by Lori Benton
“I had it from his own lips. He did it out of jealousy. He wanted to be rid of Alex.”
“Then perhaps I ought to thank him.”
Joanna swallowed back the words she longed to say, amazed her stepfather could so misjudge the two men. “Alex isn’t at issue here, Papa. You are. Demas is long gone, and you’re once again ailing. Can you explain that?”
“Phineas said it may take time for the poison to work itself out of my system.”
“Phineas said!” Joanna exclaimed, losing her patience. “I’m sick to death of what that man says. Why aren’t you?”
“Phineas has had my trust these past two years. He’s been faithful in my service when heaven itself seems set against me. Can you explain that?”
She could, but even as his face twisted again in pain, she feared he wasn’t ready, in any way, to hear it. “Elijah has done the same—as best he can—for much longer than two years.”
“Speaking of Elijah,” Papa said, “perhaps the reason Phineas lied to you is because he couldn’t wring the truth from Elijah—with whom you’ve become thick as thieves again. Perhaps Phineas no longer knows whom he may trust.”
Alarm seized Joanna. “Mari told me Elijah knows nothing about—”
“Enough of this hearsay!” Her stepfather sounded more like himself than he had in months, yet as he stood, she saw he trembled. “I want to see the three of you together. Here and now.”
Mister Reeves and Elijah were sent for while she waited in the passage, Papa ostensibly eating his breakfast, though when she peeked into the room, he hadn’t touched the food.
Elijah came first, Mister Reeves practically on his heels. There was time for Elijah to whisper before he entered Papa’s room, “Mari told me what ye meant to do. Ye’ve told him everything?”
Hardly. But she’d no time to answer before Mister Reeves reached them.
* * *
The animosity was thick enough to slice as Papa, the only one seated, questioned Elijah about the three missing slaves.
“I don’t know what he has told you, sir,” Elijah said, his disdain for Mister Reeves evident. “Those men weren’t sold. They’ve run.”
“Elijah,” Joanna began.
Papa’s sharp glance rendered her mute. Sweat beaded his brow, though the hearth fire had gone out and the room was cool. “I’m aware of that.”
“You are, sir?” Elijah cast Joanna a bewildered scowl. “Mari said…I was told Reeves maintained he sold them.”
“He did so—to me,” Joanna interjected, then stepped so she could face Mister Reeves. “Why would you lie to me? I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I understand what’s going on between the three of you,” Papa said. “Did you sell the slaves, Phineas, or have they run?”
“They’ve run, sir. As I told you.”
“Did you tell Joanna different?”
Joanna stood amazed as color mounted in Mister Reeves’s face. Could the man blush on demand?
“I own that I did, sir. I’m not proud of it. So much has gone amiss for you since I’ve been in your employ. It weighs on me that one of the reasons Miss Carey has refused my suit is because she holds me to blame—in your hearing she labeled me a Jonah. I couldn’t bring myself to add one more offense to her list.”
“Ye are to blame,” Elijah forced through clenched teeth, with no attempt to cool his heated tone. “Ye can stand here before the very man you’ve poisoned all these months and say such to him?”
“Elijah!” Joanna’s stepfather pushed to his feet, tumbling his chair back-ward.
Elijah turned to Joanna, perplexed. “Did ye not tell him?”
“Tell him what?” Mister Reeves cut in. “You saw the proof with your own eyes, saw Demas run upon discovery of his betrayal.”
“Your slave,” Elijah shot back. “At your command.”
“Who struck me down in front of you! Next you’ll be blaming me for what? The forge’s explosion?” Mister Reeves turned to Papa with the air of one beset. “I begin to see how Miss Carey has formed her ill opinion of me, sir. Moon has been stoking those flames for well over a year—ever since you rejected his suit.”
“I’ve done no such thing, yet I do so blame ye.” Scarred face flushed with fury, Elijah lifted the stump of his wrist. “Ye cost me my hand, my service. My life!”
