by Lori Benton
He frowned at the circle of juniper, broken and scattered now. No guidance to be had there. Not for him.
Malcolm stirred to rise. Ian rose to aid him. The man was so slight it was like pulling a child to his feet.
“Ye can read the Scriptures backward and forward, Mister Ian, but if ye dinna ken the voice of the Lord who inspired them, all the printed words in the world willna matter. Ye willna see if ye dinna believe.” Malcolm didn’t release his hand but turned it over in his knobby grasp. Ian’s knuckles were raw from the cold, cracked and threaded with blood. “Lily has a salve, for when ye come back.”
“Am I coming back?” Ian pulled his hand free and bent for the bundle Ally left, meaning to give it to the old man.
“That’s for ye,” Malcolm said. “From Master Hugh.”
Ian drew a chest full of air, sharp with the promise of another frost. Perhaps even snow.
Thoughts pounded in his head. Thoughts of duty. Thoughts of escape. Could he put aside betrayal and guilt, stay for the sake of his uncle’s slaves?
He wasn’t that noble. Nor that good.
“Lily had a thing for me to tell ye.”
He swung his attention back to Malcolm, stooped over his cane. “Lily?”
The old man’s eyes softened. “When ye woke from the fever, ye asked her a question, did ye no’?”
He’d not thought of those first moments of waking, after the catamount’s attack, since he left for the ridge. Memory of them returned, vivid with the urgency he’d felt, the certainty that Lily held the answer he’d been seeking. “Aye. I asked what she wished me to do. She didn’t answer.”
“She does so now.”
Footsteps rustled the fallen leaves. Ally and John, coming back to take the old man home in triumph. Ian shut his eyes, as though that would make the hearing of it easier.
“What does Lily ask of me?”
32
Lily had one word for him. Stay.
The message from his uncle, though wordless, echoed the appeal. Contained in the bundle Ally brought were Ian’s best suit of clothes, brushed clean, and his razor and strop. It was time to come down off the ridge and make his choice known.
The following morning he took a brand from the fire and set it to the shelter. He watched the structure catch and blaze, collapsing onto itself in a smoking ruin, as a bank of low cloud moved over the Carraways, promising more rain.
Obscured in thickening mist, it seemed just another stone thrusting through the leaf-mulch in a fold of the ridge. Ian nearly strode past it before its smooth regularity registered. Not a natural stone, nor just the one. A group of stones he’d taken for the bony knuckles of the hillside assumed their true identities. He’d blundered into a graveyard.
No boundary separated the cluster of headstones from the surrounding forest, but the markers appeared tended. He rounded the nearest and read the name chiseled into its face:
Miranda MacDonald Cameron
12 October 1736 Scotland
2 July 1771 Randolph County, NC
Beloved Wife
He crossed to a weathered marker, that of old Duncan Cameron, Mountain Laurel’s original settler. Completing the half circle was Aidan Alexander Cameron, born 1757. Below his son’s name, Hugh Cameron had engraved a longer inscription than that on his wife’s headstone: As for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me.
Ian groaned, closed his eyes, but the words remained, bleak and indelible.
He started to back away, yet something compelled him to leave the graves altered from how he’d found them, as if removing the windblown twig from old Duncan’s resting place or uprooting the tangle of weeds obscuring the base of Miranda Cameron’s headstone could break the timeless spell of sorrow that overhung the place.
The weeds were brown and draggled. The sodden earth released them without struggle, but Ian let them slip from unfeeling fingers. Another name was chiseled into Miranda Cameron’s stone, below the words Beloved Wife. With shaking fingers, he brushed aside the last of the weeds.
Seona Cameron
2 July 1771–3 July 1771
The bairn had lived a day. Briefly enough to be buried with her mother. Long enough to be named—the name Lily would, years later, give her daughter. In hope that his uncle would accept her, bearing the name of his first wife’s child?
“Seona—” His lips clamped over the name, like the forcible closing of a wound.
