“I think I’ll walk for a while,” she said, rising and scrubbing her hands with water and gravel, the way he’d showed her. “McGee’s been a good boy, he deserves a rest.”
“How’re your feet?”
“Tough as shoe leather. How about yours?”
He let her get away with the lie because there wasn’t a whole lot either of them could do about it. “Then why don’t we see if we can make that cave I was telling you about before it gets too dark? The rest of the trail’s not too bad if I remember correctly. That way we can reach the farm in time for breakfast instead of showing up in the middle of the night.”
Chapter Nineteen
That quick, quirky grin of hers would be the death of him yet. Jed wondered if she was thinking what he was thinking. That once they reached the farm they wouldn’t be able to share a room, much less a bed. Jed had not seen his half sister-in-law since she was a skinny, solemn teenager, daughter of one of two circuit preachers who used to cover the area. He wondered if she was as straitlaced as her parents had been. George used to suffer through the Reverend Redd’s longwinded sermons, but Jed, wild as a buck, up to everything and good for nothing, had usually managed to be elsewhere.
Pepper’s sermons, on the other hand, had been fairly interesting and had seldom lasted more than an hour and a half. The fact that one man was a Baptist, the other a Methodist, had nothing to do with their different styles of preaching so far as he could tell.
They trudged on for another mile or so, but the closer they came to the place where he’d planned to make camp, the more certain Jed was that they wouldn’t be sleeping at all—not that night, at least.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about that fire, El,” he said. She hated it when he called her Elly, but didn’t seem to mind when he shortened her name even more. “Henderson’s over that way.” He pointed east. “Asheville’s up there.” He pointed north. “There’s nothing in that direction that would put out that kind of smoke.”
The smoke seemed to be concentrated to one small area. With the wind, a grass fire would have covered more ground. A forest fire would have been visible from here, racing up the side of the ridge and bursting from treetop to treetop.
By the time they started down the northwest side of Dark Ridge, the smoke had mostly died down, only the odor lingering in the air. By then, though, Jed knew. He knew.
“Stanfield’s spread takes up the middle two-thirds of the valley, with our place lying toward the southwest.” George’s place, not “ours,” but he didn’t need to get into that now. “There used to be two more farms before Stanfield foreclosed and drove them out of the valley, though, so unless the wind’s playing tricks—”
“Playing tricks?” Her eyes were as round as chestnuts.
“The way the wind currents eddy around these mountains, anything’s possible, but I’m pretty sure the smoke came from our end of the valley.”
She nodded as if she understood what he was saying. Maybe she did, he thought tiredly. God knows they had talked about everything in the few weeks since he’d first staggered up the hill and fallen into her arms, George and the farm included.
Eleanor barely managed to hold on to McGee’s lead. She didn’t know which hurt worse, her feet, her behind, or the thighs that had been rubbed raw. Her back was breaking and she was so tired she could barely stay awake, but Jed had to be in even worse shape. He’d been walking for days. He wouldn’t hear of riding while she walked. He’d insisted on giving McGee a break, but she knew what the real reason was. He was simply too much a gentleman to ride while a lady walked.
There was no question now of stopping over for the night, even if they’d found a cave with steam heat and indoor plumbing. They’d been traveling at an increasingly rapid pace ever since they’d set out this morning. “If you’re right and the smoke really is coming from your brother’s farm, you need to run on ahead,” she said. “I can follow the trail down the ridge, or if I can’t, McGee will eventually get me there.”
But he was no longer listening. Instead, he’d climbed a mossy boulder and was peering through the darkness. “God, it is,” she heard him whisper.
A full moon had risen a few hours earlier, but it was still hard to make out the valley below. “Is what?” she asked, almost afraid to find out. There was tension in every line of his tall, lean body.
“The fire. Hang on, we’re going to take another shortcut.”
