A Place Called Home

by Elizabeth Grayson

  God only knew what course Reid's thoughts had taken.

  As they approached the blockhouse, Reid closed warm, rough fingers around Livi's wrist.

  "Reid?" Livi sputtered as he pulled her into the shadows.

  Then his lips came soft and full on hers, the strength of his grip incompatible with the hot, sweet tenderness of his mouth. He tasted dark, of whiskey and loneliness and yearning. Of confusion and need. Of masculine power and temptation.

  With the sweep of his palm along the length of her spine he gathered her in, fitting her to the long, taut planes of his body. She arched into him instinctively, knowing just how to nestle her fullness into the bow of a tall man's embrace. Reid's energy enveloped her like a wave of heat, dancing along her skin, simmering through her veins. She felt his need grow full and hard between them.

  Before she could draw breath, he deepened the kiss with the thrust of his tongue, dragging her into a maelstrom of sensation. A yearning of her own leaped up in answer. She tingled from scalp to toes, as if she'd encountered a force as fierce and elemental as summer lightning.

  Livi curled her fingers into his shirt where it strained across his shoulders, needing to draw him closer. Her body cleaved to his, her breasts and belly, the length of her thighs. She opened her mouth, drinking him, assuaging a thirst she'd never thought to feel again.

  Reid moaned and wrapped her closer.

  And then the baby kicked. So hard that Livi gasped. So hard that Reid must have felt the jolt where their bodies came together.

  His eyes widened. He jerked back, as if he weren't sure where the assault had come from.

  Then he realized. "Oh, Livi!" he whispered. "My God! I'm sorry. Did I hurt you?"

  "It's all right," she tried to reassure him. "Babies kick like that all the time."

  His face paled, as if he'd only just realized who it was he'd been kissing. He let Livi go as if she'd burst into flames.

  "It's all right," she said again.

  But it wasn't all right. She could see that in his face. She could see it in his expression of shock and self-disgust. He'd been kissing David's widow. David's pregnant wife.

  He backed away.

  She fumbled for words to ease the discomfort he must be feeling. Words that masked the way she had responded to his kiss. Words that were distant and mundane.

  "Shall I see you in the morning, then? Will you be taking us back to the cabin?"

  Livi thought she saw Reid nod before he bolted toward the group of men gathered around the nearest jug of whiskey.

  For herself, Livi didn't know whether to be glad or sorry that he'd been so quick to leave.

  Chapter 18

  Livi tensed with anticipation once they turned off the main road at the familiar outcropping of dun-gray stone. She clung more tightly to her horse's reins as they traced the course of the rocky stream. Her breath came hard as she guided her mount up the face of the hill. She paused at the top of the rise as her little sunlit valley sprawled before her. She drew a long, slow breath and swallowed hard.

  Granted, the valley was not as pristine as it had been the first time she'd ridden in. But neither was she. The land bore the scars of struggle, of fire, of a harsh and hostile world. Livi bore those scars as well. But she had survived. Just as her valley and her house and her fields had survived.

  Her blood and bone resonated with the rightness of returning to this place. She knew now that she belonged here. That this was home.

  Reid pulled his horse up next to hers.

  "Looks like the roof of the cabin's pretty much intact." His voice was cool, his outlook masculine, matter-of-fact. "It won't take Tad and me long to fix that. We'll have to whitewash everything..."

  Livi shut out the sound of his plans and listened for the soft, hollow coo of her mourning doves. She sniffed the cool, green scent of the woods and sated herself on the rush of the wind through the trees. She understood now what David must have felt when he found this spot. The awe and the elation, the wonder of belonging here. It was odd that this valley could come to matter so much, especially now that she knew it wasn't hers.

  That thought soured the sweetness of her homecoming.

  As they clattered across the puncheon bridge, Livi could see that Reid's assessment of the homestead was right. The house could be repaired and the charred rows of corn replanted with winter vegetables. Livi dared not think what might have happened if Reid and the men from the station hadn't arrived when they did, if the rain hadn't rolled in to put out the fires. But coming so close to losing this place steeled Livi's resolve. This was where she wanted to stay and raise her and David's children.

