by Laura Frantz
“Come along, Sebastian, and I’ll return you home.”
Making her excuses to Mama, she went down the lane, wanting to return before dusk overtook her completely. When she reached Hope Rising, she saw Margaret and Jemma sitting in the brick-walled garden, drinking tea, backs to her. ’Twas David who met her in the courtyard, a stable boy by his side. The lad ran to her and grabbed the rope round Sebastian’s neck while he wagged his tail and looked back at Eden mournfully.
“Let me guess.” David’s expression was chagrined. “Sebastian has come calling . . . again.”
“Yes,” she said, a bit breathless from returning at a near run. “He seems to have a liking for my herbs.”
He frowned and raked a hand through his hair. “I wish he had the same appetite for wolves.”
“Jemma said you’ve lost two more ewes.”
“Regrettably, but Ballantyne can’t be everywhere at once. Nor can I. Besides, the sheep aren’t what most concern me.” His eyes swept her from head to toe. “Margaret tells me you’re unwell.”
She met his troubled gaze reluctantly. “Just a headache now and again.”
“Headaches, is it? Any more trouble at home?”
She felt a tad cornered by his probing. Though Margaret was normally closed-mouthed, since the fire she’d been less so. “No more mischief, if that’s what you mean.”
“I hardly think such a fire mere mischief, Eden.”
That she couldn’t deny. But what could they do about it? “The barn and shop have been rebuilt, as you know. Now Papa has his hands full with the wheat harvest—”
“Have you given any thought to the spinning operation I told you about?”
“There’s been little time.” Impatience needled her as the sun sank like a scarlet ball on the horizon. She wanted to be away, repair the mess Sebastian had made . . .
He stepped closer. “You know that in future you can come to me, that Hope Rising is a safe haven. You could even move into the empty cottage now—”
“Nay!” The word erupted far too forcibly, and she rued the surprise in his eyes. “Please, David, I’m . . .” Fine? She teetered dangerously close to a lie. In truth, she wasn’t well. She was missing Silas and becoming increasingly worried about Elspeth. And she couldn’t dismiss the cold, hovering fear that something far more troubling than the fire loomed on the horizon. “You needn’t worry about me . . . please.”
Despite the lump rising in her throat, she forced a smile, if only to ease the furrow in his brow. She longed to tell him she would soon go west with Silas. ’Twas time David settled down as well. He was in need of a wife, Jemma said. Whoever he chose, she’d no doubt be a proper Philadelphia belle from one of the prominent families the Greathouses knew. Once they parted, Eden would likely never see Hope Rising again.
The realization made her melancholy, and she started to turn away lest he see the sorrow in her eyes. But he made a sudden move and caught her arm. “Wait, Eden. Promise me you’ll come to Hope Rising if you need anything—anything at all.”
Their eyes met, and she saw a wealth of childhood affection there. “I promise,” she said, as much to appease him as to be on her way. Her head was throbbing now, steady as a drum, nearly making her dizzy, and the pressure of his hand hurt.
“Is Silas playing at the Golden Plough tonight?”
She nodded. “Nearly every night, it seems.”
“Those York lasses like to see him come round.” A knowing smile lightened his features as his hand fell away. “Some tarry outside the tavern and wait for him.”
A little trill of alarm sounded inside her. “Do any . . . go in?”
“To hear him play?” He shrugged. “A few bold ones do, but he gives them nary a glance. His eye is on the West, though I can’t fathom why. Fort Pitt is naught but a mud trough with dogs and pigs running amok through the streets, yet he pockets every bit of coin to that end.”
She opened her mouth in his defense, then hesitated. Best stay silent lest David see into her heart. She tried to shoo away his disturbing words so they couldn’t take root and cause her more worry. Let the York girls look and listen all they wanted. They weren’t a part of the plan to go west. She was.
“I believe I’ll ride over to the tavern for some draughts,” he said, turning away.
