by Benton, Lori
With the flora of the Allard homestead came fauna aplenty. Tamsen had counted four cats, two dogs, six goats, an ox team, two horses, a milch cow, a flock of hens, and, in a large wicker cage mounted under the dogtrot, a pair of birds the size of doves. Upon spying their brilliant green and yellow plumage and ruddy-feathered heads, Tamsen had exclaimed in delight, making Bethany ask, “Ain’t you ever seen a parakeet? They flock about these parts, driving farmers to distraction. These ’uns would be shot dead long since if I didn’t keep ’em to myself.”
Tamsen watched the pair now, preening with their curved beaks, until Janet turned her hands over for a last inspection.
“Keep them out of water if’n you can. Come morning they’ll feel better.”
Bethany stepped from the cabin, mixing seed in a pan to feed her captive birds. The girl had been in motion since Tamsen and Jesse arrived that morning for the harvesting, yet looked as lively as ever, pale hair falling in a smooth sheath to her waist.
Tamsen had yet to see her don a proper cap.
“You do have the prettiest hands. Or did till today.” A giggle accompanied Bethany’s words as she turned to tend her birds. The parakeets fluttered to the bottom of the cage as she cast the seed. “Reckon you’d slaves to do for you, back in Morganton.”
“Beth,” Janet said. “Don’t go making assumptions.”
As assumptions went, it wasn’t wholly inaccurate. Tamsen had never worked as she’d done today—or every day since her arrival in Greenbird Cove, and blistered palms weren’t the only change that work had wrought. Even now she could feel the sunburn across her cheeks. Her hair was in a simple braid, pinned and covered in a plain cap. Her homespun gown was a far cry from the lace-trimmed silk she’d been painted in.
No doubt Mr. Parrish was out there somewhere, toting around that wretched miniature, showing her image to any who’d stop and look. How much did she still resemble that ringleted girl in the portrait?
Lord, keep him miles and miles from this cove.
She stood as Janet corked the salve. “I didn’t live in Morganton, and I wasn’t wealthy. Not really.”
“No?” Bethany drew one of the parakeets from the cage, clipped wings extended, clawed feet clinging to her finger. She stroked the bird’s bright head, eying Tamsen. “You never churned butter afore coming here. Never brought in corn. Bet you never strung shucky beans or plucked a chicken or put up any kind of food at all.”
“Not since I was small,” Tamsen admitted, then smiled at Janet. “Except for plucking chickens, which I’ve never attempted.”
“Then how d’you mean to do for Jesse?” Bethany asked.
Janet had started inside the cabin but paused to level a look at her daughter. “Tamsen will do just fine. Besides, she has us to show her anything she might need to know.”
A breeze wafted through the dogtrot, wisping pale hairs against Bethany’s cheeks. “Mama, you ain’t got time to sit for the sewing you pine to do. Where you gonna find time for teaching Tamsen how to be the wife Jesse needs?”
“It’s Tamsen could teach us a thing or two about sewing.” Janet appraised her gown. “I’d give you the linen and a year’s worth of cheese if you’d borrow my good jacket and petticoat again and make another along their pattern for me. I’ll never match your skill with a needle.”
Tamsen smiled, deciding not to mention that they were the plainest clothes she’d ever worn. “I wish you might have seen my mother’s creations.” A burn of tears pressed behind her eyes as she added, “I’d be happy to stitch a gown for you.”
Bethany’s mouth twisted, as if the conversation hadn’t gone according to her liking. “What did your mama think, you coming Overmountain to marry our Jesse?”
“My mother died not long ago. She never met Jesse.”
Janet expressed her sympathy, until Bethany cut in, “So Jesse met your pa in Morganton?”
Tamsen turned to the girl, wondering at the probing questions. “Papa died years ago. I was …” She searched for the line between truth and discretion. “I was alone in Morganton when Jesse offered to take me west with him.”
Bethany wore a puzzled look, those big blue eyes of hers far too innocent. “You weren’t one of them … What’s the Bible call ’em, Mama? Those women that charge men for their favors?”
“Beth!” Janet’s face flamed with mortification. “Of course Tamsen was no such thing.”
