But no, it was the fiddle. Just the fiddle, calling him to pick it up and tune it and coax a melody from its strings.
He resisted, stubborn Irishman that he was, digging in his heels like a recalcitrant gelding rather than yield to the inevitable. He resisted, until the night that he could stand the temptation no longer, after Red had loaded her basket and carried off the remnants of his supper and left him to his empty, sterile bed and the loneliness became too much to bear. He’d gone to his music room—who’d have guessed it, that a farrier’s son would have such a thing?—and found the fiddle. He plucked its strings, one at a time, again, and again, adjusting the tuning pegs until the pitch was as perfect as he could make it. He thought about stopping there, hadn’t he, but it wasn’t Tuesday and so he forged ahead and rosined the bow, and once that commitment was made, he had no choice but to play.
Dear God, he’d missed this.
The fiddle felt alive in his hands. Almost like a woman, in the old days, before prison had emasculated him, but hardly compensation for the dead cock he’d been toting since Jamaica. Ah, Red, you should have seen me back in the day, when two women fought over me and I had enough in me, I could pleasure them both all night. Now he couldn’t even pee in the morning without wishing for a little wood. Just a little. Enough to give him hope and make him quit asking her for laudanum, even when he hoped it was the cause of his flaccidity, just because it was easier to sleep somewhere beyond pain than to face his demons and his fears.
Red was obliging. Given her inclination, he sometimes wondered if she weren’t too quick to yield to him in this, after the way she’d bullied him in the overseer’s cottage. Still, she’d never leave the bottle, damn her, and each day that passed, he felt as though he should be coming to some sort of decision. What it was, he didn’t know, except it was the summer solstice and nights would only get longer from here. He needed change, and soon.
For now, though, he played the fiddle. Sailing songs, chanteys, waulking songs, strathspeys, hornpipes, pibrochs, jigs, reels. He played them all, flowing from one into the next, going where the fiddle and the music wanted to lead him and wondering why it had taken him so long to play again.
Then he remembered.
The last time he had played, he’d bared his soul to the darling girl he had rescued from the pirate raid that killed her mother. Forced to sail with Stede Bonnet, he’d cut Christiana’s hair, dressed her in borrowed clothes, and claimed “Christian” as his portion of the prize. He’d pretended a twisted fondness for pretty boys but it was Justin Vallé, the Frenchie who was his best friend, who saw their matching green glass eyes and guessed they were related. Letting him think that she was his nephew seemed the safest course to follow. It was certainly easier than explaining how a press gang made sure Christiana Delacorte was born on the wrong side of a blanket, while he recovered from the next set of lashes on his sorry back, courtesy of the British merchant marine.
Eventually the three of them had jumped ship. Unable to return to British service, now that he was responsible for a child, he’d taken the king’s pardon under the name of Jean Delacorte and had done well enough. After an incident brought home that Christiana was on the verge of womanhood, he’d entrusted her training to the Ursulines in Havre, and she’d emerged an educated and clever young woman. Now that she was married to Justin, it saddened him to think they might never see each other again, wanted as he and Justin both were by the British. At least Ian stood a chance in hell of getting his name cleared. His real name that no one in Maryland knew, save one.
Or two, if his gifted beekeeper had somehow managed it.
Speak of the devil.
“Red.”
She stood poised like a deer at the far end of a musket sight, framed by the opened door, limned in candlelight. When he realized he’d rendered her speechless, he pressed his advantage. “I’ve been thinking,” he started, with no idea where he was going. So he played instead, a soft, sweet melody that drew her in like a bee to one of the hives she kept on the eastern edge of the orchard. Damned if the fox didn’t come in with her, climbing in her lap as tame as if it had been her mother’s black cat. The both of them sat on the floor, wordless and soundless, listening as the fiddle’s dulcet strings and the eloquent curve of its singing wood filled the night air with a sweetness as redolent as honeysuckle in bloom.
When he had finished, he lowered the bow and looked at her, daring her to say something, anything. God, he was tired of being alone.
