by Laura Frantz
The words held a telling edge, sharp as the dirk that lined his boot. He had enemies aplenty in Pittsburgh, namely the Turlock clan. He wouldn’t be adding to their numbers with this woman. But his most pressing concern was Eden, already aglow with the babe inside her, the harm done her in York a fading memory.
He continued with a calm he was far from feeling. “I’ll have my head shipwright escort you off the premises, and I’ll make sure I’m present to see you leave Pittsburgh on the first stage tomorrow. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
Back stiff, she stood on his threshold, malice hardening her fair features. “I’ll be back, Silas Ballantyne. You can’t keep me away from Eden—or Pittsburgh—perpetually.”
Their eyes locked, but hers were the first to falter when he said, “Say what you will. I’ll not welcome you. Ever.”
1
The city of Philadelphia is perhaps one of the wonders of the world.
Lord Adam Gordon
Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
April 1822
Elinor Louise Ballantyne is an agreeable young lady with a fortune upwards of twenty thousand pounds . . .
Nearly wincing at the words, Ellie fisted the latest bulletin from the Matrimonial Society of Philadelphia and hid the paper beneath the generous folds of her spencer. The gray kerseymere fabric was too warm for an April day that had begun in an overstuffed coach and was now stalled on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Pittsburgh, but she’d chosen the nondescript garment for a purpose.
She was an agreeable young lady.
She was traveling alone.
And she was indeed worth a fortune.
These three things were a tempting combination on any day, but here in the wilds of western Pennsylvania, they were potentially lethal. Hadn’t she just seen a handbill warning of highwaymen at the last stage stop?
Emerging from the coach, she stood in a patch of sunlight slightly apart from the other passengers and tried to ignore the oaths emanating from beneath the vehicle as the driver dealt with a broken axle. The other passengers looked on in consternation, some muttering epithets of their own.
“Miss . . . ?” The inquiry came from a robust, heavily rouged woman to her left, her hazel eyes appraising.
“Elinor,” she replied with a hint of a smile, clutching her purse a bit tighter.
“Care to walk with us? We might well make it to Pitt ahead of the driver. It ain’t but a dozen miles away, so the marker right there says.”
Relieved, Ellie glanced at a stone pillar along the roadside that confirmed the words before falling into step with the others, eyes shifting to an unshaven man bearing a silver-plated pistol. A little walk would hardly hurt, given she’d been cooped up in a coach for days on end. Her travel mates had boarded just twenty miles prior and were far fresher than she but just as anxious to see the smoky valley that was Pittsburgh, the three rivers entwining there in a silvery knot.
She’d been away far too long. The surrounding woods now seemed more stranger than friend. How different Pittsburgh must have looked to her father when he first came all those years before. Raw wilderness then, not the industrial city it was rapidly becoming. Their home, New Hope, had been merely a poor blacksmith’s dream in 1785, not the jewel crowning the Allegheny bluff that now stopped river traffic midstream.
A furious honking of geese and bleating of sheep disrupted her reverie. She and her companions hurried to the side of the road as several drovers came toward them in a whirl of dust, driving their herds eastward to market.
Sighing, she shook the dust off her skirts. The thought of sleeping atop her own feather bolster, twelve inches thick, and slaking her thirst with orange ice on the veranda made her walk a bit faster. Could anyone blame her for leaving finishing school in Philadelphia earlier than planned? If she’d written home and told them of her coming, they’d have tried to stop her—or arranged for a chaperone. As it was, she’d saved them the work and the worry. She simply wanted to surprise Papa on his birthday, an event she’d missed four years in a row, given she’d been east.
No more Madame Moreau. No tedious lessons in French or embroidery. No performing harp solos in stifling assemblies or declining dances at society balls. And most importantly . . .
No more being hounded by the Matrimonial Society of Philadelphia.
They’d walked but a mile or so when the sky cast off its blueness like a discarded dress and clad itself in shades of Quaker gray. As if conspiring, the wind began to race through the newly leafed timber on both sides of them with a fickle ferocity that slowed their progress and left them clutching their caps and bonnets.