  Repairs to the cabin took three days. Reid and Tad worked to reinforce the purlins on the west end of the house, then laid up new clapboards and fastened them in place. They scrubbed the soot from the cabin and whitewashed the walls. As they worked, Livi did her best to keep up, but she was slow and cumbersome with the bulk of her pregnancy. But though she was exhausted by the end of the day, she took a few minutes each night to sit on the steps of the cabin in the twilight.

  After their weeks in the station, she loved the wind-washed silence, the song the stream sang as it rippled over its bed of stones, the hoot of an owl off in the woods. In spite of everything, she felt content here and closer to David than she'd felt in months.

  A night or two after their return, Reid came out of his side of the cabin while she was sitting there.

  "It's good to be back," she said and shifted to make room for him beside her. "I think I understand now why David loved this place. When we rode over the rise the other morning, it was as if everything in the world came right again."

  Reid considered her for a moment with narrowed eyes, then folded his long legs and sat beside her.

  "What we agreed, Livi, was that once the crops were harvested, you'd let me take you back to Lynchburg."

  "But I feel as if this is home now," she murmured, still thinking of David. "I want to stay."

  "That's not the bargain we made."

  "You know I never agreed to that," Livi corrected him. "Haven't I proved I can make my way here in Kentucky?"

  "You've proved nothing."

  Livi pushed to her feet and gestured to the fields that lay cloaked in twilight before them. "I'm the one who plowed and planted those fields. My crops are nearly ready to harvest. I've made this cabin our home." Her voice wavered. "I've come as close as anyone could to fulfilling David's dreams!"

  Reid shrugged. "This land belongs to me, and I have no intention of letting you stay on here."

  "But why?" Livi stood her ground, knowing this argument was inevitable.

  "Because you don't belong in Kentucky!" he accused. "Because this place is too wild and dangerous for a woman like you. You don't know how to defend yourself, and you'll never learn. I told David if he loved you as much as he claimed, he should have walked away and left you back in Lynchburg."

  Reid's words made Livi's stomach clench. Surely David would never have considered such a thing. Would he?

  "Come fall," Reid went on, "I'm heading west and won't be here to look after you and the children."

  "Damn you, Reid!" Livi's voice had begun to tremble. "No one asked you to look after my children and me. You go ahead. Take your trade goods; hie off into the hills. Tad and Cissy and I will be just fine here."

  He shoved to his feet, high color rising in his face. "Damnit, Livi! Can you run this farm all by yourself? Will you do 'just fine' when the Indians come over that ridge and attack again? Will you do 'just fine' when someone you love dies because you chose to stay alone in this wilderness?"

  Guilt over Violet's death rose up to haunt her.

  "And what if it's one of the children?"

  Tears stung Livi's eyes. Reid well knew her greatest vulnerability.

  Still she managed to raise her chin as if she were as strong as she longed to be. "I'd have risked all that and more if David were alive. Doesn't it matter to you that he would want his family
to farm this land?"

  "It doesn't matter at all," he persisted. "What matters is that the land is mine. What matters is that I have no intention of letting you stay. Maybe once Tad is old enough—"

  He didn't finish the thought, and Livi couldn't allow herself to be placated by something that might never happen. Before she could say another word, he stepped back toward his own side of the cabin.

  "Harvest your crops. Give birth to that child. But mark me well, Livi Talbot. As soon as you're well enough to travel, I'll tie you onto your horse if I have to and take you and your children back to Virginia."

  With a curse, Reid snatched up the bucket and spun toward the spring.

  Go! she wanted to shout after him. And don't come back! I'll hold on to this land one way or the other, Reid Campbell. I'll make my way in this world without you. Don't you think I won't!