Before she could protest he boosted her up again. Leaning forward, she clutched McGee’s shaggy mane with both hands and tried to hook her toes under his belly. Jed claimed the horse had fallen in love with her voice. For whatever reason, he’d stopped trying to bite her, to kick her or dislodge her, but that didn’t make his bony back any more comfortable.
The journey down was breathtaking, with Jed leading the way and McGee more than once overtaking him. Even before they reached the place where the valley widened out before them, she could see what was happening.
The smoke was coming from Jed’s farm. She thought of it as Jed’s even though she knew his older half brother lived there. Lived on whatever was left of it, at any rate.
Jed was cursing as he hurried forward. Sliding to the ground, she called after him, “Go on ahead, you don’t have to wait for us, McGee and I will follow.”
Without a word he turned and looked at her. Moonlight shone down on his bearded face and she thought she saw the glint of tears just before he took off at a run.
“I’m not sure what’s happened, McGee,” she said quietly, “but I think it’s bad. He’s going to need us, so don’t give me any trouble, you hear?”
Several minutes later she joined the small group huddled together near the site of the fire. She hung back, close enough to hear, but not close enough to intrude. She heard Jed say, “At least he didn’t torch the house.”
“That don’t mean he won’t. He tried, but I woke up and scared him off.” Jed stared at the taller man, then both men turned to watch a small shed collapse in a flurry of sparks and ashes.
“Last week it was the feed barn.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me what was going on?”
“Tried. You’d left the hotel. Figured you were on your way.”
A tall, thin man, George looked nothing at all like his younger brother, one being dark, muscular and bearded, the other fair, gaunt and clean-shaven. Shirtless, George wore bib overalls with one shoulder strap unfastened, as if he’d barely taken time to get dressed. The woman standing some distance away was swollen with child. She wore an enormous nightgown and a shawl. Two young children clung to her skirts while a boy of about six stood beside the two men, his small bare feet spread, arms crossed over a scrawny little chest as he mirrored the posture of his elders.
“Why burn you out if he thinks he’s got you over a barrel?” Jed wondered aloud after several minutes of silence broken only by the crackling and popping of the coals. “Doesn’t make sense if he thinks he’ll get it all in a week or so anyway.”
Another rafter collapsed in a spray of sparks. One of the younger children let out a wail, and Eleanor stepped forward without thinking and knelt beside it—it being a little girl whose thumb seemed permanently attached to her mouth.
“There, honey, you’re safe now,” she murmured.
The older woman glanced at her, looked at Jed, then edged away, drawing both children with her.
George said, “Must’ve heard about the money. Figures to scare us out before you can pay him off. Good thing I heard the commotion and come downstairs, else we might not be standing here talking about it. I heard a jug hit the porch and run outside. It was coal oil, all right. Bastard doused the porch good, but he run off before I could catch him. It was one of Stanfield’s men. Don’t know his name, but I recognized his face. Shed was already burning.”
“God alive,” Jed said reverently. “He’d have burned the house, knowing you all were inside?”
“Old fool’s lost his mind. Weren’t never real smart.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jed said bitterly. “He was smart, all right. Just because he doesn’t think like a normal man, that doesn’t mean he’s dumb.” Just vicious, cruel and greedy, he added silently. If he had that damned dictionary, he could probably come up with a few more words to describe the man who had watched as two of his hired hands held a boy while a third man beat him half to death—a man who had held him down with a foot on the back of his neck while his foreman burned a brand on his ass.
“Might’s well go on up to the house,” George said tiredly. “Stay out here long enough, the sumbitch might come back and finish the job. Wouldn’t put it past him.”
The two men set out across the clearing, George’s wife and children following behind. Eleanor brought up the rear, still leading McGee. Jed paused beside the old catalpa tree where he used to collect fishing worms and stared at the place he used to call home. In the moonlight the gaunt, two-story house looked smaller and older than he remembered, but otherwise unchanged except for a row of flowerpots on the front porch.