Any moment the repaired coach would overtake them and they’d come to Widow Meyer’s Tavern just ahead. Or so Ellie hoped. At the first stinging drops of rain, she quickened her steps, the thin soles of her London-made slippers padding along in dusty protest. The rising wind was making sport of her full skirts, blowing them up in an embarrassing display so that anyone who wanted could see the pantalets beneath.
“Egads!” a burly man uttered to her left, lifting his hands in alarm.
Hail, big as goose eggs, was raining down, giving rise to grunts and cries as all made for the cover of the woods. Thankful for the broad brim of her bonnet, Ellie huddled beneath a sycamore as the wind keened higher. All around, branches snapped a staccato tune, followed by eerie stillness that foretold further trouble.
Fixing her eye on the western rim of the horizon, she felt like uttering an oath herself. A funnel cloud was whirling, black as pitch, and the wind was tugging her chin ribbons and unseating her bonnet. Backing further into the forest out of the funnel’s path, she slipped and nearly fell on the hail-littered ground.
Like a brightly plumed bird, her feather bonnet took wing, and for a few teeth-chattering moments she feared she might follow. The purse string snapped about her wrist and was flung away into the whirlwind, all her coin with it.
Oh, if only Rose were here!
Never in all her twenty years had she witnessed anything like this! Grabbing hold of another sycamore’s shaggy trunk, she anchored herself and squeezed her eyes shut against the swirling debris, cowering at the tremendous roar of the wind. Terror clawed at her as she bent her head. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. The scent of damp spring earth and wind-whipped leaves was nigh on suffocating. Shaking, she hugged the rough bark and prayed the tree would hold fast like the iron anchors of her father’s ships. She felt fragile as a butterfly about to be shorn of its wings, certain the tumult would tear her to pieces.
Twice the storm nearly upended her, prying her fingers free from their fierce hold. Then somehow, miraculously, the funnel cloud departed and sheets of cold rain took its place, soaking the mass of her waist-length hair now matted with leaves and twigs. Nary a hairpin remained. But that was the least of her worries.
The road was now oozing with coffee-colored mud, hail, and downed trees. Through the haze of rain she could make out a few of her traveling companions ahead, scrambling for a light in the distance. It beckoned like a star, golden and beguiling, promising shelter and peace.
The Widow Meyer’s? The last stage stop just shy of Pittsburgh?
When she stumbled toward its broad wood steps, she found the tavern yard was as littered as the road, full of stranded coaches and damaged wagons and hysterical horses, its cavernous public room just as chaotic. Night was falling fast, and she was terribly homesick and near tears.
Her purse was gone—all her coin—pickpocketed by the wind, just like her bonnet. The realization edged her nearer the hysteria rising all around her. Looking up, she noticed the western portion of the tavern roof was missing, shingles agape. Rain was pouring in like water through a sieve, drenching a far corner and sending people scurrying.
“The storm of the century!” someone shouted amid the din, raising the sodden hair on the back of her neck.
Hot and cold by turns, she unfastened the braid trim along her collar, shrugged off her spencer,
and draped it over one arm, mindful that one too many men were watching. Unbidden, a memory crawled through her benumbed conscience and turned her more wary. Something had happened to her mother in a tavern long ago, the murky details never broached. What she most remembered was her father’s aversion to such places and his insistence she stay clear of them.
Oh, Papa, if you could see me now . . .
Toward dawn, Jack Turlock and a collection of the most able-bodied men finished clearing a three-mile path from the tavern toward Pittsburgh. The storm had touched down slightly west of Widow Meyer’s before blazing a new trail east and inflicting more damage. By lantern light they worked, thankful the rain and wind had abated as quickly as they had come, all relieved to see the sun creep over the far horizon in reassurance that the world had not ended after all.
“Now what?” asked a squat young Irishman with a thick lilt when the men had returned to the tavern yard. He and his companions looked to Jack, who simply stared back at them through sleep-deprived eyes.
Somehow during the long night, Jack had assumed a leadership position he’d not wanted. Clutching an ax, he turned toward the tavern yard. “We’d do well to examine the coaches and wagons and bring the injured out first. The women and children will follow.”
