Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 03]

by Choices of the Heart

  The figure of the dance brought her line of sight to Griff. Across the clearing, their gazes met, held, until they had to turn away, and Esther missed a step, treading on Zach’s toes.

  “So sorry,” she murmured.

  She wasn’t. She didn’t care at that moment. She needed to sit down, get away, do something to clear her head of the notion that she was jealous of Griff choosing to dance with pretty Maimy Tolliver over Esther Cherrett, who had always had more dance partners than any girl needed.

  “I need to stop,” she said aloud.

  “When this dance is over.” Zach drew her closer.

  She stiffened her spine, grateful for her corset for once in her life.

  “Did I tell you how beautiful you are today?” he murmured too close to her ear.

  His breath fanned tendrils of hair away from her cheek, and she jerked her head back. “No, and I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “But it’s the truth.” They turned and spun through the other dancers, along the edge of the clearing.

  “Zach,” Esther said through her teeth, “take me to one of the benches. I’m weary of dancing.”

  “We can’t stop in the middle.” One more turn, and he had them beneath the spreading branches of a sycamore tree. “We can stop here.”

  They ceased dancing, but Zach kept his arm around her. Once again, Esther’s gaze tracked Griff around the clearing until the figure of the dance turned him to face her. She caught his eye, then glanced up at Zach and smiled. “Thank you. I’m growing weary.”

  “I can walk you home.”

  “I must wait for Liza.”

  “Griff’s here.” Zach raised his hand from her corset-protected waist to her unprotected shoulder. His thumb caressed her ear.

  She slapped it away. “Stop that.”

  He did and turned to face her. “I’d like to court you, Esther. You are just the sort of girl—”

  “I’m twenty-four, not a girl, quite too old for marriage around here.” She tried to sound like she did in the schoolroom.

  He simply smiled and brushed a stray curl off of her cheek. “That’s not too old for me. There’s no one better here.”

  “There’s Maimy Tolliver. She’s young and very pretty.”

  And looking up at Griff as though he were Prince Charming from a fairy tale. He bent toward her to catch something she said, then straightened and looked directly at Esther.

  Her heart skipped a beat, and she crossed her arms. “Please, Zach, enough of this talk. I’m your friend, nothing more.”

  “I’d like it to be more.” He cupped his hand beneath her chin.

  “If you try to kiss me,” she said through stiff lips, “I—I’ll—”

  She remembered Griff tilting her chin up that way, how she thought he might kiss her, how she feared it and then was disappointed when he simply walked away.

  Oh no, no, no, she couldn’t want Griff Tolliver to kiss her. That was wrong. So terribly wrong. So terribly—

  “I’ve never met such a perfect, lovely . . .” Zach leaned forward. He was going to kiss her.

  “Stop.” Esther stumbled backward.

  “Esther, don’t run off.” Zach reached for her again.

  She took another step back. “I’m not anything like perfect. I—I’m . . . just not. And if you persist, I—I won’t be able to see you at all.”

  “But you spend more time with me than anyone. Your eyes. Your smiles.” He curled his hand around her arm.

  Another hand grasped his wrist. “The lady said no,” Griff said. “Now let her go.”

  Zach glared at his cousin. “Don’t interfere.”

  “She’s under the protection of my family. Of course I’m going to interfere if she looks upset. Now let go.” Griff must have squeezed Zach’s wrist, for his face pinched with pain and he released Esther.

  She flashed Griff a grateful smile. “I shouldn’t have danced with him so many times.”

  Though the fiddling continued, the dancing had ceased. The crowd circled around, gaping, listening.

  Griff gave her an indulgent smile in return. “Playing the flirt can get a girl into trouble.”

  “I wasn’t . . . I don’t . . .” She gave Griff a wide-eyed stare. “Or perhaps I was a little. It happens in the dancing, you know.”

  “Yea, I know. It’s why I didn’t ask you.”

  The music ground to a halt, and in the eerie stillness Zach spat out, “Him? You prefer him?” He turned on his cousin. “You promised. You said you wouldn’t court her.”