“Indeed not.” Tamsen surprised herself by laughing, causing Janet visible relief.
Bethany frowned. “An orphan? Jesse and Cade took you on out of charity?”
Tamsen bit back her grin. “Wrong again.”
“Bethany Ann Allard,” Janet said in exasperation. “It is none of your business why they chose to marry. Tamsen isn’t obliged to share it with you if she doesn’t choose. Now hush.”
Bethany returned the bird to the cage and shut the wicker door. “Sorry, Mama. I was just curious.”
Tamsen wished she could tell them the truth. Despite Bethany’s apology and offer of friendship, she clearly hadn’t reconciled herself to Tamsen’s status as Jesse’s wife. Supposed wife. But truth—as pertained to her and Jesse—had become a thing too muddled to pin down in words. Since Luther Teague talked her out of marrying, she’d had time to be relieved she and Jesse hadn’t taken such a drastic measure. Time to wonder what it would be like for them now if they had. Time to wish she’d never left the Teagues, never come to this isolated cove at all. Time to think that if she hadn’t, there just might be another gaping hole in her heart where Jesse Bird had, to her surprise, begun to fit himself.
If only things could have been different. If only Cade—
“Why don’t I teach Tamsen how to make butter?” Bethany turned with a brighter countenance, small hands brushing off a residue of birdseed. “What else can’t you do? You got a kettle for boiling laundry in the yard, a battling stick?” When Tamsen said she’d neither, the girl’s brows shot high. “How’re you keeping your clothes clean?”
“Rinsing them in the creek.” Jesse did his own washing thus. Unless he’d come straight from working or riding, he always smelled clean. She’d surmised he bathed himself in the creek each morning too.
“You’d do better boiling your laundry,” the girl pronounced.
“One thing at a time, Beth.” Janet offered Tamsen a conciliatory smile. “Keeps busy as a bee in clover, my girl. Just like her brothers—Lord help their tired mama.”
As if they’d waited out of sight for this herald, Bethany’s little brothers came swerving around the cabin from the direction of the barn.
“Pa’s coming!” seven-year-old Nathan announced, white-blond hair in straggles over stick-out ears.
“And he’s hungry!” Zeb, a year younger, plowed into his brother’s back. He grinned up at Tamsen, who was close enough to playfully yank a lock of his shaggy hair, dark like his father’s.
Jesse appeared next, quiet in his moccasins. Bethany greeted him with a blazing smile, but he came straight to Tamsen and took up her hands, turning them palms up. “How are they?”
Tamsen felt a tingle on her skin at his touch—something deeper at his focused concern. Sensing every other eye on them, she blushed and pulled away. “Janet tended them.”
Jesse smiled and lowered his voice. “You want to share supper with the womenfolk or head back and have our own? Tate invited us, but I said I’d ask you first.”
It had been a good day, even with the unaccustomed work, the awkward moments with Bethany. On the whole, Tamsen found the lively Allard clan good company, but she was ready for a space of quiet.
“What would you like me to fix for our supper?” she asked.
The dusty smell of corn chaff lingered in Tamsen’s nose as she trudged the path behind Jesse. Long, papery leaves waved brown in memory’s breeze. Husk-covered ears thudded into the wagon bed, punctuated by the laughter of little boys. The pair had tried repeatedly to climb Jesse like a tree until he’d given in to their mischief and, growling,
entered into a bout of roughhousing that flattened a row of corn before ending in shrieks on the ground.
“Whenever he’s by,” Tate had told her, “they stick to him like stink on a skunk.”
She’d laughed at the expression, hiding what the sight of Jesse at play with the boys had done to her, tugging at her heart without due warning. Laughter hadn’t banished the worry she’d carried around all day. That worry weighed on her now, dulling her eyes to the forest around her as they climbed the ridge. For the first time since he and Jesse raised their cabin on Allard land, Cade hadn’t come to help with the harvest. And Tamsen was sure it was her fault.
The morning after Jesse shared the story of Cade’s adoption by the Shawnees, rounding the cabin on her way to the necessary, she’d run smack into Cade coming the other way. He’d reached to steady her, as he had on the street in Morganton.