He was stumbling in his haste to leave when the first haunting calls broke the stillness. He halted, gazing at the treetops that grasped at the mist with skeletal fingers. The calling of the wild geese echoed, muffled and refracted, as they passed unseen above him.
When the cries faded, only the dead were left behind. Ian hoisted rifle and knapsack and went down the ridge to face the living.
In an empty horse box in the stable he stripped and bathed, then changed into the garments his uncle had sent. While Jubal held a cracked glass fetched from his own cabin, Ian scraped away his beard, conscious of the slave’s eyes shining in the light of a horn lantern, watching him, apprehensive. Ian wiped his face, then tied a neckcloth at his collar.
While Jubal gathered up glass and basin, Ian brushed self-consciously at his blue coat. It no longer fit him snug, yet his chest felt constricted. His hair was tailed tight enough to sting his scalp. His buckled shoes pinched. “Will I do?” he asked his uncle’s slave.
Jubal paused, giving him a once-over. “Now you will, Mister Ian.”
Mouth tucking wryly, Ian eyed the buckskin breeches and quilled coat, crumpled in the straw. “Will ye do me the one favor more?”
Jubal shifted his burdens to add the garments. “Want me take ’em to the washhouse?”
“I want ye to burn them.”
His answer surprised the man. “You sure ’bout that?”
“I am.” He reached for Juturna, who thrust her seal-brown muzzle through the slats of the neighboring box. Over her bout with colic, the filly promised to make a bonny tall creature, a credit to her blood. Ian stroked her silky nose, minding her birth and the hope of those days.
He’d been right about the two-faced Janus.
“Devil take this dithering,” he muttered. He’d do what he must and leave thinking for later.
“You be staying on, then, Mister Ian?” Jubal finally asked.
Ian bent his head in the direction of the house. “I suppose I’m about to find out.”
No one in the house had marked his return, not like the slaves beyond its walls. Ian had felt their watchful presence all the way to the back door, though he never glimpsed them. D’ye see, Lily? he’d willed her to hear in the dripping silence of the yard. I can keep a promise.
The weight of that promise rooted him to the floorboards outside his uncle’s room. At the other end of the passage, Maisy stood at the parlor doorway, holding a tea service, as though waiting to be called in.
Rosalyn’s voice carried down the passage, but it wasn’t to Maisy she spoke. “. . . said they found Cousin Ian, but I think he never means to come down off that ridge. He’ll turn into some outlandish recluse with a beard down to his belt. Years from now Judith and I will tell tales of him to scare your grandchildren, Mama.”
“Must you say such things?” Judith’s admonishment was quickly drowned.
“Must you so readily overlook the fact he lied to us all?” his aunt countered. “He deceived us about Thomas.”
“And Seona,” Rosalyn interjected. “Yet he’d the audacity to speak ill of Gideon. He’s no better, the hypocrite. Well, Mama? Do you still think it wise I refused him?”
“Refused?” Judith said. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, ninny, that Gideon made me an offer of marriage in August, but Mama bade me hold him off until Cousin Ian arrived.”
“I will concede,” Lucinda said, “that may have been a miscalculation. Still, Gideon hasn’t ceased his attentions nor bestowed them elsewhere. Has he?”
“Phyllida would have told me, if
so.” Rosalyn’s voice rose. “And really, what does it matter if Gideon dallies with a servant from time to time? It’s to be expected—”
“Modulate your tone, Daughter,” Lucinda cut in. “You’ll wake your papa.”
“Your papa,” a tired male voice rumbled, “is verra much awake. And surprised to learn a daughter of his house had an offer of marriage made her—four months past. Would ye care to tell me why I’m just hearing of it now?”
While voices rose, Ian started resolutely down the passage. Maisy, engrossed in the conflict beyond the parlor door, startled at his approach, rattling the tea service. Ian took the tray from her unresisting hands. It was a full tea with a plate of Naomi’s ginger cake. The spiced aroma clenched his stomach as he made his entrance.
Silence fell, as sudden as if he’d tossed a rock into a pond of croaking frogs. He set the tray on a table and bowed to his uncle’s wife. “Auntie, will ye have sugar to your tea?”
