Then again, she might not have minded.
Liam groaned. He was terrible at reading women, and worse at interpreting any moment that wasn’t completely straightforward. The only thing he was sure of now was that he yearned for her with a depth and strength that kept him awake into the night and opened his eyes again each morning. He had never felt this way about a woman, ever. And Henri was much more than a pupil to him.
Frowning, Liam recalled Sebastien’s outbursts this morning. What had he said on the way to Armand’s? Something about Jacobins. But here, in Asylum? It was hard to credit. Holding his breath, Liam submerged his head completely, rinsing bits of straw and grass from his hair and skin.
Sluicing water from his limbs and torso, he emerged from the creek, then stepped back into his trousers. He swung his shirt at the flies, then draped it over his shoulder as he strode toward home, whistling. The tune on his lips had been playing in his head since he’d danced to it with Vivienne last night. A wave of heat washed over him as he recalled how she looked in the moonlight. How she felt in his arms.
Hoofbeats sounded behind him. Liam turned to find a stranger, apparently lost. “Can I help you?” Water dripped from his hairline to the tip of his nose, and he swiped at it with the back of his hand.
The man rode close enough for Liam to see the perspiration darkening his shirt. He mopped his fleshy, sunburned face with a handkerchief, then tugged the brim of his hat into place. “Joseph Cowley. Excise officer. I’m here to collect tax on any whiskey stills in these parts, according to the law passed in 1791.”
Liam hooked his thumb into the pocket at his hip. “I’m aware of the law, officer. You’ll not find any stills around here. You’d best move along.”
Cowley squinted at him. “You certain of that? Never met an Irisher who didn’t have a penchant for whiskey and the wherewithal to make his own—or acquaint himself with those who do.”
Liam gave a little bow. “Now you have. And don’t call me a liar. It makes me cross. As you might have heard, we Irish are prone to a temper.” He poured a full brogue into his words and angled his head, displaying his scarred cheek and notched ear to their best advantage.
Eyes rounding, Cowley’s gaze scurried from the marks on Liam’s face and over his muscles, still wet from the creek. Finding it vastly amusing, Liam slammed a fist into his hand. The officer jumped.
“You best be on your way,” Liam repeated.
“Don’t you threaten me. I have the full weight of the law on my side.”
“Threaten you? No such thing. I’m but giving you a bit of advice. There’s a tavern eight miles from here.” He pointed. “If you head straight that way and don’t look back, you might reach it before the catamounts come out to find you.”
“Catamounts?”
“Wildcats. Also, be mindful of wolves. Good day, officer. May the road rise up to meet you, et cetera.” Feet planted wide on the path, Liam crossed his arms and waited until the officer’s horse trotted away, bouncing him in the saddle. A born horseman, the officer was not.
Liam shrugged off the encounter, grateful that it was he and not Finn who had met the tax collector. Who could guess what Finn would do if he’d chanced upon the likes of Joseph Cowley?
Grasses tugging at his trousers, Liam placed a hand on a knee-high stone fence and vaulted over it, the sunbaked stone warming his palm. The summer air was perfumed with freshly cut alfalfa hay and Jethro’s roasted rabbit. Inhaling deeply, he entered the kitchen house he shared with two other bachelors and wondered what it would be like to share a home with a woman instead.
“Hungry?” Jethro ladled a steaming helping of rabbit stew into a wooden bowl and slid it across the table toward Liam.
“Famished, thank you.” He tossed his shirt into a corner, lowered himself onto the bench, and bowed his head, blessing both food and friends.
“Thirsty, too, I hope.” Finn slammed a tumbler on the table in front of Liam, then sat across from him, staring like a puppy.
Oh no. Liam knew that look. He brought the tumbler to his nose and sniffed. Whiskey.
“Go on, taste it. Not as dark as Monongahela rye, but still better than anything in that Frenchie’s inn. I call it Susquehanna rye. Or maybe Pennsylvania rye. Which is better, d’ye think?”
“Short memory, friend. Whiskey isn’t my drink.”
Jethro laughed, a deep rich rumble, and tucked into his own stew. “It’s not bad, though.”