“Oh!” she’d said. “I’m sorry. Where … where’s Jesse?”
“At the stable. I need to ask you a thing or two.”
She’d blinked at Cade, before grasping the sudden shift of his words. “Ask me what?”
“That suitor of yours. What sort of man was he that you didn’t take to him?”
“Mr. Kincaid? I … He … We only met the once.”
“And?”
“I thought at first I might like him,” she blurted. “Aside from his owning so many slaves and knowing that would be the life I’d have to lead if I married him.” Words had come tumbling then. She couldn’t seem to stop them, not with Cade’s eyes fixed on her from under those fierce brows, as if he was looking for a reason to doubt her. “But then I thought, maybe he’d be a kind master. Kinder than Mr. Parrish. Maybe I could bear it. Then his own slave came in.”
She couldn’t look away from those steady eyes. She sensed disapproval. Resentment. Or thought so. Did Cade wish she’d never involved Jesse in her troubles? Never come between them like a wedge? That was what she’d begun to feel like.
Quickly she’d told him the rest, of Toby, and the slap, and Ambrose’s unconcern for the slave who’d been raped.
“What was he doing in Morganton?”
She hadn’t thought on the details of that conversation since she’d stormed out of the ordinary. “It was something about land. On the Yadkin River, I think. Really all he wanted to talk about was Long Meadows, his grandfather’s plantation.”
Cade studied her, making her feel like she was holding something back. “You’re certain he’ll not give up the hunt for you?”
“I’m no wise certain about anything, though I’ve every reason to think Mr. Parrish means to find me.”
Cade had started to say something to that, but merely grunted as if in agreement and stepped around her.
Before Tamsen woke the following day, he had left them, taking more than a day’s worth of gear and provision.
“Off hunting, more’n like,” Jesse told her when she found him out back of the cabin, chopping wood and looking as troubled by the desertion as she felt.
Deep in her thoughts about Cade, moments passed before Tamsen realized they were climbing through unfamiliar woods. Jesse had taken a side trail while her eyes were trained on the back of his shirt, the damp spot where the straps of his rifle and bag crossed.
“Where … are we … bound?” she asked, out of breath.
Jesse paused, standing a little above her on the trail. Beyond him the path twisted up through rock-studded forest. “Thought I’d show you a spot up-creek. ’Less you’d rather go home directly?”
The day was cooling toward evening, but she was heated from the climb. Sweat trickled from beneath her cap where her hair lay coiled and heavy. Jesse looked every bit as hot, and filthy from their work.
“What about supper? Aren’t you hungry?”
“As a bear,” he said. “But reckon you’d like me to wash first. Anyway, we’re nigh there.”
Nigh was a relative term, she decided, some while before a faint rushing she’d taken for a breeze in the hardwoods grew louder. It couldn’t be a wind, for the trees barely shivered. Then they rounded a bend in the trail, and there beyond was the creek, spilling over massive, moss-flecked stones in a little fall. It dropped in a glistening sheet and rippled out to the edges of a wide basin. Sunlight speared the surrounding trees, striking the pool’s surface in stripes of translucent green and shadow.
When Tamsen would have stepped past Jesse for a better look, he put out a hand. Sliding the rifle off his shoulder, he went forward a step, looked upstream, down, scanned the clump of rusty serviceberry on the far side, the dark laurel thicket above the fall, then turned. “The falls mask noises. ’S all right, though.”
The path descended to a rock that rose out of the pool, long and flat. Tamsen stood at its edge, faint mist off the fall cooling her face. Birds flitted among the brush surrounding the basin. Along the low bough of a sycamore, a squirrel ran out, scolding. She barely heard it. Nor did she hear Jesse, behind her, stripping to his breechclout. The first she knew of it was the splash of his dive into the pool. She saw the shape of him moving beneath the water before his head broke the surface in a patch of sunlight, sleek as an otter’s.
He grinned up at her, treading water. “Coming in?”
“Me?” He moved closer, propelling himself toward the rock, only his head above the water’s surface. His arms were long. Maybe long enough to reach her ankle. She stepped back.