Bidding him goodbye, she started toward home as if her heels had wings. Would that she could up and ride to the tavern and see Silas as easily. ’Twas weeks since they’d been alone. With Elspeth accompanying them to Sabbath services and the garden consuming all their energies at summer’s peak, there was little time left for stolen kisses. If only she had a remedy for that as well. For now, valerian would do for the ache in her head, if not her heart.
The kitchen in the dog days of August had never been hotter. Eden wiped her perspiring brow with the hem of her apron, patience ebbing. Jon was wailing in the background, and a red welt glowered on her wrist after she’d tried to rescue the pot of beans Elspeth had spilled. They pooled on the worn floorboards in a brown mound, steaming and sticky.
Elspeth shot her an exasperated glance and began untying her apron. “You have no patience with me in the kitchen! No wonder I spill things! The smithy is far preferable to this—”
“Papa asked me to teach you.” Taking a deep breath, Eden feigned patience. “How are you to feed a family, manage a household, without such skills?”
Elspeth snorted. “And how am I to learn? You throw into the pot a pinch of this and a pinch of that. How am I to follow?”
“Making cornbread is simple enough. One egg and a cup of buttermilk. One cup meal. A pinch of salt. A spoonful of bacon grease. Mix well.”
Rolling her eyes, Elspeth planted her hands on her hips. “Little wonder you are so dull. There are far more interesting things afoot, but you take no notice.”
“And what should I take notice of?”
“Papa is making plans. Something to do with the gunsmith’s son.”
Eden looked up from the mess on the floor, hope kindling. Was this why Papa wanted Elspeth in the kitchen? Was he about to pair her with Giles Esh? “Are you . . . partial to him?”
“Who? The gunsmith’s son? Don’t be ridiculous. Father tried to foist him on me first, and I refused him. It seems he prefers you anyway, daft as he is. My sights are still set on Silas Ballantyne, and don’t you forget it.”
Eden bit her tongue. Then why are you running amok at night? ’Tis not Silas you’re meeting with, surely. She turned away, thoughts aswirl. The troubling truth was that Elspeth could be dallying with any number of men who came to the smithy for business or who’d helped with the rebuilding. The thought filled her with a recurring dread. What if another babe was on the way?
From the corner cradle, Jon’s cries grew more muffled as if his fussing had worn him out. As usual, her sister didn’t give him so much as a glance. It hurt Eden, this shunning. At eight months, he was the plumpest, handsomest babe she’d ever seen. Though she tried to puzzle out his parentage, looking for a clue in his tiny features, his origins remained a mystery.
“I’ll make the cornbread,” Eden said in measured tones, taking up a whisk. “You fetch the cream and apple butter from the springhouse. We’ll both clean up the mess.”
“Oh my, Sister!” The smile Elspeth gave her was far from warm. “That’s the bossiest I’ve ever seen you.”
When the door opened unexpectedly, Eden bit her lip as Elspeth stood in front of the steaming beans, rearranging her full skirts as if to hide them. Silas and Papa were entering the kitchen for the noon meal, a merchant in their wake. There was a business matter brewing, one that involved Silas’s three-sided lanterns adorning the expanding streets of nearby Lancaster.
Eden was acutely aware of Silas brushing past her on his way to the dining room, but she dared not look at him lest love and longing splay across her face. He was a master at hiding his own emotions, hardly giving her a glance. Not even Papa, sharp-eyed and sharper-tongued, suspected. Or so she hoped.
The bounty of their table gave the merchant pause. “’Tis Eden’s doing,” Papa was saying. “’Tis no secret she keeps the finest garden in the county.” His bald-faced boasting, so at odds with his usual criticism, made her flush the color of the beets she served. “She’s been putting by a wealth of goods for the winter. No doubt she’ll make some man a fine wife.”
“Some man?” The merchant’s amused tone stopped her cold just shy of the kitchen door. “Word is . . .”