“Stand down, the pair of you!” Papa shouted, then doubled over.
“Papa—” Joanna rushed to him.
Mister Reeves blocked her way. “Sir, let me help you to your bed. This is too much. Miss Carey, Moon, please go.”
“I will not,” Joanna began, furious at his presumption, but with much effort her stepfather straightened.
“No, Phineas. I’m well enough to end this.” Papa drew breath and, though wasted and pale, seemed to gather the authority once wielded as master and commander around him like a tattered cloak. “Elijah, gather whatever things are yours. I want you gone. This hour.”
The flush of battle drained from Elijah’s face, leaving his scars standing out a stark and rippled pink. “Ye’re asking me to leave Severn?”
“I am not asking it.”
Shock had frozen Elijah. “I’ll take Mari and Jory with me.”
“They aren’t yours.” Mister Reeves had put his back to Papa; only Joanna and Elijah could see the triumph in his eyes. “They belong to Severn.”
Joanna looked to her stepfather, certain he wouldn’t be so cruel. “Papa, you cannot separate them. It’s—” She broke off when Elijah swung toward her, shaking his head.
Without another word to Papa or Mister Reeves, he made for the door. As he passed her, he spoke for her ears alone. “Kitchen.”
* * *
She found him there with his son in his arms, Marigold clutching his coat sleeve, silently weeping. From the doorway she watched him bend and kiss Jory’s head, then return him to his mother. He kissed Marigold’s trembling mouth, whispered a few words, then took up a knapsack from the kitchen floor and, as Phoebe and her girls stood gaping, strode to the doorway, meeting Joanna in its square of morning light.
She looked into his eyes, an ache in her throat.
“I’ve an idea where the field hands have gone,” Elijah said. “I’ll find them—and, with God’s help, a way to still be of aid ye.”
Guilt churned within her. “Whatever I attempt, he’s a step ahead of me. This is my fault. I never know when to speak and when to stay silent.”
Elijah actually smiled. “Joanna, don’t. I’ve seen this day coming for months. But will ye do something for me?”
“Anything.”
“Watch over Mari and Jory for me. Keep them safe.”
“I’ll do all I can. I promise.” She meant it, but as he went out she wondered, with Papa taking Mister Reeves at his word, despite the cost, and Elijah forced to go, who was left to watch over her?
None but You, Lord. None but You.
* * *
She waited two days, pretending she’d been cowed into submission by Elijah’s banishment. Then she overheard Mister Reeves telling Papa he meant to ride to a neighbor come morning, some miles south along the river, to try to sell one of Papa’s last breeding mares.
Once she’d seen him ride away with the mare in tow, she brought Papa’s breakfast to the house and found him in his study, standing before one of the maps that once guided him at sea, looking so shrunken from the man he’d been a year ago, her heart nearly misgave her.
But if she didn’t do this now, what would follow? His death; she and Charlotte cast adrift with nothing but their lives, if even those.
She set the tray on the wide desk beside the white conch shell. The sight of it brought back vivid memory of Alex in the candlelit passage, his smile as he held it to his ear, hearing its distant echo of the sea.
Her chest ached, as though her hea
rt had twisted.
“Papa, here is breakfast.”
He turned from the map. “Where is Charlotte this morning?”
During his times confined to bed, when he’d felt well enough for company, Charlotte had sometimes spent an hour in his room. Now, however, Joanna required his undivided attention.
“She’s with Azuba.”
“Just you and me for breakfast?” He glanced at the tray, seemed to notice food enough for one. She’d have no appetite until this was done. Likely not for some time after.
“If you wouldn’t mind my company, I’ll stay.”
He seated himself at the desk. Joanna perched on the bed. She ran a hand across the coverlet, wished with all her heart Reverend Pauling was present, breathed a prayer that he might somehow know her need, and began. “I know you put little stock in my opinion these days, Papa, but I need to tell you something. It’s to do with Mister Reeves.”
