by Lori Benton
He looked last at the newest stone, as unassuming as the woman whose name was carved thereupon. Judith Ann Bell Cameron—beloved wife and mother. Below it, Ian Hugh Cameron—son. He crouched to trace the letters. “Judith. Rest ye well with my lad. And his sister,” he added, touching Elizabeth’s tiny marker, snug next to Judith’s. Then he stood. “I’ll see ye again. All of ye.”
Wiping his eyes with a shirtsleeve, Ian turned from the graves, picking his way to his friends waiting in the wood’s deeper shade.
“Ye’re set to continue digging, Charlie?” he asked briskly to drive away the concern furrowing the man’s scruff-bearded face.
Charlie Spencer grinned, showing a gap where he had lately lost a tooth. His hand dropped to fondle the ears of his nearest dog. “Aiming to. And keeping things mum. Too much a lark to think of stopping either.”
“Speaking of . . .” From his coat John withdrew a leather pouch. “The earnest we agreed upon. Small nuggets, shavings, and flakes. I’ll send more as I’m able.”
Ian took the proffered pouch, curled his fingers around the soft leather, hefted its weight. “Never entrust an amount this large to the post, aye? A little at a time will do.” The gold he held rendered him able to keep the promise just made to his kin—once he found the means to convert it into coin, best left until they reached Boston if what tender he had lasted. “I’ll write ye, give ye a reliable address. My da’s will do for now.”
“Take care on the journey,” John said.
“Sounds a fair piece of travel,” Charlie chimed in. “Some folk on the roads not to be trusted. I’ve met a few.”
“Aye, well,” Ian said, moved by their concern, “I’ve made the trek a time or two before, and somehow I doubt anyone will think to try Ally.”
“Long as he keeps his mouth shut,” Charlie agreed. While of imposing stature and intimidating strength, Naomi’s son was as gentle as a kitten, as simple as the child he had been when a mule kicked him in the head.
“Listen, both of ye.” Ian put a hand to each man’s shoulder, gripping hard. “I couldn’t have asked for better neighbors. And friends. I know ye both prayed long for me. Ye’ll have my prayers, if not my presence, always.”
“And you ours,” John said, taking him in a thumping embrace. “God will make the way for you, Ian. He’s gone before you, preparing that path. Be ready to be surprised by His goodness.”
“I’ll hope for it,” Ian said, unable quite to hold his friend’s gaze.
“Expect it,” John said.
Charlie Spencer bobbed his head, then called his ranging dogs, gave a final salute, and tromped off along the ridge, rifle shouldered. Ian watched him go; then wordlessly he and John Reynold turned from the Cameron graves and went down the ridge together a final time.
5
BOSTON
June 1796
It was sultry for early June. Even with the window propped to catch a breeze off the water, Seona sweated over the hem she stitched in the tiny gown meant for someone’s newborn. In his corner bed, her own baby napped, overwarm for comfort to judge by his thrashings. Pausing to blot her brow with a kerchief, she gazed down at the street below, still surprised to find herself a world away from tobacco fields, cabins, and corn.
“You mind how cool it was on the ridge of a night, Mama, when we’d go up for the singing?” She heard her old way of talking nudging up through the polish put on her speech since coming to Boston, as if the memories had conjured the ghost of the girl she had been.
Lily raised her head from the meticulous stitching she was adding to a bodice. “And I mind that stifling kitchen of a day. It’s plenty hotter there than here. Ye forgotten?”
“I ain’t . . . haven’t forgotten.” Speaking of the singing minded Seona of the night Ian had followed Mountain Laurel’s slaves up that ridge. The night he gave himself, heart and will, to the Almighty.
“I know ye haven’t, girl-baby.”
Whatever else had changed, one thing remained the same: whether in a sweltering kitchen in Carolina or a stuffy room in Boston, her mama hardly ever broke a sweat. Seona turned from the window, taking in the sleekness of her mama’s upswept hair, a few white strands among the black. “Think we should go see Penny?”
“Penny?” Lily’s brow flickered at the change of subject.
Gabriel sat up in his bed, fair hair plastered to his head. “Eddie and Wobbie?” He screwed a fist against sleepy eyes and let out a fretful whine.
“No, baby.” Seona put down the sewing and went to scoop him up, never mind it was so warm their skin stuck where they touched. She walked him to the pitcher on the washstand and poured a cup full of tepid water. “Thirsty?”
Gabriel sipped it, looking cranky and unrested.
“It’s been months,” Seona said, returning to the subject of Penny. Not even Catriona, clever at ferreting out who thought what about whichever, had seen Ned’s grieving wife. Penny was still shut up in her home, refusing to see anyone save Ned and the hired woman who came to clean a day or two each week. “Maybe if you and I knocked on her door, she’d see us. We’re the only ones haven’t tried.”
Gabriel’s head fell against her neck and nestled there, damp and warm. She wanted to lay him down, see would he nap longer. He fussed when she tried, so she held him and paced the room.
“We could go,” her mama said.
“To see this boy’s auntie?” Seona asked, forbearing to speak Penny’s name again. Until today it had been weeks since Gabriel asked for his cousins, but he hadn’t forgotten them.