  “I haven’t,” Griff said at the same time Esther exclaimed, “He hasn’t.”

  Except perhaps in those dulcimer lessons, with him right beside her, his hands curled around hers, the air crackling between them.

  “It’s nothing,” she insisted to herself as much as to Zach. “Truly, Zach.”

  He didn’t seem to hear as he glared at his cousin. “So maybe Pa is right and Tollivers can’t be trusted to keep their word.”

  “No, don’t say things like this because of me!” Esther cried.

  She clutched at the folds of her skirt. She glanced right and left, taking in the faces—curious, accusing, angry, everything but sympathetic. She was a stranger, a female who had come into this isolated community and apparently had taken the most eligible bachelor on the ridge. No one would listen to her explanation. No one would accept her protest as the truth. One choice faced her, the choice that had brought her there.

  She spun on the low heel of her dancing slipper and ran.

  19

  Esther plunged into the trees, into the darkness, away from the crowd, all staring eyes and moving lips. All the angry notes she’d received in Seabourne raced before her mind’s eye even as her real eyes probed the blackness for a path, a clearing, a place to hide. The notes turned to faces, the words rang in her ears.

  Bad woman. Scarlet woman. Go away.

  She paused in a thicket and clamped her hands over her ears. “I’m . . . none of those . . . things. I’m . . . not.” Her protest emerged in panting gasps.

  Yet perhaps she protested too much. Always in her heart ran the relentless fear that she was all of those things. She had been too friendly with Zach, teaching him to read, sitting beside him on the bench instead of across from him. Just because his nearness made her feel nothing didn’t mean hers didn’t affect him.

  And at the same time, she flinched from Griff’s touch because she liked it too much, met his gaze with hers and thought about meeting his lips with hers. Wanton, sinful thoughts, unacceptable behavior to have danced with Zach once, let alone half a dozen times, when she had Hannah’s warning. He would make assumptions about her intentions, and rightly so. She had made the same mistake again, not considered the other person in her own pursuit of pleasure.

  “I didn’t know how to say no politely,” she protested to the night.

  But he and Griff looked to come to blows over Zach’s unwanted advances and Griff’s interference. Blows, a flaring up of the feud because of her.

  She folded her arms across her middle and bent over, sick. As her breathing slowed, the night sounds of crickets, a distant owl, and the faint rustle of leaves brushed against her ears, calming and soothing.

  Not knowing where the clearing lay was not calming and soothing. She had run. She presumed others had pursued. Yet the woods lent one a hundred directions, and she had taken one the others hadn’t, if they had left and not decided to let the scarlet woman lose herself in the woods, come face-to-face with one of those screaming mountain lions and—

  She must go back. She must find her own way back. Downhill would surely lead to the river. The river would lead her back to the celebrants.

  She started walking slowly, carefully, her hands out to protect her face from swinging branches. Thorns and twigs ripped at the lace on her gown. A ruffle caught on the limb of a fallen tree. She yanked the fabric and herself free. Her gown was hopelessly ruined. No matter. She would never want to wear it again. She had ruined Zac
h’s enjoyment. Perhaps Hannah was right and she had ruined Griff and Zach’s friendship.

  If she did, then she would keep running. She would not be responsible for the feud starting up again, or live with the guilt and let it turn her ugly and bitter as it had Bethann.

  Despite her efforts, she sounded like one of those black bears crashing through the underbrush. Twigs snapped beneath her feet. Branches cracked like rifle shots. Rustling, snuffling, gasping, she pressed on, down the hill she had fled up, pausing to listen for the rush of water.

  Voices drifted to her during one of those pauses.

  “Whatzat?” A man’s slurred speech rang loud and clear through a fence of trees.

  Esther blinked and caught the flicker of light now, a fire in a clearing. Fires meant people. People meant someone to help her find her way back.

  She lifted her foot to take a step forward.

  “Probably one of those spyin’, lyin’ Brookses,” another man said. “Whatcha wanta bet?”

