The King's Mercy

by Lori Benton

  The question jarred. Pretender. With his own feelings about Charles Stuart conflicted at best, Alex forced his jaw to relax. “I was a foot soldier. I didna hold a rank.”

  “Not even as captain?”

  “No.” He’d led his clansmen briefly at Culloden, after so many had been slain. “Never officially.”

  Carey looked surprised, and thoughtful. “I begin to think you’ve the makings of one.” He moved nearer the hearth, stretching out his hands to the blaze, though Alex found the room over-warm. “How came you to be aboard the Charlotte-Ann when Phineas came downriver to find me a blacksmith?”

  “Ye ken how, sir.”

  “In part. But I’d hear the tale from you. Taken prisoner in the final battle of the Jacobite uprising, as I understand it?”

  “Culloden, aye.” He didn’t want to tell this tale, didn’t want the words to pass his lips. But Carey was nodding, expecting him to continue. “We were put aboard ship at Inverness, hundreds of us, wounded, half-starved, and brought thus to London, some put into Tilbury Fort, the rest onto ships moored on the Thames, chained in holds for a year before a lot was cast and some given the king’s mercy, others taken to trial. Of course we were half of us dead by then, including my kinsman.”

  “A brother?” Carey asked. “Father?”

  “An uncle, but father to me.”

  “Ah. Rory MacNeill, as I recall.” The name hung on the room’s warm air, until Carey prompted, “And after you were granted the king’s mercy?”

  “Upon our release from the ship I was carted away with the rest, my indenture bought and sold. Next I kent I was being rowed out to the Charlotte-Ann, which I boarded weak as a wobbly colt. Ye ken the rest.”

  “A wobbly colt?” Carey looked him up and down, seeming amused by the comparison. He’d filled out in the weeks spent at the forge. He was nearly back to the size he’d been before he joined Charles Stuart’s army, though his muscles now were harder, more defined.

  “Your physical strength is one thing you’ve regained,” Carey said. “I hope in time the trade you’re learning will give you purpose. A chance at another life. Should you choose to continue that life at Severn…” When Alex merely returned his gaze, struggling to hide his aversion to the notion, Carey gave a curt nod. “A discussion for another day.”

  The fire crackled. Somewhere the house settled with a creak. Or a footstep overhead?

  Alex recalled a thing he’d meant to say. “I’m sorry for the loss of Josiah. All your losses of late, sir.”

  Carey bent for a poker to stir the embers in the hearth. He went about it, taking his time, then set the poker in its stand. “I’ll be honest, MacKinnon. I’ve known a great weariness of spirit these past weeks, but looking at you now…I think if you are standing after all your losses, what right have I to fold under lesser blows? You encourage me.”

  It was the last thing Alex had thought to hear from the man, on this or any day. “How so?”

  “By the very fact of your drawing breath.” Carey set his mouth firm, then added as if to himself, “I am determined. I shall shed this shadow.” Contrary to his dark words, a swift smile touched his lips. “I was thinking what David—Reverend Pauling—would say to us both were he here, that a battle is being waged between the Almighty and our enemy, and the prize is our very souls.”

  Alex felt the jolt of surprise as the faintest of currents running through his bones. “He said something of the sort to me.”

  “I’ve sensed that battle these weeks past.” Carey held his gaze, searching, then looked away. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.” He made a fist and lifted it. “I know this.”

  Alex had presumed Edmund Carey a man of faith, having hosted the reverend and their worshipping neighbors weeks before. He’d gathered the man was subject to periodic bouts of melancholia but until now hadn’t known the depth of the darkness Carey battled.

  Dismissed from the house, he went out wondering if it was anything like the darkness that warred within his own soul.

  19

  FEBRUARY 1748

  Jemma ran away from Severn late that winter, and Alex MacKinnon was among those who brought her back, looking for all the world like another captured fugitive. While Jemma was marched to the kitchen by Mister Reeves, Demas on their heels, Alex headed toward the smithy. Even through window glass Joanna saw his lip was cut and swollen, one eye bruised.

