The Barefoot Bride

by Paisley, Rebecca

  Saxon yanked his arm away from the man he'd once considered a friend. "Wesley, you bastard, keep her name out of your mouth. Because if you dare to sully it again, it won't be medical attention you need, it'll be a coffin! If I ever hear any of you talk about her—if you so much as think about her in the wrong way, I'll make sure it's the last thought any of you ever have!"

  Saxon stalked out then, but his warning, like a black cloud, hung heavily over the room.

  Chapter 19

  Shane took great care to keep his huge form hidden behind the bushes. "Smooth," he whispered as he sipped at the liquor. "Aye, 'tis just right, Chickadee." He handed her the flask and grinned, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight that lit the North End.

  Chickadee took a sip. "It ain't as good as George Franklin's but it dranks all right, I reckon. 'Pears to me you boys can start a-sellin' now."

  Gallagher's eyes caressed the contraption Chickadee had constructed several weeks ago. It had taken him, Shane, and Killian a while to find all the parts she'd described to them: copper cooker, cap, slop arm, plug stick, rags, copper worm, barrel, and water pipe. But they'd found them and watched as she built the rig. Relying on memory, she made a replica of the stills she'd seen George Franklin make many a time.

  And then she set about remembering the recipe for his whiskey. "We're gwine use whole grain white corn, put it in this here barrel, and cover it with warm water," she'd explained to the three amazed Irishmen. "We'll leave it set fer a day and a night. Then we'll put it in that thar sproutin' tub on account o' it's got a sieve in the bottom fer a-drainin'. We'll keep on a-pourin' warm water inter it, and put a hot cloth over it till all the water's done drained out. In about three days, them corn kernels is gwine be sprouted. We'll dry 'em with heat and grind 'em inter corn grits. Then we'll put them grits inter a barrel with hot water and let the whole mess git real ripe afore we thin outen the mash with more warm water and add rye malt and sugar to it. After a few days, we'll stir the mash real good and let it work fer two or three days more. Then we'll run it through the still."

  The Irishmen's astonishment grew when she did exactly what she'd explained she would. The first runoff, what Chickadee called singlings, had been a dingy, poisonous fluid. So she made a second run of doublings, this one at a lower temperature, and had produced a clear, two-hundred-proof liquid.

  Now, as the foursome sat and sipped the homemade liquor, they all knew the whiskey would bring a good price.

  "I'm nae knowin' how to thank ye, Chickadee," Killian said. "Ye've given us a trade, lass, aye, that ye have. We'll be keepin' our jobs on the docks, but 'tis thanks to ye we'll be able to make money on the side now."

  Gallager nodded. "I've spoken to several people, and 'twas anxious they were to buy from us. 'Tisn't a whiskey sold in the bars that can outdo this ye've made fer us."

  "How can we ever repay yer kindness?" Shane asked.

  Chickadee gazed warmly at the three men. "You-uns heped me git back to Khan that night. We're even now."

  The four friends sat in the splash of moonlight for a while longer, the Irishmen quietly reminiscing about the green homeland they'd left behind and Chickadee remembering the scene with Wesley. After she'd left the dining room she'd taken a coach and sought sanctuary here with her three Irish friends.

  But the look Saxon had given her before she'd left, had followed her here. It hadn't been a furious expression, but neither had it been gentle. He masked his emotions well, but she presumed she'd broken one of those Boston rules he once tried to explain to her. Throwing soup was probably against the law here.

  She just couldn't do things right no matter how hard she tried. Nothing she did was working. As if she'd ever had him, she was losing Saxon, and there wasn't a thing she could do about it. Boston, with all its fancy rules—Saxon himself, with all his ghosts—there were so many things that stood in love's way. Oh how she missed those happy times they'd shared in the Blue Ridge.

  She smiled sadly at her friends. They were all kindred spirits. Each of them lost and trying to adjust to Boston; each of them knowing Boston would never be, could never come close to the wild, unspoiled beauty of their homelands.

  *

  Saxon was just leaving as she entered the bedroom.

  "Whar you gwine at this time o' night?"

