Mountain Laurel

by Lori Benton

  Before he could utter the emphatic reply that leapt to his tongue, the back door opened. Lamplight speckled through the trellis onto Seona’s face. She closed her eyes, hiding their anguish. “Let me go, Ian. Let me go to Mama.”

  “Seona, that you?” Maisy’s voice. “Miss Judith asking for you. She up in her and Mister Ian’s room.”

  Wretched with guilt, Ian met the glint of Seona’s opened, frantic eyes. “I’ll see to Judith. But first . . . Seona, we have to tell them.”

  “I do. You don’t.”

  He frowned in the darkness. “Ye said it was mine.”

  “It is. You the only man . . .”

  “Then what? Ye’re saying I could refuse to claim it? I won’t do that.”

  “No matter Miss Judith’s feelings?”

  His chest constricted with the magnitude of what he’d done, with this sundering of his heart. All their hearts. “No matter what,” he ground out. “I won’t be like my uncle.”

  He reached for her, but all he caught was the ratty shawl she’d worn. Rather than be kept another moment with him, Seona had slipped out of it and let it tumble to the breezeway stones.

  When she was gone, he took it up and pressed it to his face, breathing in her scent, until the worn wool lost the fleeting memory of her warmth.

  Judith was abed with a book, a small volume he’d seen her read from often. A candle burned on the bedside table she’d added to the chamber’s furnishings.

  Ian shut the door and crossed the room. “What did ye want with Seona?”

  “I’ve hardly seen her since she returned. I think she’s avoiding me.” Judith marked her place in the book and set it aside. “What is that?”

  He saw in her eyes that she’d recognized the shawl, knew exactly what, and whose, it was. Wondering what had happened to the old arisaid she’d worn, come down from his uncle’s first wife, he dropped its pitiful replacement on the chair.

  “Ye didn’t answer my question, aye?”

  “I wanted to talk with Seona about . . . what happened to her.”

  “I can tell ye. She ran from the man who bought her, trying to get back to m—to Mountain Laurel. They hacked off her hair as punishment and laid a strap to her.”

  She’d stopped running, given up the hope of freedom for the sake of their baby. She wanted it. He clung to the realization as he peeled off his travel-stained coat and dropped it on the floor, tugged his reeking shirt over his head, and crossed to the basin to wash the worst of the road grime from his face and hands.

  “I’m so sorry for her suffering.” Judith’s tearful voice jerked him back to their room, the stomach-churning fact of their marriage. “Is Thomas gravely ill?”

  “He’ll live.” His expression in the glass turned grim; he’d not forgiven Thomas for his part in their abduction, for luring Seona out into the dark that night, though he’d suffered for it. It had been a difficult journey west through the Piedmont, but Thomas was stronger now than when Ian had found him in that swamp shanty.

  “As for Seona . . . a beating isn’t all of it.” Better Judith hear it from him than a gossiping house slave. Or worse, her mother. Still he took the coward’s tack, speaking with his back turned. “She’s with child.”

  He heard his wife’s convulsive swallow as he wrung out the rag, dripping water noisily into the basin.

  “Was she . . . forced?” Judith barely got the word out.

  Ian caught his haggard reflection in the glass, seeing lines around his eyes he’d never noticed before. “Thomas would say so.”

  “Ian, I don’t understand. Did Thomas see it happen?”

  “No. The bairn’s mine.” He moved to a chair and stood one-legged, attention riveted on removing his boots and stockings. From the corner of his eye he saw his wife’s face, pale, stricken.

  “I see.” Another swallow. “Will it be—? Do you intend . . . ?”

  “I’ve no answers to give ye. I only just learned of it myself.” Ian set his feet to the floor. His flesh still clung to the feel of Seona, of the bairn beneath his hands—tangible proof of their union. “Ye needed to know, Judith, but can we not talk of it tonight? Please.”

  He grasped for a way to stall further, to put off joining his wife in their bed. But he’d ridden hard for days, caring for Thomas along the way. He swayed where he stood. Oblivion would be sweet, since solitude was denied him.

  He snuffed the candle and shucked off his breeches, then slid between the linens.