“Does it hurt?” she asked him, thinking that’s why he stopped playing. He was long past that, with his cracked ribs not quite healed and his gunshot wound threatening to weep bloody tears.
“Aye,” he said, nothing else.
“Do ye need more laudanum?” she asked, damn well knowing he did. He could tell it from the concern that pursed her lips and made her pet the fox in the way she should have been touching him, with soft, female hands and promises of pleasure.
“What I need,” he said slowly, “is to quit. Will you help me?”
Oh, he had her then. Not at all what she was expecting. What she was prepared for.
But he had to give her credit. She didn’t hesitate to answer, “Aye. The best time is the new moon.”
“That’s two weeks, Red.” He tried not to sound desperate.
Beth petted Sophie, seeming grateful for the diversion. “I need tae study. See what needs done, how tae do it. It willnae be pleasant.”
Neither was telling himself he should want a woman and having nothing to show for it. The only rise Red had managed to get out of him was his temper, when she’d chewed him out in front of the others for riding before he was more fully healed.
Shrew, he thought, and smiled when she felt it. As disturbing a principle as it had once seemed, having her know his mind betimes worked to his advantage.
“I’ll make it worth your while,” he said, though she would have done it anyway, because that’s the kind of person she was. “I’ll knock a year off you and your mother’s service, and add your father’s acreage at the end of it. A hundred twenty acres total for the two of you.”
Upon hearing his offer, an almost miraculous change came over her, lending credence to the concept of alchemy. He’d not lit a woman up like that since…well, he couldn’t remember when. Last woman he’d been with was Druscilla, and he paid for her services. The last time he’d shared her bed was Tuesday, Valentine’s Day four months gone. He hadn’t known that she’d already betrayed him, powdering the drink that he’d carried to the card table, where he’d won a stolen ring and lost his freedom when he tried to pawn it. But Druscilla was dead and he was here, no longer wishing to die but to find a way to live again.
Red said she would help him.
All in all, a good Wednesday night. Happy solstice to me.
Red looked up and smiled at him, as if she were happy for him, too. And he wondered what she was doing here, the solstice being such a milestone day in the pagan scheme of things. He’d never told her that he knew she was a witch. It was no one’s business but hers, as far as he was concerned, but he could see how she would guard it like a state secret. Not everyone understood the old ways, and what people didn’t understand inspired fear that made them do hurtful and foolish things. He wasn’t even certain her mother knew, come to think of it. Jannet Gordon was a papist, who naturally came under suspicion herself from Protestant reformists like the pious Geoffrey Knowles and his priggish wife.
The indentured Knowles clan lived one cabin down from the Widow Gordon but refused to have aught to do with her or her black cat Dubh beyond eating the fish she caught. He didn’t know if his other female bondservant, twenty-one-year-old Rebecca Denning who managed his spinning house, would even let Jannet midwife her after Miss Denning married Israel Waters, the indentured farm hand who worshipped and toiled beside Geoffrey Knowles, raising the crops that fed Ian’s people and livestock.
When he wasn’t being the farm foreman, Geoffrey kept busy with sprouts of
his own, his wife Lucy being immensely illiterate, superstitious, and fertile. But she was a damn fine cook, and she managed the hen house, and their six children added value to The Oaks. Thirteen-year-old William helped exercise the horses when the seasonal work allowed it. Eleven-year-old India, nicknamed Dee, chafed at learning to weave when what she longed to do was ride astride and fly the courses. Ten-year-old Lettice was the singer of the bunch and, like most middle children, needy of attention; Miss Denning was teaching her to card and spin. Anyone could see that eight-year-old Worth Knowles was Geoffrey’s shadow and would be a farmer just like his father. Last but by far the most engaging were the five-year-old twins Harmon and Harmony, who gathered eggs and haunted the garden and orchard, looking for fairy circles and giving their mother fits when they insisted they had seen sprites in the strawberry patch.