  “Come out of the bushes,” yet one more man called. “Come into t’light where we can see ya.”

  Esther didn’t move. She dared not breathe.

  “We won’t hurt you iffin you didn’t hear us plotting to rid this mountain of more Brookses and Gosnolls.” The man laughed.

  His companions joined him.

  “Nothing important,” one of them shouted.

  More laughter followed.

  Esther spun on her heel and tried to creep away. Lace caught on a thorny shrub and held her fast. She grasped it with both hands and tugged in an attempt to free it and herself. The ripping of fabric. Stitching screeched like a saw on metal.

  And someone grabbed her from behind.

  She kicked at him. She swung her fists back to strike his arms, break his hold. She screamed and screamed as she should have screamed in January. “Let go of me! Let go of me! Let me go!”

  He eluded her attempts at blows with the grace of a fencer and carried her kicking and still screaming into the clearing. “Lookee what I got here. Prettiest rabbit I ever snared.”

  “And the loudest.” One of the men rose and clamped his hand across her mouth.

  She tried to bite him. Her teeth wouldn’t sink far enough into his calloused palm to hurt him. He simply chuckled and stayed where he was, too close, close enough for her to smell his sweat and whiskey breath.

  “Which one of us gets to skin the rabbit?” he asked.

  “I catched her,” her captor said.

  “Yea, but iffin you let go, she’ll run. I think I should.” The man with his hand across her mouth raised his other hand and hooked his fingers into the modest neckline of her dress.

  Esther’s stomach rebelled. She swallowed, tensed, made her whole body go still. She couldn’t stop them at that moment. If she seemed to comply, perhaps they would lower their guard.

  “I like to skin them right down the middle.” The man gave her gown a tug. “Yessir, right down the front to get to—”

  The click sounded like a slamming door in the night. The three men froze except for their heads snapping around to the other side of the clearing.

  “Let her go, Jake and Jeb Tolliver,” Griff said, stepping into the clearing. “I’ve got two barrels with this scattergun and won’t hesitate to use both of them.”

  No one ever looked as good as did Griff Tolliver at that moment. Her knees weakened. If Jake and Jeb let her go, she would fall flat on her face and probably hug Griff’s calves, or feet, or whatever she could reach.

  Neither of them released her. “You wouldn’t shoot kin,” Jake or Jeb said. “Not over a stranger.”

  “She’s not a stranger to me—to my family.” Griff shifted the bell-shaped barrel of the gun. “I’m taking responsibility for her. Now let her go.”

  “We was just havin’ some fun,” the third man objected. “We wouldn’t have harmed her.”

  Perhaps he wouldn’t, but Esther was too close to Jake and Jeb not to know otherwise.

  She twisted her shoulders, then her hips, trying to loosen their combined hands on her waist and neckline. Both tightened their grip. Fabric tore.

  And Griff fired.

  Leaves and twigs showered down on them.

  “Are you crazy?” the man behind Esther bellowed. “That nearly got me.”

  “The next one will.” Griff shifted the gun. “If you remember how to count, you have until three. One. Two. Th—”

  Cursing, the men released her and scooped up a jug from the ground, and all three hightailed into the trees.

  Esther dropped to her knees, gagging, fighting the urge to retch to clear her mouth from the taste of the man’s hand—salt and spirits and grime. Her hair tumbled around her face, her pins gone. It seemed to reek of smoke and sweat and whiskey. And her fear. The ripping, tearing terror of knowing exactly what would have happened if Griff hadn’t come across her.

  “It’s all right now, Esther.” He stooped before her, and with the same kind of gentleness that plucked music from the dulcimer, he brushed the hair away from her face. “They’re gone.”

  She grasped his hand like a line for a drowning man. She should shove it from her, tell him she’d had enough of men taking liberties with her person. Except they weren’t liberties if she allowed it, if she wanted it.

  She clung to his fingers, pressed them against her cheek, and began to tremble as though the temperature had dropped to freezing.