  Oblivion proved disobliging. Memories of Seona tangled with glimpses of a future fraught with unfathomable complication, while his body longed for release of another kind. It might have been an hour later when he heard a wakeful sigh beside him.

  “Judith?”

  She reached for him readily, as if she’d been waiting. He sucked in a breath at her touch, mind in an uproar, lips pressed tight over a forbidden name.

  “You don’t have to ask permission, Ian.”

  Though her voice was barely audible, he heard the pain of longing in it. As deep as his own, but infinitely purer. He reached for the hand lying on his chest, not knowing whether he meant to clasp it or push it away. Then he closed his eyes and turned to her embrace.

  Three days passed before Ian thought of Ruby, and not until she was mentioned at table. John Reynold had taken the quaking sack of bones, as Rosalyn christened her, home to Cecily until Ian returned to deal with her as he saw fit.

  One look at the woman, washed and decently clothed, winding yarn and rocking six-month-old Robin’s cradle with a skinny foot, and Ian saw fit to leave well enough alone. John made no objection, for the time being; Cecily, not surprisingly, had taken a liking to Ruby, who’d greeted him warily when he entered the cabin but bid him farewell with unconcealed relief that she’d been allowed to stay put.

  “How fares Thomas?” John asked him on the cabin porch.

  “The fever’s lifted but he’ll need time to recover his strength. I mean to send him north as soon as he does. Her too,” Ian added, nodding toward the cabin. “Unless ye’d rather I didn’t?”

  “We would never hold her in bondage—you know that. But you’d make certain she has a place to go? Some means of living?”

  Ian nodded, having no idea what such arrangements would entail. Deciding on a means to see Thomas safe out of Carolina had proved difficult enough. He’d yet to inform Thomas of his plan; though Thomas was in no condition to abscond with himself in a fit of pique, one could never be too chary with him.

  John regarded him, more questions in his eyes. Chary of them as well, Ian took his leave before his neighbor could speak Seona’s name, but he felt that searching gaze until the wood swallowed him up.

  Spring had hold of the landscape. Redbud shimmered its pink lace through the dark pillars of budding hardwoods. Ian was too preoccupied to appreciate the sight. His head teemed with thoughts of crops to sow, livestock to tend, slaves to oversee, and the promised desks for Stoddard—the proceeds from which he desperately needed—calling from the shop.

  And his kin. They all knew of the child now, and he bore their varying degrees of dismay or disdain—and Rosalyn’s smug air of vindication—with as much composure as he could muster. While his uncle seemed to withdraw from them daily, for Judith’s sake Ian had settled into a brittle civility with his aunt. As for Jackson Dawes . . . Ian never left the house now without his rifle.

  Palming the stock, he scanned the trail for places a man might lie concealed, but no one lurked behind rock or tree.

  Soon his thoughts flowed back into that current that flooded his waking mind and swept a reckless course through his dreams at night. Far from hounding his uncle about Seona’s manumission, he now shied from mentioning it. Thought of his child born free yet sundered from him by so great a distance as Boston was no more bearable than the notion of a child born to him enslaved. Like a man caught behind a veil, he went about only half-seeing, making a dozen small decisions every hour that affected those around him, but never coming near that
decision.

  Emerging from the wood moments later, he saw Seona, bent over a toting basket outside the washhouse. Before he could think, he was striding toward her, wet grass pulling at his boots—until the sound of retching behind the garden pales checked him.

  “Miss Judith, let me help ye.” A breathless sob answered Malcolm’s soothing voice. “There now . . . ’tis easing off, then?”

  When Ian looked toward the wash line again, the basket lay abandoned in the grass. Seona had seen him and fled.

  “I’ll have eaten something disagreeable,” Judith said, clearly mortified that he’d heard her in an act so unbecoming as vomiting into the peavines and come into the garden to investigate. Half-moons hung beneath her eyes, dark as bruises. She’d never been the picture of blooming health, but how long had she appeared so peaked?

  Guilt stirred in Ian’s chest. Perhaps her malady wasn’t physical. Her long-suffering silence was another reminder of the choice looming over his heart.

