Mountain Laurel

by Lori Benton

  “That’s right.” A scream wanted to tear its way out of her.

  Thomas cleared his throat. “You left the coop open, pester-bug.”

  Esther glowered at the name, then whirled to see the slatted door of the henhouse swinging, the meanest hen slipping out.

  Seona didn’t stay to watch her dart after it.

  She sprinkled dried geranium in a saucer, then poured in a cupful of water. While it steeped, she found the cloths for washing wounds. Thomas, who’d followed her into the herb shed, caught her shaking hand. “Let me do it. You can’t see your own head.”

  “How’d you find me?” They kept their voices low. Nothing but a door stood between them and the kitchen, where Naomi was working. Seona would have to go in and help soon but needed time to gather all her pieces.

  “I followed you,” Thomas said, not a bit shamefaced to admit it. “Saw Dawes come down the ridge. Only took a moment to round up the hands.”

  She flinched as he pressed the cloth to her brow, feeling sullied by what happened. No amount of water was going to help that stain. Tears swelled behind her eyes until the hurt of holding them back was too much. Thomas put the cloth down and took her in his arms. She cried silent into his shirt, yearning to be where Ian was, to sink into one of those warm springs, let the water come over her head.

  Gradually she realized Thomas was talking.

  “. . . woman over at Chesterfield, a kitchen girl. And her boy. They’ll go with me when the time comes.”

  She took her head off his shoulder, wiping her nose. “Go? What are you saying?”

  Thomas dropped his voice even lower. “I’m saying it doesn’t have to be this way. Not for you. I aim to go back north before winter. Can’t promise to take many with me this time, but you and your mama should come.”

  Had that tree knocked her wits loose, or was Thomas saying he meant to turn runaway and carry off two Chesterfield slaves? And he was inviting her into it?

  “I heard your mistress talking to the mousy daughter, that Miss Judith,” he said. “She means to put you with Will, to make new little slaves for her. Figures it’s only a matter of time before she brings Master Hugh around to it. Or she’ll wait ’til he’s gone.”

  Seona’s throat clenched too tight to speak.

  “You know in the end she’ll get her way . . . unless you come north with me. Find a place no one knows you and pass for white. You could do it, if that’s what you want. Or maybe you could stay with me. Whatever.”

  Leave Mountain Laurel? Pass for white? She gaped at Thomas, hardly knowing what to say first to this crazy talk. “How you meaning to get safe away?”

  Thomas stared back, weighing his words. “There’s a man promised to help me. A white man we met coming south. A Quaker.”

  “How you meaning to find a Quaker?”

  Thomas narrowed his eyes at her, then shook his head. “Reckon that’s all I’ll say, for now.”

  Too much already, Seona was thinking. “Does Mister Ian know what you’re planning?”

  Thomas’s mouth twisted. “Wouldn’t that put a hitch in things, if he did?” Which was him telling her plain to keep her mouth shut. “Just think on it, Seona. Freedom.”

  Thomas was waiting, wanting her to say she’d do this fool thing, when Naomi opened the door to the kitchen and saw her face.

  Seona fled the kitchen after supper was cleared. She’d the slaves’ washing, which had to be done on her own time, and was hanging out the last of it by lantern when she pushed aside a shift to find a man standing on the other side. She leapt back and nearly fell over the toting basket. “Will! You trying to scare me dead? What you doing up by the house this time of night?”

  Will glared in the lantern’s glow. “Come to ask you somethin’.”

  Seona snatched up basket and lantern and made for the washhouse to put them up. Will waited outside, then fell in with her as she started for the cabins.

  “Ask me what?”

  “Why would Mister Ian want you looked after?”

  She stopped in her tracks. “What’s it to you if he’s mindful of my well-being?”

  “Well-being?” Will stared, then shook his head. “You know better. White men be like chilluns—find themselves a pretty toy to play with and leave it in the dirt when they done. They don’t care about no well-being.”

  Her face went hot, though the rest of her was chilled. “You don’t know—”

  “Where you think you come from, girl? Or why your mama never give to Ally or Munro for a broomstick match? Master Hugh long since done with her, but he won’t share, neither.”