He had the grace to lower his voice, but Eden felt as if he’d shouted the words. She nearly dropped the gravy bowl as the drone of Papa’s tone lowered in what she feared was affirmation. The gunsmith’s son. It could be nothing else. She’d ignored Giles Esh’s recent visits to Papa, thinking they were simply talking trade. Might they be arranging a match without her knowledge?
Heartsick, she cleaned up the spilled beans before rocking Jon to sleep by the open kitchen door, trying to court a reluctant breeze. The scraping of utensils on plates in the adjoining room set her teeth on edge. When she served a berry cobbler at meal’s end, it seemed everyone was looking at her closely, as if Papa had just told them something momentous.
As she passed behind Silas’s chair, he shot her a sidelong glance. “Eden, I have need of a good shirt.”
’Twas Saturday—wash day—and he was to play at a wedding that evening. She nodded absently, though his request struck her as odd. He’d never asked her outright for such. She always left his clean clothes in a basket by his door.
She went into the side yard, where half a dozen shirts and breeches were draped over the garden fence. Darting a glance about, she brought one sun-warmed shirt to her face, breathing in the fragrance of linen and lye. But it was his scent she craved . . . his touch . . . the safety and security of his arms. Her heart turned over. Was he as lonesome for her as she was for him?
When she returned to the dining room, his chair sat empty. Papa and the merchant were deep in conversation while Mama and Elspeth cleared the table. Slipping out to the empty smithy, she found Silas’s door ajar.
Oh, Lord . . . for a moment alone with him.
“Eden, come.”
His tender tone was her undoing. Her heart gave a wild leap. Without a backward glance, she stepped into his room for the first time since he’d claimed it.
27
Gather the Rose of love, whilst yet is time.
Edmund Spenser
Silas shut the door with a firm click, taking the shirt from Eden’s hands. Pulling the garment over his head, he watched, bemused, as she turned her back on his bare chest, a faint tint to her cheeks. “You’ll not be so modest once we wed, I’ll wager.”
She spun toward him, her fingers grazing his collar as she fumbled with a button. “Nor so clumsy. Only a few weeks more.”
“Aye, Eden Ballantyne.” His hand circled the back of her neck, her hair like silk beneath his calloused palm.
The sweetness of her rose up and turned him inside out as he bent and kissed her, his senses reeling dangerously as she kissed him back. He sensed her surprise and delight, her yearning for more. More than he could yet give her. Drawing back, he drank in the anticipation of what was to come. For now he had but a foretaste. There was only the two of them. The door was shut. No one and nothing else existed.
But the gunsmith’s son.
Her expression clouded as he thought it, as if they’d already become one and she was thinking it too. He kept his voice low, mindful of Liege returning to the forge. “Eden, what is this about Giles Esh?”
Worry raced through her eyes. “I’ve heard naught of it till today. He danced with me at Hope Rising’s ball. I—I’ve never encouraged him—”
“’Tis your father’s doing.” His voice softened in sympathy, though he felt a spike of alarm. She was just a pawn in a business deal; Liege hadn’t even consulted her. “He wants another man at the forge once I leave. Being a gunsmith with some understanding of iron, Esh is the logical choice. And he is, by all accounts, smitten with you.”
She simply looked at him in surprise. Losh, but she had no idea how tempting she was. Taking her hands, he turned them over and kissed them. “One day, Eden Lee, you’ll have to fend off no man but me.”
She was regarding him with such love and trust it rent his heart. A gentle and quiet spirit she had, more than any lass he’d ever met.
A new worry gnawed at him. Was he even worthy of her?
“There seem so many obstacles of late,” she whispered. “David Greathouse keeps speaking of spinning, and now Giles Esh . . .”
He studied her thoughtfully. “I could tell your father my intentions.”
“Nay, he’d simply use it against us—make things harder for us.”
“He’s given Esh permission to court you. Or so he said at table.”
“Oh, Silas, what am I to do?”
He cupped her chin in gentle teasing. “You could simply be a sonsie lass, hardly giving him a glance, pretending he’s not even in the same county, like you do with me.”