  “Shh. Hush now.” He knelt and gathered her against him, holding her close, stroking her hair down her back, murmuring, murmuring over her keening wails. “Hush now. Hush.”

  “I”—she gasped—“can’t.”

  “Yea, you can. You don’t want nobody else finding us like this. They’d have us before the preacher by morning.” His tone was light, teasing.

  It worked. Her shuddering diminished. She managed to swallow the wailing sobs. If he released her, she wouldn’t tumble over or be sick. She would get to her feet and start walking.

  He didn’t release her. He slid his hand beneath the fall of her hair and cupped the back of her head, tilting her face up toward his. Too close to his. His breath brushed her lips. His eyes gazed into hers. He was going to kiss her. She must stop him. It was wrong. They weren’t even courting. If the mere touch of his hand made her insides quake, how much more would his kiss do to her body, her heart, her soul?

  His lips covered hers before she worked that out, and then she couldn’t think. She could only feel—warmth and excitement. She could only taste—lemons sweet and tart on his lips. Despite her head saying, No, no, no, she wound her fingers through his ragged curls and held him near for the first closeness she’d allowed herself in nearly six months, a closeness she thought she feared, believed she didn’t want.

  Knew she shouldn’t have.

  She tensed and dropped her hands to his shoulders.

  He raised his head only enough to break the contact. “I expect that was a right foolish thing to do.”

  She nodded.

  “Should I apologize?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t stop you.”

  “I’m right glad about that.” He brushed his lips across hers. “I’ve been wanting to kiss you practically since I met you. But you’ve been running from me since you got here.” He cupped her face in his hands. “Why?”

  “I . . . I’m . . .” She jerked away and grabbed for her torn neckline. “Please. Please forget this happened.”

  “Forget?” He smiled. “If you think I can forget that, you don’t know noth—anything about men.”

  “I know too much about men, like the intentions of your cousins. They thought they could—they thought I was the kind of female they could—”

  It came to her then, the full impact, the irrepressible nausea. She scrambled to her feet, tripping over and tearing her gown further, and darted into the bushes.

  She might have crawled beneath a convenient rock and stayed there until Griff gave up on her and went away. She couldn’t face him again
. She’d let him kiss her. Aching for arms around her, she accepted his touch and too much more. And she didn’t want to pull away this time. She wanted to stay, kissing him again and again.

  Oh, the people of Seabourne were right. She was a conscienceless woman leading men astray. Oglevie and Zach, the Tolliver cousins and Griff. Griff, who drew her to him like a full moon drew the tide up the sand. She couldn’t run fast enough or far enough to get away from him, the first man who made her feel as others had said she made them feel. And if she gave in again, if they gave in to temptation again, if someone like Zach caught Griff touching her, a lifelong friendship—the slender stem of hope for peace on the mountain—might shatter.

  She must get back to the Tollivers’, gather what of her things she could carry, and leave.

  She started to push her way through the trees.

  “Esther.” Griff reached her before she had gone two yards. “You can’t get back by yourself. You’ll be lost in half a minute.”

  “Downhill to the river?”

  “Downhill into a holler full of Gosnolls.”

  “Oh.” She scrubbed at her lips, wishing she still tasted lemon. “They wouldn’t harm me, would they?”

  “Like those Tolliver cousins wouldn’t.”

  “Oh.” She hung her head. Her loose hair seemed to weigh down her scalp. “You wouldn’t have truly shot them, would you?”

  “Nowhere it would have done any harm. Well, not much anyway. They’re a lot of lazy varmints hoping to get their hands on the lead mine, or some of the profits.”

  “By killing off Brookses.”

  Griff’s hand closed over her shoulder, and he turned her toward him. “What did you say?”

  “I heard them making some jokes about doing away with Brookses and Gosnolls.”

  “Well, that’s right troublesome.” He released his grip and slipped his arm around her shoulders.

  Make him stop.

  She rested her head on his shoulder, too weak and weary in body and spirit to remain upright, forthright, create distance between them.