He moved slowly, the heavy canvas of his trousers mud-mired to his thigh, his boots soiled beyond repair. He’d misplaced his coat in the melee, and his dirty shirt had snuck past his waistband and now ended at his knee. Rubbing the crick in his neck, he remembered his cravat was adorning someone’s broken arm as a sling. It had been a very long night.
A gentle wind was stirring all around him after a dead calm, reminding him of his near escape the night before. In the thick of the storm, a falling oak, broad as three men, had missed him by mere inches. The crashing thud of it echoed long in his thoughts, and on its heels was the voice of his former schoolmaster.
Pulvis et umbra sumus. We are dust and shadows.
He tried to shake off the memory, but the tempest inside him lingered, of greater fury than the storm now bearing east. Ducking beneath the low lintel of the tavern’s main entrance, he sensed a hush fall over the public room at his appearance. At the mud-spattered sight of him? Or his family’s reputation? Likely the latter. In the keeping room of this very tavern was cask after cask of Turlock whiskey. He could smell its distinctive tang and felt a shiver of disgust, though he needed a drink himself.
Stepping up onto the raised hearth, he faced the waiting crowd. “We’ve cleared the road west well enough to get a few of you through. The injured will go first, followed by the women and children—”
“Injured, aye.” A gentleman in a top hat got to his feet, a frown marring his features. “Then those of us who are well bred and have business to attend to are next, surely—”
“Nay. The plan is in place.” Jack’s voice resounded to the room’s damp corners. “I’ll wager there’s little business being transacted this day short of saws and ox trains. For now, we’re ready to escort the wounded into Pittsburgh. All else can wait.”
A few children began crying, making him second-guess his decision, if only briefly. Returning outside, he helped load the hurt onto what wagons hadn’t been damaged, trying not to linger on bleeding limbs and gashed faces. Some contraptions were in dire need of repair. Given there were a good hundred people left to transport, it could take far longer than planned.
Toward noon he returned to the public room, the stench of spirits and unwashed bodies colliding in a sickening rush. A bit light-headed from hunger, he began assembling women and children, keeping families intact for travel. A few genteel ladies murmured in complaint at being made to wait, but he gave them no notice other than a cursory reassurance they’d not linger long. The room had emptied by half now, and he could better assess the situation.
“Mr. Turlock, sir, what d’ye want me to do with Cicero?” The stable boy at his elbow shifted from one bare foot to the other, looking befuddled beneath his many freckles. “Ain’t like ye to stay on.”
“See that Cicero gets an extra nose bag of oats.” He pulled a coin from his pocket and flipped it into the air, and the boy caught it with a grin. “I hope to leave come morning.”
Truly, he rarely lingered long, his restless nature never settling. He only needed a tankard of ale. A meal. Mayhap a bath. Aye, that was a necessity. His mother tolerated no mess at Broad Oak, nor did her housekeeper. Glad he was that he had a change of clothes in his saddlebags.
It was twilight when the last of the wagons and coaches pulled away and he arranged for a room. There were now mostly men and a handful of women left, eating and making low conversation at the surrounding tables. As he stood by the counter, sipping from his tankard, his attention was drawn repeatedly to a corner cast in shadows. Had he overlooked someone?
A young woman sat alone, back to the wall, her gray cape reducing her to shadows. He’d noticed her earlier helping with the children and assumed she was part of a family. He drew closer, breathing past the tightness crowding his chest.
Aye, he’d overlooked someone. But he couldn’t believe it was she.
Although Ellie had kept her eye on Jack Turlock, if only to stay clear of him since he’d first set foot in the tavern, she now looked away. Toward the gaping kitchen door, where the smell of roast goose and apple tansy and bread she had no coin for mingled with the smell of pipe smoke and spirits. Folding her hands in her lap, she sat as erectly as she could despite spending the previous night in the chair, her backside as stiff as the splintered wood.
Mercy, it couldn’t get any worse, she thought, as her sister Andra was wont to say.