  "Where am I... Where have you been? I searched the grounds everywhere, and when Josh finally told me you'd taken a coach and—"

  "The North End," she said wearily, dreading an argument but knowing one was brewing.

  "I told you never to go there again!" He forced her into a chair and then caught her scent. "Dammit to hell, Keely! You've been drinking again!"

  "Saxon—"

  "How often have you gone there?"

  "Not ever' day."

  He glared at the top of her head. "That's not an answer."

  "Well, it's the onliest one yore a-gittin'!" She pushed him away and stood. "I love you more'n more ever' dang minute of ever' dang day, Saxon. But I ain't gwine do ever'thang you tell me to do. My friends needed hep bad. I tole you I was gwine keep on a-seein' 'em."

  "Why didn't you just tell me you wanted to go? If it was that important to you, I'd have taken you there myself! I just don't want you there alone, Keely. Those bars are—"

  "Ain't never been to nary a bar. I don't go thar to drank."

  His eyebrow rose. "Then why do you reek of alcohol?"

  She raised her nose and straightened her shoulders. "I only been a-samplin' likker. I ain't been a-drankin' it fer real. You got to taste it iffen you want to know iffen it's right."

  His eyes widened. "You're making it? You and those Irishmen have been out all night—"

  "I ain't been out all night! Saxon, they need money. Thur so dang poverty-poor, my heart hurts fer 'em. I larnt 'em how to make George Franklin's likker on account o' it was the onliest way I knowed how to hep 'em."

  Saxon slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand. "Of all the harebrained—I've a good mind to have those three Irishmen arrested for moonshining!"

  "Then I'll go to jail too."

  He exhaled raggedly, attempting to calm himself, because arguing with Chickadee and winning when she was in one of her famous hardheaded moods was an impossible feat.

  "Saxon, I didn't do nothin' all that bad, and nobody seed us thar," she explained convincingly. "I didn't mean to stay gone fer so long, but the night's so purty and the moon's so bright. And what with the still right thar, the heat o' George Franklin's likker a-warmin' me... well, it sorter memoried me o' my holler. I reckon I tuk sick fer home tonight."

  Her poignant smile and the faraway look in her sad eyes explained clearly what words could not. He turned and went to the window. How she loved those hills! Those blue-green mountains were as much a part of her as the golden freckles on her face and, in all probability, the Appalachia was calling her back to its soothing bosom.

  He thought about the affairs she'd attended with Araminta and realized what an effort she'd made to make him see how much she cared for him. He knew now that she'd been scorned and insulted at each of the assemblies, and yet she'd led him to believe she was enjoying herself. She'd wanted him to be glad she was doing as he wished her to do. Dear God, he thought to himself. Her love for him had enabled her to bear all that suffering.

  "What a truly remarkable emotion love is," he whispered, his breath fogging the window. Only love, the very thing he'd once believed to be pure myth, could have made him feel the way he had today at the race. He'd been irritated by the way people laughed at her, angered by the condescending way everyone looked and sneered at her. The whispered insults he'd heard had infuriated him, and Wesley's slander had finally hurled him into a rage.

  The savage need to defend her was the most uncontrollable emotion he'd ever experienced. And only one thing could have possibly caused such a violent need.

  Love. Love was real.

  And how eager he was to tell her he'd discovered that sweet truth, to fervently profess his love
for her. He wanted to tell her to stay with him forever.

  But he couldn't do that now. Not when he was just understanding what his wish would mean. She was nature in all its untamed glory, and this was Boston in all its refined elegance. The two, very simply, did not mix.

  "I realized that from the start," he whispered again. "Knew it but hoped..." He ran his hand through his hair.

  And he couldn't return to North Carolina with her either, he fumed. That would mean leaving Desdemona, for he could never take her with him. To hell with the fact that Araminta still retained custody over Desdemona, but the girl, though she'd improved mentally, remained frail and weak physically. She'd not last a week enduring the rough life Chickadee yearned to have back again.

  There was only one course to take. Pain gripped him as he thought of it. As much as he longed to give Chickadee all his love, the love that had been there from the beginning, he would have to conceal it from her. He could never even let her suspect its existence.