  She’d been the one to suggest he join the search. “He recalled to me a conversation he and Jemma had with Reverend Pauling, about the Cherokees,” she’d told her stepfather. “Jemma called them her people.”

  Her stepfather had nodded, thoughtful. “Her mother had Cherokee blood. And the grandmother, here before I took ownership, what was her name?”

  “She was called Maggie,” Joanna had said. “But Jemma—and others—maintain she called herself Looks-At-The-Sun, or Sun-Gazer. Something of that sort.”

  “So MacKinnon thinks she’s trying to reach the mountains?” Papa was looking more robust than in autumn. Time spent out of doors, the relative calm of the winter—no deaths, losses, or illnesses other than the usual agues and a few cases of worms that had little tummies bloated—had helped lift his spirits. “If the girl trusts him at all, it may do some good to have him along.”

  Perhaps it had, for they’d returned with Jemma. Joanna had been prepared to go straight to her, but perhaps it was Mister Reeves she’d best speak to first. Papa had warned him once against too freely using the whip when punishing a slave.

  By the time she reached the passage below, Mister Reeves had entered the house. He stood outside her stepfather’s study, blocking her path. “Where’s Captain Carey?”

  “Away to the mill. Why is Alex returned looking as though he wrestled an alligator? What happened to him?”

  Mister Reeves barked a laugh, then studied her narrowly. “Such concern for your stepfather’s indentured man.”

  Joanna willed herself to patience. Her interactions with Mister Reeves had been few since the day he and Papa derailed her hopes for Severn, save for meeting at table. In Papa’s presence Mister Reeves was all politeness, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel any warmth for the man. Not when he brushed aside so readily what was most important to her. As he seemed to be attempting to do now. “Was it Demas?”

  “Ought I to take offense you haven’t asked whether I am to blame?”

  It hadn’t crossed her mind that he could cause Alex such injury and come away unscathed. “I merely seek the particulars of the matter, which you are clearly reluctant to relate. I’ll have the story from Alex.”

  It would take but a moment to visit the smithy. Then she’d go to Jemma, no doubt being washed and fed—and scolded—in the kitchen. She tried to move past Mister Reeves, but he took her arm in his cool grasp. The wrinkling of her nose was purely involuntary.

  “Miss Carey, I don’t wish to quarrel. I’ve been a week on the river and days in a swamp. I’m exhausted and, as you discern, in need of a bath. As for MacKinnon—yes, it was Demas caused his injuries.”

  “Why?” she asked, searching his impassive face.

  “I cannot answer that. I wasn’t near enough to see the start of their quarrel.”

  Joanna pulled her arm free. “You never inquired?”

  “It didn’t seem important. They ceased their brawling when I reached them.” Mister Reeves at last stood aside. “Have one of the girls heat water for me and bring it to my room, if you’d be so kind. And mind you deal with Jemma, Miss Carey. You cannot let disobedience of this magnitude pass unpunished.”

  Suspicion gripped her. “Have you already seen to that?”

  “You’ve made it clear she’s your concern. But I shall make her mine if you neglect to curb her willfulness.�
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  * * *

  She found Alex alone in the smithy, pacing the shop, coat and breeches stained with filth. His stockings were ruined, his hair unkempt, but his face…The window’s thick glass had done it a kindness.

  “What happened upriver?” she asked at the doorway. It had begun to sprinkle, cold on her cap and shawl. She hurried inside where the forge was newly lit, a welcome warmth.

  “Jemma isna pleased with me,” he said, halting to face her. “Is she all right?”

  “You’ll know better than I. I’ve not seen her, but you…Have you water in your room?”

  “I havena looked.” He did so, coming out with the pitcher. “Moon’s left it full. Why d’ye need it?”

  “I mean to tend your face. You shouldn’t leave those wounds unwashed, as I expect they have been for days.”

  Reluctance etched his injured countenance. “Ye dinna need to.”

  She ignored the half-hearted protest. “You’ll need to sit. I’ll never reach.”

  That brought a wincing half-smile to his broken mouth. “Ye managed it once.”

  She dropped her gaze, softening at the recollection of standing on a block chair to measure him.