The Knowles boys helped in the vegetable garden and fields; the girls helped in the kitchen garden as well, and trained in domestic arts like candlemaking, cooking, and turning flax and wool into thread and fabric. Fleece was the initial domain of Jason Henry, a small but mighty man of thirty-two in charge of all the livestock beyond the horses. He filled the smokehouse in the fall and kept milch cows year round. He slept little during the lambing season, and in the spring, he sheared the sheep. In the summer, on any given day, he managed pastures, cleared ground, did a little carpentry, and felled timber on ground that Beth approved.
Beth Gordon, who slept with foxes and talked to bees and communicated with horses and whispered to trees.
He wondered if Red Beth knew that Thomas Marshall, his farrier and smithy and one of the two brothers he’d hired to oversee his stable, envied her ability to know a horse’s mind. Probably—but possibly not, as guarded as the man seemed to be where Beth was concerned.
Thomas was quiet, actually on the shy side, all the more surprising, being a widower. He lived with his brother Dylan, above the empty carriage house. Dylan was Ian’s stable manager, but while Thomas’s meaty arms and muscled girth came from physical exertion, Dylan’s gamey leg hampered exercise and his limping frame grew stouter accordingly.
The rest of the stable staff were all indentures. Ralph Shelton was nigh forty years old but at just over five feet tall, was just the jockey and exerciser his blooded horses needed. Theopholis Ashby, called Theo or Ash but never more, was his eighteen-year-old abbreviated groom, temporary valet, and designated carriage driver somewhere down the line. The carrot-topped O’Flaherty cousins worked as stable hands, cleaning and mucking and suffering through the nastiest of jobs, one with a smile, the other with a frown, like theater masks of tragedy and comedy. Nineteen-year-old surly Sean was already soured on life, too big to be a jockey and resentful enough to make things miserable for those around him. Sean O’Flaherty was fond of drink and fond of fight, and Ian had half a mind, once he was healed, to show him how boxing was really done. Sean’s wiry, effervescent cousin Patrick was only fifteen but at two inches over five feet, Patrick prayed his growing was done so that he could take Ralph Shelton’s place as jockey when Ralph’s indenture was served out next year.
And then there were the Gordons: staid, steady Jannet and her remarkable daughter Beth, sitting expectantly on his floor with the wildling that she’d tamed.
Ian put the fiddle to his cheek and listened to the spirit of the wood, shaped by someone’s loving hand. It wasn’t the finest instrument he’d played, but he believed it was quite possibly the most honest. He plucked the fiddle’s strings, testing, correcting, perfecting the pitch when he met Red’s patient gaze and heard her voice echo in the distant halls of his memories. Something about a village’s worth of bondservants who depended on him.
She got that right. What she didn’t know was that he’d been going over Philip’s books and funds were tighter than he’d like. In short, he was dependent upon the success of his horses for more than mere survival of The Oaks. It was going to cost him to clear his name of the charge of desertion, especially when he’d broken out of prison. Pity, the English didn’t care for that sort of thing. Nay, they were too busy abusing prisoners, robbing them of dignity and desire for anything but what would end their torment. And even that, they would not give to him, hoping to extract information on the pirate raid for which he’d been falsely arrested.
That would teach him to gamble and win.
Red tilted her ear, as if wondering if she’d heard him right. She looked at him, with a lap full of fox, a curious smile curving her lips, and a mind that seemed to be working madly despite her stillness.
Vixen, he thought, what are you up to?
Perhaps she was thinking of what she’d promised him: a grand and glorious life. Well, he was going to have to get free of the laudanum for that to happen. But for now, he needed it, and she gave it to him, and she took the bottle, bless her, before she left him to his lovely but lonely bed, where a fiddle sat on the chair beside it and sweetly sang him to sleep.
Beth spent the night in the big house, mistrustful that the Captain had been fully truthful when the smile curving his mouth failed to match the pain etched on the rest of his face. He shouldn’t have played jigs any more than he should ride, yet he insisted doing both and suffering the consequences.
Stubborn man. Beautiful, haunted, stubborn man.