  “There’s no need to tire yourself,” he said. “I don’t see your sister sullying her hands in the garden or anywhere else for that matter.” Rosalyn was often away to Chesterfield now, reveling in the grander living that would soon be hers. The wedding wasn’t until June, yet there seemed no end to the urgent matters requiring Jubal to escort her to the neighboring plantation at the most inconvenient of hours.

  Judith tucked her hands into the folds of her skirt. “I enjoy the garden. It’s peaceful.”

  She’d retreated to its peace often of late. “I’m guessing ye’ve been out here all the morn. Ye should rest.”

  Judith flicked a glance at Malcolm, who’d turned to hoeing a nearby bed. “If that would please you, Ian.”

  Her swift compliance irritated him. He bridled the unreasonable reaction. “At least ye’ve something gives ye peace,” he murmured as she went, and wished he hadn’t driven her from it. A dithering fool he’d seem, though, calling her back.

  “Ye say that, Mister Ian, as though ye hadn’t as much yourself.” Leaning against the handle of the hoe, Malcolm regarded him from the shadow of a tattered straw hat.

  It seemed an age since they’d spoken more than a word in passing. Not since the cold day on the ridge, when another impossible choice faced him. Malcolm and Lily had gotten their way. He’d stayed. But Malcolm hadn’t suggested he bind himself in marriage to one of his uncle’s stepdaughters. That choice had been Ian’s, a safeguard against abandoning yet another course.

  Wedlock, in truth.

  He studied Malcolm’s face, lined as an aged map, as though in it he might discover the path to his wife’s soul. “Does Judith speak much to ye, Malcolm, out here in the garden?”

  “She doesna mind a stretch of quiet, your wife,” the old man said. “But aye, she does speak to me.”

  “What about?”

  “Mainly what she’s been readin’.”

  “That Lowlander poet she fancies? Burns, isn’t it?”

  “She hasna mentioned a poet.” Malcolm twisted the hoe, turning moist earth with the blade. “’Tis from the Psalms Miss Judith’s been readin’ of late.”

  Surprised, Ian asked, “Any psalm in particular?”

  Malcolm didn’t pause his work. “‘The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.’”

  The old man had dug the hoe deep again before Ian found his voice. “Does she think she has that now? Or she hopes for it?”

  Surely the latter. He’d brought the lass little but disappointment and misery.

  The richness of manured earth came up to fill his nose as Malcolm turned the soil. “Miss Judith isna different from any other soul. She’s wanting that goodly heritage the Almighty has for her.”

  A goodly heritage. Exactly what he’d come to Mountain Laurel hoping to find—or create. The yearning stabbed deep. Then he looked at the old man laboring before him, seeing him as if with new eyes. “And ye? Is it what ye hope for too?”

  Malcolm gave a rattling chuckle. “I have it already, as I told ye once.”

  Ian frowned. “Malcolm, ye haven’t even a cup to fill. Ye own nothing—not the clothes ye stand up in. They belong to my uncle.”

  He regretted his words—what need had he to point out the bitter obvious to a man who’d lived it every day of his long life?

  “Hugh Cameron isna my master.”

  It was more unexpected than the reply that had launched them down this thorny trail. “Ye came to him when old Duncan passed—along with the rest.” Ian gestured, taking in house and outbuildings, the fields rolling up to the sheltering ridges of the Carraways.

  “Aye, that’s so,” Malcolm agreed.

  “Then . . . ye don’t think of me as your master?” He would be, should Malcolm outlive his uncle; the man seemed as durable as a stick of hardwood, despite swollen joints and stooped back.

  “Dinna take it amiss, Mister Ian,” Malcolm said with the faintest of smiles. “I dinna see ye that way either. I ken well enough your uncle has his papers telling the world he can bid me work for him, wi’ no more thought for my well-being save what keeps me fit for his use. But d’ye ken your uncle isna master over my soul?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do ye then?”

  “That’s what I wanted for Seona before—” He couldn’t keep the pain from his voice. “I wanted to give her freedom, body and soul. I want that still.”

  And he wanted this man to believe it.

  With evident effort, Malcolm bent to pluck a stone from the soil. “Whether ye see this or no, Mister Ian, ye never had it in your power to give her that. ’Tis your own soul’s freedom ye should be worrit over.”

