Love's Reckoning

by Laura Frantz

  “Thomas is fine, thank you. As for Elspeth, she’s well—well enough to go to church.”

  Surprise lightened his eyes, followed by amused understanding. “With Silas Ballantyne, I suppose.” He chuckled and returned his hat to his head. “Where are you going?”

  “To Margaret’s for tea.”

  “Would you like me to escort you?”

  She nearly laughed. For fifty feet? “’Tis kind of you, but I’m nearly there. And my basket isn’t heavy.”

  “May I have the first dance then?”

  She met his eyes, finding them so different from Silas’s. David’s were mild, like his manners, and so gray they seemed without color. “You’ve asked me that since we were very young,” she said, feeling their old kinship return, “when Master Gilbert came to Hope Rising to give us dancing lessons.”

  He reddened, eyes on his boots, and raked a hand through his sandy hair till it stood on end, reminding her of the boy he used to be. “Yes, but we’re no longer so young and the dancing master is no more, and I’m thinking you may have other admirers.”

  “None,” she said softly, though Papa’s ominous words held the hint of a coming match. Remembering it now seemed to snatch all the sunlight from her soul. Could her old friend see that too? “Good day, Master David. And yes,” she added, turning and tossing a shy smile over her shoulder, “you may have the first dance.”

  12

  Two is company, but three is none.

  Eighteenth-century proverb

  Two hours later in the glare of midafternoon, amidst church bells pealing, Eden returned down the lane, straight into the path of Silas on horseback. Elspeth sat behind him, arms wrapped firmly around his waist. The sight jarred Eden from her pleasant reverie and left her as overcast as the sky above. While Silas and her sister had just spent the morning together, in the place she longed to be, she’d been at Hope Rising, nearly forgetting Elspeth’s glee. Truly, Elspeth had never looked so triumphant. A numbing hurt took hold that had everything to do with Beatrice’s disappointing letter and nothing to do with the sight of them together. Or so she told herself.

  She hoped they’d merely nod and go on their way, but nay . . . Silas came to a stop in the middle of the lane. Holding the reins loosely, he looked down at her, wearing a bemused expression she’d not seen before. Was he wondering why she’d not accompanied him instead of Elspeth? Thinking her reluctance was refusal? Disinterest? Fear of her father?

  She kept her eyes on his greatcoat, the shirt she’d made him peeking out beneath. Despite his modest dress, she was always struck by his person, his presence, and today he loomed large. And Elspeth . . . There was no denying she was positively regal in back of him. No doubt she’d turned every head in the church with her colorful cape and feathered bonnet.

  Horatio pawed the ground as if impatient with their dallying. No one said a word.

  Awkwardness rent the air, so thick that Eden finally blurted, “Master David has asked that you play your fiddle at Hope Rising.”

  Silas shifted in the saddle. “Why would he?”

  “’Tis a tradition to hold a dance after the ice harvest,” she explained, thinking he’d be pleased. “Musicians are always in demand.”

  He continued to regard her warily. Had Papa not told him help was needed? Why, the event was the talk of the entire county, anticipated for months. Still, she read no pleasure in his expression.

  “I’ve not heard of any ice harvest,” he replied, raising the fire in her cheeks.

  After David’s courtly manner, she found Silas abrupt, even gruff. Had she erred in asking, somehow offending him, and in so doing pleased Elspeth? A satisfied smile pulled at her sister’s mouth as she gazed down from her queen-like perch.

  “Come, Silas,” Elspeth urged. “I’ll tell you all about it later. My sister seems determined to turn us to ice with her chatter.”

  “So be it.” With that, he slid from Horatio’s back, reins dangling, and reached for Eden.

  Her eyes went wide as his hands spanned her waist beneath the soft circle of her shawl. He lifted her off the ground, her basket tilting precariously, and set her in the warm saddle he’d just vacated before slapping the gelding’s backside. Horatio shot forward in the direction of the farm, Elspeth clutching Eden’s middle without a look back.