She’d never met anyone like him, shrouded in shadows that he seemed ready to shed, or try anyway. She needed to ask her mam, needed to pray, needed to go still enough to hear the answers she sought. He had no idea what he asked of her, that it was her nature to feel what others felt, which is why she kept herself apart, living alone in the cottage that hovered on the edge of the orchard and the woods, close to her bee hives and to her sacred space that she had visited earlier today.
Summer solstice.
Herne was pleased.
And tomorrow was the full moon, time for manifestation. The prayers she would offer, the spells she would speak were already weaving themselves in her mind. Gambling had cost the Captain too dearly. Once he was done with opium, it would be his nature to find something else to latch onto. It could be gambling, or drinking, or womanizing—well, not yet, that one, but when she prayed about the laudanum, she’d pray about that. too. With luck, she might be shown something that would work for them both.
Beth slept downstairs on the daybed in the library, with Sophie curled beside her and the fox silently questioning what they were doing here. Sophie missed their little stone cottage, on the edge of the fruit orchard, filled with cherries that were nearly ready, and rows of tiny promises of apples and plums, peaches and pears. Sophie loved it mostly because it was conveniently close to the woods where she could run with Herne, without fear of being hunted or chased by hounds. Herne would take care of her. He took care of everything in his woods, including Beth.
She had never found anyone she could trust enough to tell, and would have had a hard time of it anyway, trying to describe what Herne was when she herself didn’t know. She felt him. She heard him moving through the forest, his supernatural stride ranging from the soft shift of fallen leaves to crashing through the thickets, depending on the urgency. She understood that he’d been here far longer than man and he would still be here when she was dust and that he’d merely tolerated her at first, yielding to a grudging acceptance once he knew her heart. She had thought about asking him into the circle with her, and yet part of her was wary. Remembering those early days when she’d tread so gingerly around him, she remained fearful that an invitation might be misconstrued as something more, and give rise to an expectation that she might not be prepared to meet.
Stranger things had happened. Look at Leda and the swan.
Beth stroked the fox’s whisper-soft fur and asked Sophie’s thoughts on the matter. Clearly, Herne was no swan. If anything, she would guess that he was a satyr or a silenus or a faun. Perhaps he was an urisk—or as close to what existed beyond Scotland, anyway. She’d seen one once, as a child. It had given her the scare of her life. People’s hair turned white f
or less reason. Nay, if Herne was an urisk, he would never show himself to her. Ancient energy that he was, he understood something of human nature, of human frailty. The first time she’d worked up the courage to talk to him, she let him know that, despite her best intentions, regardless that she trusted him with her life, seeing him would probably frighten her in a way that neither of them could easily bear, and thus far, he had honored that.
Instead Herne told her where he was by dropping acorns and singing the song of a meadow lark in the middle of the forest and leaving messages with the oak trees, to whisper to her when she walked by. She hadn’t yet asked Herne what he thought of the Captain come from the sea. She supposed she should; if her dreams unfolded the way she saw them, if nothing happened to change the potential future, Herne would need to know.
Chapter Seven
The June full moon came at strawberry season, and Beth spent the better part of the morning picking them. The backache was worth the fine tart that Lucy Knowles made the Captain, just to see the look of heaven-on-earth on his face, his startling green eyes almost glazed with passion, his mouth curved in a smile that begged kissing.
She could feel the full moon in her body, as attuned as she was to it, since her womb ebbed and flowed with its tides. The new moon started her cycle, and the full moon found her body ripening, ready to receive a lover that never came.
She wasn’t a virgin. She had known a man, once upon a time. She had not fancied herself in love, but she’d been young and tempted and had just learned she’d be crossing an ocean and she had lain with him before they left. That, and seeing the urisk and encountering Herne for the first time, were the most singular, momentous events of her young life, until the night she’d staved off her moontide and had lain naked with the Captain in her arms.
He’d asked for her help, and she intended to give everything she had. Everything she was. She was willing to do whatever it took to see him happy, healthy, and whole.
Ride the Wind: Touch the Wind Book Two Page 5