  Ian stared at the bent neck, the skin creased and sagging, at the twisted brown fingers grasping the hoe. “My freedom?”

  Malcolm tossed the stone onto the garden path. “Every man makes himself a slave to someone or something. Your white skin doesna spare ye that.” The old slave straightened with an audible creak. “And my brown skin doesna mean I canna choose what masters me. In the way that matters most, I am free.”

  Ian ceased hoping for sleep to quiet his longing. He listened to Judith’s breathing, assured himself she slept, then slipped from bed and took up his boots, waiting until he was on the back steps before pulling them on.

  He oughtn’t to be doing this. For a moment he fought the pull, but his heart wasn’t in the struggle. His heart was very much in favor of plunging off the steps into the night. He followed its will, past the kitchen-yard, down the track under a starless heaven, until he stood in the shadows of the oaks.

  An acorn dropped, rattled down a cabin roof, thudded to earth. An owl called from the orchard.

  He moved closer, creeping over last year’s mulching leaves, stepping round a broad trunk, and came in view of Seona’s cabin. Sweating now despite the night’s chill, he crouched against the tree, refusing to heed the scream of conscience telling him being there was a betrayal. What choice had Seona left him? If she’d only stop running from him, let him talk to her. The child was his. Did that not give him some right to approach her?

  Perhaps she would come out to use the privy.

  He tucked his hands beneath his arms for warmth. Clouds cleared. Stars glittered in patches. The cabin door never opened.

  The first trill of birdsong drove him back to the house, where he pushed his clothing under the bed and crawled between the sheets, careful not to let his cold limbs touch his sleeping wife. He lay staring at the bed hangings taking form in the graying dawn, frustrated over the night’s fruitless watch. Eager for night to come again.

  He knew the voice of his master now.

  37

  APRIL 1794

  Outside the privy beneath the leafing oaks, Seona hesitated. Instead of going back inside the cabin, she tread the cool ground to the edge of the track that skirted the plowed field beyond, where the night sky opened wide. Orion in his glittering bel
t stared down at her, minding her of years back when Miss Judith read her stories of the belted star-man. Ancient peoples thought he was a hunter or a giant. They didn’t know God put the stars in the sky, Miss Judith had said.

  Now Seona reached out to those heavens and let her heartache flow, streaming from her eyes, through her open mouth in wordless appeal.

  “He thinks I never wanted him,” she’d told Lily and Naomi the morning after Ian brought Thomas home and learned about the baby. “He thinks I went along with it ’cause he expected me to.”

  “Best he go on thinking that,” Naomi had said. “He married to Miss Judith. Ain’t no changing it. Best leave things as they be.”

  Things as they be couldn’t stay so forever. Day after day she waited to know what would be done with her and the baby growing inside her. Night after night she listened for a voice whispering hope. God wasn’t cold and distant like the stars He’d made. He wasn’t so high and set apart He couldn’t understand her pain. Her fear. Surely.

  “You were a man, too,” she whispered. But God-become-man was a mystery hard to keep hold of, like water in the hand. Comfort spilled through her fingers as Orion watched, uncaring. How was she to live within sight of Ian and Miss Judith together without it shredding her soul to ribbons? What was she to do if Ian took her child but sent her away?

  There was no answer. Shivering in her shift, she turned to go back to the cabin. A twig snapped as she moved.

  A rustle of leaves brought him into the starlight—Orion himself, barefoot and fair-haired, linen shirt glowing as if with its own light. His hand closed over her arm, cold as a star.

  “Don’t go.” His breath wasn’t cold, but warm on her brow. She couldn’t see his face but didn’t need to. Her heart minded every plane and hollow. “I’ve waited for ye, Seona. I cannot bear it, watching ye from afar. Not touching. Not speaking.”

  Exactly what Orion might have said, could he speak. But this was Ian, and his whisper fed her soul. He cupped her head, fingers combing deep through her cutoff curls. He drew her to him, pressed her head to his chest, and she thought how easy it would be to let the longing sweep her away. To forget Miss Judith up at the big house, lie down with him beneath the oaks, and take back what was theirs.