Lily held her gaze. “I mean go. Take our leave of the Camerons.”
Seona halted in the middle of the room, Gabriel heavy in her arms. “What about all this adoption talk? You saying you don’t want that?”
“I’m saying I have enough clientele now. If we both work at it, we could set up for ourselves. Not in a house like this but somewhere decent. It’s another path we might follow, is all.”
Panic coiled in Seona’s chest at thought of leaving the Camerons, stepping out from under their covering. Further fraying the threads binding her to Ian. Had she the freedom to up and make such a break? Ian was Gabriel’s father. He had a say in matters. Hadn’t she written to tell him so?
“No, Mama. I don’t want that. Not yet anyway.”
“What do ye want?”
“Joy in this family, like it was before . . .” Her head ached from the heat. “You notice how Ned’s coming round less? How quiet Miss Margaret’s been? I don’t even know half the time anymore where Catriona’s got to.”
Her mama glanced up from her work. “Calling on a friend this afternoon, I thought.”
“That’s what she said.” Catriona had been gone considerable longer than such a visit ought to take. Though it wasn’t the first time Seona had made that observation, she shook her head, refusing to be sidetracked. “Nothing’s going to bring the boys back, but maybe talking to their mama will help matters. I don’t know.”
Lily sat a moment more, gazing out the window, then put aside her sewing. “Reckon it won’t hurt to try.”
Mainly on account of his crankiness, Seona took Gabriel along, though she worried whether his presence would be comfort or cruelty to Penny—and hers to him.
Gabriel perked up at the North End’s sights and sounds, but when they knocked the door clapper of Ned’s narrow, white-painted home, neither he nor Penny answered, but the woman who kept their house, dustrag in hand. When Lily asked for Mrs. Cameron, the woman waved her rag and exclaimed, “Law to me! Miss Penny’s not to home.”
Seona wondered if she meant what Boston folk sometimes did by those words—that Penny was home but unwilling to be sociable.
“You’re the boarders, aye?” the woman asked, eyes fastening on Gabriel, riding Seona’s hip. “Living with Mr. Ned’s kin?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Seona said. “Might you tell Penny we came to call?”
“I cannot do that.”
“What?” Seona said, taken aback by
the woman’s blunt reply. “Why not?”
Below her frilled cap, the woman’s brow furrowed. “How is it ye don’t know? Gone a fortnight now is Miss Penny. Back to her parents in Deerfield. I’ve no notion when she means to return,” she added when they asked. “That’s a question for Mr. Ned, I’m sure.”
At the last street to cross before they reached Beachum Lane, they were stopped by a harried, sweaty boy attempting to drive a flock of noisy geese along the cobblestones toward somewhere they didn’t seem inclined to go. Not of a mind to risk threading a path through darting beaks, Seona and Lily stepped back to wait. Seona shifted Gabriel to the other hip. “Best we tell the family about Penny?” she asked over the honking and the boy’s shouts. “Or might they already know?”
Lily cast her a look. “Robert and Margaret may, but if Catriona knew . . . wouldn’t ye? How long has she ever kept a secret?”
Seona caught her mama’s smile, tempered by this new knowledge of Ned Cameron’s pain, as the boy, hair as flaxen as Gabriel’s, got his wayward geese on past and shot her a triumphant grin that made her think of Ian . . . who had lost a son to a distance so great it might well be forever.
Was Ian as distraught as Ned and Penny had been all these months? Would the last thing he wanted be his daddy adopting Gabriel?
“Come on, girl-baby,” Lily called, already crossing the street.
By habit now, Seona cast another look along the busy lane to be sure nothing else was bearing down. Off through the shifting bodies pausing at vendors’ stalls or ducking in and out of shop doors, she glimpsed a girl crossing at the next intersection over, arm in arm with a male companion. The girl turned her face up, features catching the sunlight, to laugh at something said by the man to whose arm she clung. The well-dressed man doffed his hat to someone in passing, revealing dark hair brushed toward his temples. It was that New York merchant, Morgan Shelby. With Catriona.
Someone bumped Seona’s shoulder and she sidestepped. Before she got another look down the street, the couple had walked on, swallowed by the shifting crowd. Seona hurried to catch her mama up, asking, “Who was it Catriona visited today?”
“I never caught the name,” Lily said. “Didn’t ye?”
“I forgot.” Seona smiled as if it made no matter. Hoping it didn’t. Hoping Catriona hadn’t been keeping secrets after all.
“Pudding, Mama?” Gabriel asked as they entered the house.
“I’ll take him,” Lily said, reaching for her grandson. “I hear Miss Margaret in the kitchen. I best go have a talk.”
Gabriel and his grandmothers were in the keeping room when Seona joined them. A glance at Margaret Cameron’s face, wreathed in dismay, answered two questions. She hadn’t known about Penny leaving Boston. She did now.
“Ye’d think I’d have heard of it from someone afore now,” Ian’s mama was saying as Seona entered the heavily beamed room. She had long since realized she judged every Cameron face by Ian’s, in all their moods searching their features for his likeness. Of his siblings, Ian was the only one who had come away with his mama’s blonde curls, though Miss Margaret’s were streaked with white.
