A Place Called Home

by Elizabeth Grayson

  Outside she could hear the ring of Eustace's hammer and knew he was driving spikes into the shingles at the edge of the roof, a job every bit as hot and miserable as her own. She could hear the slop of water as Tad brought buckets up from the spring, and the steady thunk and tear of Reid splitting firewood.

  He must have taken his shirt off as he worked, for all at once she heard Cissy's ever-inquisitive voice.

  "How'd you get that snake twisted up your arm?"

  Livi smiled. She well remembered the shock she'd felt on seeing that tattoo peeking out from beneath the ruffled cuff of Reid Campbell's shirt the night of her sixteenth-birthday fete. She had been fascinated and appalled by the dark blue pattern coiling against his dusky skin, by the exotic, pagan look of it. Since then, she'd had more than one chance to study the tattoo up close, and it still had the power to make her go all squeamish and warm inside.

  Livi moved to the doorway to hear the rest of the exchange and to take advantage of any stray breeze. Reid was squatting with his broad, sun-darkened back to her. Beads of sweat crawled along his ribs and down the valley of his spine. He had extended his arm so Cissy could see the pattern more clearly. Coiling around his arm from the back of his hand to just above his elbow, Reid's tattoo was meant to represent a snake, though the arrow-shaped head and sinuously patterned body seemed to Livi based more in fantasy than in fact.

  Cissy stared openmouthed as she examined it.

  "You like him?" Reid asked. "He's a diamondback rattler."

  Cissy reached out to touch the dark, damp skin of Reid's forearm. "Is he painted on?"

  "Sort of. It's something the Indians do. It's called tattooing."

  "Does it hurt?"

  Reid nodded, clenching and unclenching his fist, making the snake appear to writhe.

  "E-e-e-w!" Cissy wrinkled her nose in distaste and took a step back.

  Reid chuckled at her reaction. "Before you could get a tattoo like this, you had to prove you weren't afraid of snakes."

  Livi leaned against the doorjamb. She had to admit she'd always been curious about the tattoo. Tad drifted closer, pail in hand, and even Eustace stopped hammering to listen.

  "What did you have to do?" Cissy asked.

  "You had to stick your hand into a rattlesnake nest—all the way up to here." He made a gesture that indicated a spot just below his elbow. "It wasn't a very smart thing to do, but I was full of piss and—ah—I was full of mischief then."

  "And you got a snake tattoo if you could do that and not get bit?"

  "Who said I didn't get bitten?"

  Livi felt the shiver to the base of her spine.

  "The snake got me right there." Reid pointed to a spot between his thumb and forefinger. "I got so sick I nearly died. Most snakes are harmless, but rattlers aren't something to fool with," he admonished Cissy.

  And then he laughed.

  Somehow Livi had been waiting for that laugh, tensing, anticipating, almost dreading the sound. She recognized the aggressive bark of challenge, of triumph, of unholy daring. It was a laugh that had always set her teeth on edge. Perhaps that was because it was the only time Reid revealed so much of himself, the energy, the combativeness, the wildness that ran deep in blood and bone. Perhaps she'd hated that laugh because she had come to view it as a harbinger of danger, because it bore the intoxicating lure of freedom in the sound. And there had always been in it, in him, a threat to all she valued and held dear. At times that laugh had made her blood run cold.

  Now it moved through her in a different way, a vibration that set something deep inside her aquiver, a challenge that quickened something hot and vital in her blood. Feeling that set her world a little out of balance. It made her wonder if he or she had changed.

  She watched for a moment more—her daughter's winsome curiosity, Tad's openmouthed admiration, and Eustace's answering grin. Then she turned back into the heat of the cabin, rubbing the gooseflesh from her arms.

  She had just put the cake to bake on a slab of ash wood at the edge of the fire when she heard the shout of someone approaching the cabin.

  "Hullo the Talbots."

  She returned to the doorway just as Benjamin Logan cantered across the bridge. She waved and descended the steps to where Reid and the others were gathering to greet their guest.