  “I didna ken ye for who ye were, at first,” he said.

  That was a thing he’d never told her. Not that they’d spent a great amount of time in conversation over the winter. She’d tried not to darken the smithy door more than was needful, though she’d been happy to do so whenever her duties required it. Yet something about the man, quite at odds with his imposing stature and sometimes daunting silence, reassured her now. What was it Marigold said of him, all those months ago? Something about seeing kindness in him. She’d seen it in how he treated Elijah and Jemma. Perhaps Reverend Pauling had seen it as well.

  “Who did you think I was?”

  “Ye willna be miffed if I’m honest?” She caught a teasing glint in the one blue eye not swollen nearly shut as he set the pitcher on the anvil and folded himself onto one of the block chairs near the forge.

  “I won’t be. Tell me.”

  “I thought ye were head seamstress maybe. Or a housemaid. An indenture, I suppose, like me.”

  She had to swallow when she caught his gaze, as powerful in his present state to rattle her as ever, only now it pulled at her and set her heart racing—with yearning. “What if I said I wish I had been?”

  His uninjured eye flared at that. “What d’ye mean?”

  They’d never spoken again of that vision she’d had of what Severn could be for her family, for Azuba, Mari, all their slaves. She hadn’t told him how Papa and Mister Reeves had summarily dashed it.

  “You were right, Alex.”

  He’d picked up on her change of mood. The teasing fled his gaze. “What about?”

  “I’ll never see our slaves freed and living here. A law prevents it.” She broke their gaze when his became too searching. She touched his coat sleeve, which bore a tear—not to mention spatters of what looked like dried blood. “I’ll take your coat for mending. For now, tell me how this happened.”

  “First tell me something,” he said, catching her hand in his. “Ye’ve been carrying this knowledge around for weeks, have ye not? I’ve noticed a heaviness on ye, the times ye’ve been by here.”

  “You have?” To her knowledge, no one else had.

  “Aye. Have ye spoken of it to anyone?”

  She slipped her hand from his to fetch a towel from his room, then soaked and wrung it. “I guess I didn’t see the point.”

  He studied her through the slit of his wounded eye. “Why are ye here now? Ye might’ve sent Mari to do this. Or”—he laughed without humor—“taken no thought to me at all.”

  She’d been reaching for him, about to turn his face so his injured eye was better lit. “Don’t you deem yourself worth the effort?”

  Their gazes held again. It was he who looked away first. “I’ll tell ye what ye asked to hear, while ye do what ye came to do.”

  Joanna cupped his face and tilted it. He hadn’t shaved in a week at least. Beard stubble glinted dark gold in the light from the forge’s fire, reminding her of his piratical appearance back in summer. His lips were set, his lashes lowered. His brows were full, darker than his hair. She wanted to stroke one, but contented herself with tracing the skin around his wounded eye, briefly brushing his temple, all of which bore bruising.

  He was stone beneath her touch. Then he drew a breath, and she realized he’d been holding it, and holding himself utterly still. She pulled back, uncertain. He reached up, fingers encompassing her wrist.

  “I’m not made of glass,” he said gruffly. “Dinna go chary of me.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Ye’re doing quite the opposite.”

  Her belly fluttered at his words, the quirk of his mouth. “You said you’d tell me about Jemma. And Demas.”

  “Aye. I did.”

  She washed his brow and around his bruised eye, then down his cheek and jaw, while he spoke of their search upriver for Jemma, getting word of her along the way, finding her at last in Cross Creek.

  Joanna drew back. “However did she get so far?”

  “She willna say. I suspect more than one boat spirited her upriver. I doubt she’d have made that distance afoot.”

  “I’ve been as far as Cross Creek only once.” Joanna stepped around him to reach the damage done the other side of his face, the cut to his cheekbone and the split in his lower lip. “She didn’t come willingly once you found her, I’m guessing.”

  “She didna.” Jemma had bolted at sight of them, he said, vanishing like a rabbit into a patch of swamp. Alex and Demas had given chase, and in the process ran right over the scaly back of an alligator, half submerged in a woody tangle. “I’d thought it another rotting log.”

