by Lori Benton
“We’ve been discussing a ball, Cousin,” Rosalyn said, taking possessive grip of his other arm. “But Judith and I have failed to learn whether or not you favor dancing.”
“Surely you dance, Mr. Cameron?” Phyllida inquired.
Judith, bereft of an arm to cling to, waited hopefully.
“Poorly, I fear.” When next he caught a glimpse, the tableau on the veranda was unchanged. “I’ve no objections to a ball, though I may safely say dancing three thirsty hours straight is a feat I’m not likely to match.”
“You were attending to our conversation,” said Phyllida. “How sly you are, Mr. Cameron!”
Not sly enough by half.
“Begging your pardon, ladies. I should see how Thomas is getting on.”
Ignoring their protests, he detached himself and struck out in the direction Seona had taken, toward the side of the house connected to the summer kitchen. When he turned a corner to be confronted by a cluster of framed buildings, he halted. The few slaves he saw ducked quickly out of sight. He was on the verge of shouting for Seona when the shrubbery at the corner of the nearest building shivered, though the breeze had died.
“Mister Gideon, please. Miss Rosalyn—”
“Can wait.”
Ian rounded the structure to find Seona backed into a gap in the hedge, pinned against the clapboards by the hips and hands of Gideon Pryce, who was bending his face to hers. She twisted away and saw him. “Mister Ian!”
Pryce pushed away from her. Seona stumbled through the hedge, putting Ian between herself and Pryce, who emerged from the shrubbery with slow deliberation, tugging at rumpled clothing.
His cousin’s fan lay on the ground. Ian retrieved it and held it out to Seona. “Go.” She went, leaving him glaring at Pryce. “What the devil d’ye think ye’re doing?”
Pryce lifted a careless shoulder. “You can hardly blame me, tempting a piece as she is.”
Ian’s hands convulsed. He imagined the crunch of the man’s teeth against his knuckles, felt them break loose from their moorings, felt the wet spurt of blood.
Though he held himself rigid, whatever Pryce saw in his face made him step back, but he covered the retreat with a calculating smirk. “Fancy yourself a knight to her rescue? An admirable sentiment, though hardly appropriate.”
“I doubt my uncle would approve of such interference with his property, which makes it very appropriate, I should think.”
“Whether or not he approves, I expect he’s allowed it a time or two.”
“Allowed?” Ian echoed, before he understood. Seona herself was living proof.
Awareness of their surroundings penetrated his rage. The cluster of buildings appeared unnaturally deserted, until he caught sight of a tiny child wobbling in the doorway of a nearby cabin. The round little body was sugar-brown, head crowned with a mop of loose black curls. A darker hand reached from the cabin’s depths and drew the child from sight.
Ian fixed Chesterfield’s master with a level stare. “Do as ye will with your own slaves, Pryce. Don’t trifle with my uncle’s again.”
Pryce’s mouth smiled pleasantly. “Marking your territory?”
“Ye might say.”
“Well then. As it seems we’ve boundaries to settle between us, might I ask . . . does your fair cousin, Miss Bell, lie within your newly marked precincts?”
“Rosalyn? How d’ye mean?”
“I’m referring to her display earlier.” Pryce batted his fingers as if in a caress. “You’ll admit, having witnessed the lady take such liberties upon your person, a man might presume he’d been displaced in her affections.”
“I hold no claim on her affections . . . as yet.” Sheer perverseness made him add that last. “And have ye some understanding of which I’m unaware? Ye’ll admit I’ve more than a passing interest in the matter—as her kinsman.”
“There’s no formal understanding between us.” The as yet went unspoken, but Ian heard it plain. Pryce gestured toward the house. “I’m certain our absence has been remarked upon. Shall we rejoin your uncle and the women?”
Ian stood his ground, forcing Pryce to turn his back and lead the way.
“I wondered where the pair of ye’d gone, and why ye were so grim-faced when ye returned.” Wrapped in a banyan, seated at his desk, Hugh Cameron swore—scathingly. “Though he’s never been so bold as to outright suggest it, Pryce has hinted the debt I owe him would be canceled should I give him Seona.”
