“This is useless.” Keturah threw the stick into the river.
Delilah gave a sigh of relief. He almost followed suit—except he feared Keturah would disappear, leaving him empty as an upset bucket. Still he must end this futile search. “A red shawl would stand out in the water. It must have been swept into the drop-off.”
Keturah tossed the blanket aside, kneeled, and removed her still-soppy moccasins.
“Keturah Wilkes, whatever are you doing?” Delilah squealed.
“I’m going to find my shawl.” Her chin rose.
“You want to jump into the river again?” He had rescued a crazy woman.
“No. But I must.” Her trembling cheek looked lily-petal soft. His hand ached to touch it.
He heard himself say, “I will look for the shawl.”
All his life he had doubted the sanity of the people around him. Now he wondered if she had driven him to madness. He plunged into the chilly water.
Like a catfish, he slid along the river bottom. When he found nothing, Henry gulped fresh mouthfuls of air and swam well past the pier’s mossy posts. Nothing. Popping through the river surface, he opened his mouth to tell her he was done. Finished.
She was yelling for him to try that spot. He already had searched near the drop-off twice. He might have told her to find another madman for her task, except with the wind sloshing waves up his nose it was simply easier to drop back down into the water and look. Perhaps. His open eyes, braving the silt, burned.
There, caught among the weeds. He grasped the shawl, wadded it into a shapeless mass, and held it close to his body with one hand as he made for shore. Planting his feet in the muck, he held up his trophy.
At the joy on her face, his irritation evaporated. She splashed in, and he handed her the muddy, slimy shawl. Clasping the blanket around her with one hand, she hugged the shawl. He wished he could take its place. But she did hold out a hand, and though he did not feel worthy of its whiteness, he clasped it as if he were the one drowning.
“Keturah Wilkes.”
The bass voice sounded more powerful because the man did not raise it. Keturah, clinging to her filthy bundle, dropped Henry’s hand as if it contained hot coals. She turned slowly around. The birdlike friend on shore gave a funny little chirp.
Henry did not want to look up. But he lifted his chin and looked squarely into the rocklike gaze of a big man with Keturah’s eyes.
Chapter 2
Perhaps thee would like to explain?” Papa’s tone, though controlled, spoke more words than his dictionary.
“My shawl blew into the river.” Keturah knew only the truth would set her free. “I fell in, trying to retrieve it. This person witnessed my misfortune and helped me to shore.”
She dared not look into Henry’s odd, yet wondrous, golden-hazel eyes again, eyes that had imprisoned her when he pulled her out.
“That does indeed relieve my mind.” Her father’s probing gaze did not soften. “I thought perchance thee had grown too warm in thy lovely shawl and decided to take a cooling bath in the mud.” He gestured toward the village. “Perhaps thee knows Caleb’s whereabouts?”
“He carried Mistress Norris’s heavy basket to her house,” Delilah chimed in. “She was ill.”
“Of course.” Papa nodded sagely. “The air fairly reeks with charity today. Would thee be so kind, Delilah, to go ask Caleb to meet us at the edge of town?”
With a wave, Delilah skittered away. Keturah, wading ashore, looked after her in despair. After this escapade, who knew when she would come to town again?
Papa turned to Henry, still standing in water. “I would be far remiss if I did not thank thee for helping my daughter. What is thy name?”
“Henry Mangun.”
“God bless thee, Friend Mangun.” Papa pointed to the blanket wrapped around her. “This belongs to—”
“Sol. I work with him.”
Keturah tried not to shiver as she handed it to Henry. “I will use Papa’s horse blanket on our ride home.” She wrinkled her nose at the thought of the smell.
“That will no doubt complete thy elegant toilette.” A tiny smile escaped Papa’s mouth.
Perhaps there was hope after all. And thanks to Henry, she still had her shawl. “I cannot thank thee enough.”
He smiled for the first time, a slow light that filled his tanned face like a sunrise. Almost before she realized it, he had disappeared into the nearby forest.