He waited for Eleanor, beckoning her forward. “Eleanor, this is my brother. George, this is Mrs. Miller. She’s been traveling with me.” He heard his sister-in-law catch her breath and recognized his mistake a moment too late. Lorly hadn’t changed much. Still prim, prissy and disapproving. He wondered how George had managed to get three children on her, with another in the oven.
He cleared his throat. “That is, I was staying at Miz Miller’s house when…”
Laura Lee Dulah, her voice laced with disapproval, said, “Go on upstairs, children. Hurry now, get back to bed.”
Nobody moved. Five pairs of eyes turned toward Eleanor—Eleanor with her matted hair, her bare feet and her torn and filthy dress.
Jed met her eyes over the heads of the three clinging, whining children who were obviously being shielded from any possible contamination. He started to speak, but she waved him to silence.
“If you’ll tell me where the stable is, I’ll see to McGee,” she said quietly.
If she’d been wearing a crown and one of those velvet cloaks with the white speckled fur trimming, he couldn’t have been any more proud of her. “We’ll both see to McGee, dammit. You got any blankets to spare,” he said to the other woman, “I’d like to borrow a couple.”
He had already turned away when George caught his arm. “Don’t take offence, boy, Lorly don’t mean no harm.”
Jed looked at the big horny hand on his elbow, then looked at the lined face of his only relative. “If you can spare a stall, we’ll bed down out there for the rest of the night. Come morning, I’ll borrow some clothes and see about getting my money out of the bank.”
“We still got three days.” George’s voice held an unspoken apology, his posture a picture of defeat.
“Three days is enough time to burn what’s left. If you can spare those blankets and some food, Mrs. Miller and I will—”
“God’s sake, Jed, come in the house! Bring your woman, Lorly don’t mean nothing. She’s been feeling poorly with the new babe and all.”
Eleanor felt an irreverent urge to giggle. Poorly Lorly? Would that be Laura Lee, perhaps? Or Lorelei?
The mind boggled.
Jed spoke for them, as Eleanor couldn’t have opened her mouth without laughing. Hysterically, but who would have known? She’d be looked on as not only immoral but insensitive, and at the moment, she couldn’t have refuted either charge.
Jed said, “If you’ve got any coffee, I could use about a gallon. I expect Mrs. Miller would like to, uh—wash up, wouldn’t you El?”
El would. But first she would like to drink her gallon of coffee, with cream and sugar please, eat everything edible she could find and then sleep for a solid week. In a barn, on the ground—at this point she wasn’t particular.
After that, she would consider the situation and decide where to go from here. Because she obviously couldn’t stay where she wasn’t wanted, not even for a single day. Not even if it meant walking away from the most wonderful man in the world.
Eleanor couldn’t get comfortable. Other than the one lumpy pillow she’d been grudgingly offered, there were no cushions on the wooden settee, as if indulging in any form of physical comfort might doom a mortal to eternal damnation. The quilt covering her had an odor she didn’t care to identify. It could have served as bedding for a dog, or maybe been used by a child who hadn’t been properly trained to use a chamber pot.
She would rather have slept in the barn. At least the straw would be clean. It had been George who’d insisted on their sleeping in the house, Jed in a room off the kitchen, herself as far away as possible in the front parlor.
God, she was tired. Daylight was only a few hours away, and she needed sleep to be able to think clearly about the future. Instead, all she could do was lie here on this blasted contraption and try to find a position that wouldn’t leave bruises on her body. At least her old Biedermeier had been padded, even though the padding was about as comfortable as a sack full of turnips.
Thinking about the dawning look of suspicion on Lorly’s face as she’d taken in Eleanor’s filthy bare feet, her matted hair, and everything in between, she had to wonder what the woman would have made of her in-laws, the Millers.
And what they would have made of her. It was almost amusing, only she couldn’t afford to be amused. If she started laughing, she’d never be able to stop—either that or she’d end up crying. There was no room in her life now for either tears or laughter.