“It’s nice. Cold, but you get used to it.” His lips were turning purple.
“I don’t swim, remember?”
“I’m not likely to forget. But I can teach you. It’s not hard.”
She shook her head.
“Suit yourself.” Still grinning, he sank under the rippling surface.
She watched him stroke around the pool, knowing he had to be freezing. Finally he swam back to her. He put a hand over the stone’s lip and clung on.
She’d been right about his reach.
She knelt, tucking her petticoat close, so as not to have to shout. “Is this where you and Cade come to bathe?”
“It is. You want to come too?” He ran a hand down his face, sluicing away water, then dipped his head so his hair slicked back over his scalp. She found herself fascinated by the fine shape of his skull, usually hidden under that thatch of hair he wore tailed back. Her heart was going at a trot.
“I’m happy hauling water to the cabin. That way I can heat it.”
Jesse gripped the ledge with both hands and vaulted onto the rock, streaming water all around. The breechclout covered him front and back. Not a bit at the sides. His long, lean belly and even longer legs were slick and bare, his shoulders and chest stippled with cold.
Fearfully and wonderfully made, he was.
Cheeks blazing at the thought—and sight—she tore her eyes away and looked at the pool, the trees, the sky. Shock, mortification, admiration were threads in a hopeless tangle around her pounding heart. She was tempted to plunge into the pool after all—clothed, of course—just to cool her face and calm her rioting thoughts.
Apparently untroubled sitting there nearly naked, Jesse shook his hair like a dog would shake, giving her an excuse to scramble to her feet and put her back to him. After a moment she heard him dressing.
“You worked hard today. Tate told me he was pleased to have you helping. I’m sorry ’bout your hands.”
Tamsen swallowed but had no words—only the image of golden skin and lean muscle seared across her mind. His gaze was hot on the back of her head. She felt a trickle of sweat run down her nape.
“You don’t have to wear a cap all the time,” he said, as if he’d seen. “Janet’s given up on making Beth wear one.”
Tamsen faced him. Shirt and leggings covered most of that disconcerting skin now. “You don’t want me to wear a cap?”
“Wouldn’t bother me if you didn’t.”
“But my hair …” Twice as thick as Bethany’s, her hair could curl past taming when the weather turned humid. “It’d be a bramble
thicket if I don’t at least keep it plaited.”
Her hands were trembling. She clenched them, wincing at the sting of blisters as Jesse squeezed the water from his own hair. Gaze locked with hers, he stepped closer. “I didn’t mean to fret you none. Wear your hair any way pleases you. That’s all I meant to say.”
Tamsen looked away. It wasn’t only Bethany, or her hair—or sight of his impressively knitted frame—that had her knotted up inside. “Jesse … I know Cade left because of me. You don’t have to pretend otherwise.”
Vines grew thick among the trees below the pool, draped scarlet among greenery nipped with brown and gold. Insects danced in the sunlight shafting through the trees. She couldn’t look at any of it now, only at Jesse and the pain seeping into his gaze.
“Cade keeps a lot to himself. Always has done. He’ll come back. And come ’round to accepting the way things are now.”
“He shouldn’t have to. I wish …”
“Don’t say you wish I’d never helped you,” he said, a look in his eyes now she couldn’t read. “Don’t say that.”
“Then I wish it hadn’t cost you so much. I wish you didn’t have to lie to your neighbors, or that Cade felt driven out of his home, or that he’s upset you can’t go hunting this—”
“You weren’t meant to hear that.” Jesse closed the space between them, then touched her face. She froze, though his hand had already warmed, and for an instant she almost let herself press against it.
She stepped back. “I did hear it.”
Jesse held her in his gaze. “You let me worry about Cade. Ain’t nothing happened between him and me to cause any lasting upset. It’s only … We’ve all reached a spot where we got choices to make, soon as the dust settles. It’ll be all right.”
He was trying to reassure her, drawing from a well of comfort she hoped wasn’t as shallow as her own. Tamsen forced a smile. His in return was so relieved and full that it did something alarming to the pit of her stomach. Alarming, but nice.
Then he went and shattered the moment.