by Jo Goodman
"Do you think you are the only one who would chafe at the bonds of marriage? Mayhap I was protecting myself from such a pass. I am certain we would not suit. Think on it. We rarely spent more than a few hours together before there was some sort of argument. You never made a secret of your dislike for me."
"I never disliked you." He could not bring himself to admit that he was afraid of her, of what she could do to him if she realized his vulnerability. Jericho reached for her hand, but she pulled away. Stung, he got to his feet and stared out the window, pretending great interest in the antics of a mother rabbit and her brood on the edge of the wood. "If there should be a reason later on," he said heavily, "that you should have need of my name, I hope you will not hesitate to contact me."
Her eyes widened and her hand flew to her mouth. Here was something she had not considered. "A child! I had not thought!"
Jericho's expression softened as he looked down at her. "Of course you hadn't."
"A child!" Her thoughts flew ahead to the inevitable disappointment of her brothers, the wedding under fire, the pity on the faces of the guests as their eyes settled on the bride's rounded middle. "Oh, it would be too awful," she said, never thinking of the construction Jericho would put on her words.
To Jericho it was the final proof that Rae wanted nothing to do with him. It was easy for him to believe, since it was no more than he had expected once he'd realized the truth of her identity. "I agree," he said coldly. "Still, should it happen, I will not have my offspring labeled bastard. There are too many in this world now, and the course their lives run is unsteady, at best. You must promise that you will seek me out, else I will tell Salem and Noah the whole of it now, and we will be married, child or no."
In that moment she knew Jericho Smith was a bastard, and she ached for him, nearly wept for him, but in the end held to her decision to put him from her life. It mattered not at all about his birth; what mattered was that he not be coerced into a marriage that was fated to make him unhappy and bitter. "I promise," she said quietly. "Though I doubt I have conceived. After all, it was only the once."
Jericho snorted. "I'm certain you can talk to any number of chits who were trotted down the aisle, bellies burgeoning, repeating that bit of nonsense up until the moment they said 'I do.' Ashley among them," he finished brutally.
"You mean Salem and Ashley..." she faltered, not knowing what to make of Salem's hypocrisy. "It doesn't seem right that Salem should have been so suspicious and angry with you. He is not in a position to cast stones."
"I don't think I would tell him that, if I were you. He and Ashley have made a success of their marriage. He is more likely to recommend the thing than dwell on how it came about."
Her hands twisted in her lap. "There is nothing to say, then. I will keep silent unless I needs must speak of it. Marriage is not for either of us."
"As you say. We would not suit."
"Well..." She wished she had some witty truism that would end this painful conversation, something glib that would wrap it all up neatly. Her throat felt thick and achy, but her eyes remained dry.
Jericho shifted on his feet. "Well, I reckon this is goodbye." Eloquent to the end, aren't you, Smith. Who would guess at the age of eight you could quote from the Bard's most famous works? "The quality of mercy is not strained...."
She smiled faintly. "I reckon it is," she mocked softly.
At the door to the cabin Jericho paused, his knuckles nearly white on the handle. He glanced over his shoulder. "I was wonderin', Red. If you get your memory back, think you'll still remember any of these last few days?"
She froze, afraid any careless move would shatter her fragile hold on her emotions. He had called her Red. It was almost her undoing. "If there is no child, does it really matter?"
Jericho turned his head and spoke to the door. A muscle twitched in his cheek. "No, I suppose it doesn't." He left the cabin then, before Rae saw his shoulders heave once in despair.
Twenty minutes after Jericho's departure, Salem returned to the cabin. "Are you ready to go?"
She nodded, smiling, not understanding that her brother knew her too well to believe in the brittle curve of her lips. "Have the others left?"
"A few minutes ago. There were some things we still needed to discuss with Smith." Seeing her bewilderment he explained. "Not all about you, Rae. There is a war on, you know, and Smith is an able and much needed commander. Here, he gave me this to return to you." He held out the dagger in its leather sheath.