Papa had taken a bite of toast. He swallowed, resistance rising in his gaze. Joanna knew a niggling of doubt but was too desperate to draw back.
“Please, Papa. Let me say this, then you can ask questions—or remonstrate —whatever you need to do. Will you listen? For Charlotte’s sake, if not for me?”
Some of her stepfather’s color, wan as it was, bled away. “What is it?”
“I’m going to tell you why I believe Mister Reeves is behind most, if not all, the losses we’ve suffered this past year and more. Please, just for a moment, conceive that it may be true.”
Having thought it through a dozen times over the past two days, how she would present her case, she launched into it succinctly, recounting all that had gone wrong since Phineas Reeves’s arrival, starting with the explosion of the forge.
Papa didn’t take a second bite of toast, but he remained silent, as he’d agreed. She dropped her gaze only once while she spoke and saw that he was clutching the edge of his desk.
“Bit by bit, since his arrival, you’ve lost nearly everything that was yours, with Mister Reeves lamenting each loss all the while he has been behind it, either directly or through Demas’s agency. I believe the only reason he sought my hand was to gain complete control over Severn, as my husband and your heir.”
“He’d never have complete control,” Papa said. “Not as long as I…” But he didn’t finish the statement, as something flickered in his gaze, and his brow furrowed.
“As long as you lived? Exactly, Papa. Mister Reeves has been attempting to make Severn his even as he destroys it piece by piece. And I’m certain that poison is, once again, the cause of your illness.”
“Joanna, we’ve been through this. Demas likely set the mill ablaze—I admit I misjudged MacKinnon on that score. Demas may have even caused the kiln’s explosion and for all I know the forge’s. But Demas was caught with oleander in his cabin.”
“So Mister Reeves maintains,” she said, keeping her voice reasoning with effort. “I know Elijah’s words hold no weight with you now, but he was right. Demas was Mister Reeves’s slave. Not ours. And since we’ve been watching over your food again—”
“Who’s been watching?” her stepfather cut in.
“Azuba and I,” she said and hurried on. “We’ve let no one else near your food from kitchen to bedside since you fell sick again. And you’re feeling better these last few days, aren’t you? It’s not the first time we’ve done this, Papa. It cannot be mere coincidence. Only this time Demas isn’t a factor.”
“Joanna…Phineas said it would take time. I might have a relapse, mightn’t I?”
There was a note of pleading in his voice she’d never heard. It was almost a physical pain, causing him further distress, but she couldn’t retreat now.
“Think back. How many times did Mister Reeves bring your meals to you right before and during your worst spells?” She watched his expression carefully, saw the denial crumbling. “He’s divided you from Elijah, from Alex, from me. Only you have the power to stop him before it’s too late. I cannot protect you alone. You must stand and protect yourself. Charlotte and me as well. Dismiss that man as you did Elijah.”
Her stepfather pushed away the tray on his desk, though she was certain the food wasn’t tainted. He looked at her with staring eyes that gradually filled with horror.
“If this is true…why?”
“I believe I know why. Think back to when you knew him aboard the Severn.”
A sheen of sweat sprang to her stepfather’s brow. “Phineas was like a son to me. He and Elijah.”
“Yet it was Elijah you took into retirement. Elijah for whom you found a place.”
“He was my personal servant. Of the two Phineas seemed better suited to life at sea. I thought he was content to remain.”
Joanna leaned forward, hands fisted on her knees. “I don’t think he was; at least he quickly came to regret it. He’s told me things about the man who took command. Captain Potts allowed others to perpetrate cruelties, and Phineas, it would seem, bore the brunt. I’m convinced he blames you—and Elijah—for leaving him.”
“Then why, when we met in Wilmington after all those years, would he have sought my help, agreed to…?” He paused, running a hand over his sweating brow, fingertips squeezing his temples, as though his thoughts as well as his words had scattered.