Ian perched on a bench at the foot of his uncle’s bed, rigid as the polished hickory supporting him. He’d waited until they returned to Mountain Laurel, and supper past, to inform his uncle of the encounter with Pryce and Seona. “He’ll not have another chance to trifle with her behind your back, sir. But what’s this about owing the man?” Ian gestured at the ledgers on his uncle’s desk. “I never saw—”
It was at that point his aunt intruded, cotton on her mind; she’d been present when Pryce unrolled the plans for the gin. It took her several effusive seconds, however, to register their tight-lipped faces and demand explanation for such dour countenances.
“That won’t do at all,” she said in alarm, when informed of Pryce’s attempted violation of Seona. “I’ll not have white babies among the servants. Why not give her to Will? The buck has asked for her often enough.”
Ian had risen at her entry. “Has he, Aunt?”
“Will has a woman,” his uncle said. “At Chesterfield.”
“And whose are the babies he gets on her?” Lucinda’s mouth pinched over the words. “Put him to Seona and they’ll be ours.”
Ian started to protest but his uncle was swifter. “Lucinda, all I mean to say concerning Seona is this: she willna attend ye to Chesterfield again. If ye wish a servant along when ye visit, take Maisy. As for cotton, I dinna mean to risk our livelihood on such a venture ’til I’ve thought the matter through—and ken Ian’s mind on it.”
“Indeed?” Lucinda scorched him with a glance before she turned on her heel and left them.
Uncle Hugh deflated at her going, sinking into his chair. “Ye asked me about the debt owing Pryce,” he said, as if his wife hadn’t interrupted. “He’s acted my factor, informally, these past three years. His connections to markets reach a deal farther than mine. But more than that, the man’s made me a cash loan, of which I’ve no’ paid back a shilling. Ye won’t find record of it in the ledgers,” he added. “Lucinda doesna ken.”
Ian absorbed the information but, unwilling to be sidetracked, asked, “Did ye mean it, about Seona?”
“I’ll keep the lass from Pryce’s reach, but I’ll no’ take up the matter against him since no lasting harm was done. Can ye abide wi’ that?”
Could Seona?
“As long as nothing of the like happens again,” Ian said.
Beyond the slatted blinds darkness had fallen to the chirp of crickets, audible through the glass. Uncle Hugh appeared in dire need of his bed.
“Ye guarded my back today, Nephew.”
“I cannot say it was my pleasure, but I’m glad I was there to prevent . . .” What was it his uncle had called it? “Lasting harm.”
His uncle studied him in silence before asking, “Ye’ll be staying on, then?”
The question caught Ian unprepared. There was an instant when panic fluttered beneath his breastbone, another when he might have acted upon it and offered some refusal—ended it all then and there. He steadied himself and it passed.
“I’d thought ye’d wish to be certain before ye committed to me.”
Likely it was the wavering candlelight, but for an instant Ian thought he saw a glint of desperation in his uncle’s weary eyes. “Lad, dinna be daft. I’m certain. I only need ken that ye are.”
Seona stepped from the warming room, candle in hand, as Ian shut the door to his uncle’s room. He met her at the back stair. “On your way to sleep?”
She stood on the bottom step, eye-to-eye with him. The candle, set in a cracked clay dish, threw shadows on her tired fa
ce. “Yes, sir. I’m done for the day.”
Done in was nearer the truth. He glanced back along the passage to the lamp-glow from the parlor: Maisy putting the house to rights. He kept his voice low. “Are ye all right?”
“I’m fine, Mister Ian.”
“Has Gideon Pryce bothered ye before today?” He caught the tiniest flinch of her features before she shook her head. He took the candle from her, lifting it to better read her face. “D’ye tell me true?”
Her lips pressed tight; then she said, “I don’t want no trouble.”
“There won’t be trouble.”
She raised her eyes, their expression almost pitying as she sighed. “One other time he got me cornered, put his hands on me. Like today.”
The saucer’s edge cut into his palm. “When?”
