Mountain Laurel

by Lori Benton

  Movement drew Seona’s attention to a figure down the passage. Mama. She’d gone around through the parlor. But why . . . ?

  Her gaze jerked back to Master Hugh. Every other eye was fixed on Miss Judith clinging to Mister Ian. None but Seona—and the figure hurrying down the passage—saw when Master Hugh slumped against the doorframe. The rest went on weeping and quarreling.

  Then, save for the rain’s patter, there was silence for an everlasting second before their voices broke around Seona like glass splintering.

  “Uncle Hugh!”

  “Papa!”

  And she knew they’d turned in time to see what she’d seen—Master Hugh, eyes blank and knees buckling, sliding down the door molding, coming to rest in the circle of Lily’s arms.

  The little basket where she kept her treasures—pretty pebbles, a few arrowheads, a redbird’s feather Ally once gave her—sat nestled atop the faded quilt in her arms as Seona stood for the last time at the top of the garret stair. The heat trapped under the roof pressed in as she stared at the place her and her mama’s pallets had lain. Dust lay over the house-clutter heaped about, but those two spots were bare. Sight of them saddened her, like the passing of someone she’d taken for granted.

  She drew breath to say a prayer for Master Hugh.

  “Seona?” Mister Ian peered up at her, shoulders filling the tight stairwell. She hadn’t seen him since he hauled Master Hugh up from her mama’s arms and half carried him to his bed. “Is there aught I can bring down for ye?”

  “No, Mister Ian. This is the last of it.” She descended the stair. When he reached to steady her, she was tempted to do like Miss Judith and cling to him. Such liberty wasn’t hers to take. “How is he?”

  “My aunt has him smothered under quilts with a fire laid and him sweating away, white as the sheets. And naught I can say to dissuade the woman.” Mister Ian’s mouth twisted like he’d tasted something bitter. “She’s keen of a sudden to have your mother by.”

  He reached for her armload, into which she’d tucked her drawings. If ever she aimed to speak of it, now was the time. “Mister Ian . . . I’m meant to burn all my pictures.”

  He pulled her into his room. The toting basket sat on the floor where she’d left it hours ago when Miss Rosalyn hauled her off.

  “Take care of that if ye must,” he said, seeing her eye the laundry, still needing put up. “Come back to me after, aye?”

  He was sitting on the edge of the bedtick when she returned. Across the counterpane he’d spread her drawings—including the one of him. “Rosalyn was in the shop earlier, looking at the patterns. I knew she had her suspicions, but she didn’t say why she was so keen on those morning glory designs. Has ye drawing on her walls, does she?”

  “She wants her room to look like Miss Phyllida’s.” Amazing she could sound so calm with his likeness lying in plain sight.

  He reached for it and held it between his hands. “Ye did this from memory?”

  “Yes, sir. After you’d gone back north.” As she spoke, the room brightened. Sunlight streamed through the window behind Mister Ian, yellowing the scraps of paper littering the bed. His eyes should have been in shadow. Instead they caught some odd bend of light in the room and blazed up bright.

  “There’ll be no burning. I’ll keep them for ye.” He handled her drawings with care, rolling them inside the raven picture. He tied the ribbon and set them aside. “I wanted ye to see what more ye could do. I knew what could come of it but told myself I’d stand between, that I wouldn’t let it touch ye. I’m sorry.”

  “Turns out Master Hugh knew all along. Mama, too.” Before he could say something more, she spoke up first. “Mister Ian, can I ask you something?”

  “Aye, of course.”

  “Did you mean it a kindness, that day in the hollow you said you’d let me go on drawing and wouldn’t tell?”

  Slanting light struck his cheekbone and the line of his nose, making plain the strain of that day and his remorse.

  “I did.”

  “Then you did what you meant to do, letting me draw for you.” There was a burning in her eyes. She wanted to say this right. It mattered. She blinked hard and hurried her words. “I’m glad you let me help because I never in my life seen anything so fine as what you made of that desk for your sister.”

  The blue of his eyes warmed, spilling over her like the light. “The praise of the praiseworthy,” he said. “I’m honored.”