Caleb, his mouth hanging open like a sheep’s, joined them in the near-silent ride home. Wrapped in the scratchy horse blanket, Keturah held her nose. She checked the wet red and green crewel in her pocket. Hopefully, her unexpected bath had not affected the bright colors. She anticipated no further remarks from Papa. He would say little to Caleb—usually the dutiful son—about leaving his sister unescorted in town. Papa would assume both had learned from their misadventures and would adjust their ways accordingly.
But Mama? She, Caleb, and Papa had left the mighty Ohio behind, but Keturah knew they all were preparing for the flood of reproaches that surely would sweep them away.
♦ ♦ ♦
Henry stuck his fingers in his ears and tried to invite sleep back into his dark, musty loft. He liked fiddle music and sang a good ditty. Though he tended to watch more than participate, he liked parties. But not this kind, especially after several hard days of loading and keeling boats.
Ma’s hee-haw laugh scared away any lingering dreams. He flipped off his corn husk tick, crawled to the ladder opening, and stuck his head into the room below.
“Ma, you trying to wake the dead?”
She laughed uproariously. “Boy, when things is good, I gotta dance.”
Several people clapped as his red-haired mother, hands on ample hips, never missed a step in her jig to someone’s wild fiddling. Her feet blurred, she danced so fast. He couldn’t help grinning. Nobody could outdance Ma.
“Henry, you missed the best loot ever.” Charlie, his brother, raised a gourd filled with wine. “Rich farmer on his way home from New Orleans. But we were kind. Left him his underdrawers.”
The room rocked with huzzahs and toasts. Charlie’s eyes glittered with a look Henry had come to dread.
He pulled back and flopped on his tick. As children he and Charlie had been the best pickpockets at the docks. Now Henry only stole when he or his family were hungry. But Charlie wanted to get rich. Someday he would trespass on James Ford’s territory one time too many. Or worse, join Ford in his schemes to lure travelers to Potts’ Inn and rob and kill them.
I’ll never touch Ford or Potts, no matter how poor we get.
He lay sleepless until they grew too drunk to notice his leaving. He grabbed his poke and climbed down the ladder, navigating dancers and snoring bodies on the dirt floor. He unlatched the door, welcoming the forest’s fresh, chilly air as he escaped to the limestone bluffs along the river, honeycombed with caves he’d explored since a child. Not that he would go to the big pirate cave. He would never go there again. Ever.
Henry, using the silent walk his Shawnee Indian father had taught him, meandered through the forest to his secret cave. Even Charlie didn’t know this favorite spot, big enough for him to build a fire and lie down for a rocky but peaceable night.
♦ ♦ ♦
Tea-kettle-tea-kettle-chee-chee-chee! One Carolina wren woke Henry. Soon several chattered outside. He dragged his aching body to a sitting position. Sly sunbeams peeked through a small opening in the cave’s roof, teasing him to come outside. Henry, swathed in the blanket he kept in the cave, munched a piece of hardtack from his poke. He did not work on Sunday—a welcome rest from his usual back-breaking labor. Beyond that, Sundays had always seemed special. For the life of him, he could not imagine why. After Saturday nights, his home looked like a pigsty. He would not return there today. The peaceful village streets drew him, but churchgoers wearing their Sunday best eyed him. Their faces told him ragged half-breeds did not belong.
Henry pulled a small worn book fro
m his poke and opened it under the sunbeams. Ma hadn’t given a fig whether he went to school as a child. But he went because he liked the teacher and wanted to read.
As a teen, he stole a Bible because he’d always wanted one. He read it off and on, trying to sound out the hard words. Now he scratched his head, deciphering a New Testament verse: “‘Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’”
What did it mean? At twenty-five he felt old and hard as the cave. “Any man,” it said. How could any man—especially him—become new, like a baby?
The memory of Keturah, her softness and sparkling eyes, invaded his thoughts as they had many times the past week. Despite the cave’s chill, his face heated like an iron skillet. He should not think of scripture and Keturah in the same moment. Yet he felt they were linked. She and her father were obviously Quakers, saying “thee” and “thou.” Keturah and her pa sounded as if they had stepped out of the Bible.
