Stanley Marlborough was young and able, not yet twenty-five, with the fine features of an English aristocrat: clear blue eyes, ruddy skin, sandy hair. Used to having everything he wanted, he was so angry that he chased her at first. She heard his footsteps pounding close behind her, his breath coming in ragged bursts. When he slowed and fell behind, she reckoned he was more afraid of Polly than he was determined to catch his quarry. Still, she raced on, long after she could not hear him anymore.
“By the time I realized I was lost, I was too confused to find my way out. I wandered down one path after another until dusk, and then I was terribly frightened that I was going to have to spend the night alone in the swamp. I heard a bobcat scream, started running and hit my head on a fallen log. That’s the last thing I remember before I woke up here.”
Noah had not moved. He sat so still that she thought he was not listening for a moment, until she looked hard into his face and what she saw there made her shiver. His expression had darkened to one of barely suppressed anger, one she would not have guessed him capable of.
“That explains it.” He was looking at the floor now, his voice so soft she barely heard.
“What?”
He lifted his head and looked directly at her. “Now I know why I saw all that fear in your eyes when you awakened.”
“I didn’t know where I was.”
“It was more than that. You were afraid of me, because of die way I look.” He gestured toward his eye patch and scar. “But it was also because of what that man tried to do to you.”
She felt the sting of tears again, and reminded herself that Noah would become upset if she cried again. She blinked the tears away.
“What that man tried to do to you was not your fault.”
She wiped her face, smearing tears down her cheeks. Could he really understand? Would anyone ever understand how confused she had been without the faintest idea why he had attacked her? She had done nothing to deserve his unwanted attention. What if there was some flaw in her? Something that she unwittingly did that encouraged the worst in a man?
“Thank you for saying that,” she said softly, still in doubt. “Especially since you really don’t know me at all.”
“I know enough.” Noah got to his feet, nudging the stool back under the table with his foot.
She knew he was eager to tend to the grisly task of skinning the beavers, but he lingered at the foot of the bed.
“You let me know as soon as you feel up to heading out of here and I’ll take you to the edge of the swamp.”
He walked out without a second glance and, oddly, Olivia felt a wave of regret. She wished she had not told him anything about her experience with Stanley Marlborough. She wished she had simply made up some story about becoming separated from her traveling companions, but she owed him the truth—it was the least she could do for him. He had shown her only kindness, asked nothing else of her. She would not hide the truth from him, as she would have to from so many others for the rest of her life.
But now that he knew, did he seem more anxious than before to be rid of her?
Noah walked around the porch to the back of the cabin, pulled his skinning knife out of its sheath, raised it high and plunged it into the wooden railing. Then he braced his hands, one on either side of the knife, and tightened his fingers around the smooth cypress. He had no idea what Stanley Marlborough looked like, but he could easily imagine an Englishman’s mush-colored face and the feel of a scrawny neck between his hands.
Still, it was easy for him to understand the desire that drove a man to put his hands on Olivia, the hunger that had pushed her employer to attack her. He had felt that same desire, experienced that raw hunger himself. What he could not understand, or ever condone, was the man’s lack of honor. How could Marlborough have succumbed to such base, animal instinct?
He did not have to imagine what it was like to lie wide awake no more than a few feet away from her every night and think about slipping into bed with Olivia, of taking her into his arms. He knew the torture of such thoughts firsthand—and he had only been with her for a few days. What would it be like to have to be with her for weeks on end? How long could he ignore the wanting that grew stronger with each and every encounter?
How long could he hide his desire?
He knew with utmost certainty that Olivia had done nothing to encourage his longing, and yet it was inspired. She probably had no notion what she did to a man just by looking his way. No notion at all.
He took a deep breath and prayed that she would mend quickly.
Chapter 5
Bond Homestead
Outside Shawneetown, Illinois
Payson Bond stared down at the broken plow handle in his filthy hand. Once his hands had been smooth and white except where his fingertips had been stained with ink. They were a teacher’s hands, a poet’s hands, but now they were chapped and cracked, his palms callused, his nails ragged and backed with dirt.
Once he had had lofty goals and a dream, a vision of moving his family to the Illinois frontier so that he would be out from under the control of his wealthy father-in-law. He would clear the land, set down roots, teach the children of his neighbors, and prosper. He had wanted to become a part of history, to be among the brave and hardy souls who left homes and family behind to conquer new lands much romanticized in the East, a place of noble savages and stouthearted planters and farmers, of pioneers who followed their dreams into a West newly opened after the Louisiana Purchase.
Once he had been happy. The whole family had been happy. Susanna; Payson Junior; Frederick, his youngest.
Olivia.
Just thinking of her nearly bent him double with pain. Olivia, his lovely daughter born of his first wife, Margaret. None of them could bear to mention Olivia’s name anymore, not even the little boys. At first his sons were forever asking when she would come home, at least until the day Susanna had burst into tears and run from the house screaming, scaring them all half to death. After that, Olivia’s name slowly faded from their conversations, as if speaking it aloud would dredge up all the horror and memories of the day she was taken from them.