  "I was headed over this way, and I thought I would deliver some of the stores Reid ordered when he came to the fort." Logan swung down from his horse and handed a burlap sack to Livi. "There's some bacon in there to hold you until you get a chance to butcher those pigs, a length of blue fustian Reid said you had need of, some salt, and—a canister of tea."

  "Tea?" Livi breathed as if he had just offered her gold and pearls. "Real English tea?"

  "Reid said you set high store by English tea."

  Livi didn't know how Campbell had found out that tea was the single thing she'd craved all through this pregnancy, but she was grateful that he had thought to get her some. She'd run out shortly after Reid had arrived, and sassafras and walink tea made damned poor substitutes when what you craved was a cup of dark, rich brew.

  "I do thank you." She bobbed her head, including both men.

  "And then, let's see," Logan went on, loosening the ties of the long, flannel-wrapped parcel he had tied to the skirt of his saddle, "there's this. Is there anyone here who's old enough to have a rifle of his own?"

  "Me?" Tad breathed. "Is it for me? Because I'm thirteen today?"

  "Thirteen seems old enough for a boy to have a gun of his own," Logan said, a grin crinkling the corners of his mouth. "At least Reid seems to think so."

  Logan handed the parcel to Tad, who dropped to his knees to unwrap it. He loosed the string and slid a classic Kentucky rifle out of its makeshift case. It was a fine piece, well balanced and graceful, with a curly-maple stock. The octagonal barrel had been browned with acid, as had the flintlock, plate, and pan. The butt plate and the cover of the patch box were polished brass. The hickory ramrod that slid into the stock beneath the barrel was banded and tipped with horn.

  Livi watched Tad's eyes widen with delight, watched him run his hands over wood and steel and brass as if he couldn't believe a gun as fine as this could possibly belong to him. She watched him raise the stock to his shoulder and sight down the barrel.

  He's too young, she thought. Too young to have a gun of his own. Too young to be so grown up. I remember when I held him to my breast.

  "Ma, look!" Tad exclaimed, alight with excitement and pride. "Look what Reid gave me for my birthday!"

  Jealousy streaked through Livi, a jolt of envy and disappointment that abruptly turned her day to dross. This is what David would have done to make Tad's birthday special. This is how she should have rewarded Tad for overcoming all they'd faced on the trail. The gift of his first rifle would have told him in a tangible way how much his help and grit had meant to her.

  Instead it was Reid who had marked Tad's passage into manhood, Reid who had understood what her son needed far better than she. Reid who had offered validation when all she'd given Tad was lectures on hard work and responsibility.

  "Yes, I see," she said.

  Something of what she was feeling must have been evident on her face, for she saw her son's enthusiasm falter.

  "Ma?" he asked, suddenly uncertain.

  "I don't recall that Reid asked me if it was all right to give you a rifle for your birthday," Livi heard herself say. She shifted her gaze to where Campbell stood. "You didn't ask me, did you?"

  For an instant before his eyes iced over, Reid looked as startled by her reaction as Tad.

  "I had no idea I needed your permission to give the boy a gift," Campbell answered.

  "This isn't an ordinary gift, though, is it? A rifle is something special. Having a gun of his own marks Tad as a man, and I don't know that he's ready—"

  "Ma, please." Tad tried to intervene. "I'll be careful."

  "He handles a rifle a good deal better than you," Campbell challenged her. "If anyone ever ear
ned the right to have a gun of his own, Tad has in these past months."

  Livi knew it was the truth and didn't care.

  "Please, Ma. Pa would have let me have a gun this birthday if—"

  "If he were here," Livi finished for him. "A great many things would be different if your father were here."

  Livi stood stiff and brittle. If she bent so much as an inch in this, she'd surely shatter. "Wrap up the gun, Tad—"

  "But, Ma, I'm not too young!"

  "—and give it back to Reid."

  She was vaguely ashamed that they were having this out in front of Ben Logan, but she couldn't seem to back down.

  "You heard what I said, Tad. Wrap up the gun."