Dismay stole her smile away. “Doing so breaks my heart into little pieces.”
“’Tis best for now,” he said with a weary smile. “Till October.” The thought filled him with a profound sense of wonder. She was nearly his.
Why, then, did he feel a nagging doubt that it was not to be?
Eden watched warily as Giles Esh approached her at the well. A good fifty feet from the kitchen door, the stone recess was surrounded by old apple trees recently laden with fruit. She knew why he sought her out, having received Papa’s permission to court her. And their courting was to begin . . . now.
She surveyed him in the warm shade, trying to smile, trying to stay the judgmental thoughts that sluiced through her like the cider they’d just finished pressing. Through no fault of his own, Giles was so unlike Silas. Small. Thin. Pockmarked. Already losing his fair hair.
“Good day, Giles.”
He removed his hat, turning the worn brim in his hands a bit awkwardly. “Good day, Miss Eden.” The brilliant hue of his eyes, even in the shade, struck her hard. They were as blue as Jon’s—and totally besotted. She lowered her bucket into the well, wanting to climb in after it.
He plucked an apple from a low branch and took a bite, chewing thoughtfully. “Your father’s given permission for me to squire you to church come the Sabbath.”
She worked hard to keep her dismay down. Elspeth had already intruded on this, her most favorite day. Would Giles too? She drew up the bucket so hastily she spilled half the water out.
“If you have need of church,” she said quietly, “I would bid you come.”
And so he did, sitting as close as he dared that next Sabbath while she pined for Silas further down the pew. Beside Giles, Elspeth managed to look bright-eyed despite her near-nightly jaunts, turning every head as she entered the austere little church in her outrageous ostrich feather hat. Eden eyed her buxom figure, fearing the worst.
As the opening Psalm was sung, she stole a look at her beloved, straight-backed and silent, eyes ahead. She missed their stairwell meetings, his fervent kisses. All summer their paths had hardly crossed. Sometimes he seemed to have forgotten all about her. And she was struck by the realization that his work, his ambitions, might well be the greatest rival for his affections. He was so driven. So fiercely determined.
As she’d read the Song of Solomon the night before in the garret when the household was asleep, her worn emotions had intensified and turned her breathless.
By night on my bed
I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.
As the heat of August faded into a cooler September, dread and elation were Eden’s constant companions. Soon she would be free of Papa’s and Elspeth’s fractious ways and Giles’s unwanted attentions. The wilderness awaited, promising a sort of peace, yet as that day neared, new worries dawned. Mama seemed to have taken another melancholy turn, going about her chores teary-eyed and silent. Eden feared it was her own leaving that made her mournful, then remembered hearing Mama and Papa arguing more and more often behind closed doors.
She escaped to Hope Rising when she could, though it no longer held the appeal it once did. Silas spent afternoons there, overseeing the breeding of the now-flourishing Blackface. Eden lingered at a fence, watching his tall figure in a far meadow as he moved among the flock, nearly forgetting Margaret was waiting. Steaming cups of hyson tea and rose petal sandwiches welcomed her, a far cry from the usual fare. Though Eden hadn’t breathed a word of her departure, it seemed Margaret somehow suspected.
Margaret poured the rich brew into pristine cups, the hand-painted flowers and leaves adorning the china reminding Eden of her own fading garden. Absently, she wondered if any good tea could be had in the West. She doubted the porcelain pot she’d packed would make it over the mountains intact.
“Cream and sugar?” Margaret asked, ever polite.
“Both, please.” Eden shifted in her chair, wondering how she’d manage with the babe. Jon sat on her lap, a chortling, cooing imp, his fists tightly fastened to his leading strings as he chewed them to soggy bits. At nine months, he was heavy as a tub of lard and twice as slippery, always trying to stand or crawl.
“I’ll hold him for thee,” Margaret offered, nearly groaning as she did so. “My, but he’s a handful! How is his temper?”