“Are you in on this?” Liam asked Jethro. “Did you both use your shares of the rye harvest to make whiskey?”
“Plan to.” Jethro swallowed. “Why not? It’s still the most profitable use of the grain and the easiest way to get it to market.”
“You should see the still, Liam,” Finn added. “I’ve been working on it for months. Didn’t want to tell you about it before I knew it would work. Well, it works.”
“I don’t want to see it.” He pushed the tumbler away. “An excise officer came through today, looking for stills to tax. Which means he was looking for you two.”
“Don’t forget Ernest and Derek Schultze. They use it for their own rye, and all I ask in return is a small share of the whiskey they produce.”
“Quite the operation you have.” Liam kneaded the muscles in his shoulder, still stiff from cutting hay. “And I told the officer there was no such thing around.” Was it a lie, if he believed it true at the time?
Finn grinned, pushing his ruddy cheeks back from brown-stained teeth. “Well done, lad. A toast.” He lifted his tumbler. “To second chances. To crops that pay. To a future rising from your land, whatever Armand may call it.”
Liam poured a glass of water and lifted it. “To a future. To the land,” he said, and drank. But it did not sit well with him.
Chapter Thirty-One
A week had passed since Paulette’s arrival, and every day the young woman offered assistance Vivienne hadn’t even realized she needed. From boiling old potatoes into a starch to planting onion ends in the garden to grow new plants, she had a use for everything. Vivienne shadowed her movements in order to learn and try to help, but today she sensed she was merely underfoot. So she turned to what she did best.
Sunshine checkered the lace pillow on her lap as it streamed through the lattice on the summer house. Her baking for the inn delivered for the day, she was glad to be out of doors. Deftly, her fingers crossed bobbins tied to the strands over, under, and across the delicate threads. A pattern emerged, fit for a king. If Louis-Charles were to arrive in the settlement, he would be in dire need of, well, everything. Evelyne Sando had volunteered to embroider fleur-de-lys onto a new silk coverlet, while Vienne worked on lace cuffs, using Henri as a model for size.
“Care for some company?” Without waiting for a response, Paulette carried her two pails into the summer house and sat across from Vienne on the bench. She scooped a mess of beans into her aproned lap and began shelling, dropping the peas into the empty bucket at her feet and letting the hulls patter to the floor.
“Thank you for doing that,” Vienne said. Beyond her, across the fields of alfalfa hay, butterflies flurried like snow.
Paulette grunted. “You have the harder work, by far. It scarcely takes a single thought to run a thumb along the seam and pop these peas out. Oh—will my being here bother you? Break your concentration?”
Vienne smiled without looking up. “You can talk. As long as I watch what I’m doing, I’ll be fine.”
“Good. Henri isn’t back yet, I see. Don’t you worry?”
Vienne shook her head. “He’s only fishing in the creek. Mr. Delaney is with him.”
“And you trust him with the boy?”
Wind rustled through the space between them, ruffling the hems of their skirts. “Yes. He has more than proven himself on that score.” Though her personal feelings for Liam had tangled and grown wild, she knew beyond a doubt that he was good for Henri. And the child adored him. “But I’m not quite decided on his cousin, Finn, and the company he keeps.”
“Oh?”
“He has a good heart, but he tends to act without thinking. And the two American laborers who have befriended him—the Schultze brothers—are known for sloppy workmanship and drunkenness.” But the Schultzes were not foremost in her mind today. “Paulette, I must ask you to forgive me. I’ve never inquired about your family or how you came to be in Philadelphia. You know plenty about me and Henri. Won’t you tell me about yourself?”
For a moment, Paulette’s hands stilled. Then, with characteristic spirit, she resumed her shelling. “My goodness. Can’t say as I’ve ever been asked that by my employer before.”
“But don’t think of me that way.” After all, she was not the one paying her wages. “You’ve done so much for me. You changed my life by teaching me how to bake. So, please, I’d really like to hear your story. Unless the telling of it brings you pain.” Why had she not considered that until now? Perhaps this was the reason the girl hadn’t already mentioned a parent, a sibling, a friend. Vienne should tread lightly. “How long did you work at the Pension Sainte-Marie?”