“Back in summer. Out in the washhouse one day he was visiting. He’s never done no worse than what you saw.”
He thought of her pinned, face twisted with revulsion, fear. The candle wavered in his hand, spilling hot wax down his wrist. She snatched it from him an instant before the flame doused. “Your hand—”
“It’s fine.” The pain was quick to pass. “Go on to bed now.”
She started to obey but paused on the turning of the stair when he said her name.
“Had I known how it was with Pryce, I’d have prevented your going today. Ye never need go there again. I’ve settled that with my uncle. But should Pryce come here and trouble ye at all . . . find me.”
The candle flame danced in the fanning of her breath. “Then what?”
Ian felt the wax on his flesh crack as his hand curled tight. “I’ve skinned wolves before, aye? I’ll skin another before I let one harm ye.”
PART II
September–October 1793
What did you see when we were here together? Did you speak of it? Or did you ride away North again with the Knowledge shut up in your Soul, and me never knowing? Until now.
10
The table desk had taken form beneath his hands, dovetailed corners tight-fitted, moldings and edges smoothed. A swipe of the rag removed the sanded residue from the slanted top. Ian tossed the cloth aside. Eyes closed, he shut out the smell of shavings and glue, everything but the silken wood over which his fingertips now glided. His right hand paused, described a circle, and again. Just there. A spot that needed another sanding.
He’d long denied himself the gratification of shaping seasoned hardwood into a thing of beauty—not since he left the Pringles and their troubled home. But he’d held on to the memories of countless hours in Wilburt Pringle’s shop and all the master cabinetmaker had taught him. They’d flooded back since he’d commenced crafting the desk, most of them good memories of like-minded souls engaged in fulfilling work.
Only in one regard had he set his heels in opposition to the status quo of Pringle’s shop. Had he built this desk under Pringle’s guidance, the man would have insisted he stain it with lampblack, Spanish brown, or some other darkening agent. To Ian’s mind, if the wood was quality, then a piece needed no finish save an application of beeswax and turpentine rubbed into the grain and buffed to a mellow sheen. He’d debated the issue with Pringle a dozen times, those final months of his apprenticeship. As for his sister’s desk, the seasoned maple would age like wine, deepening through subtle tones of amber until it darkened to honeyed brown.
But he was getting ahead of himself. The true challenge still lay before him: the design for the drawer face that would make this piece uniquely Catriona’s.
“Morning glories,” he murmured, as though his sister hovered at his elbow. “I’ve not forgotten.”
He opened his eyes to see Seona in the doorway, clutching a tray covered with checked linen. It was a mild day, with a teasing presage of autumn in the air. Below her kerchief the dark cloud of her hair moved like a live thing on the breeze.
“You missed dinner, Mister Ian.” She set the tray on a bench inside the door and lifted the cloth from a bowl heaped with dinner leavings. The long-ignored gnawing in his middle made itself audibly known.
“Just in time,” he said, wiping his hands down his leather apron. He transferred the bowl and a cup of the season’s first pressed cider to the workbench. Seona stepped back as though to leave. “Would ye bide while I eat? I’ll make quick work of it.”
“Thomas said he’d leave his shavings for kindling. I could gather those.”
Had she come there before now to visit Thomas? Briefly he watched her move toward the rear of the shop, where Thomas had left off carving barrel staves the day they went to Chesterfield, then began an assault on the dinner she’d brought him. While he ate, he flipped through his battered copy of Chippendale’s directory, perusing it for patterns that might suggest the morning glories his sister desired, something to serve as a basis for the half-formed design he had in mind. He didn’t want a spray of blossoms in the center of the outer drawer—too like the commonplace fan embellishments Catriona had spurned.
Something less regimented was in order. An entwining pattern perhaps, suggestive of the climbing-vine quality of her favorite flowers?
He could with reasonable competence carve such a design from a well-sketched pattern, but the vision was beyond his rusty skill to reproduce on paper, and he’d no intention of ruining good maple attempting to transfer the image straight from his head to the wood.
He dabbed a crumb from the bowl and wiped his mouth with the cloth, turning pages.