But yes it could, and he was coming straight for her.
She’d not seen Jack Turlock in years. Last she heard he was touring Europe, taking inventory of distilleries in Scotland, Ireland, and France, or so the papers said. In that time she’d nearly forgotten all about him. Clad in mourning garb due to his grandfather’s passing, he’d cut a sober if striking figure when she’d seen him on the streets of Pittsburgh. As the younger son and not the heir, he wasn’t nearly as interesting as his brother Wade, at least not to meddling society matrons. Jack shunned social functions, preferring the gin rooms along the waterfront to genteel ballrooms. Little wonder he’d not noticed her till now. His taste ran to tavern wenches.
As he walked her way, their many childhood encounters came rushing over her like the rivers at flood stage. She felt like a little girl again, about to be struck with a stone or at least belittled by his terse tongue. They’d often faced off at the creek dividing Turlock and Ballantyne land back then, her brothers Ansel and Peyton the same age as Jack and Wade. Sometimes Andra had been there—and Daniel Cameron. As the youngest, Ellie had escaped most of their wrangling. The look on his face assured her she’d not escape now.
He stared down at her, his low voice skipping any pleasantries. “Why didn’t you tell me you were here?” She stiffened at the censure in his tone, then softened when he said, “I’d have put you on the first wagon out of here.”
“There was no need. I’m not injured.” Her gaze fell to her lap.
I’m simply a bedraggled mess, without coin or comb.
As badly as she wanted to be home, she did not want to be singled out. This preferential treatment was what she was running from. Rose, her former maid, usually handled all the details of travel. Without her capable, plucky presence, Ellie hardly knew what to do.
She raised wary eyes to Jack’s, finding him more mud than man, his clothes in tatters. He managed to look bemused . . . and apologetic. Odd for a Turlock. He broke her gaze and leaned into the table, motioning to a serving girl in a checkered cap and kerchief.
“Tea,” he said quietly. “Some bread.”
With a smile she disappeared as if taking orders from the inn’s owner. But the owner, Ellie realized, was busy pouring Turlock whiskey behind a long, scarred counter hedged with a cage. Business, from the looks of all the thirsty gathering there, was brisk.
“You’re in want of a room,” he told her. “Then we’ll leave in the morning.”
“We?” Her mouth formed a perfect O as she said it.
His sharp gaze pinned her so there would be no mistaking his meaning. “You’re in need of an escort to take you home—a chaperone.”
“I’m in need of a chaperone?” she echoed in disbelief.
To keep me safe from the likes of you.
Humor lit his gray eyes and warmed them the color of molten silver, as if he well knew what she was thinking. “I’ll return you to New Hope myself, out of respect for your father.”
My father? The man who jailed you countless times?
Speechless, she felt a swell of gratitude override her surprise as the requested tea and bread arrived, the latter slathered with butter and honey. Her stomach gave a little lurch of anticipation, but she pushed the plate his way. He’d not said they were hers, so she’d make no assumptions.
With a long, grubby finger, he pushed the plate back toward her, along with the steaming tea. Famished, she bent her head and breathed a quick prayer before biting off a corner of stale bread, a cascade of crumbs spilling down her wrinkled bodice.
“I can do little about how you look, but I can certainly feed you,” he said drily.
She stopped chewing, heat creeping into her cheeks, and remembered her trunk. Had the coachman ever repaired the axle and gotten this far? Or was he still stuck, hemmed in by countless fallen trees—or worse? Concerned for his safety, she nevertheless rued the loss of her belongings. Perhaps she could beg a comb. Some hairpins. Taking a sip of tea, she felt immediately better. Tea was comfort. Tranquility. Civility.
“I can walk home,” she said, setting her cup aside and brushing the crumbs from her dress. “’Tis but a few miles more. I don’t need an escort.”
Quirking an eyebrow, he looked beneath the table at her feet. Ever-practical Jack. Quickly she drew her sodden shoes beneath the muddy hem of her skirt.
“Five miles and you’d be barefoot. Ten and you’d end up begging a ride. There’s a sidesaddle in the stable—or a coach.”