  A shudder passed through the flesh beneath Joanna’s fingertips. With her own breath caught in her throat, she cupped Alex MacKinnon’s cheek and placed a kiss on his brow, the gesture pure reflex, born of her relief that he’d done such a thing and hadn’t suffered lasting injury.

  His head jerked slightly, and for an instant she froze, unable to meet his gaze. Her face wasn’t warm; it was on fire. “S-so there was an alligator?”

  “Oh, aye,” Alex said after the briefest pause. “It about took off my leg when it writhed round and made for me. I staggered but stayed on my feet. I hadn’t a weapon to hand, so I kicked it in the snout. Then I dodged away, darting through trees and muck. I heard Jemma’s screeching and made for the sound. Guess the beast didna like the carryings-on. It didna chase me.”

  “Thank the Almighty for that,” Joanna said, having regained her composure while he spoke.

  “I dinna ken whether the Almighty had anything to do with it, but Reeves said it must have just eaten its fill to have been so sluggish.”

  “I’m sure of it—the Almighty, I mean—even if you aren’t.” She washed the cut on his lip, gently running the damp cloth around his mouth. “And this?”

  She was close enough to hear the breath he drew. “When I caught them up, Demas had Jemma lifted off the ground, kicking and screaming. I suppose I was still worked up from the alligator. I didna think, just lit into him.”

  “An alligator and Demas?”

  “The more fool I,” he said ruefully. “I canna say now he was doing the lass any real harm. But that’s what I thought when I laid eyes on them. I ken that’s what Jemma thought.” Silence held them briefly before he said, “May I ask of ye a favor, lass?”

  Lass. She liked the implication of the word, as though no inequality of station existed between them. “You don’t want me to tell Papa, do you? The part about you and Demas.”

  “I’d rather we let it go.” She still held the dirty towel. He reached for her other hand and held it. Again. “I doubt Reeves will speak of it.” />
  Joanna wasn’t thinking about the overseer. She glanced down at Alex’s lap, thinking how easy it would be to fold herself onto it. When she raised her gaze, she saw invitation in his eyes, but warning too. As if he were bidding her do the reckless thing she was contemplating and cautioning her not to do it. She spread her fingers, entwining them with his, felt the deepening of his breath.

  “I need a bath,” he said.

  She laughed, though her heart was banging crazily, her mind screaming every warning reason could produce. “Your face is clean.”

  Something shifted in his eyes. Wanting bloomed, banishing the warning. “Joanna…,” he said, an instant before Elijah appeared in the smithy doorway. Instead of pulling her to him, as she’d been sure he meant to do, Alex pushed her away. She’d dropped the towel. Sweeping aside her petticoat, she bent for it to hide her face, if only for a moment.

  “Joanna, why are ye here?”

  She straightened, certain Elijah had seen too much. “What do you mean? I’m only—”

  “Why are ye here,” Elijah repeated, and she heard the furious urgency in his voice, “instead of seeing to Jemma? Reeves is taking the whip to her—now!”

  * * *

  Joanna was still shaking an hour after all was said and done and she’d retreated to the sewing room to pace in agitation, leaving Charlotte distracted by Azuba and her dolls, none the wiser as to what had happened. There was that to be thankful for.

  Shock at seeing Jemma tied to a post behind the kitchen, wailing in the falling rain as the whip landed across her bared shoulders, had boiled over into rage. In the midst of it, she’d all but assaulted Phineas Reeves and torn the whip from his hand, as Phoebe and her girls, Marigold, and Elijah stood back from them. And Alex, who’d followed her from the smithy.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Mister Reeves had demanded, hazel eyes lit with an incongruous light, face glistening with rain.

  “What are you doing? Not half an hour ago you told me Jemma was my concern!” Awaiting no answer, she’d called to Phoebe to untie Jemma, whose shirt hung bunched about her waist, revealing narrow shoulders crossed with livid stripes, blood running pink, mingled with rain. When Phoebe hesitated, darting frightened eyes at Mister Reeves, Alex and Elijah pushed forward through the ring of watchers.