Odd, that she didn’t respond right away. The question was innocuous enough. But then, “Six years. Madame Barouche hired me when I was fourteen. I was young, but I knew how to work. And I suppose Madame couldn’t afford the wages of an older, more experienced maid.”
Vienne’s hands suspended, bobbins held between her fingers so she could glance at Paulette. “That must have been hard. I was working by that age, too.”
“With your aunt, you said. But not your parents.”
“No. My aunt raised me as her own child, or as close to it as she could.” Not for the first time, Vivienne wondered if Tante Rose had felt as out of her element as she had felt with Henri. “And your parents?”
“I watched them die.”
“Oh!” Vienne clutched the bobbins in her hands and looked up. “I’m so sorry.”
Calmly, Paulette went on shelling peas, never breaking her rhythm to sniff or wipe a tear. No emotion of any kind changed her features. “It was a long time ago.”
“But it’s not something one ever forgets.”
“I was very young. I barely remember them. I only recall the moments they died. I wish the opposite were true, you know? That I remembered their lives and not their deaths. I don’t know for sure, but I think they might have been good people.” She poured a pile of hulls onto the floor and scooped another handful of beans into her lap. “After that, I lived on the charity of others for years, until I could work in domestic service in Marseille. But my employers were . . . not kind. I hid on a ship, finally landing in Philadelphia. That was in 1789. Right before the Bastille fell, actually. I found Madame Barouche and have worked for her ever since. That is, until she decided the pension was too much for her advancing years and took a room above a parfumerie on South Second Street.”
“Such a hard life, Paulette. I had no idea. Thank you for sharing that with me.” Vivienne could not think what else to say. Her own life could have paralleled that tale, had it not been for Tante Rose.
They grew quiet, with only the sound of dropping peas and the patter of bobbins dropping on the pillow as Vienne traded one silk strand for another. A black-capped chickadee fluttered into the summer house and alighted on the lattice, apparently content to watch the women work.
“Well.” Paulette rose, brushing off her apron. “I know my story didn’t make for good telling. The living of it was even worse. But we’re here now, aren’t we? No looking back.”
“Indeed,” Vivienne mused. For she had nowhere else to go. “Paulette? Sebastien said something about a possible danger to Henri. Have you heard any whisperings about that? I hate to see hobgoblins where there are none, but I don’t want to play the fool, either.”
Paulette reached over and patted her knee. “Never you mind about that. If anything’s amiss, I’ll know it before anyone else, you can count on that. I’ll keep a good watch on you both.”
Smiling, Vienne returned to her work. “It’s so good to have you here.”
Night lay thick as molasses on Liam’s skin, though the window was open to invite a breeze. Hay crunched in the mattress as he turned onto his side, a fly buzzing in his ear. If Jethro and Finn could sleep in this heat, no doubt it was only with the help of whiskey.
Whiskey. The word had come to mean so much more than a drink and could scarcely be uttered without thought of the excise that went with it. Liam didn’t agree with the tax any more now than he ever had, but the fire that had once burned in his belly against it was gone. He had spoken and fought against it. And he’d lost.
A Bible verse, long buried, surfaced in his mind. Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.
Liam turned onto his back and stared at the ceiling. He had always tried to do the right thing, as he saw it. But it had been far too long since he’d asked God to show him the right, as He saw it. That the two could be different unnerved him. He pushed himself out of bed and went to the window, leaning on the sill for a breath of air, if not a fresh wind.
Then he heard a man screaming for help, clearly terrified. What on earth?
Liam hastily pulled on his trousers and grabbed a knife from his bureau before bounding down the stairs and outside. The man in distress couldn’t be far. The cries intensified, leading Liam in the direction of Vienne’s house, until he came upon a large pale form at the edge of the woods.
“Help me! You have to help me!”
Moonlight filtered through the clouds. “Joseph Cowley?” The excise officer was stripped naked and tied to a tree.
“You,” Cowley snarled. “You said there were no whiskey stills in these parts. Then I sampled some at that tavern you sent me to, and they told me it came from here.”