Uncle Hugh threw off a lap robe and rose from his chair, appearing more than a little relieved. “Lad, welcome home. I see ye got the clothes I sent.”
Scrutinizing his appearance—a far cry from his cousin’s prediction, he hoped—his aunt’s expression thawed minutely, the frostbite of shock giving way to speculation. “If we’re to have this conversation now, let us do it with our tea. Maisy? I’m sure you’re still there. Mr. Cameron has made his dramatic entry. Cease your skulking and come serve.”
While the housemaid obeyed, Ian stood in the center of the room, eyes on his uncle. “I’ve come to give ye my answer, sir.”
“So I see,” Uncle Hugh said, matching him in formality. “And what might that answer be?”
“That I do mean to stay . . . since ye’ll have me.”
There was no immediate response to the declaration. No sound save the snap of burning logs in the hearth, the clink of dishes as Maisy served cake. The faces of his kin turned to him, the chinaware plates suspended in white hands, were a blur. What was sharp and immediate was his heart, pounding fit to burst free and flee the stuffy parlor.
His uncle’s gaze held him, pale and clear. “Ye’re resolved upon it, then? I’m glad of it, Nephew—”
“Begging your pardon, but I’ve conditions. If ye’ll permit me to name them.”
Lucinda set down her tea. “Conditions?”
Ian felt the sweat gathering on his brow. “For one, I’ll not ask any man to perform a task I haven’t set my own hands to. I’ll work alongside your people, Uncle, learn every chore and task, no matter how menial.”
His uncle nodded. “’Tis how I began.”
Though meant as approbation, the words produced an inward shudder. Ian had but to look into his uncle’s eyes to see his future. The man he would become.
“Ye said conditions?” Uncle Hugh prompted.
“Aye, sir. I mean as well to—” There was nothing for it but to push the words past the croaking strings of his throat. “I mean to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage . . . with your blessing.”
In the hearth a pine knot popped, a sound like distant musket fire. It was nothing to the tension that crackled in the air as heads bent forward and eyes bored into him.
“That wasna a condition of mine, ye’ll recall,” his uncle said.
There it was, his way of escape. But even the possibility was a thing he must deny himself lest in some future moment of weakness he take it.
“No half measures, Uncle. Ye said that too.”
Hugh Cameron lifted a hand to his beard, then swept it in a gesture of concession. “Verra well. Ye’ve my blessing. But had ye no’ best be asking the lass will she have ye?”
Ian had the grace to flush. “Aye, sir.”
He turned to face his cousins, seated side by side in matching chairs. He felt oddly removed from his body, so that it didn’t seem his eyes that swept their faces and rested upon Rosalyn, with her golden hair and cornflower eyes and lush mouth parting in expectation . . . then moved past her to fix upon her sister, plain as a sparrow in a gown of gray. He took a step, wondering whose legs moved him, whose hand grasped and raised the small white hand of his younger cousin. Kneel, he told himself but couldn’t get the message to the appropriate limbs. He stood like a puppet with its strings pulled taut. “Judith—”
“Judith?” Lucinda and Rosalyn exclaimed together.
Judith’s face was lifted, her mouth fallen slack. He was aware of the rustle of skirts as Rosalyn rose and went to her mother. “Judith may have him, Mama. After all, I believe I shall marry Gideon Pryce!”
The dismissal barely registered. The pressure of the small hand in his increased, tentative, questioning, a tether to a body bent on carrying him through this ordeal. “Cousin—will ye consent to be my wife?”
Judith shut her mouth. The shock in her brown eyes softened. A light sprang into them, wavered like a candle’s new-lit flame, then steadied. Something inside Ian thawed, flowing toward the serenity of that flame.
Judith set her tea on the table by her chair. He blinked, and she was on her feet in front of him, the neat parting down the crown of her head barely level with his chest. He’d expected her to appeal to her mother for guidance. She didn’t. She looked at him, quite composed.
“Yes, Ian,” she said. “I will consent to be your wife. With all my heart.”