  The praise of the praiseworthy. Distracted by those lovely words, Seona missed her footing on the bottom stair and stumbled. She hung on to the bedding, but the little basket flew off the pile, hit the wall, and burst open. Pebbles and arrowheads went rattling across the floor. She was after them at once, but Miss Lucinda got there first, drawn from Master Hugh’s room by the clatter.

  “Reckless girl! Is there no end to the turmoil you will inflict upon this household?” She snatched up the basket and came at Seona, then winced, swished aside her petticoat, and picked up the pebble she’d trodden upon. She stared at it in her hand.

  “Seems we’ve had a squirrel nesting over our heads.” Miss Rosalyn had emerged from Master Hugh’s room, behind her mother.

  Ignoring her, Miss Lucinda stepped closer, Seona’s basket in one hand, pebble in the other. “Where did you get this?”

  “I gave that old basket to Seona, years ago.” Miss Judith had come to the door too. A faint handprint still showed pink on one cheek. “You patched it up, I see.” Miss Judith blinked at Seona, smiling though her eyes were pained.

  “Thank you for clarifying, Judith.” The mistress spoke with exaggerated patience. “Ladies, go back to your stepfather and shut the door. I’ll help Seona gather her things.”

  Her daughters shared a puzzled look behind her back but did as she said, leaving Seona alone in the passage with their mother.

  “I’ll tidy this, ma’am, and—”

  Miss Lucinda tossed the basket aside and grabbed her arm. “I wasn’t speaking of that ratty old basket.” She held out her hand, showing the pebble. It was one of the prettier ones, a knobby yellow thing, shiny, big as a hazelnut. “Where did you get this?”

  “Likely from Ally. He’d give me pebbles like that when I was little.”

  “Naomi’s half-wit found this? Where?”

  “I don’t know exactly. He turned up some in the fields. Found some in the creek. He didn’t usually tell me where.”

  Miss Lucinda’s eyes felt like they were boring into her. She turned her loose. “Clean up this mess. Keep the basket if you wish.”

  Seona started scooping up the pebbles nearest to hand, as Miss Lucinda’s fist slipped into the side seam of her skirt, like she was reaching for the pocket tied beneath.

  When his knock went unanswered, Ian opened the door across the passage from his room wide enough to see Thomas, candlelit, hunched before the trunk he used for a desk, writing in his journal. “Have ye aught becoming to say of me in your wee book?”

  Thomas didn’t turn. “I shouldn’t wager on it.”

  “I haven’t coin enough to make it worthwhile—yet.” Leaving the door open in hopes of drawing a breeze through the half-open window, Ian sat on a crate pushed against the wall. He set the covered plate he carried beside him. “Look, Thomas. I didn’t mean to snap at ye before, in the shop. It was wrong of me.”

  The sun had set on that tumultuous day. The light outside was purpling toward twilight, but the candle shed a warm glow on Thomas’s sweating brow.

  “Reckon that depends on your point of view.”

  “What d’ye mean?” Ian scowled. “Put down that quill and face me to talk.”

  With meticulous care, Thomas set the pen in its stand and swiveled on the stool. “You do recall my being your slave is a ruse?”

  Ian pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, then blew out a sigh. “Let me start this again. In the shop, with my uncle, I was preoccupied with an issue that had naught to do with ye—as I’m sure ye’ve heard though ye wisely
kept clear of it. Still I addressed ye in a manner ye didn’t deserve. For that I ask your pardon.”

  Thomas eyed him a moment more, then inclined his head. “Granted.”

  “As for recalling our ruse,” Ian continued, dropping his voice. “What d’ye take me for?”

  “Since you ask—”

  “It was rhetorical, aye? Besides, it’s down to your own muleheadedness ye’re here. I see no remedy save I escort ye back to Boston, which I cannot do with my uncle taken to his bed.”

  “What is it ailing him?” Thomas asked.

  “My aunt’s pestering to send for a physician but my uncle won’t allow it,” Ian said. “Says he knows well enough it’s his heart. Takes to fluttering and skipping—paining him sharp if he pushes too hard, leaving him weak for days. I take it this time it’s worse, though.”

  Thomas nodded. “Don’t add worry about me to your troubles. I’m content to stay for now.”

  “Are ye? Content, I mean. Ye worked for a man and I was paid for it.”