But other things about them intrigued him. Keturah told her pa the truth about her “swim.” She could have made up a story, even blamed him for dumping her into the water. But she didn’t.
Her pa’s patience surprised him, too. Men swore and struck their families when they annoyed them. Henry had never seen an angry man show such calmness. He had called Henry, a river rat, friend and blessed him.
Keturah and her pa must know God. Something inside him leaped. But was it the girl or her God that excited him more?
He would have to think on it. Clutching the Bible, Henry shouldered his poke and headed for the river. He hunkered down on top of a cliff overlooking the water sparkling in the sunshine as if God had just made it. Humming a scrap of a hymn he’d learned at school, he opened the Bible again.
♦ ♦ ♦
Keturah tied on her First Day bonnet. Mama gave the kettle of beans baking in the fireplace’s coals a final stir. They joined Caleb and Papa, who had driven the wagon to the door of their cabin.
“Thee is ready for Meeting?”
Papa’s words meant more than finishing chores and donning their best clothes. Keturah nodded. Although sitting in silence strained her ready tongue, she genuinely loved First Day, when a few area Quaker families gathered in the tiny cabin that served as a meetinghouse. Sharing God’s Light and listening for His wisdom, rather than scrubbing and cooking, seemed an excellent use of time to Keturah. Did Mama like sitting still? She hid a grin.
Keturah enjoyed the meetinghouse more during summer, when the wide-open wooden shutters let in the forest’s fresh scents. But the candles Mama brought for the table at the front glowed like the Light within. Sitting beside her on the women’s side of the room, Keturah pondered the scriptures Papa had read at breakfast, all about becoming a new creature in Christ. At times her thoughts and actions had nothing to do with Christ’s Light. As one Friend spoke of God’s refining fire, and another rose to praise God, Keturah asked Him to make her the woman He wanted her to be.
Yet she could not believe God had designed her like Mama or most Quaker women, who married at sixteen or seventeen, kept house, raised children. Her heart longed for adventure, for learning, for newness of life she had not yet tasted.
Keturah felt an odd sense of someone watching. To be sure, she had felt boys’ covert stares at Meeting throughout the years. Now, the group’s marriageable young men had all found wives. She rejoiced in their happiness—and her own respite. Why this uneasiness?
She turned her head, coughed into her handkerchief, and cast a glance behind. Large golden eyes met hers. A tall, thin figure sat on a bench at the back. Henry Mangun. Why had he joined them? How had he slipped in without anyone hearing?
Henry blinked and then stared at the floor. She shifted back to the front, surprised to find herself blushing as Meeting ended.
“Friend Mangun?” Papa strode to the door.
Papa remembered his name, too. Henry looked as if he wanted to escape. But as Papa talked, he asked hesitant questions, then more. With the buzz of the women’s after-Meeting conversation, Keturah heard little. But they appeared to discuss the scriptures read. Henry said nothing to her before disappearing into the forest as he had done after rescuing her.
She knew all—including Mama—were bursting with curiosity, but they would keep their post-Meeting discussions to spiritual and family matters. As she expected, Henry’s attendance came up at dinner.
“Who was that boy?” Mama ladled beans onto their plates. “Is he from Rock and Cave?”
She frequently sent food and clothing for the village poor with Papa, but she had not set foot there in years.
“Henry Mangun. Lives downriver.” Papa drank his cider, taking care not to look at Keturah.
“Why would he come? How could he know where we meet?” Mama sputtered.
“Perhaps—” Papa put his cup down. “Perhaps he is looking for God.”
Chapter 3
Two weeks later, Mama’s small hands pounded bread dough on the big oak table in their cabin’s main room. “Thee shall see the man.”
“Mayhap thee might tell me before inviting a gentleman to keep company.” Keturah pounded hers harder. “I am not a child.”
Mama stoked the big stone fireplace. “Perhaps thee knows another grown woman who swims in the river wearing her best dress?”
Keturah gritted her teeth. Mama would display this unfortunate incident like a prize ribbon until Keturah turned eighty. At least she did not know about the shawl.