"I don't think I want it. Anyway, didn't I hear Noah say it belonged to Ashley?"
"It does, but I doubt that she'll want it." He tossed it carelessly on the bed. "Too painful a reminder for everyone. Let's be on our way. Even the children have been fractious with missing you."
She tried to respond to the forced lightness in Salem's voice by forming a picture of her niece and nephew in her mind. She had no idea how much it would hurt when she met them and found she had drawn it all wrong.
* * *
Rae lay on her back in the open field and blinked several times at the brightness of the cobalt sky before shielding her eyes with her forearm. In response to a cool breeze from the river, high grass rippled on all sides, and the corner of her mouth lifted in a sleepy smile as it tickled her bare arms and ankles. She stretched lazily and sucked in the fragrant September air. Indian summer had come to McClellan's Landing, and Rae had fallen victim to its warm promise, seeking a moment's respite from her family's watchful eyes.
They meant well, of course, but it had been six months since she left Jericho Smith and four since she'd returned to Virginia with Ashley and the children, and she was weary of being hovered over as if she were some unfledged chick. Salem had helped her see the amusing side of all the familial concern, but he was no longer around to offer any aid. On Washington's orders, he had abandoned his pose as a British supporter, sent his family back to the relative safety of the landing, and taken his place as one of thousands of regular soldiers waiting for a battle that would end the war.
Rae wrote to him often, newsy and humorous little missives that inadequately described the state of her own mind, if they mentioned it at all. Though she wished they wouldn't, she knew her mother and Ashley kept Salem and Noah aware of her progress, or lack of it, in recapturing her memory. Rae saw nothing to be gained by informing them of every odd bit she would suddenly remember, especially if they were sharing it with Jericho. She did not want him to know how it was breaking her, this struggle to clear the shadows from her past. She did not want him to suspect that a day rarely passed when she did not wish she were back on the schooner on the Hudson, in the company of a man who thought she was no better than she ought to be.
She supposed she should have realized that it would be easier to be without her memory in the company of Jericho than in the presence of her family, but when she'd left the schooner it hadn't occurred to her. It was a matter of expectations, she decided a few weeks later. Jericho's expectations were shockingly low or nonexistent, and he only had the flimsiest guidelines on which to base her actions.
Not so her family. They all had their own ideas about the sort of person she was—daughter, sister, aunt, friend. Rae realized there existed among the members of her family a collective memory that could be called on to chronicle many of the events of her life. In the beginning it had only been Salem and Ashley who, in the course of an easy dinner conversation, would mention something about the landing or the children, even something about Rae's parents, and catch themselves, looking to Rae expectantly to see if she knew what they were talking about. Almost always they felt obliged to explain themselves when her stare remained blank or confused, and she hated the disappointed glances that were exchanged when no one thought she would notice. And now those patient, somehow sad glances were multiplied beyond Rae's bearing at the landing. With a frequency that alarmed all who cared for her, she found subtle ways to exclude herself from family gatherings.
A faint frown crossed her f
ace as the sunlight's path was blocked momentarily, leaving her in cool shadows. She sighed softly, not bothering to remove her forearm from her eyes. It was too much to hope that a cloud could be blamed for disturbing her worship of warmth and solitude.
"Charity thought I might find you here," Ashley said, dropping into the grass beside Rae. She was too fearful of being turned away to ask Rahab for permission to join her. Pretending to be unperturbed by Rae's less than welcoming air, Ashley smoothed the folds of her gold skirt about her legs and drank in the view of the landing that the grassy knoll afforded her.