  It was the nearest anyone had ever come to admitting Master Hugh was her daddy. Except for Ian. “Ian—Mister Ian ain’t like that.”

  She’d caught herself too late.

  “Don’t got you calling him mister no more, do he? You got some notion he in love with you?” He made the words sound dirty.

  “Of course not. He’s just . . .” She wasn’t sure what she’d meant to say, but Will wasn’t listening anyway.

  “You know that woman they let me be with, away at Chesterfield? She done had two chilluns since—both of ’em near white as you.”

  Seona had never seen the woman Master Hugh and Gideon Pryce let Will visit twice a month, but Will’s skin was dark as blackberries. Pity came over her. She reached for his hand.

  His fingers closed on hers, eager and warm. “I asked Master Hugh for you, but he won’t pay me heed. You ask him, girl. He do what you want.”

  “You got a wife.”

  “That woman ain’t mine. Ain’t you listening?”

  She tried to pull away, but Will’s fingers latched tighter. “Maybe it ain’t Mister Ian you want. I seen you with Thomas aplenty.”

  Head throbbing, Seona shut her eyes. “I’m too tired for this, Will.”

  “Then wake up, girl! What is it you want? You got to figure what that is and how you gonna take it. Ain’t nobody gonna give it to you. Those that would ain’t got it to give, and those that got it gonna keep it to spite you.”

  She broke free and fled to Naomi’s cabin, Will’s words beating in her aching head.

  20

  The air inside the shop prickled with the scent of fresh wood shavings, but there was no sign of Thomas when Ian entered. More pressing to his mind was Seona’s whereabouts.

  As if his thoughts had summoned her, he turned at the scuff of footsteps to see her framed in the doorway. Little more than a fortnight had passed since their parting, yet it might have been a year for the jolt he felt at seeing her. For the first time since waking to Rosalyn, he remembered the dream he’d had at the inn—and who the dream-woman in his arms, hair tumbled loose and lips softly yielding, had been.

  The memory broke upon him with such force it threatened to knock him off his feet. Seona came into the shop, took his arm, and gently pushed him onto the stool. He went down unresisting, the hard surface taking his weight.

  “You all right?” Her creek-water eyes were fixed on him. She’d a kerchief pulled low on her forehead, hair loose down her back. A long, dark coil of it fell over her shoulder. He took it, looped it round his finger.

  Holding her tethered. Grinning like an idiot. “I brought ye something,” he said and felt it to his soul when her eyes smiled into his.

  “What is it?”

  He let go her hair to rise and fish it from his knapsack, wrapped in a handkerchief. He held it out to her, resting on his palm. “Unwrap it and see.”

  Her fingertips brushed his skin as she did, sending shivers up his arm. She peeled back the final fold, stared at the polished horn comb, then took her hands away.

  “I can’t have that,” she said.

  “Aye, ye can. Unless it doesn’t please ye?”

  “It’s beautiful. But I can’t. I can’t even have it in my cabin. What if Miss Lucinda takes a notion to go poking round?”

  He frowned. “Why would she?”

  “She’s done it. Turned out the cabins when something
went missing. She’ll say I stole it.”

  He started to tell her she’d nothing left to fear from his aunt, but memory of his name scrawled below a contract, witnessed and legal, that would send her away from Mountain Laurel stole his voice. Send her away, when all he wanted to do in that moment was hold her close.

  Seeming to weaken in the face of his silence, Seona reached for the comb. This time she took it from his hand, holding it closer to examine the carving. “Morning glories,” she said with a catch that might have been a laugh. “Where did you find it?”

  “A shop in Salisbury. I saw it and knew . . . it was meant for ye.”

  She raised her eyes to him. “No one’s ever taken such thought over me.”

  “It’s long past time they did.” He brushed the edge of her kerchief, drawn down nearly to her brows. “Will ye let me?”

  Her eyes searched his, regret-filled. “You know I can never wear it.”

  “Not yet,” he said with a confidence he couldn’t bring himself to explain. “But just for a moment? So I can see.” He pushed back the kerchief as he spoke, smoothing the hair at her temple, and saw a bruise, a half-healed scrape.