The set of Mama’s mouth told Keturah further argument would be a waste. In silence they formed the loaves of white bread they ate only on First Day or when visitors came. Keturah’s kneading almost matched her mother’s. But that did not guarantee baking success. Often Mama hid Keturah’s bread from company—especially male company.
“Bring in a ham.” Mama chopped apples for pies as if wielding a battle-ax.
Keturah welcomed an escape to the smokehouse. The brisk October air cooled her hot cheeks as she detoured into the drafty washhouse. Keturah pulled the red shawl from its hiding place behind pokes of rags Mama kept to make rugs. She threw it around her shoulders, parading past big wooden tubs, imagining she wore it openly today. Especially on Christmas Day. Every day if she chose.
If she chose. The words rattled in her mind, useless and noisy as stones in a bucket. She wished she dared shout from the rooftops that she harbored no interest whatsoever in Thaddeus Squibb, son of wealthy Friends from northern Illinois.
Keturah could not recall Thaddeus, though Mama said they met at the last yearly Meeting. Keturah enjoyed those rare gatherings of Friends from across the state. But this was not the first time a man only Mama remembered had appeared afterward at their door, eager, suitable, and impossibly dull. She considered appearing at dinner wearing the shawl. Friend Squibb, seeing her in all her scarlet glory, would disappear like a bad dream.
She giggled but then felt a little ashamed. People prone to rash judgments annoyed her. Should she not keep an open mind, too? She had not told her parents a deep part of her longed for a strong man’s love. He had not yet appeared. If God chose to bring him with Mama’s help, who was she to reject him without so much as laying eyes on him?
Remembering the river episode, Keturah realized her mother was right about her occasional lack of common sense. Reluctantly, she restored the shawl to its hiding place. She dashed to the smokehouse and cut down a large ham. Carrying her greasy bundle, Keturah hurried into the cabin and managed to slice it for frying without wounding herself. She raised cloths covering the rising bread to check its progress and sighed. Mama’s loaves looked perfect. Hers were lopsided.
As a final peace offering to Mama and Friend Squibb, she made gingerbread cookies using Grandmama’s recipe, the only dish she never ruined. As she rolled and cut the rich brown dough into circles, she recalled that, long ago, her Methodist aunt Rachel had told Keturah her Quaker grandmamma secretly called them Christmas cookies. Keturah had followed tha
t example. Now the cake-like treats added their aroma to the cabin’s mouthwatering aura.
Keturah tidied up and set the table with Mama’s white tablecloth and dark blue-and-white crockery, brought precariously downriver from Pennsylvania. The room with its scrubbed wooden floor, cozy rag rugs, and polished pewter would smile a welcome to Friend Squibb.
Keturah washed up then clambered up narrow stairs to her bedroom. She brushed her hair until it glowed like summer wheat, and donned her best dress—without the red shawl.
♦ ♦ ♦
Friend Squibb did not appear nervous, if one judged by appetite. He ate as much as Keturah’s father and brother combined. Had he devoured a whole pie? But he also was making Keturah’s Christmas cookies disappear. Between bites, he declared he had not eaten such a feast since his dear Sally departed this life.
Keturah choked on her pie. One glance told her Mama had known. No wonder I did not remember him. He has to be at least fifteen years older than I.
Still, he was handsome, an enormous tanned, blond-haired man. She brushed away a biblical reference to the giant Anakites of Canaan from her mind and tried to smile. She did not have to make conversation, for Friend Squibb devoted his whole attention to eating. Due to a full mouth, he rarely answered. At least not so she could understand. Keturah tried not to panic when Papa and Caleb left to do chores after dinner without inviting their visitor to join them. Her mother accepted Keturah’s fervent offer to help with dishes but went to fetch heated water from the washhouse.
She hoped Friend Squibb’s heavy meal would make him drift off. Instead, his alert blue eyes surveyed her with a pleased air. Keturah gulped.
“Thee has been well?” Friend Squibb gave her a huge, toothy smile.
“Very well, indeed.” She could not tell him his manners nauseated her.
“Thou art tall and strong, not frail and fussy, like so many young women.” He cocked his head to one side. “Thee likes children?”
A Plain and Sweet Christmas Romance Collection Page 40