  But making her way alone wasn't all that easy. As the days passed, Livi fretted about the harvest. She didn't see how a woman mere weeks from delivering her baby and two half-grown children were ever going to pick all that corn. She didn't have any idea how they could get it husked and shelled and stored away.

  She absolutely refused to ask Reid for help. If she did, she'd feel as if she'd compromised herself and she'd have to forfeit any money she'd ever make by selling her share of the corn. And how would she and her children live then?

  * * *

  The help Livi needed came on foot and on horseback almost a fortnight after her argument with Reid.

  "Hullo the Talbots!" Ben Logan hollered from the top of the rise one morning as Livi was getting dressed. She rushed to the cabin door just in time to see nearly two score of people troop out of the woods behind Ben and Anne. She recognized friends from Logan's Station, other families who were settling out, and a few of the scruffy single men who lived alone in the woods. They came with food and tools and songs and laughter.

  The men and boys headed immediately into the fields, pulling the ears of corn that had dried on the stalks and ferrying full bushels back to the house. The women either sat in the breezeway and sewed, laid out long makeshift tables in the yard, or saw to the food. Cissy and the other children ran around squealing with laughter.

  Enough time had passed since they had all been cooped up together in the station that the women were eager to renew their friendships and share the latest gossip.

  "I hear that Susan Ferguson over at Harrodsburg gave birth to a fine baby boy," Margaret Chamberlain informed them.

  "They named him Gabriel," Margaret's oldest daughter added.

  "We sure could use another musician out here." Josette Adams giggled. "Or another trumpeter to summon the troops."

  "My Frederick ran into old man Billings at the crossroads," Fanny Morris reported. "All slicked up he was, too. And when my Fred asked why, Billings told him he was courting Mattie Watkins's middle girl."

  "Eliza?" Urilla Peters sniffed in disgust. "And him old enough to be her father!"

  "Some old soldiers salute well into their final years," Granny Nichols offered up with a sly half grin that made all the women laugh.

  "And, Livi, what about you and Reid?" Anne Logan asked.

  Livi bent over the bit of sewing in her hands. She was aware that the other women had fallen silent, and felt herself color up.

  "What about Reid and me? He'll soon be heading off to trade with the Indians, and once the baby is born, I'm going home to Lynchburg."

  The flood of disappointment that met her announcement covered the distress Livi felt at the way things had gone between Reid and her. After their argument, Reid had withdrawn. Instead of sharing his meals with her and the children, he ate alone. Instead of offering to help around the cabin, he spent more time in the woods. She knew he was restless. She understood how much he yearned to leave. She and the baby were holding him here against his will, but there wasn't much she could do to change that.

  "What's all this?"

  She looked up to find that Reid had come around the corner of the cabin with rifle in hand, Tad and Patches hot on his heels.

  "I—we—" Fresh color bloomed in Livi's face.

  "We all just came over to visit," Anne Logan answered in Livi's stead, casting a long, measuring look at each of them, "and to get this corn crop harvested. If those pigeons you've got there are for supper, you might better take them down to where Prudence Wilson is doing the cooking. Then head on out into the fields with the rest of the men, and take that boy there with you."

  Reid stood his ground just long enough to make it clear he was making his own decision, then did exactly as Anne had directed.

  "Damned cocky rogue!" Anne muttered under her breath and winked at Livi.

  The men ate a huge meal at midday and went back to the fields. As more bushels of corn were carried in, two boys emptied them into a pile in the cabin yard. It was here that the corn-husking contest would take place once the fields were stripped.

  The men finished up just before sunset and came in to eat. While lanterns and torches were lit, Ben Logan and Reid negotiated the placement of the rail that would evenly divide the pile of corn to be husked, then chose up teams. In preparation for the contest, jugs of whiskey came out. Each man took a good swig from the gourd dipper and picked up his iron husking pin. Even Tad took a swig, and Livi huffed with disapproval.

  "Nimbles up the fingers," Lige Higgins assured her.