“You finished, Mister Ian?”
Seona had fetched up at his side, apron bundled around the gathered shavings. She stole a glance at the desk. He pretended to misunderstand her question. “I’ve work yet to do before it can be called finished. It’s meant for my younger sister and she’s a demanding patron.”
Seeming unaware of his scrutiny, she made a study of the desk’s lines. He wondered if she liked it, and if so, would she tell him?
“What’s your sister called?” she asked.
“Her given name’s Catriona. She prefers to be called Cat, though Mam makes every attempt to forbid it.” That drew a hint of a smile. Encouraged, he went on, “She’ll outgrow the notion and be properly Catriona before long. Though I allow we’ve spoilt her, being the youngest and only girl. A table desk she’s wanting and here I am setting about it, five years and more out of practice.” He hoped she might remark upon the desk at last, but her mind was fixed on its intended recipient.
“Does your sister look like you?”
He thought about that, then with the back of a knuckle tapped his chin with its slight cleft. “We all inherited the Cameron chin—me, Catriona, our brother, Ned. But Catriona’s hair is like my da’s. Darker, almost red. Not as red as Uncle Hugh’s used to be.” He raised the desk lid and stepped back. The interior was empty save for the long, shallow drawers lining the back. “For her brushes, pencils, bits of chalk,” he explained. “Catriona’s an artist. Like ye.”
A shadow in the door-yard made Seona start. Only a passing cloud dimming the brightness of the day. “We’d hear anyone coming,” he said.
She relaxed enough to finger one of the brass handles laid out on the bench. “Did you make these?”
“I bought them years ago, thinking this would be my life’s work. Da kept them for me, while I was in Canada.” He pulled the outer drawer until it was halfway open. “Look here. D’ye notice aught unusual?”
“The wood’s a different kind? On the inside, I mean.”
Not the answer he’d looked for, but he nodded. “Aye. It’s common practice to use an inferior wood for the parts that won’t be seen. And since I’m revealing the mysteries of my trade, have another keek at that drawer.”
Seona peered within, then stepped back to study the case’s exterior. “The drawers inside are shallow to make room for other stuff to go in, but this one on the outside . . .” She opened the outer drawer further. “It goes underneath the bottom of the main part inside, but it don’t look as deep as it could be. Why’s that?”
/>
“Reach in and see.”
Still clutching the bulging apron with one hand, she reached inside the drawer and felt along its floor, then its sides.
“Run your fingers along the back,” he suggested.
“Oh . . . there’s a latch. It’s tiny.”
“Pull it toward ye.”
There was a click. She yanked her hand back as though it had been a snake’s rattle, then with a grin she bit down on to suppress, felt inside again. “The back panel’s fallen down. There’s a space tucked behind. That’s clever, Mister Ian.”
He felt a surge of pleasure. “I’ve never made a secret compartment before, but Catriona was insistent. Took a little time to devise it.”
“Compartment,” Seona repeated, as though trying out the word. She tilted a look at him. “What would your sister be wanting to hide?”
He blinked at her. “I never thought to wonder. But that’s what she wants. A secret compartment. And morning glories.”
“Morning glories . . . you mean some kind of fancy work to pretty it up?”
“Carved across the drawer front—here.” He made a bracket with his hands to show her the area, then set the pattern book between them and began turning the pages. Slowly.
She leaned close, pointing to a page of stylized roses. “Like these?”
“More like a flowering vine, I’m thinking. I haven’t any drawings of the sort I need, though.”
A strand of her hair lay dark against the linen of her sleeve. Without thinking he lifted it, seeing in its coil an echo of the design trapped in his head. She stilled at his touch, while he stared with dawning speculation. “Seona . . . I can manage the carving but was never much of a hand at sketching. Would ye care to give it a try?”
“Draw something for your sister’s desk?” Astonishment took hold of her features, and something else he’d almost have called eagerness, before it was snuffed like a candle’s guttered flame. “I best not, Mister Ian.”
She reached for the bowl, preparing to go. He put a hand on her arm. “No one else knows what ye do. We’d be careful, aye?”