  Silas snatched up the paper that fluttered to the ground in Eden’s wake lest it get soiled. A letter? He had no wish to read it, but the monogrammed post lay wide open and seemed to demand he do so. Across the bottom was a sprawling signature that bespoke elegance, ease. The author was no mystery. After spending the morning with Elspeth, he now knew the name of every man, woman, and child in York County. Beatrice was a Greathouse, Eden’s friend . . . and Elspeth’s enemy. The few words penned therein left him a bit upended, and the timorous Eden he thought he knew grew hazy.

  Dearest Eden, The position you seek is delayed till spring.

  He folded the paper and slipped it in his coat pocket, surprise sifting through him. For a few minutes he stood still, the winter wind biting him, and turned up his coat collar as he tried to make sense of the cryptic message. Was Eden leaving York County? Or simply seeking work within its confines, mayhap at Hope Rising? He felt a stinging disappointment, followed by a return to reason. What did it matter? Let Eden have her position, her plan.

  He had his own.

  Come Monday the weaving was but half done. Having been with them a fortnight, eating numerous meals at their table, sleeping in the summer parlor, and playing countless rounds of chess with Silas in the weary evening hours, Isaac Lackey had turned out but a few rugs and coverlets. The paltry offerings were now spread over the dining room table for their perusal—a few napkins and towels, twin sheets, a rug, and other smaller items—making Eden wonder what else Isaac had been doing.

  She watched as Mama ran her hands over a tablecloth of vivid red and green, her practiced eye finding a flaw or two. “He lacks the skill of his father. But weavers are so hard to come by and we are in such dire need of woolens, I’ll not complain.”

  Even as she said the words, the loom upstairs had gone silent—again. Eden felt a keen dismay. But Mama seemed not to notice. Her face resumed its placid lines, her expression benign. She simply turned to her pattern book, pointing out two designs.

  “Go show Mr. Lackey these, Eden. I simply must have two more rugs worked in this way.”

  Nodding, Eden set down the pewter she’d been polishing and wiped her hands on her apron, trying to master her dislike of the lazy Isaac. The profound quiet boded ill, but thankfully, before her foot touched the first step, the loom’s clacking resumed. She imagined him throwing the shuttle back and forth across the stretched wool, Elspeth assisting, neither of them pleased with her unexpected appearance.

  When she reached the landing, her heart seemed to grind to a halt. The door to the weaving room was closed, though Mama insisted it always be open.

  The pattern book grew damp in her hands. Again the loom stilled. Breath held to the point of bursting, Eden pushed open the door. Isaac sat on his bench, but his hands were no longer on his work. They were on Elspeth, who was kissing him.

  The pattern book fell from Eden’s hands. Elspeth swirled around on the bench, her face a stew of surprise and indignation. Isaac simply looked smug, taking up the shuttle again as if nothing untoward had happened.

  A startling question cut through Eden’s mortification. Might Isaac be Jon’s father? The timing was certainly right. He’d last been here the previous winter . . .

  Scooping up the book, Eden opened the door wide, voice trembling at their brazenness. “Mr. Lackey . . .”

  Thoughts of Silas crowded out what little remained of her composure. What would he say to this? Her sister was so fickle—so unfaithful. The shame that should have been Elspeth’s suffused Eden from tip to toe. “Mama needs two more rugs worked in this pattern,” she whispered, handing Isaac the book. Hearing the babe crying below, she turned and fled.

  Si
las spread the tobacco-colored map upon his desk—Eden’s desk—in the garret room. The light slanting through the sole window highlighted every geographical feature that lay beyond the Allegheny Mountains to the west. Simply looking at the topography set his soul on fire. ’Twas a holy passion he had to push west—to move beyond the boundaries of who he was and what he’d been born to—to who he felt called to be.

  Or was it a less holy, burning ambition instead?

  He’d logged less than two months in York County, and already his soul chafed at his tenure. Yet if the Lord deemed it necessary for him to tarry here, he would. His sprawling indenture had an end, and he knew the date like his own name day.

  Eighteen October, 1785.