  Her objections didn't seem to matter much as Tad shucked his shirt like all the men and boys were doing and found a place beside Reid on the near side of the mound of corn.

  Everyone knew the rules—whichever team finished husking the corn on its side of the rail first, won. Cheating, while not officially sanctioned, was at the very least expected.

  Anne Logan fired a pistol into the air to signal the start of the contest. A cheer went up as the men hunkered down and set to work. Husks flew in one direction while the stripped cobs of corn flew in the other. The men worked hard, their heads bent and their bowed backs gleaming with sweat. The women shouted encouragement, laughing as two opponents began heaving husks at each other, clamoring in protest when the two began throwing the empty husks in the women's direction.

  The gourd passed regularly from hand to hand. Undermined by skillful excavation, the rail that marked the center of the pile fell toward Ben Logan's side, dramatically shortening the work for the men on his team.

  "Foul! Foul!" Reid's side complained. It did no good. Instead the men worked harder, faster. Their forearms flexed, their wrists and fingers flicked back the husks and stripped them away in practiced movements. The pile of un-husked corn dwindled while the pile of dried cobs grew.

  The men began to chant, "Faster! Faster! Faster!"

  Ben Logan's team finished first. The men crowed their victory, laughing, slapping one another on the back, and passing the gourd of whiskey again. While Reid's side finished up, the winners filled the corncrib that Tad and Eustace had built a few months before.

  By the end of the evening, when the work of harvesting was done, Cissy had fallen asleep on Anne Logan's lap. Tad was swaying like a willow in the wind. Reid and Ben were bragging about how quickly they would husk the corn next time. Livi was so exhausted she could barely stand.

  Still, she gathered herself to thank all her friends before they left.

  "I don't know what I would have done without you," she told them truthfully.

  Anne and Ben were the last to leave. While Tallie slept against her father's shoulder, Anne drew Livi into a voluminous hug.

  "That baby's dropping," Anne said and cast a discerning eye at Livi's bulk. "It won't be long now. You send for me any time of the day or night. You hear me, Livi?"

  Livi nodded. "I will, Anne. And thank you for everything."

  "That's what neighbors are for," Ben assured her as he helped Anne mount her horse, then handed their sleeping daughter up to her.

  Livi stood at the edge of the breezeway and waved. Reid took his place beside her as if it were where he belo
nged. As they watched the Logans ride out, Livi became aware of the warm, comforting pressure of Reid's hand at the small of her back. His touch surprised her—and pleased her more than she could say.

  * * *

  The soft scratches on his cabin door jolted Reid awake every bit as fast as a whooping horde of Indians would. He grabbed for his pants and the primed pistol that always hung on a peg above his bed. He stumbled through the darkness to the door. He slipped the bar and nosed the barrel through the opening.

  A pale moon face greeted him, a woman with tumbled hair in a crisp white nightdress.

  "Livi?" he said.

  "I'm sorry to disturb you in the middle of the night—"

  "What's the matter?"

  "It's the baby. It's coming."

  Reid's stomach dropped like a rock down a well.

  "The baby," he murmured and let her in. "What do you want me to do?" He sparked up the candles on his writing table and shrugged into a shirt. "Do you want me to ride to Logan's Station to get Anne?"

  "I want you to stay with me."

  No, he thought. Don't ask me that.

  "How far along—how soon do you think—"

  "I've been having pains since just after we went to bed. My water broke an hour ago."

  Reid felt the heat wash up his neck. He didn't want to know this. "Then I'll have Tad—"

  "No!" She grabbed his arm for emphasis. "I won't have either of you riding six miles through the forest in the dead of night."

  He could tell by her grip that she meant it.

  "I don't want the children disturbed. I don't want them worrying. It's going to be an easy delivery, if you'll just help."

  "Jesus, Livi! I don't know anything about bringing a baby into the world!"

  She smiled, a smile that would have carried a lot more weight if he hadn't been able to see the sheen of sweat on her upper lip.

  "You have the easy part," she told him. "I'll do all the work."