  With that scene in the shop still a bruise between them, it occurred to Ian the accusation leveled at him moments ago might have some substance—a realization as uncomfortable as the heat. Treating Thomas as a slave without making him feel like one was a line too blighted obscure to walk cleanly.

  Swallowing frustration, he said, “That mahogany by rights is yours.”

  Thomas nodded, a fleeting satisfaction curving his lips. Then he waved a hand. “Make those desks for Stoddard. I got what I wanted from the arrangement.” Before Ian could inquire further into that, Thomas shot a glance at the covered plate. “Peace offering?”

  “Supper.” Ian drew back the linen from a mound of biscuits, roasted chicken, and boiled sweet potatoes, still faintly steaming.

  Their stomachs rumbled in unison. Ian dragged another trunk from its place. He set the plate between them, then reached around the doorway, bringing in two pewter cups and a cider jug. They ate in companionable silence until Ian ventured, “So. Chesterfield. How was it?”

  Thomas popped the last of a potato into his mouth and shrugged. “I made hogsheads, sunup to sundown. Took my meals on a bench outside the kitchen. Pryce came by every other day or so to ogle my work. Seemed pleased enough.”

  “Did ye have time to yourself—aside from meals and sleeping?”

  “An hour or two at night. Besides two other cooper’s apprentices, I had a boy helping me. Josiah. His mama works in the kitchen.” Thomas’s mouth softened briefly but firmed again as he said, “Pryce hinted he’d be agreeable to having me train Jo for the coopering—to my master’s further benefit, of course.”

  “Pryce wants ye back? He never said so to me.”

  Belowstairs a door closed. Voices drifted up. Lucinda and Rosalyn. Ian waited until their conversation receded toward the front of the house, amused to see Thomas’s shoulders relaxing with his own. Through the window a breeze wafted. Ian loosened his neckcloth.

  “Listen,” he said. “I don’t think it wise to form attachments at Chesterfield. This lad—”

  “Speaking of attachments,” Thomas interrupted, “Seona told me what’s been going on between you two. She wouldn’t say how you found her out.”

  She hadn’t mentioned the birch hollow. Ian was glad of it. “I offered her the chance to draw. She took it. I meant to please her.”

  “Please her? She’s a slave, Mastah Ian.”

  “I know what she is.”

  Thomas began a retort but broke it off, turning toward the doorway.

  “Cousin?” a diffident voice cut in. Judith stood with a lighted taper in a saucer. “I fear we neglected supper.” She smiled a little ruefully at sight of the plate on the trunk, scattered with crumbs and chicken bones. “I see you’ve managed to fend for yourself.”

  “Aye, we have.” He searched her face. “Are ye better now?”

  She lifted a hand to her cheek. “Mama was distraught. I don’t hold it against her.” She seemed to mean it.

  “I mind ye tried to speak up for Seona and Lily. Thank ye for that.”

  Judith’s cheeks stained pink. “You were being kind. I could see that. I’ll say good night, Cousin . . . and Thomas,” she added.

  As the glow of her candle faded, he noticed Thomas watching him with speculation. “It’s more than your uncle having taken to his bed, why you won’t go back to Boston.”

  “Her?” Ian waved a dismissive hand at the spot Judith had vacated.

  “I didn’t mean your cousin.”

  Ian stood, mistrusting the emphasis Thomas placed on that word. “What, then?”

  “You want to redeem yourself in your daddy’s eyes. But I knew that wouldn’t be enough to hold you here. Not when you saw how it is.”

  “Ye don’t know my mind—not as well as ye think. Part of me wants nothing more than to saddle Ruaidh, leave this place, and never look back.”

  Surprise flickered in Thomas’s eyes. “What hinders you?”

  The light was gone now, save for the candle’s. Ian took up the plate and jug.

  “I’ve Stoddard’s contract to draw up,” he said but paused at the door. It galled him to admit Thomas—and that meddlesome Quaker—had been right. How could he in clean conscience entangle himself in this life of slaveholding? Yet how could he walk away?

  He was caught in it now, the issue taken on flesh and blood. His own.

  “I cannot, is all,” he said and crossed the passage to his room.