Thousands of acres of fertile, rich Virginia soil surrounded the McClellan homestead. The house seemed to be part of the land, as if it had been planted there rather than built, and indeed, the McClellans tended it as if it were a living thing. The sweeping verandas were an open invitation to travelers, who could catch a teasing glimpse of the red brick mansion through a break in the trees along the river. The windows, their white shutters thrown open, winked in the sunlight and sent a sparkling greeting to passersby. The landing was the very antithesis of the fortresslike home Ashley had known on the Linfield estate. Her glance rested thoughtfully on her sister-in-law. Rahab was lucky to have grown up in such a loving environment; no matter that she couldn't quite appreciate it at the moment.
"I might have known Mother would see me," Rae answered resignedly. "I can't seem to escape her eagle eye. Was she always so astute?"
Ashley smiled. "Always with the ones she loves." She hesitated. "You used to call her Mama."
"That is what Leah told me. And Gareth, when he came from Williamsport to visit. And his wife. But I can't bring myself to say it now. It isn't comfortable. Does it hurt her very much?"
There was nothing to be gained by lying. "Yes, it hurts Charity. And Robert, when you call him Father instead of Papa. But they are trying to understand, so they practice patience and love you all the more."
Rae lifted her forearm a tad so that she could see Ashley. Salem's wife was much different from how Rahab had first imagined her. She admitted she had not wanted to like Ashley, because Jericho thought so highly of her, even loved her, but there had been no help for it. She was hard not to like. It was depressing, truly. Ashley was quick-witted, lovely to look at, talented at the spinet and with a needle, a loving and patient mother, unfailingly gracious and even-tempered with everyone but Salem. Rae suspected that this last small failing was because Ashley loved her husband to distraction. Rae could hardly fault her for that. "Do you know," she said at last, "that sometimes I wish they would not be so quick to treat me as if I were a bit of crystal. The children are the most natural around me, as if it doesn't matter that I can't recall the time Trenton spit up on my favorite ballgown or when Courtney played peek-a-boo beneath my skirts."
"Perhaps it's because Courtney and Trenton don't remember many of those things, either," Ashley suggested. "When it comes to memory, you may even be younger than they are. You shared only a short past with the children. The rest of us are not so content to build a friendship on your recent memories."
"Then why doesn't someone just knock me over the head with a—"
"Bed slat?"
"Exactly. Perhaps it would raise some recollection."
"More likely it would raise a nasty lump," Ashley said dryly. "From the beginning the doctors have told us that you will recover in your own way, in your own time."
Rae snorted. "I don't think they know what they're talking about. Aren't they the same men who proposed no one mention any remotely disturbing events in my past? Until I cornered you for an explanation I thought I must have been the only child in the world who had not shed a tear over a skinned knee, a broken dolly, or the loss of a pet. I would never have known I had been engaged to Troy if Jericho hadn't said something about it before he knew who I was. I waited for someone to bring it up to me. In the end I had to beg you to tell me the whole of the story. You were so afraid it would stir some sort of regret or sadness."
"Yet you didn't feel a thing."
"Not personally. Don't you see? It was as if it happened to another person. I cannot even imagine having loved Troy. He is such a perfect complement for Leah that I think we would never have suited."
"It's true that they deal well together, but you were very hurt at the time it happened. You found it difficult to take the attentions of any suitor seriously after that. If it hadn't been for your loss of memory, I doubt you would have let Jericho Smith within an arm's length of you."
Rae cast her arm aside completely and stared narrowly at Ashley. "What makes you think I did?" she asked sharply.
"Credit me with some sense. Rae. I am not one of your brothers, who believe your story because they want to believe it, even need to believe it. I have not the least doubt that if Jericho had known who you were his treatment of you would have been naught but impeccable. And if you had understood you were not any man's bit of muslin you would have given him a set down that would have driven that lazy smile from his face."
Rae wished Ashley had not mentioned Jericho's rather indolent grin. She had been trying for months to forget what it looked like. "So?" she asked a trifle belligerently.
"So I think that you and Jericho acted as circumstances permitted you to act."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that if you had been less fortunate you would be carrying Jericho's child at this moment," Ashley said bluntly.