  Campbell glared, his anger palpable. "This isn't about the gun, Livi, and you know it."

  "It isn't about tea or fustian or bacon, either." She flung the burlap sack at his feet and spun back toward the cabin.

  Once she was inside, the tears came in a torrent. They were tears of fury and frustration, tears of fear and confusion and self-loathing.

  Reid was right, this wasn't about the rifle. It was about land that didn't belong to her, crops she didn't want to sell, a future she didn't even dare to contemplate. It was about a boy who'd had to grow up far too quickly, and Livi's inability to make him stop.

  It was about loyalties and power and intent, about jealousy that was taking on new life and form. Reid was buying Tad's affection with this rifle, and she couldn't bear to lose her son the way she'd lost his father. She had no strength to wage that war a second time.

  Livi wept for a good long time. No one came to disturb her. No one dared to brave the house. And when she finally thought to check on Tad's birthday cake, she found that she'd burned it.

  * * *

  Reid thought he'd seen Livi at her best and at her worst, but he'd never seen Livi as she was today. Her reaction to the gift he'd given Tad was volatile and out of all proportion to what had actually happened. Her outburst had shaken Reid, and judging from the expressions on their faces, it had shaken Tad and Cissy, too. Reid was torn between following Livi into the cabin, and letting her be. Letting her be clearly seemed the safer choice.

  "It's going to be all right," he said, reassuring the children as best he could. "For now, though, Tad, would you take these things and put them in my cabin? And would you keep an eye on Cissy, please, while I have a word with Mr. Logan?"

  As the boy did as Reid instructed, the two men ambled toward the stream. Though it didn't seem his place to do it, Reid apologized for Livi's behavior. "She's a bit high-strung these days," he murmured, "with the baby and all."

  "Not once in carrying our young ones did Anne ever get so—'high-strung' as that," Ben Logan observed. "Does Livi know the land's not hers?"

  Ben had been one of the witnesses to the agreement Reid and David had made.

  Reid nodded. "I told her as soon as I got back."

  "Then what's she doing here, working as hard as she is?"

  "She refuses to leave until the crops are harvested."

  Logan registered surprise with a shift of his brows. "Refused, huh?"

  "She insists she won't have a mite to bless her," Campbell went on, "until she sells off the corn she and the children put in. Once she has her price, I expect they'll head back to Virginia."

  Logan stopped at the edge of the stream and slanted a look in Reid's direction. "You're not going to marry her, then?"

  Campbell jerked around to stare at Logan. "Marry her? Marry Livi Talbot? For God's sake, no!"

  Ben looked at him long and hard. "Doesn't it seem the fair thing to do?"

  "So she can have her share of David's land?"

  "You and David didn't make that agreement to deprive his wife and children of what's rightfully theirs."

  "No, of course not. I intend to pay her what the land is worth, but only when they're ready to leave," Reid insisted.

  When Logan said nothing, Campbell went on. "God Almighty, Ben, they don't belong here. You've seen what this land can do to women, and Livi's not like Anne. She doesn't know the first thing about making a home in the wilderness. It would have been hard enough for her if David had lived, but now—"

  Logan's snort of derision cut Campbell short. "Look around you, Reid. Beyond building the cabin and clearing the fields, most of what's here is her doing, isn't it?"

  Reid didn't need to look at the corn waving lazily in the slow, hot breeze. At the vegetables flourishing in the garden out back. At the corral, the sty, and the chicken coop.

  Reid felt the warmth come up in his face. "They don't belong here," he insisted.

  "You don't want them here."

  "No, I don't. I'll take responsibility for them for now. I'll go back and see them settled safely in Virginia. I'll do what David would expect. But I can't watch over them while I'm off trading for months at a time. Besides, Livi and I have always been poison to each other. You saw the way we were just now. I don't want to live at daggers drawn."

  "What I saw back there," Logan said, "was a woman who doesn't know where her future lies. You hold the land she thought was hers. You're making her give up her husband's dream. You're trying to buy her son's loyalty with presents."

  "I wasn't buying his loyalty."

