Custer looked at her strangely for a moment. “I always put the welfare of my men first, Libbie. What a strange thing for you to tell me.”
She shook her head, not at all knowing now why she herself had said it. “Look, Bo!” Libbie pointed down at the approaching columns. “You can see dear Tom down there!”
“Sure enough!” He laughed as they both waved to that tiny figure in creamy buckskins and a white slouch hat perched astride his dun mare.
“How much he dresses like you, Autie. That man fairly worships you, like young Boston, even little nephew Harry. Big brother, brave uncle—you are every bit of that and more to the whole family now. What would any of them do without you?”
Custer stared absently at Tom, still such a tiny, almost indistinct figure among that sea of blue tunics. “After this campaign, he’ll be his own man, Libbie. No longer any need of him following on my coattails. I’ll see to it. Tom is destined to ascend the upper rungs of the army ladder. And I—I’d like to take you on to Washington, my dear.”
“Washington?” She placed a delicate hand against her breast in surprise.
“No … you might fool others, Libbie,” he chided, “but you can’t convince me you haven’t thought of it many times.”
“Why, the last time we were there together was during the war. Our abbreviated honeymoon, as I recall.”
“Just start getting used to the idea!”
He swept her chin into his cupped palm, planting a kiss on her parted lips. Custer held his mouth to hers for a long time, until he finally opened his eyes to find her staring mule-eyed at him.
“At least you didn’t pull away this time,” he said, licking his lips, tasting the tantalizing flavor of her lip rouge. “Perhaps you enjoyed my touch.”
“Y-yes,” she finally stammered. “I have … have always enjoyed your touch—oh, how I will miss you, Autie!”
Libbie raised her ivory chin and closed her eyes for him this time. Her lips parted slightly, inviting.
Custer had never refused her.
CHAPTER 3
JUST before dawn on the eighteenth, a summer squall rumbled over the valley of the Little Heart River, soaking everything that hadn’t been covered with gum ponchos or rubber sheets, leaving cargo, wagons, and tents steaming beneath the new sun.
At eight A.M. the air still hung heavy as the regimental paymaster completed his issuance to the men of the Seventh Cavalry. Custer had purposely ordered him to accompany his troops west on the first day’s march so that no soldier could be tempted to spend his meager pay with the post sutler, or with those painted prostitutes at Sadie’s Shady Bower or Clementine’s Retreat, Bismarck’s infamous fleshpots.
In addition, the general gave his troops a few minutes to write a letter home, as Custer knew many would be sending money back to family in the States.
“Mr. Cooke! Have trumpeter Voss sound ‘The General,’” Custer ordered his adjutant, Lieutenant W. W. Cooke. “Let’s be pulling for the Powder River!”
“Aye, General!” Cooke snapped his heels together, giving a smart salute.
Custer said to Libbie: “Every time I think about it, I’m glad I made Cooke adjutant before we moved the regiment to Kentucky to control those infernal sheet-draped night riders. He’s been a blessing ever since. Not that Moylan wasn’t competent. Just that, well—Mr. Cooke adds a dash of something to our corps.”
“Because he’s a Canadian?” she asked, hinting at a grin.
He shook his head. “I’m not quite sure just what it is, really. He has a way with the ladies, as does brother Tom. Why, I’d dare venture to say those two dandies have seen more—well, let’s just say those two make a rounding pair, they do. Dashing, gallant gentlemen. Exactly what I want folks to think of the Seventh when they lay eyes on officers like Cookey or Tom.”
“You’ve surrounded yourself with the very best, dear,” she reminded him, handing her empty coffee tin to Custer.
“More, Mrs. Custer?” he asked.
“No.” She rose, combing her hands down that long buckskin riding habit her husband had ordered tailored in St. Paul especially for her. “The darkest of hours is upon me, dear, sweet man. I must tear myself from you and let you go off to your other mistress now.”
Custer twitched at her sudden declaration. “Whatever can you mean by that?”
After all these years and all these miles, he brooded, how did she … what can she be thinking of … who would have told—
“That beautiful, dark-eyed, seductive young mistress who keeps calling you away from my arms with her siren song, Autie.” Libbie turned west, gazing down that gentle slope where the bustle of twelve hundred men and many more animals raised a deafening clamor.
As that noise rumbled up the hillside toward their informal officers’ row, she continued. “I’ve known about her for a long … long time, Bo. But, kept it to myself, not wishing to clutter up our lives with decisions … having to choose. Let’s face it—I knew I would lose if it ever came down to it. So why force you to choose between me and her?”
He had struggled to keep the young dark-eyed one out of his mind—out of his mind completely but for those long, soul-chilling winter nights when he found himself recalling a long winter gone.… Only when he was lacking what Libbie had for too long neglected to give him of herself … only when he could no longer force down that memory of the dark-skinned one he had kept hidden away inside him for these seven long years … only then did Custer admit to himself that he had always wanted to go back … back in time and—
How had Libbie found out about Monaseetah? Was it Benteen?
Libbie was in his arms suddenly, spilling the remaining coffee in his cup all over a boot and a forearm. He was even more surprised by her impulsive embrace.
“You silly,” she murmured into the linsey-woolsey shirt she had personally sewn for him. “You can be so thickheaded at times.”
“Thick-headed?”
“Your mistress.” She stepped back, cocked her head at him with a stern gleam of reproachment in her calf-brown eyes and balled both hands atop the hips of her buckskin riding skirt.
“My … my mistress?” he squeaked.
“If you had to choose,” she wagged a parental finger at him disapprovingly, “Elizabeth Bacon Custer would be the one to loose, wouldn’t she?”
He swallowed hard, not believing it had come to this.
“Your love affair with the army, Bo!” She giggled, rallying a brave smile she let rain over him as she took a step closer, gazing up into his sapphire eyes.
He stared down at her in disbelief, the sting of some tears already smarting his eyes, totally dumbstruck in the wonder of this woman he had known for all these years and perhaps never really known at all.
“That’s what I’m jealous of—the truth be known,” she went on. “Your love affair with the wildness and freedom of it. And I’m bitter toward the army because they allow you to run away from me out there and play at being a soldier—just like a schoolboy.”
Custer swept her into his arms and held her close.
“I’ve always known, Autie,” she admitted quietly. “Known that if you had to choose, I would rate second best … only what you came home to when you couldn’t be anywhere else. But I’ve taken what I could of you, when I could … and I’ve lived a very full life.”
“But, it isn’t over—”
“I’ll always be there when you decide to come riding back home to me, my darling Bo.” She flashed him a valiant smile even though her watering eyes told him something far darker.
Elizabeth turned away, smoothing her palms across the buckskin skirt, then fussed with those mother-of-pearl buttons on the front of her jacket. Looking down the slope, she noticed Custer’s sister Margaret striding uphill, arm in arm with husband James Calhoun.