  He fumbled the comb, which clattered on the wood-dusted floor. “Seona. What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  She bent for the comb, sending her kerchief tumbling, but he grasped her arm. “Plainly it was something.”

  “I fell—in the woods. I’d gone to draw. Thomas was by.”

  “Was he?”

  Her glance flicked up at his sharpened tone. “You asked him to look after me?”

  “I did. I hated to leave ye. I wanted ye with me a dozen times.”

  “You did?”

  “A hundred times.” Still gripping her, he bent to kiss her brow, her cheek, then hesitantly, her lips. She might have been made of wood for all she responded.

  He drew back, a hollowness where his heart had seconds ago beat strong. “That’s it, then? Ye feel nothing for me?”

  She clamped her lips tight, but a sound escaped her. A groan. He held her inches from him.

  “If ye want me to leave ye alone, I will. But say it, Seona. Say what ye feel. Not what ye think I want to hear.”

  She raised a hand to his face. Trembling fingertips moved over his lips; then she laid her cheek against his breastbone. “What have my feelings got to do with anything?”

  “Everything,” he said, before her head reared up, silencing him. He heard it too: footsteps on the path beyond the door.

  They sprang apart. Before he could prevent her, she fled the shop.

  Seconds later Thomas stood in the doorway, frowning after Seona, then at Ian. “Guess I’m not the first to welcome you home, Mastah Ian.”

  He brushed past Ian, then halted to bend down. With a face as blank as any born slave’s, he placed Seona’s kerchief and the comb atop the workbench, then moved to his side of the shop.

  “Pryce paid a call while you were away. He begs another week of my labor.”

  Ian was about to protest any further arrangement with Pryce, until it struck him what having Thomas away from Mountain Laurel for a spell could mean. One less pair of eyes . . .

  “Is it something ye want to do?”

  “It is.” Appearing startled at his swift capitulation, Thomas jerked his chin toward the bench by the door. “He left the contract.”

  Ian tucked kerchief and comb into a coat pocket on his way to the door. “I’ll sign it. Let me speak to my uncle, see how we’re set for hogsheads here. Maybe in a week ye can go.”

  Ignoring Thomas’s sardonic, “Yessir, Mastah Ian,” he started for the weaving shed, from which issued a rhythmic thud—Lily, home scarce an hour and back at work—but hesitated. If Seona had fled to her mother, he couldn’t speak to her. If she hadn’t, no point in asking.

  He halted outside the empty washhouse. Above him arched a bowl of cloudless blue. The slopes beyond the orchard flamed gold and scarlet, patched with the green of pine and laurel.

  The orchard. She’d sought refuge there the day Stoddard visited, the day of his uncle’s collapse.

  He found her there again, alone this time with a basket at her hip, searching for windfall apples—or giving the appearance of it.

  She saw him coming and started walking fast. Away from him.

  “Seona, wait!”

  He caught her easily. She dropped the basket, scattering half-rotted fruit in a tumble of sweet decay. She didn’t fight his grip on her arm. “Miss Lucinda means to give me to Will. Reckon on account he’s asked for me and—”

  He gave her a brief shake. “No other man will have ye, Seona. Ye’re mine.”

  Her head jerked back as if he’d struck her. He dropped his hands from her, knowing he’d said it in the worst possible way.

  “Listen to me. It won’t happen—whatever my aunt’s scheming. I’ve seen to it.” Aye, he’d seen to it. With every moment it struck deeper: he’d bargained away any future he might have had with her, for her freedom.

  She stared past him, empty-eyed. “I ain’t worth what it takes to feed and clothe me. I don’t do nothing Maisy or Esther can’t do as well. If I start breeding, they can get their worth of me. But I can’t be having white babies.”

  Something dark swelled in Ian’s chest, jagged and sharp. “No one,” he said, forcing words past the barrier, “is going to do that to ye. Not while I live and breathe.”

  “If it comes down to making babies or being sold,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard, “I choose the babies. You been kind to me but Mama’s right. It’s got to stop now.”