Payson laid the broken plow handle on the ground beside the heavy blade and unfastened the lines on the brown cob mare. He gave her a swat on the rear and she ambled off in the direction of the cabin, toward her feed trough, moving faster than he had been able to get her to pull the plow all morning.
As he headed for the cabin, he reached into the back pocket of his wool pants and pulled out a soiled kerchief, lifted his hat and wiped the cloth across his brow. It came away sweat-stained and streaked with dirt. He shoved it back into his pocket, wishing away the circumstances of his life, wishing with every step and every heartbeat that when he opened the door of the cabin that life would be the way it used to be, that Susanna’s big blue eyes would light up and she would greet him with a smile or a tender touch. He wished the boys would run to him with shouts of joy, their faces shining, their spirits light, their life as innocent and free as all children’s lives should be.
The cabin was already on the tract of land he had purchased. His acres backed up to the woods, and on the south side he had begun to clear another field. Built by a settler intent upon moving on to a bigger piece of land with his profit, the cabin was small and crudely made, but it had provided the immediate shelter his family needed. There were rough shelves for dishes and for his many books, two long benches, a table and a bedframe, a packed dirt floor, and a loft for the boys.
Early on he had purchased some chickens, but the wolves had gotten most of them. He had the mare, a milk cow, a plow, and a neighbor who would loan him an ox and cart when he needed them.
He knew that inside, Susanna had retreated to her rocker, silent and forlorn. She sat there for hours, staring at the bare dirt floor or the empty hearth. Day after day she rocked back and forth, her hands lying idle in her lap, her hair knotted, her clothing unwashed. More often than not she let the fire grow cold while she spent her t
ime dwelling on the child she had lost shortly after their arrival, the lifeless baby girl who had died without ever having wakened to life.
His sons had taken to escaping the cabin to play somewhere at the edge of the wood—sweaty, barefoot, faces always streaked with dirt, noses runny, hair standing out in all directions. Slowly they were losing all touch with the ordered, civilized life they had once known. They had grown so much that their clothes no longer fit them. Their wrists and arms and their knobby little ankles hung out of the ends of cuffs and hems.
Payson dreaded every step he took toward the log cabin that he could see across the open land. The field he had struggled to clear himself was still peppered with the stumps of hickory, sycamore, and maple trees he could not pull out even with the horse and plow. His crop of corn had yet to be planted.
He was no farmer. He knew that now, too late, now that he faced this hard land where brute strength was glorified and a man was judged more by the rows he could plow in a day and the amount of whiskey he could hold than by education or wealth.
He had what his neighbors called “book larnin’.” He was a teacher, a poet, a man of letters—not a farmer nor a hunter, not a drinker, not even a dreamer anymore. His dreams were long gone. Shattered. Vanished as all visions eventually do, but his had gone not little by little, but all at once. His dreams had vanished with Olivia.
For Susanna’s sake, for all their sakes, he should have listened to his father-in-law and stayed in Virginia. But instead, he had stubbornly clung to the idea that he would be able to carve a home out of the raw, fertile land available in Illinois. He had been too pigheaded to take the money and small plantation that Susanna’s father offered them, one that would enable him to keep Susanna in the style in which she had always lived.
Her father was a rich man, one who had felt sorry for a near-penniless, widowed teacher and had hired him to tutor his only child, not to steal her heart. Richard Morrison had fought their marriage every step of the way. He had argued until the bitter end, tried to dissuade Susanna from marrying a poor widower with a daughter very near her own age. But Morrison’s objections only made headstrong Susanna more determined.
After trying to be the husband Susanna deserved for six long years, Payson finally convinced his wife that if they moved away from her father’s constant ridicule and were settled on their own homestead in Illinois, they would truly be happy. Instead, he had turned her life into a living hell.
As he walked over the heavy clods of dirt in the field, his steps began to drag the closer he came to the cabin. There was not a wisp of smoke curling out of the chimney, but at least spring was here, and now whenever Susanna let the fire go out the boys were not threatened with frostbite.
She had let things go so far during the winter that he had been forced to take in a poor Scots girl who had come begging to help fetch and carry in exchange for room and board. He offered her sleeping space in the loft with the boys and gave her bed and board in exchange for help, but Molly MacKinnon was a wild, outspoken girl with no notion of responsibility. She had up and disappeared toward the middle of March. Now the boys had no supervision at all while he was in the fields or out hunting.
On the threshold, Payson paused and looked at the planks of the rough-hewn door. Although he felt as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders, he straightened them anyway and tried to summon a smile. The expression felt unnatural, more like a grimace. He set the broken plow handle against the outer wall.
Swinging the door open, he stepped into the close, dark interior of the cabin. His gaze immediately went to Susanna and once more he was filled with dread. She was in the rocker, just as he had known she would be, staring into the cold, ash-filled hearth. Her slim, tapered fingers were knotted together in her lap, her head bowed. Long tendrils of her light brown hair straggled along the sides of her face. She did not even look up when he walked in and quietly closed the door behind him. He was scared to death for her, scared of what would become of them all.
“Susanna?”