  Because if she knew, she would never leave Boston. She'd stay here and endure her homesickness with her indomitable fortitude. She'd be brave for him, keeping her yearning for the Appalachia carefully hidden.

  But he'd see it each time he looked into her eyes—those sparkling orbs that were as green as her mountain forests. He'd feel it every time his fingers played through her copper hair, those tresses that were the same red-orange-gold of the mountain leaves in autumn. He'd hear it each time she laughed, that sweet, happy song that rivaled even the lovely melody of the Blue Ridge breezes.

  Staying in Boston would be a sacrifice too great to expect of the girl he loved. And so, when the Winslow business was over—something he knew would occur shortly—he would have to send her home.

  "Why, dammit?" Why had it happened this way? Why had Fate allowed him to discover love and then forced him to send it away? It was the cruelest injustice he'd ever known. He pressed his forehead against the cold pane of the window and shut his eyes against the pain he knew would never go away.

  "Why what, Saxon?" she said softly and joined him.

  God, he would miss that voice, he thought as he turned to enfold her in his embrace. "Keely," he whispered and wondered what would fill the void in his arms when she was gone.

  He swept her from the floor, and because she was a rare treasure it would be agony to relinquish, he held her closely and tenderly while he still had the time to do so. He carried her to the bed and slowly undressed her, savoring each revealed part of her before uncovering the next.

  He shed his own clothing quickly, and when he lay down beside her, he kissed her with all the adoration he wished he could put to words. And when he began to caress her, it was with more passion than he'd ever shown her before. He made love to her languidly, thoroughly, as if each passing minute was his last with her.

  And when at last he had finished and Chickadee dried his sweat-drenched face with her soft hair, she had no way of knowing that one of the droplets was a tear.

  *

  The Christmas season brought with it a fresh snowfall and Khan's complete recovery. Chickadee spent a lot of time outside, Saxon, Desdemona, and Khan never far from her side. The Blackwell grounds were soon covered with snowmen, most of them sprayed yellow by the very territorial wolf.

  Saxon, as a surprise for Chickadee, went out and bought holiday decorations for the house—all of them arranged with galax leaves. He thought it would please her to see how galax was used, but when she fingered the heart-shaped leaves and wondered aloud if she was the one who'd picked them, he was reminded anew of how much she missed the Appalachia.

  Chickadee had no idea her homesickness was the reason for Saxon's depression. She only knew he'd changed and didn't smile much anymore. More than anything, she wished there was a way to bring back his sweet, mocking grin.

  Her wish was granted on Christmas Eve. Saxon, denied real Christmases as a child, ignored the bitterness the holiday always brought to him, and in the privacy of their bedroom he played Santa Claus and presented Chickadee with the gift he'd had made for her.

  It was the most beautiful rifle she'd ever seen; sleek, gleaming, and perfect in her hands. But more than that, its stock was the one she thought had burned so long ago.

  "I found it on the floor of your cabin that day," Saxon explained. "I had a gunsmith here use it to make a replica of what the parts that the original rifle must have looked like."

  She was speechless with gratitude and disbelief, and many moments passed before she could find her voice and present him the gift on which she'd been working so hard. Sliding her hand beneath her pillow, she brought forth a small book and held it out for him to see.

  He was confused. The book of poetry already belonged to him. "For me?"

  In answer, she only smiled and flipped through the pages until she found the one she wanted. "'When the br-bright sunset fills,'" she began to read slowly, "'the sli-silver woods with...'" She paused then, her nose wrinkled as she tried to read the next word.

  "Light," Saxon whispered in amazement.

  "'Light,'" she continued, nodding, "'the green slop... slope throws its shadders in the hollers of the hills, and wide the up-upland glows.'"

  Her eyes afire with pride, she closed the book, caressed it, and then looked up at Saxon. "I larnt to read, Saxon. It's my Christmas gift to you."

  His eyes went from her book to her face, and what he saw there made his heart skip a beat. She was beaming with happiness over her accomplishment. "Who taught you?"