Less fortunate. Rae's eyes closed briefly. No, she thought, Ashley was in the wrong there. She was less fortunate because she was not carrying his babe. When she opened her eyes they glistened wetly. "What do you know of it? You got pregnant so you could force my brother to marry you."
The flat of Ashley's hand met Rae's cheek with surprising force. Stunned for a moment, Rae could only stare at her, then tears flooded her vision and Ashley's flushed face blurred. Rae started to bury her face in her hands, miserable that she had been so hateful to someone who had shown her every kindness, but Ashley reached for her, gently drawing her wrists away, and moved so that Rae could rest her head on her lap. Ashley stroked the streak of fire in Rae's hair, while the younger woman cried out her grief.
"It's all right, darling," Ashley said in quiet, soothing tones. "You've been strong for so long, it's all right to cry now. You've been aching forever, it seems." Rahab had been hurting in silence since Salem had taken her from Jericho's side. Ashley had watched her try to resume a life she no longer understood, make polite conversation with people she was supposed to know, but didn't, and pick up the threads of memories she wasn't certain she cared about. It had been painful to see Rahab attend an evening social and watch her withdraw into herself as the night wore on. She was frightened of saying the wrong thing, of calling someone by the wrong name, of thinking she knew someone she had never met before in her life. Salem and Ashley had known at that moment that they had to get Rae out of New York and back to the landing. It was the veriest coincidence that General Washington's needs had matched their own. Thus Rae would never know she had been the reason for their returning to Virginia with such haste.
Coming home had not provided the healing balm Ashley and Salem had hoped it would. Of a certainty there was support and an abundance of love, but no one had foreseen that Rae would feel out of place. Rather than being comforted by so much attention and good intentions, it seemed as if Rahab were in danger of being smothered by the weight of the cotton wool wrapping.
Ashley gave Rae a bit of the hem of her skirt so she could dry her eyes. "I don't have a handkerchief," she explained. "Invariably I use Salem's sleeve. It's shocking to think that while he's gone I shall have to make do with my own linen." Rae's watery smile lifted Ashley's heart. She continued to stroke Rae's hair, the gentle pressure assuring Rae there was no hurry for her to move. "It's true that I was carrying Courtney before I married your brother," she explained. "But—"
"There's no need to—"
"There's every need. I was saying that I never forced your brother into marriag
e. Did someone tell you that I had?"
Rae shook her head. "Jericho mentioned something to me—about its only taking the once—" She sniffed as her cheeks warmed, and her fingers plucked at a bit of Ashley's gold skirt. "You know what I mean—and that it had happened to you and Salem. I made up the part about you forcing Salem's hand."
"You're sorry, aren't you, that you're not going to have Jericho's child?"
"Does it make me so awful, do you think?" Rae asked plaintively. An errant tear slipped from her eye and splattered noiselessly on the back of her hand. "I wouldn't have demanded that he marry me. But to have his child, a boy with his bright yellow hair or his languid smile, or a girl with cerulean eyes and thick lashes, well, that would have been lovely."
Ashley could have pointed out that the child might have taken after Rahab, but she didn't think that news would have been welcomed. Rae still had not the least sense that her looks were striking and vibrant when she became animated. If men of her acquaintance called her cold, it was because they had glimpsed her smile and despaired when it was not turned on them. "I don't think that wanting Jericho's child makes you awful. Does he know that you love him?"
Rae's breath caught. She considered lying but suspected Ashley would have none of it. "I never told him that I did."
"Then he doesn't know. Is that the way you want it?"
"Yes... no... I can't say. We said good-bye."
There was a smile in Ashley's voice and in her eyes. "And you can't say hello again, is that it? What rubbish!"
"Perhaps." Rae shrugged. "It doesn't matter much anyway. He can't have many good memories of me. I was nothing but trouble to him, and he would spare you no detail in the telling of the misery I caused."