PART V
January–May 1794
Unsteady and profitless though he remains, dare this Prodigal look back from whence he’s come? Would you be watching for me?
33
Gooseflesh prickled over Ian’s legs, standing the hairs on end. Ignoring the chill, he splayed his hands on the windowsill, pressing his forehead to the frosted glass. Snow had fallen with the dark, but the clouds were parting now, drifting east. The thin blanket of white magnified the moon’s sporadic glow. Down by the oaks the slave cabins hunkered beneath snow-laced boughs.
“Seona.” Her whispered name scalded the frigid air. Was she safe this bitter night? Imagination knifed through him: Seona and Thomas entwined in some distant hayloft, clinging to each other for warmth. He gripped the sill so hard its joints creaked.
Behind him bedding rustled. “Husband?”
With frost-melt trickling down his brow, he left the shutters thrown wide and crossed the room to slide his legs beneath the still-warm bed linens. Moonlight cast a colorless sheen on Judith’s features as she sat up.
“Why were you at the window?”
He drew in his gates, a fortress besieged. Something inside him had shattered in the act committed not an hour ago. It took all his will to ignore the caged thing beneath his ribs that mourned and raged. “Did I hurt ye?”
She’d come to him innocent of the marriage bed and he’d tried to be gentle—until his mind burst with a flood of memories and the woman in his arms had ceased to be Judith. He reached now to touch her; ever so slightly she shrank from him.
“Mama said I wouldn’t like it.”
The ice around his heart cracked with shame. “I’m sorry.” He touched her face, warm beneath his chilled fingers. He lingered on the hollow of her neck, his thumb on the rapid pulse at her throat. She tensed.
Seona had welcomed his touch with a desire as eager as his own. So he’d thought. But Seona wasn’t the only one who could pretend.
“It doesn’t have to be painful.”
“I—I thought it was supposed to start with kisses?”
She’d noticed. He hadn’t kissed her, afraid a touch of her mouth would melt the illusion he’d clung to. “Would ye like it to?”
Silvered moonlight showed her wavering smile. Her nod.
He bent dutifully, trying not to notice the small lips, the inexpert hesitancy. Trying not to think of Seona. It was like trying not to breathe. Already he was losing sense of time and place as his mind raced back to the fire of autumn.
Judith winced, a small gasping sound, and it was winter again. “Ian, I—I want to like it.”
He could feel her trembling and rolled away from her. H
e’d tried to forget what he’d seen in her eyes as he made his offer of marriage, again when they spoke their vows in his uncle’s parlor the previous evening. He’d convinced himself she’d consented in the face of Lucinda’s unbending will—one of her daughters would claim Mountain Laurel for herself and her children. But there was more to it for Judith. He was past denying it, and now their future lay before him, bruising in its clarity. Whatever hopes she had for their marriage, he was going to trample them.
Seona had torn apart his soul in leaving, like a dovetail joint holds fast under stress, forcing the coupled pieces to break at a weaker point. He’d nothing but jagged splinters to give his wife, fit only to pierce and wound.
She’d never known such cold. Never mind winter was all but past; it might as well have been ice, the March air against her face, the ground beneath her feet, as she peered up at the strip of stars above the track cut through the pines. Hope had fled her world, taking every warmth from earth, flesh, soul. Ian hadn’t come for her. Which was why she was standing in the dark, barefoot and without provision, teetering on this reckless edge. She had to leave that place. Before the Gibbses discovered her secret.
Twice now she’d run. The second time had come once she’d stopped denying she was with child. That had gone worse than the first time, for all she’d better planned things. The beating she’d got had left her fearing she’d lose the baby. She hadn’t, but once she’d healed enough to work again, she’d been too afraid to try a third time.
She’d still had hope then Ian would come for her.
She was nigh five months along now. What had been a thickness in her middle was getting harder to hide. Her shapeless clothes and the old shawl she’d been given, wrapped around her even in the kitchen’s warmth, had kept her secret from the Gibbses, but yesterday one of the children—thankfully out of her mama’s hearing—had eyed her and said, “You gettin’ fat, Show-nee.”