by Beth Trissel
She almost lost her footing on the red and yellow leaves slicking the ground beneath her leather shoes. Easy, she told herself, breathing in the tang of hickory smoke from the chimney.
Perhaps they’d not be out for long. Heavy clouds darkened the sky and stiff breezes whipped her skirts. Most of the trees were stripped of their autumn finery. She glanced at the ridges looming up beyond their narrow valley. Only a few leaves clung to the branches. Winter would soon be upon them.
Good heavens. She could be snowed in with Jack. Her heart lurched into her throat and a riot of emotions coursed through her. Annoyed with herself for being so easily unsettled, she pushed open the double doors to the stable.
The earthy aroma of horses and hay greeted her as she entered the dim interior, so comfortingly familiar. An expectant nicker welcomed her from the first stall. Karin brushed chilled fingers over the mare’s soft black muzzle and fed her searching mouth the apple she’d brought. Velvet lips crunched the juicy fruit and nudged her for more.
“That’s all.” Her voice was lost in the rattling wind.
She walked past the remaining stalls and nuzzling lips. McNeal bloodlines were heralded in these parts and painstaking attention given to their horses. More brood mares and foals were out in the pasture and Joseph waited in the lean-to they’d built for foaling.
As for Jack, she spotted his shadowy figure inside the farthest stall. He’d bridled his mount and looped its reins around one of the stout poles joined to the wide beams overhead. His back to her, he curried a magnificent strawberry roan stallion, its chestnut coat heavily mixed with gray. The horse snatched hay from the manger and stood quietly, seemingly good-natured and well trained.
How on earth did he come by such a superb mount? Karin had no more opportunity to wonder, and it wasn’t the stallion she kept close watch on as she approached the two, unsure what Jack might say or do.
“Mister McCray!” She was careful not to take him by surprise as she’d done last night, ready to turn and race back outside in an instant if need be.
Jack turned his head, eyes narrowed beneath his hat. Tension ran the length of his jaw. She faltered at the anger in his face. He must still be vexed with her grandfather; possibly with her too.
Uncertain, she said, “Jack?”
A smile turned up the corners of his drawn mouth, making him appear even more youthful and less like a hardened frontiersman. “So, you’ve come. I figured John McNeal would hold you prisoner before ever letting you go off with me.”
Maybe he should have. Karin stepped nearer to Jack, the hay cushioning her shoes. “Grandpa can be prevailed upon by your bonnie mother.”
He paused, the brush in his hand. “And you?”
Karin shifted from one damp sole to the other and ran her tongue over her lips. “Perhaps.”
His smile widened. “Come and meet Peki.” He opened the short stall door.
She hesitated outside the narrow space.
“You’re not afraid, are you?”
“Not of the horse.”
Jack chuckled. “I’ll be on my best behavior.”
“For a warrior or a soldier?”
“Myself.”
Keeping her eyes on his broad back, she said, “I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”
“Come discover.”
She slipped inside the pen bedded with clean straw and turned almost in awe at the horse towering above her. She patted his sleek neck. “He’s beautiful. You could start a new line with him.”
“Yes. He’s the finest I’ve ever known. But God help me, Karin, so are you.”
A current charged through her at his words and the emotion behind them. She swiveled, lifting her eyes to the intensity in his. “Why do you need the Lord’s help?”
“You have no idea,” he said huskily.
Unable to fathom what he meant, she stared up at him, her head reaching just below his shoulders. He stood so near her that even with the layers of clothing between them she was keenly aware of his warmth, energy, and something else new to her, desire. Instinct told her this emotion was as explosive as gunpowder and contagious as fever.
Almost without realizing what she did, she backed toward the door. His mouth tightened, but he remained where he was. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I seem to have a knack for frightening you.”
She stopped. He really hadn’t done anything wrong yet. “You must think me the most shameful coward.”
A sardonic glint flickered in his gaze. “A little.”