  He riffled through his haversack and brought out a second map far different from the first. This one he’d nearly memorized. In the far left corner was the outpost of Fort Pitt, situated on an oft-disputed, arrowhead-shaped tip of land known as the gateway to the West. He’d heard of the raw breed of men there, of disease and lawlessness and Indian unrest, yet the more he learned, the more he saw beyond the danger and violence to what it would one day be. In the matter of trade, this new land was ripe for exploitation and settlement. Settlers were now plotting out the makings of a village, a Scottish stronghold. For years Quakers had pushed the intrepid Scots toward the borders to fend off the Indians on the Pennsylvania frontier. Pittsburgh was the result.

  His longing to have been among the first wave of immigrants was fierce. Posts near the Forks of the Ohio and beyond were now well established, and men were getting rich through the Indian trade. Now there were rumors of a different sort of wealth—of coal and other natural resources buried deep in the western hills, there for the taking. One day the territory would surely be filled with the smoke and soot of Edinburgh. Pittsburgh even boasted of becoming a second Philadelphia.

  Leaning back in his chair, he ran a hand through his unkempt hair and sighed. All that stood between him and his future was a precarious apprenticeship, the Allegheny Mountains, and two hundred miles of unfamiliar wilderness. Rolling up the maps, he returned them to his haversack along with Beatrice Greathouse’s letter to Eden. If she came to him in the stairwell again, he’d return it to her.

  Though he tried to dismiss it, the letter’s terse words tore at him. Did she seek a position at Hope Rising? Were her parents aware of her scheme? Nae, reason told him. The plan was in place to escape this contentious place.

  Hers—and his own.

  It was nearly nine o’clock when Eden made her way to the barn, rags and liniment in one hand, lantern in the other. She needn’t have bothered with a light, the moon was so luminous. Stopping by the smokehouse, she set the lantern atop a barrel. Curing hams dangled overhead from thick rafters, and the pungent tang of saltpeter, pepper, and sugar was nearly smothering. As she snitched bacon from a barrel, she felt as duplicitous as Elspeth.

  Her breathing quickened at the muted strains of a fiddle. Was Silas in the barn? Keeping a wary eye on the barn’s cracks, seeking his tall outline, she prayed he was at the far end and she could slip in and out unnoticed. They hadn’t spoken since yesterday when she’d met him and Elspeth in the lane. She’d not thought to find him here now. His lovely music nearly made her forget her mission. But for the injured dog awaiting her, she’d have turned back.

  She’d placed the pup behind the haymow in one far corner, well out of harm’s way. For a moment she felt a flash of exasperation at having so tender a heart. “Let the dog die,” Papa had said when she’d found the gangly pup shivering and bleeding in the pasture a week before, the victim of a wolf or worse. But its queer eyes—one brown, one gray—had seemed pleading, a test of her newfound faith.

  The Quaker saying she’d stitched on a sampler and hidden in her dower chest propelled her forward. I expect to pass through this world but once. Therefore any good work, kindness, or service I can render to any person or animal, let me do it now, for I will not pass this way again. Though not Scripture, it seemed an echo of the same.

  The barn door opened with a groan, but the fiddle music masked it. Silas was down with the horses, well away from the dog’s piteous moans, yet each time the fiddle trilled higher, the pup would raise its head and howl. Eden clapped a hand over her mouth in amusement and dropped to her knees in the hay. The pup paused long enough to lick her hand, tail thumping wildly, before resuming his lament.

  “There’s naught wrong with your wagging,” she said in hushed tones, relinquishing the bacon, “or your howling.”

  Unwrapping his foreleg, she applied the liniment to the deep gash, the herbal scent supplanting the strong smell of hay. Working by the low glow of lantern light, she realized too late the fiddling had ceased. Only the usual barn sounds surrounded her—a pigeon’s nesting, a rooster’s crowing, the creaking of old rafters in the wind.

  Slowly she turned. Silas leaned against the stall, bow and fiddle in hand.

  “You needn’t stop your fiddling,” she said, getting up as gracefully as she could. “I like a fine jig.”

  “So your father lets you dance.”

  She nodded. Strangely, he did, though it had been the ruination of him. “I’ve never heard such playing as yours.”

  He grinned, his teeth a flash of white in the dimness. “Screechy and scratchity, you mean.”