  Did Lily want him to leave her daughter alone? She’d said nothing of the sort to him, not in all those days they’d journeyed together. Even if she had, he wasn’t certain he could heed such a warning now.

  He lifted his hands to cradle Seona’s face. “Hear what I’m saying to ye. It won’t happen.”

  He drew her to him, held her, murmured her name, until the sharp thing in his chest began to blunt. Leaves dropped scarlet from the trees around them, swirling like his thoughts. He stepped back, holding her at arm’s length, his heart beating heavy with a desperate idea. “My aunt won’t breed ye like stock nor sell ye away. Not if I marry ye first.”

  She didn’t shake her head so much as sway it, side to side. That he’d stunned her was no surprise. He felt poleaxed himself. But he was also more certain of this than he’d ever been of anything in his life.

  “I want ye, Seona.” He held out his hand, but she didn’t take it.

  “I saw Master Hugh going into the house,” she said. “Looking no better for all your pains getting him to those springs. Bide a while. I’ll be yours for the taking.”

  His heart plummeted with the weight of stones. “Ye say a thing like that to me? D’ye think that’s all I want—this?” He pulled her to him and kissed her. He wasn’t quick about it or very gentle, and they broke apart like combatants, breathing hard.

  Her eyes were snapping now. “What else is it you see in me you want so bad?”

  “Everything,” he said. “Your courage, your kindness, your strength, the beauty of your soul . . . everything, Seona. I want the work of your hands and the work of your heart to be for me—for us. I want to blister my hands and brown my face in the sun to give ye everything ye’ve gone without. I want your love . . . and I want your children. Our children.”

  “Ian . . .” She shut her eyes as if the picture he painted with his words was unbearable. “I can’t marry a white man. Or any man. Not legal. There ain’t a way.”

  There wasn’t, true, while she was enslaved. And in North Carolina. Both circumstances were going to change, but he couldn’t bear to tell her that. Not now.

  “Look at me, Seona.” He waited until she opened her eyes. “Have ye heard of a thing called handfasting?”

  She frowned. “Is that like a broomstick marriage?”

  “Not quite,” he said, though it was uncomfortably close. “It’s an old custom. My parents did it. They w
ere handfast a year and a day before they wed in kirk.”

  It wasn’t a deception, he told himself. They’d have a real wedding—perhaps on the journey north after she was free. Then she would be his, waiting for him in Boston. Waiting for his uncle to die and free him, too.

  He fetched a shaky breath. “It’s a way for us, Seona. But first, let me do this proper.” Afraid his legs mightn’t hold him for the duration, he knelt. The damp soaked cold through his breeches as he took her trembling hand. “Will ye do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

  “Ian, please.” She tugged at him, trying to pull him up, then dropped to her knees too. “Master Hugh won’t let us.”

  “He need never know.” He’d find a way to keep both promises, to his uncle and to her. The only thing that mattered now was whether she would have him.

  “But I’m a—”

  He touched his lips to hers, silencing her.

  “No matter where or how I found ye,” he said after the kiss, “were ye the queen of Sheba and above the lift of my eyes—I would love ye.”

  Her eyes were wide and drowning green. “You love me?”

  “Aye.” He took the comb from his pocket, brushed back her hair, and slid it in, trailing a finger across the fading bruise at her temple.

  She raised a tentative hand. “Is it fitting?”

  “It suits ye.” He touched the comb as though it were a diadem. “Will ye accept it as an earnest of all I mean to give ye—even if I must hold it in keeping for now? Will ye be handfast with me?”

  Some constriction within her seemed to loosen its hold. She spread her hands against his chest, ran them over the shoulders of his coat and high around his neck. Their touch was chill, but her mouth turned up to meet his was warm and sweet.

  “If you want me . . . I will. But how? When?”

  Ian smiled against her kiss, then told her.

  21

  Ian was there at the hollow ahead of her. So was Munin, perched up in a birch tree that leaned across the pool. The raven was eyeing Ian, who stood at the water’s edge eyeing it back. “Is it ye, Cousin,” he asked, “come to stand witness for us?”