  Ben hesitated just long enough to make Reid reconsider. "The fact remains, Reid, that you control her future. Livi doesn't even know where she's going to have the baby she's carrying, and women set high store in knowing things like that."

  Reid stared at the creek. Stoicism ran in him, and he practiced it now, hoping Logan would give up his lecturing and ride away.

  It seemed that Ben Logan had inherited some stubbornness of his own. "How do you think Livi got herself and her family here?" he asked pointedly.

  "They came over the mountains with a pack train, I suppose, like everyone else."

  "Except the way I hear it, the party Livi was traveling with abandoned her and the children just this side of the Cumberland Gap because the little girl fell ill."

  Reid swung around. "What?"

  "From what Eustace told me, Livi and Tad took shelter in a cave and kept body and soul together while Cissy recovered from what everyone on the pack train seemed to think was smallpox."

  "Jesus!" Reid whispered, scrubbing one hand across his face. "Why wouldn't Eustace tell me any of this?"

  "You figure it out," Logan challenged him. "And you know, Reid, in the end, it was a damned good thing Livi and those kids got left behind."

  Anticipation pressed up beneath Campbell's ribs. "Why?"

  "Because the party they were with, the party of churchmen from Petersburg—"

  "Yes?"

  "—got massacred at Four Mile Creek."

  Reid's stomach pitched and hands went cold. He'd seen what marauding Indians could do, how they tortured the men, how they raped the women. God only knew what they might have done to the children in that company.

  "And Livi said she and the children came through right after it happened," he murmured half to himself.

  Coming upon that massacre must have been like riding through hell. There must have been friends among the people who were killed. Women with whom a widow like Livi would have had to form alliances, children Tad and Cissy must have called their friends.

  "Jesus!" Reid muttered again.

  Ben bent to pick up a handful of stones and skipped them, one by one, across the stream as if to give Reid more time to think.

  "And just so you know—Eustace and Violet think the world of Livi Talbot. It seems she saved them from slave catchers bent on taking them back to Virginia..."

  When Reid said nothing, Ben Logan dusted his hands on the seat of his pants. "Well, I've got to be getting back."

  The words shook Campbell from his thoughts. "I'll just keep the things you brought out, Ben. And I appreciate you riding over."

  "I've already had Erskine credit all that to your account." Ben Logan grinned and headed toward his horse. Halfway there he paused and turned. "Liv
i Talbot's quite a woman, Reid. See that you don't sell her short."

  Reid nodded once and hunkered down on his heels at the edge of the stream. He watched the water darting and leaping over the stones.

  He couldn't quite absorb all Logan had told him. Why hadn't Livi confided what their journey to Kentucky entailed? Why hadn't she given him any idea what they went through after David died?

  Because I never asked. Because I never gave her the chance. Because she wouldn't have told me anyway.

  How had Livi stood what she'd been through?

  She's stronger than I thought, stronger than I ever credited her with being.

  Now that he gave it some consideration, there might have been more than obstinacy, more than antagonism in her refusal to leave. After the struggle they'd endured to reach this land, the effort they'd made to plow and sow the fields, Livi must have felt this land belonged to her—agreement or no. It made him wonder if she really meant to leave when the crops came in. It made him question his own motives in demanding that she go. Ben Logan had deliberately stirred up this hornet's nest, and Reid Campbell had the feeling he was going to get stung.

  Chapter 15

  Patches's barking and the sound of someone banging on the cabin door jerked Livi from a sound sleep. She floundered toward the edge of the bed, the weight of her belly dragging like an anchor as she swung her feet over the side.

  "Yes, who is it?" she called out, trying to make some sense of what was happening.

  The answer came muffled through the heavy door. "I'm from Logan's Station, ma'am. We had news of Injuns headed this way."

  Though the warning sounded genuine, Livi glanced up to where Tad stood looking down from the loft. "Go see who's there," she whispered, "before I open the door."

  Patches continued barking as the boy peered down one of the lookouts beneath the overhang at the edge of the roof. "Looks all right," he called down.