She could hear them talking in the kitchen. Jed said, “I can make it to Asheville and back by evening, but I’ll need to borrow a horse. McGee’s pretty well shot his wad. Besides, we had to leave his saddle behind and I don’t know that he’d take to wearing a borrowed rig. He’s right particular.”
“You can take one of my horses. Bay’s faster, but the gray’s steadier.” George’s voice was slower, his accent more pronounced. Almost Elizabethan, as if he’d been isolated here in the valley since the early colonial days.
“I’ll take the bay. Any problems you know of between here and there? It’s been a while since I’ve been this far west.”
“Rockslide last spring up near Greyson’s Falls. Take a left at the burned tree—you’ll see the turnoff. You’ll come out just above Lee Fox’s place. Road’s clear from there on so far’s I know.”
Eleanor sat up again, sore to the very marrow of her bones. She wasn’t going to get any sleep this night, and it was clear the others weren’t even going to try. Not the men, at least.
With a reluctant sigh, she stood and gathered up the corners of the smelly blanket, wondering whether to leave it on the settee or take it out and hang it over the porch rail to air. Her hostess would probably fumigate it once she left.
She heard a murmur coming from the back of the house, and then Lorly said, “There’s more coffee in the pot. I’ve got to go out back.”
Eleanor waited, not knowing whether to join them and get it over with, or stay here and put off the confrontation. It wasn’t going to get any easier, no matter what. Lorly obviously considered her a fallen woman and wanted nothing to do with her.
The truth was, Eleanor was in no position to deny the charge. She had spent the last two weeks and more alone with a man not her husband. She had slept with him and made love with him, and given a choice, she would do it all over again.
After a moment’s silence, she heard George say, “I’m right sorry about that, Jed. Lorly’s just broody, she don’t mean no harm. She just weren’t expecting your woman.”
“Eleanor’s not my woman,” Jed said quickly, and Eleanor’s hand grew still in her task of folding the thin quilt. She waited to hear just how he intended to explain her. She wasn’t his woman. She wasn’t anyone’s woman. The trouble was, at this point she didn’t know what she was—or where she belonged.
“She’s right pretty, I’ll say that for her. Hair’s a mess, though. Looks like her head’s full of nits. If she was one of my young’uns, I’d cut it off,
soak a rag in coal oil and tie her head up for a few days.”
Before she could take offense she heard Jed saying, “Funny you should mention it. That’s just what Eleanor said—not the coal oil, but she asked me to cut her hair for her. Trouble was, all I had was a butcher knife. Maybe Lorly could lend me some scissors.”
“I reckon. Jed, Stanfield’s bound to know you’re coming.”
In the other room, Eleanor blinked at the sudden change of topic. She did not have lice, either. Tangles and dirt, certainly, but she would have known if she’d had lice. At times she’d seen whole classrooms affected by the pesky things. They itched.
“I was pretty sure he’d hear about it one way or another. I could’ve taken a train from Raleigh partway and been here a lot sooner, but I was afraid he might arrange a little accident if one of his spies sent word I was headed this way.”
“Pass the molasses.” There was the sound of clinking cutlery.
They were eating in there? Well…damnation!
“I’ve been looking for you ever since I got your last wire. Lee rode over with it week before last. She the reason you’re so late?”
Halfway to the kitchen, Eleanor froze. Knowing that she was the “she” in question, she could picture Jed nodding. She needed to see his expression even more than she needed a plateful of whatever they were eating.
To think that only yesterday she had felt closer to him than she had ever felt to anyone, even to cousin Annie, and certainly to Devin. Hesitating outside the kitchen door, she reminded herself that regardless of all that had happened between them, Jed was with his family now. Once again she was alone among strangers.
“If it weren’t for Mrs. Miller—Eleanor—I wouldn’t be here at all,” Jed said quietly, and she strained to hear.
That was the way Lorly found her. Coming in through the front door, the older woman paused, one hand on her swollen belly, the other still holding the china doorknob.
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