“Revenge, Papa. I believe it’s that simple.” Unable to sit still a moment longer, Joanna sprang from the bed and crossed the room. “He’s been a viper in our midst, striking out at everything and everyone that might have been of help to us. Elijah, Alex…”
Tears came, for fury and grief at all Phineas Reeves had cost them.
“MacKinnon,” her stepfather said dully, the sound of the name odd on his lips, slurred as though he’d been drinking. But Joanna was in full spate, finally releasing the pent-up fear and heartbreak of the past months.
“Why did I not stand up for him? Why did I not better fight for him? He asked me to marry him, to walk away from this life I’ve come to loathe, and though he called me weak because I couldn’t leave you, or Charlotte, still I loved him!”
Her stepfather made a strangled sound behind her.
Joanna faced him, tears streaming. He’d half risen from his chair, struggling to speak through a mouth peculiarly twisted.
“You…Mac…Kin…?”
Alex’s garbled name was the last he said before he fell back into his chair, then toppled to the floor.
39
OCTOBER 1748
Pauling needed all his breath to put one foot before the other, often leaning on Alex as they traversed the steep paths leading them eastward. The autumn days were shortening; the mountain heights were fiery-leafed but frosted cold at night. Alex woke often to keep a fire going, while Pauling shivered and endured. Fishing Hawk had described well the landmarks to watch for, the quickest paths to take. Alex was reasonably certain of his course, but their progress was distressingly slow.
Late the third day on the trail, Pauling’s strength failed, forcing Alex to carry him until he found sufficient shelter from a spattering rain in which to build a fire, beneath a grandfather spruce with boughs vaulted enough that the small blaze wouldn’t ignite them. Once he had it going, Alex rummaged in the knapsack for something edible.
“When did it happen?”
Startled by the thread of Pauling’s voice, he looked up. The man was eyeing him with fever-bright eyes strained with suffering, and alight with joy. Alex knew at once what he meant. His mouth lifted at the corner. “On the buffalo hunt.”
He told briefly of the run through the draw, the arrow, the words exchanged with Runs-Far.
“Timothy,” Pauling murmured through fever-cracked lips. “I knew him well chosen.”
“Ye’ve a canny sense of folk,” Alex agreed. “I once told ye I could never believe as ye did. As ye’ve already deduced, I take it back.” At the smug look on Paul
ing’s face, he laughed soundlessly. “I dinna think ye’re one bit surprised.”
Pauling shook his head, moisture sheening his eyes. Gradually, though, a soberness overtook his gaze. “Yet you’ve been encumbered by more than that monstrous pack—and my dead weight—these past days.”
Alex shook off a shudder of foreboding. “Aye, ye’re right.”
Pauling offered a weak smile. “I cannot bear a pack, but I may yet help you bear other burdens.”
Alex unearthed a parcel of jerked meat, of which he was heartily sick. He offered a strip to the reverend. “Ye willna like it—not one bit,” he warned. “And I dinna mean just this poor fare.”
He related what Jemma told him of Reeves, including that most ominous detail. Charlotte.
He’d never seen Pauling look so shaken. “Father in heaven.”
“I kent the man wasna what he wished to seem,” Alex said. “But put him down to a schemer bent on advancing himself, using Edmund Carey to do so, clearing the likes of me from his path. I’d not have left them to his mercy had I kent Reeves for such a monster.”
He held out a canteen. Pauling drank, then sat for a time, eyes closed. When at last he spoke, he said, “I’d have had you try to see me to my sister’s house, but in light of what you’ve just told me…”
“D’ye mean now to return to Severn?” Alex doubted the man could make it half so far.
“No. Mountain Laurel is close, though?”
Hugh Cameron. A measure of relief flooded Alex. “I’ll get ye there, Reverend. If I must carry ye the distance.”
* * *
Four days later, Alex was less certain of keeping that promise. Though the weather had favored them, Pauling traveled a shorter distance afoot each day. Yet by Alex’s reckoning they ought to have reached the Yadkin’s headwaters. Camped that evening beneath an overhang of rock, he decided come morning he’d scout for sign of the river.