His wife did not respond. Payson walked over to the rocker, stood behind her, reached out and laid his hand on her shoulder. He closed his eyes, wishing he could will his strength into her. She was only twenty-four, too young to dwell in the depths of despair for the rest of her life. That was what scared him most of all, the idea that one day she would tire of being so very miserable and take her own life. There was so much he could not forgive himself for already, that he doubted he could exist under such a burden, even for his boys.
If there were only something he could do to bring her back, he would gladly do it to save her, but he had no notion what that might be anymore. There was no way to change the past.
“Where are the boys, Susanna?”
He wished she would shrug her shoulder at least, or give him some sign that she had heard him, but Susanna did not stir. Payson sighed. He walked past the shelves where his collection of books gathered dust. How long had it been since he had an hour to himself? Since he had been able to luxuriate in reading or work on one of his own poems? He ignored the books and went to the long trestle table that took up far too much space in the small room. He sat down, thirsting for a cup of coffee, too tired to make one for himself.
He had barely hit the bench when the door flew open and banged against the wall behind it.
“Little Pay’th cut hith head off!” Freddie, his younger son, yelled at the top of his lungs as he came flying through the door.
Susanna did not even flinch. Payson got to his feet, concerned but not panicked. Little Pay had had an accident nearly every other day since they had moved to Illinois, and four-year-old Freddie was always happy to exaggerate every one of them.
Payson was on his way to the door when Little Pay walked in with his hand pressed to his forehead. A trickle of blood showed between his fingers.
“I cut myself down by the crick.” Little Pay, not having noticed Payson yet, was calling out to Susanna.
“I’ll get a rag,” Payson said, stepping over the bench.
Little Pay swung his gaze across the room, looking at Payson and then at his mother, who had not moved at all.
“I didn’t know you were here, Pa.”
Disheartened, the boy started across the room to get his own rag. On the way he bumped into the elegant carved sideboard shoved up against a wall, a remnant of their former life. It was a lasting piece of luxury, a wedding gift from Susanna’s father, one that looked as out of place in the crude cabin as a tinker at a governor’s ball.
“Ouch!” Little Pay bellowed when he connected with the sideboard. “I hit my head again. I think it’s bleedin’ worse.”
“He’th bleedin’ worthe!” Freddie echoed.
The rocker started to creak.
Picking up a dishtowel on the way across the room, Payson went directly to his older son. By now, Freddie had climbed up on Payson and Susanna’s bed, his dirty bare feet adding another contribution to an already soiled quilt. Payson inspected Little Pay’s wound and slipped his arm around the boy’s shoulder as he held the dishtowel against the superficial cut. Beneath his worn cotton shirt, Little Pay felt bone thin. All of them had lost weight during the long hard winter when there was little food put by because Payson had discovered too late that his hunting skills were lacking, but his elder son seemed to have suffered most of all.
“Maybe Mama could wipe it off.” Little Pay sounded doubtful as he looked over at his mother.
“Let’s not bother your mama.” Payson glanced toward his young wife and felt the rip in his heart tear a little more. He bit his lips and concentrated on his boy.
“You’re all right, son,” Payson told the child as he pressed the rag to the wound. He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled Little Pay between his knees and asked, “How did you manage to do this?”
He dabbed at the cut until it stopped bleeding.
Little Pay shrugged. “Just fell.”
“You’ve got to be more careful,” Payson w
arned. “There’s not an inch left of you that’s not bruised or battered.”
Freddie was trying to climb up the cabin wall by inserting his bare toes into the cracks between the wood where the chinking was missing. Payson ignored him.
“Freddie’s climbin’ the wall, Pa,” Little Pay told him.
Payson sighed. “I know, son. Freddie, get down, please.”
“Papa, you need help putting in those seeds yet?” His wound forgotten for the moment, Little Pay volunteered so earnestly that Payson felt ashamed.
“The field isn’t ready yet, son. Besides, the plow handle broke this morning. I’ll have to fix it and finish plowing before I can start the planting.”
The boy said nothing. He looked over at his mother and Payson followed his gaze. The rocker had stopped moving, but his wife held her silence and did not turn around.
Susanna could hear her boys and Payson across the room, but she felt as if she were trapped in another world where she could not reach them. They had begun to talk around her as if she were not there, and in a very real sense, she wasn’t. Just her body and a corner of her mind that still clung to a thread of her old life, her old self.
She was too young to feel so old, but she did. Old and helpless, the life draining out of her a little more each day. She imagined it seeping into the dirt floor beneath her feet, draining right through the soles of her shoes, right down into the soil of this cursed Illinois ground.
Little Pay seemed to scratch or bruise or skin something constantly. She wondered if perhaps it made the hurt inside go away if you hurt bad enough on the outside. She ached for Payson and the boys, but she could do nothing. The pain she already bore went so deep she was numb, paralyzed with it.
She could still hear everything, though. Even earlier, when Payson had said something about a broken plow, she was screaming inside, but the sound would not come out. How could it, when it took every ounce of strength she had in her just to breathe?
Didn’t Payson know they were cursed now and always would be? When would he stop trying? When would he admit that he had been wrong and simply give up?
Blue Moon Page 6