  “On the contrary.” Awe edged her voice. “One would think you were fiddler to the duke and not your father.”

  “Aye,” he murmured. “On occasion.”

  “Might you be . . .” She bit her lip, remembering their confrontation in the lane. “Practicing? For Hope Rising?”

  He gave a terse nod, and she had the distinct feeling he was no more pleased with the mention than he had been at first. Disappointment sank like a stone inside her. She’d wanted him to have something to look forward to—to break the monotony of his days. There was so little joy in their lives, and so much work. She’d hoped they might share a dance. The admission brought a queer stitch to her stomach as a deeper realization dawned. Might his playing bring back memories of Scotland—all he’d lost?

  He looked at her and then his fiddle. “I ken little of what you colonials dance to—the music, the steps.”

  Was this the trouble then? Moved by the stark vulnerability in his eyes, she blurted, “I could show you.”

  But even as she offered she felt a paralyzing shyness. He was studying her in that earnest way he had, as if daring her to do so. She wouldn’t go to church, his intensity seemed to say. Would she dance then?

  She gathered up the rags and liniment and prepared to leave, but he caught her wrist as she turned away. “Nae, Eden. Stay.”

  His tender insistence, the touch of his fingers, was like a lure. He set his fiddle and bow down and took the things from her hands.

  “’Tis mostly simple country dances,” she began, but the whispered words died in her throat.

  “Such as . . . ?” His tall shadow touched hers.

  “‘Sir Roger de Coverly’ is but one.” Her voice was barely a whisper. She felt the chill of the barn. His warm gaze.

  Slowly he took up his fiddle and struck a familiar tune. She would stay, the starting note seemed to say. As she stepped into the walkway between the stalls, alarm shot through her. What if Papa, Elspeth, found them thus?

  Back to him, hands on her hips, she summoned all her courage and began to step lightly, eyes shut, following the intricate pattern of a beloved country dance. The music wafted to the barn rafters, surrounding her, wooing her, nearly making her giddy.

  That lassie o’ yours, m’ lady, has a good ear.

  The words returned to her from a far-off place, spoken by the dancing master at Hope Rising years before. She’d been but nine. Now she was nearly twenty. Back then she hadn’t cared that her mother beamed at the compliment. Now it gave her confidence.

  “Sir Roger de Coverly” faded and the Glasgow reel began. Her steps were sure, his timing flawless. And his playing—oh, ’twas heaven’s own! She
felt she had wings! When the music ended she slowed to a dizzy spin, eyes still closed, and felt his hand in hers, his other warm about her waist, as together they matched their steps over the hay-strewn space.

  “You need no music, Eden. You need only me—and I you.”

  She thought she must be dreaming. Is that what he said to her at the last, his breath warm against her ear? Simply thinking it sent little shimmies of pleasure coursing through her. No man had ever spoken to her in such a way.

  A dream, truly.

  The house was tucked into bed, but Elspeth was awake, waiting. She sat up as Eden entered their bedchamber, eyes shining in the gloom, her arms folded across her chest. All Eden could think of was finding her with the weaver but a few hours before.

  “Where have you been? ’Tis late.” Elspeth’s tone, ever accusing, was a wounding whisper. “I was about to fetch Father.”

  “I was with Silas in the barn,” Eden answered, with a confidence born of near elation.

  And Elspeth said . . . nothing.

  No threats. No tears. No tantrums.

  13

  Distance lends enchantment to the view.

  English proverb

  Five days later the weaver left. ’Twas the Sabbath, and Elspeth went to church with Silas again. How diminutive she looked beside the strapping Scot, the pointed contrast drawing Eden to the bedchamber window. Silas was, she lamented, deliciously long of leg and wide of shoulder, as handsome from the backside as the front, just as Elspeth said. Eden watched them go, wishing it was raining torrents or on the verge of a blizzard so they’d be confined to the house. But the morning was clear, the church bells tolling beneath an endless blue sky.

  Church was suddenly acceptable—permissible—for Elspeth, all in the name of courtship. “Absent yourself from their company,” Papa had said. “Arrange occasions for them to be together.” Well, that she would do, if reluctantly.