“Who did this to you?”
“Two men. German accents. Took my clothes and ran.”
The Schultze brothers. Holding back an unholy oath, Liam unfolded his knife as the smell of burning tar met his nose.
Shadowed by night, Derek and Ernest arrived, carrying a pot of tar between them. Two long sticks topped with sponges jutted from Derek’s right hand, while Ernest clutched the neck of a burlap sack, undoubtedly full of feathers. Watching Liam, they set down the pot.
“Evening, boys,” Liam said. “Lovely night for a walk, isn’t it? Only it seems to me it’s past your bedtime.”
Derek glared at the knife in Liam’s hand. “What do you think you’re doing here, old man?” A thatch of red hair fell over his brow.
“Preventing the two of you from doing something very stupid and very cruel.” He hoped.
Ernest dipped his sponge in the tar and held it up, the dripping black liquid a perfect match to his hair. “I heard tell you fought the whiskey rebels out in Washington County, but I also heard you helped Finn O’Brien escape before he was thrown in jail. So which is it, Delaney? Are you a friend or foe to liberty?”
Liam clenched his teeth. He certainly didn’t have it all figured out, but he knew that severely burning a man with hot tar was not the answer. “The tax is the law. I’ll not stand by and let you destroy a man for doing his job.”
“So you’re for tyranny, now,” Derek sneered. “Strange, for a veteran of our revolution.”
Liam stood his ground, silently calculating how many seconds it would take to cut through Cowley’s bindings. Too many. If the brothers had a mind to, they could simply pick up the cauldron and heave its contents over the naked man in a shorter time. He ducked behind the tree and placed the hilt of his knife in the tax man’s hands. Let him cut through his bindings himself.
“Oh no, you don’t.” Derek lunged, but Liam caught him by the shoulders and shoved him backward, hard. The young man fell on his rear, dangerously close to the pot of hot tar. While he scrambled to his feet, Ernest plunged his stick into the pot once more and thrust it toward Liam.
He dodged it, then yanked the stick from the reckless young man’s grip and threw it as ha
rd as he could into the woods.
“Look out!” Cowley shrieked, then took off running through the trees. Derek lit after him, dripping stick in his grip.
Ernest charged into Liam, knocking the air from his lungs as he plowed him into the ground. Liam rolled until he had the upper hand. Unwilling to break Ernest’s nose, Liam slammed his fist into his jaw just hard enough to slow him down and take the fight out of him.
He should have punched harder. Infuriated, the younger man lashed about, all rage and no strategy. Still, he managed to connect his fist with Liam’s nose.
Derek ran out of the woods alone, poised to dunk his sponge back in the cauldron of tar. The taste of blood in his mouth, Liam wrenched free of Ernest’s flailing limbs, dashed to the pot, and overturned it, spilling the tar on the ground.
“We’re done here,” he growled. “Go home.”
Clouds passed over the moon, and in the sudden darkness, Liam lost track of Ernest. He felt a blow to the back of his knees at the same time hands grabbed his shoulders and yanked. Hands outstretched, he fell to the ground—right on a puddle of congealing tar. It coated his hand and splashed onto his chest.
A lantern came bobbing toward them. “Who’s there?”
Pain warbled her voice in his ears. He understood by the sound of their footsteps that Derek and Ernest grabbed the pot and made a hasty retreat.
As the light came closer, Liam stood and backed away from the spreading tar, holding his burning hand away from his body. He glanced at Vivienne and saw her feet were bare beneath the hem of her dress. “Stay back!” he said through gritted teeth. “There’s tar on the ground.”
She stopped, glancing to the earth, then up to his blackened hand and the flecks of tar on his torso. Her eyes widened. “Cold water?” she said.
He grimaced. “The creek.” He had to stop the burning.
Quickly, she led the way with her lantern to a grassy bank downstream from the springhouse. Jaw clenched, he strode into the water and knelt on the muddy bed so the creek came up over the burning spots on his side and chest. He squeezed his eyes shut and moaned, more from frustration than the pain.
A Refuge Assured Page 33