Indignation ruffled her and she cocked an eye at him. “What can you expect? You tried to slit my throat in the night.”
He laid the brush on the wooden ledge. “No, sweetheart. If I truly tried, you’d be dead.”
Both his reply and the endearment rattled her. “Near enough. And then—” she broke off, unwilling to mention the kiss. “Well, I’m not normally this fainthearted.”
The smile he shot Karin made her weak.
“If you don’t wish me to think so, prove me wrong. Show me you have some mettle,” he challenged.
“How?”
He fixed her with a look that swept right through her fluttering middle. “Go for a ride with me on Peki.”
“What—now?”
A casual shrug belied the force in his demeanor. “Peki could do with the chance to stretch his legs. He’s not used to confinement. Nor am I.”
“But your mother doesn’t want you straining yourself.”
Throwing back his head, he laughed as if at the best joke. “I’ve not had anyone making that kind of fuss over me in ages.”
“You have now. Besides, Grandpa won’t want me perched up there with you.”
“Or your uncles, or Joseph. You’ve a legion of menfolk. Ever decide anything for yourself?”
Now he sounded like Neeley. She drew herself up. “Of course.”
He lifted the saddle on the ledge and swung it to the stallion’s back. “You coming or not?”
“Are you going either way?”
“I surely am.”
She squared her shoulders. “Then I’m coming too.”
He glanced at her and a slow smile spread over his face. “Come, then, my bold little miss.”
Chapter Five
With Karin at his heels, Jack led the saddled stallion out into the stable yard. He stopped to consider the angle of her dimpled chin. “Want to be even more daring and ride astride?” He suspected she’d take the bait.
She looked up at him with a spark in her eyes, twin flames in pools of blue. “Astride.”
He almost chortled. It sobered him slightly to think of the bad influence he was, no doubt, exerting on this otherwise dutiful young lady, but only slightly.
She wasn’t tall, about average in height for a woman, and needed a boost to mount Peki. Despite the layers of cloth she’d bundled in, Jack relished closing his hands around her waist and hoisting her up onto the stallion’s broad back. He didn’t even mind the complaint in his shoulder as her petticoats bunched up on both sides in a mass of striped burgundy and revealed her shapely stocking clad legs.
Nearly giddy from the sight, he swung himself up behind her. He closed his good arm around her alluring form and pulled her snugly against him. A gasp escaped Karin. “Can’t risk you taking a fall,” he said, leaving her no choice other than to remain as she was.
Normally, Jack found doubling up on horseback disagreeable at best, but that harkened back to the days of grimy soldiers who reeked of sweat and rum. Having Karin pressed against him beat riding alone any time.
He wished he could keep her like this. She embodied everything hard years spent battling over the fate of America hadn’t, like a spring day scented with flowers after grueling months of ice and snow. And he’d endured plenty of winter in his life. The ache in his shoulder aside, Jack never felt more alive.
With a throaty chuckle, he prodded Peki. The stallion sprang past the smokehouse, spring house, and other outbuildings spread around the homestead, built o
f log and stone and kept in good repair. Hazy ridges rose above them on either side. Giving a spirited whinny, Peki stretched out his legs and pounded past the neatly pruned apple orchard. Jack urged the sure-footed horse toward the split rail fence.
Karin tensed at first then laughed as the animal sailed across and landed on the turf where several brown and white Guernsey’s grazed. Her nerve thrilled him. He’d expected her to squeal in alarm.
The cows snorted. Leaving the startled beasts behind, they raced through the rain-soaked grass. In a nearby meadow, mares and foals of all colors, dappled gray, chestnut, bay, and black, scattered at their coming, the quality of their bloodlines evident in the horses’ strong legs, high-molded backs, curved necks, and fine heads. None outshone Peki, or for that matter, Karin.