  14

  They were still up to their knees in corn. Across the mound left between them, Ian caught Seona’s glance as she flung a shucked ear into a nearby bucket. Ignoring the burn of blisters, he redoubled his efforts. Grip, rip, and jerk. Rip and jerk. Snap and toss. He was getting the hang of it; Seona was husking only three ears now to his one.

  The race had begun at dusk, when John Reynold divided the mountain of corn gleaned from his field with a row of marking sticks, then split his work force—Ian, Thomas, most of the Cameron slaves, Charlie Spencer, and a neighboring family, the Allens—into two teams. Ian and Thomas, neither having husked an ear of corn before, were banished to opposing sides. While the smallest Allen children frolicked with Spencer’s motley pack of hounds, they’d set to work in a spirit of genial competition. A bonfire burned outside the barn. A cider barrel stood ready for a dip of the gourd.

  Halfway through the work, with the fire sparking against a star-strewn sky, Naomi, Cecily Reynold, and Rebecca Allen had abandoned them to see to the feast to follow the husking.

  They were down to the bottom of the mound now. Discarded husks lay in drifts. Naomi and Rebecca Allen trooped from the lantern-lit barn, waving off cries of help from Esther, husking corn with furious zeal at Ian’s side.

  Seona tossed away another ear and paused to tug up the shawl she wore against the chill. It was a length of wool, predominantly green, crossed with faded bands of blue with a rusty cord running through the center. An old plaid, worn, but fine of weave.

  “D’ye know what this is?” Ian had asked as they walked the forest path to the Reynolds’ with his uncle’s slaves.

  “This old shawl? Mama says it came from the old mistress.”

  “It’s an arisaid. A thing a Highland woman would wear.” He’d wondered, had his uncle’s first wife been a Scot? The woman had died round about the time Ian’s da crossed the Atlantic and settled in Boston. Not until then had Robert Cameron begun a regular correspondence with the half brother he hadn’t seen for nigh thirty years. By the time Ian was old enough to be aware of distant kin he’d never met, his aunt was so long dead she’d sparked no curiosity.

  Now, in the firelight, he was mindful only of what the garment’s color did for Seona’s eyes, until a nudge from Esther recalled him to his task. Grip, rip, and jerk. Rip and jerk. Snap . . .

  He tossed the ear into the nearest bucket, narrowly missing little Ruthie Allen, whose task it was, along with her brother, to drag the buckets to the crib, empty them, and bring them back ready to fill again.
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  As Ian reached for another ear, Thomas, perched on the log beside Seona, brushed shoulders with her, speaking too low for Ian to hear. She flung away an ear, laughter in her eyes.

  Grip, rip, jerk . . . snap. Ian flung the ear, making Ruthie Allen dodge and squeal as if it were a game. It should have been, but Ian’s mood darkened as Thomas’s laughter rose above the hum of conversation. Annoyed, he turned away. Down the double line of huskers, he saw a dark face shining in the firelight, as unsmiling as his own: Will, his uncle’s field hand, shucking corn with his eyes fixed on Seona.

  Teeth grinding like millstones, Ian turned his attention to the corn piled at his feet, fumbled the ear he’d half-husked and grabbed for it blindly, catching it before it fell.

  “By jingo, lookit there! I’d have sworn there weren’t a red ear in this batch.”

  Charlie Spencer’s exclamation brought Ian upright. He stared blankly at the scruffy little man, then beyond him as conversation fell away. Necks craned. Fingers pointed. Beside him on the log, Esther bounced with excitement. “Who you gonna kiss, Mister Ian?”

  On her other side, Jubal shushed her. “Don’t you be asking Mister Ian such a thing.”

  “But he got to kiss somebody.”

  Ian frowned. “I do?”

  “Look at him.” Spencer pushed a derelict hat back on his balding head. “Ain’t got a clue what we’re on about.”

  From the other end of the dwindling mound of corn, John Reynold explained. “You’ve found a red ear, Ian. Tradition grants you your pick of present female company to kiss in exchange for it—should she let you.”

  “The unmarried women,” Zeb Allen clarified, catching sight of his own wife, heavily pregnant with their sixth offspring, coming back from the cabin with Cecily Reynold.

  Ian stared at the half-husked ear in his hands. The exposed kernels were a mottled red, as was his face—or so it felt when he looked straight into the drowning green of Seona’s eyes.

  Helpful shouts arose: