her own mother, for Malvina had been there for Candy since she was a small girl longing for someone to rock and sing to her.

Malvina had done those special things.

Not Candy’s mother.

Can

dy hurried to Malvina and hugged her, feeling the familiar stiffness of the starched black dress against her arms, for Malvina was as exact in her washing and ironing as she was in her cooking and keeping house for the Creighton family.

“I’ll go see what is delaying Father,” Candy said, hurrying from the dining room.

She walked down a narrow corridor that opened up to various rooms in this large log cabin, which had been the family’s quarters since her father had been transferred to this fort from one not far away in Missouri.

Candy would never forget that particular fort, which sat atop a huge bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. Jefferson Barracks Fort had been lovely and was never threatened by Indians.

Candy’s family’s home had been on the parade grounds of that fort, too, but it was much more elaborate than this cabin at Fort Hope. It had been a tall, two-storied plantation-type house, with beautiful furniture, draperies, and many servants besides Malvina.

When they had departed, Malvina was the only one who joined them, for they knew the sort of house they were moving into, and it was barely enough for the family, much less a dozen servants.

Candy missed Missouri, for she had loved exploring along the Mississippi River, even paddling out into it with friends in canoes. Her mother had been horrified once she heard about such escapades.

Candy believed it was those escapades that had caused her father to leave Jefferson Barracks and take his position at Fort Hope.

“Oh, well, just another piece of my life that is gone,” Candy whispered to herself as she stepped up to the closed door of her father’s private study.

Before knocking and disturbing her father, Candy gazed at the closed door. As long as she could remember, there had always been two rooms forbidden to her, from base to base, home to home: her parents’ bedroom and her father’s private study.

Her father had said there were things negotiated in both rooms that had nothing to do with Candy.

Of course she understood why the bedroom was off limits when her mother still lived with them. But never would she understand why she couldn’t at least enter her father’s private study.

What . . . could . . . he be hiding?

What rankled her nerves was the fact that the military staff entered her father’s study freely through the door that led outside to the parade grounds. All official business was transacted there in his study. Perhaps her father just hadn’t wanted Candy to get involved.

That had to be the reason she was not allowed there. She was a part of her father’s other world, which had nothing to do with the orders being handed out in his study.

Surely it had been in that very room that he had made the decision to abduct the Wichita chief . . . a decision that had gone badly awry.

Realizing how more impatient Malvina must be getting as she watched the steam spiral from the food she had labored so hard over in the day’s heat, Candy knocked gingerly on the door.

“Father, Malvina has made your favorite meal,” she said. “It’s getting cold.”

When there was no response, even though she knew her father was there, probably packing his important papers in his briefcases, Candy softly spoke his name again.