Jack nudged the stallion and he jumped back over the crisscrossed rails. Hooves pounding, Peki drummed up the road. Karin’s giggle entranced Jack and tempted him to jump Peki over fences all day just to hear it. If she reveled in this no-holds-barred ride, she truly was her father’s daughter. But how in God’s name could Jack tell her about Shequenor?
Even if she didn’t bolt, and he felt certain she would if he didn’t first pin her down, John McNeal would horse-whip him within an inch of his life. Not only that, but Shequenor expected Jack to bring Karin back to his secluded hunting camp, at the very least for a visit, preferably forever.
“I allow you one full moon circle to bring her to me,” Shequenor had said.
Jack might as well try to kidnap the whole McNeal clan as to haul Karin off.
Bare fields stubbled with the remnants of harvested corn flew by on either side as he pondered his mission. Had knights of old ever been given such a quest? Going on a crusade seemed easy by comparison.
Damn it all. Wasn’t he supposed to rescue damsels in distress, not inflict suffering on them? Of course, according to Shequenor, Jack would be undertaking a rescue, but that warrior was not of sound mind.
As if in protest of his mutinous thoughts, black crows rose cawing from the earth where they were pecking for fallen kernels. Kicking up his hooves, Peki cantered on through the narrow valley shrouded in mist and hidden back in these blue-green mountains like a secret. Jack had to admit it was mighty fair here, like a piece of heaven. And not only because Karin rode with him, though that multiplied his pleasure tenfold.
Few outsiders knew of this valley’s existence, though he could think of one who did. Years ago, Shequenor raided back into these ridges with his war party and carried away Jack and the beautiful Mary McNeal. The warrior had given her, and her alone, his heart.
One fateful day when Shequenor and Jack were absent from the village, soldiers reclaimed Mary and the other captives as the result of Colonel Bouquet’s treaty. Shequenor learned of Karin’s birth and his young wife’s passing through his mystical talent for divining events, but didn’t dare return for his only child. The land grew too heavily settled and the frontier pushed farther west into the Alleghenies, Kentucky, and Ohio.
So the crafty warrior bided his time and struck a bargain with his younger adopted brother to send Jack in his place. Only Jack was totally unprepared to find his heart fast coming into danger from Shequenor’s enchanting daughter. Lusting after Karin was bad enough. Falling in love with her—out of the question.
Out of the question, he repeated to himself, and at odds with his independent nature.
In Jack’s hard experience, women were unreliable whether they meant to be or not. Take his mother, separated from him during his childhood, but he’d gotten over her and put the doting woman from his mind. Until now. Again, that unaccustomed pang of conscience. If having a conscience meant stabbing self-recrimination then he’d fare better without one.
“Hey!” Karin’s shout over the whistling wind broke into his thoughts. “Where are we headed?”
“Anywhere you like. Name the spot.”
“My birth place.”
“Weren’t you born in the homestead we just left?”
“No. A small cabin.” She pointed up the road between the purplish foothills of the ascending ridges toward a darkened hollow. “That way.”
Puzzled by her choice, but not objecting in the least, Jack turned Peki in the direction she indicated.
“Grandpa doesn’t like me to return here, but I thought you might not mind?”
“Happy to oblige!” And help rekindle memories that might prove useful.
He guided Peki over the road that forked to the right along a little used track barely wide enough for a wagon to pass. Karin’s scarlet mantle made a vivid contrast to Peki’s roan coat. Lengths of her black hair whipped free from her hood as he spurted ahead.
Both woman and stallion were exquisite, and neither belonged to Jack. At least, not yet.
****
Laughing in the wind, Karin thought how exhilarating it was to ride over the countryside with Jack McCray. No man ever took her on such a gallop, though she’d ridden her mare hard enough when Grandpa wasn’t looking.
Water splashed the hem of her skirts as they forded a rushing stream and the horse scrambled up the muddy bank. She couldn’t imagine what had gotten into her to behave so daringly, and cringed at the thought of hearing that same question repeated in far stronger tones upon their return to the homestead. But for now…
Apart from lingering reservations about her bold escort, she felt freer than ever. Even with Jack’s arm locked around her triggering the most unsettling sensations. Unlike the others, Karin suspected he wouldn’t object to her speaking of her mother. Likely, not even her father. Though, of course, Jack could know nothing of either one.