  "Bunny. First we read, and then I make Bunny go out and move her body around. She don't like it much, but she's bound and compelt to have Max as her man and thanks she's got to git smaller. Me, I think Max'd like her if he jist knowed her better. Anyhow, she larnt me to read, so I figgered I'd hep her back. And I been a-larnin' Desi to read too."

  "Longfellow," he said softly. "You read Longfellow. A passage from 'An April Day.'"

  His eyes and voice caressed her. She melted in the heat of his tenderness. "I liked it. It made me thank o' the Blue Ridge. You reckon that Longfeller ever went to the Blue Ridge? This here poem he writ sorter makes you see them mountains in yore mind, don't it?"

  "Yes it does, Keely," Saxon agreed sadly. "It's a beautiful poem, and it does indeed describe your hills."

  She watched as that strange melancholy filled his eyes again. "Saxon, ain't you proud o' me? Didn't it make you happy to hear me a-readin' the way I done?"

  There were no words he knew to describe the intensity of his feelings at that moment. Almost everything she ever attempted, ever succeeded in doing, she did for him. Dear God, how he longed to tell her how much she meant to him. "Keely," he whispered, taking her into his arms and holding her for a very long time before he spoke again. "You will never know how much your gift means to me. It's the most meaningful present anyone has ever given me."

  "I'd do anythang fer you, Saxon. And it was fun a-larnin' to read. It's fun a-larnin' new thangs. I don't reckon thur's nothin' I wouldn't try at least once."

  She sat back and ran her fingers over the spine of the poetry book. "Like the grand-ball party that Miz Preston woman's a-havin' at her place soon. I ain't never been to nothin' like that. I warn't much fer them other git-togethers I been to, but this ball thang differs. Bunny tole me this story? Well, it was about this girl called Cindereller. She had the worstest kind o' time with her stepmama and stepsisters, but in the end this fairy come and heped her git to the ball at the castle. Cindereller even weared glass shoes. Wonder why they didn't break and cut her feet up, Saxon?"

  He squelched his amusement. "They were made of magic glass."

  "Magic glass," she repeated, wishing she could believe in that sort of thing but knowing full well it was only fantasy. "Yeah, well, Bunny said this grand ball you-uns have ever' year is jist as fancy as Prince Charmin's ball."

  "Do you wish to attend the ball, little one?" Their invitation hadn't been withdrawn, he mused. If Chickadee wanted to attend Boston's most elegant affair o
f the season, he'd take her. He'd do anything at all to make her happy before he had to send her away. And if Boston didn't like it, it could go to hell.

  "Well, I do sorter want to go. But, Saxon... I don't know how ter dance real fancy-like."

  "I could teach you to waltz in one afternoon, Keely. The steps are easy to learn, and you are naturally graceful."

  She threw her arms around him. "Oh Saxon, thanky!" Flying from the bed, she began to twirl around the room, already practicing that thing that Saxon called a waltz.

  He watched her and thought of how much like Cinderella she really was. A rare beauty with a heart of pure gold, mistreated by society, much as Cinderella had been abused by the stepmother and stepsisters. And he, he thought with a pang of longing, might have been her Prince Charming. The only thing missing in the story-come-to-life was the fairy godmother.

  The thought jerked him to his feet. He stood staring at Chickadee, his only movement the slow smile of newborn hope spreading across his face.

  "Saxon?"

  His grin broadened, his gaze still riveted on her.

  Why couldn't he be her fairy godmother... er, godfather?

  "I might need me some spectacles," Chickadee said, "but I could swear that's a smile a-turnin' up yore lips. Didn't never thank I'd see it agin. What brung it on?"

  "If I could transform her... like the fairy did with Cinder—" he mumbled quietly to himself. "Make Boston see her in a different light..."

  "What's that about light, Saxon?"

  He began to pace, his hands firmly clasped behind his back. "If people began to accept her, stopped ridiculing her..." He stopped in front of a wall, stared at it for a second, and then turned for another walk around the room.

  Chickadee couldn't understand his incoherent words. "Saxon, what—"

  "She herself said learning new things was fun," he went on, his speech still slurred. "If society ceased its scorn, would she begin to... Maybe if she were given a warm welcome wherever she went... it's quite possible... really quite possible that she might..."