Still, it was wonderfully reassuring to have somebody to talk to, especially him. And he’d promised to be on his best behavior. As for the old cabin, the quest to know more of her past had taken fire in her. For some inexplicable reason, she wanted to share something of that and her birthplace with Jack.
What she expected to discover there, she didn’t know, only that she must begin at the beginning, the last point of contact with her mother. Perhaps Mary McNeal would guide her from above. Would her father also guide her from wherever he was?
Peki lurched to the side of the rocky path and jostled them. The road was rougher here than the dirt track they’d traveled earlier. Jack slowed the stallion to a trot and kept a firm hold on Karin. Bare chestnut trees towered overhead and hemlocks waved green boughs in the blustery breeze. Damp cold saturated the air and chilled her through. Her fingers were icy, toes numb. Pewter clouds darkened the western sky above the brooding ridges.
She had the oddest sensation as if something, or someone, waited beyond them—for her. Only hunters and trappers journeyed far back into these mountains, or foolhardy settlers in pursuit of Indian land. She had nothing to do with them, or they with her. And yet—
Did she hear a growl? Ridiculous, she told herself, shivering. But not only from the chill.
“We’re in for a right soaking!” Jack called. “Sure you remember the way?”
Not quite as certain as she’d been before. She peered at the hilly path winding further into the hollow. The way was dim and the trail veiled with mist. Trees crowded out the light back here even in summer except where they’d been cleared. All of that growth had reasserted itself, making it eerie among the hazy trunks. Even so, how difficult could it be to find her old home?
“The road veers again to the right. We’ll pass an ancient oak and see the cabin. ’Tis hard to believe my family used to live back here. It must lie four or five miles from our present home, and not easy miles.”
“When did the McNeals move?” Jack asked.
“Ten years ago. Grandpa and my uncles built again on the new site.”
They’d left their painful memories behind, or tried to, but Karin couldn’t seem to let go. Perhaps because she didn’t really know what hung over her from the past and never would unless she searched. Maybe Neeley was right—annoyingly so—and she needed Jack’s aid.
; Familiar sensations welled in her from long ago as they wound near the abandoned homestead. She could almost smell the buckwheat cakes in the iron skillet and taste the wild strawberries from the best patch around. The spicy scent of sassafras rose in the wind. And then, through the smoky-white branches, Karin spotted the gnarled oak tree and gray stone chimney just beyond it. A rush of nostalgia flooded her along with yearning. After all these years, she was home.
She pointed. “There. I see it, Jack.”
He trotted Peki over the washed-out trail, halting him in the leaf-strewn grass and browned weeds outside the log cabin. “Someone’s kept the place up.”
“Uncle Thomas sees to it the cabin doesn’t fall to ruin.” She suspected it had to do with her mother, but he never said. How forlorn the place seemed. No smoke rose from the chimney in promise of warmth within. The windows, little more than slits, reminded Karin of eyes nearly shut. She hoped the old place wasn’t closed to the mystery she badly wanted to unfold.
Jack lifted her over the side of the horse. She slid to the ground to stand in the wet tangle. He dismounted and they both looked around. The rustic stable stood to one side of the overgrown yard, a bit ramshackle but serviceable. Surrounding evergreens provided some buffer from the icy wind, and then sheeting rain began to fall.
“Go on indoors, Karin. Watch your step. Boards on the stoop could be loose. I’ll see to Peki first and find you.”
What else might they find?
****
The deluge enveloped Jack and he couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. Arms piled high with the wood he’d discovered in a musty corner, along with an ax, he dashed from the stable to the cabin. Someone, maybe Thomas McNeal, kept a supply of kindling ready in the event of a blizzard or flood.