“Penny shut herself up for months.” Lily had Gabriel on her lap, spooning bites of corn pudding into his mouth. “Not just from us. Everyone.”
“Ach, my poor dears . . .” Miss Margaret let her words trail off, glancing at Seona with pained eyes, then fondly at Gabriel. “Did I ever tell ye Ned was as fair as this wee laddie when he was a bairn? But his hair darkened to his da’s shade by time he was nine. Only Catriona was born with the russet fuzz.”
“Wussit fuss,” Gabriel said before Lily popped another spoonful of pudding into his mouth, deftly catching a spill.
Margaret Cameron looked from her grandson to Seona and sighed. “Ye ken we’re awaitin’ Ian’s word on the matter Robert put to ye? No one means ye to do anythin’ agin’ your will—or Ian’s. But I do wonder—”
“If it’s high time we heard from that brother of mine?” Catriona asked, coming in from the back of the house, through the scullery. She untied her light spencer and shrugged out of it, then looked around the silent room. “What’s wrong? Have we word from Ian at last?”
“No,” her mother replied. “’Tis Penny—awa’ to Deerfield a fortnight past and Ned’s kept us in the dark aboot it. Or did ye ken?”
“Penny’s gone?” Catriona went still, faint color rising in her cheeks. “How did you find out?”
“Her housemaid told us today,” Seona replied.
Catriona’s blush was fading. “Why did Ned keep it from us?”
“I dinna ken.” Margaret Cameron rose, unpinning the apron covering her gown. “But I’ll be hearin’ the why of it today. That gowkit firstborn o’ mine will put his feet under my table this evenin’ if I’ve anythin’ to say aboot it. And I do!”
“I’m sure he will, Mam,” Catriona said as she went out, the smile she blazed bordering on unfitting, given the news of Penny.
Seona slipped out after her, leaving her mama minding Gabriel and Margaret Cameron donning a hat to leave for Mister Robert’s shop. She found Catriona in her room, spencer tossed across the bed’s coverlet.
Ian’s sister turned from the window, where she stood. “I knew about Penny going back to Deerfield. I didn’t want Mam to know I knew.”
Seona frowned. “Knew for how long?”
Catriona crossed the room and shut the door. “All of an hour—at most. Don’t look at me so. I haven’t been keeping secrets.”
“Haven’t you?”
Catriona sat at her dressing table to unpin her cap. “Whatever could you mean?”
Seona perched on the end of Catriona’s bed and folded the discarded spencer. “I saw you out today.”
A fumbled pin was the only indication she had startled Catriona, who shook her hair down to coil around her shoulders. “I didn’t see you,” she said into the looking glass mounted above the table, then reached for a brush to attack her curls.
“I hadn’t heard Mr. Shelby was in Boston again,” Seona said. “How long have you known about that?”
Catriona’s brushing stopped. “A quarter hour longer than I’ve known about Penny.” She set the brush down and faced Seona. “Mr. Shelby managed to get the news from Ned today and presumed we all knew. He and I met on my way home—quite by chance. He mentioned Penny’s being gone and, once he saw I was distraught at the news, suggested we take a cup of tea at the Red Lion, seeing as we were practically on the doorstep.”
“I see.” Seona had never been inside that particular tavern but knew it for a decent sort of place. “Still, you maybe oughtn’t to have gone with him alone.”
Catriona’s cheeks flamed. “Mr. Shelby was all kindness, never for a moment inappropriate.”
Had it been appropriate for the man to suggest such a thing in the first place? Ought he to have seen Catriona straight home instead?
As if she read the thought, Catriona said, “After our tea, Mr. Shelby escorted me home as any gentleman would. But as we made our way, we came up with a plan.” Hope surged into Catriona’s face. “Mam doesn’t have to ask Ned to supper. Mr. Shelby’s arranging it as a particular kindness to me—to us all. He’s talking to Da now and to Ned. By the end of their conversation—he assured me—both he and that brother of mine will be under our roof for supper. Ned can hardly refuse if Mr. Shelby is invited again—and I invited him. He can hardly refuse to explain about Penny, now we all know of it. So you’ve no need for concern,” she finished. “For I see you are concerned.”
“I was,” Seona admitted.
Catriona returned to her hairdressing. Seona watched her coil the long strands high again, set them with pins, then pull loose a few artful curls to spill down her neck. Her gown’s capped sleeves bared her graceful arms. It was more skin than Seona would ever be comfortable showing. She had insisted on sleeves to the elbows on any new gowns, despite Catriona urging her to try a more current fashion.
Ian’s sister glanced at her
in the glass. “I don’t think you like Mr. Shelby.”
“Never mind what I like. It’s you . . .”
“What about me?” Catriona asked when she hesitated.
“Promise you won’t get mad if I ask?”
Catriona faced her. “I won’t. What is it?”
“Is this the first you’ve kept company with Mr. Shelby, since the day we met him in the shop?”
“He’s only just back in Boston—yesterday, he said. Our meeting was by Providence.”
“You called it chance.”
“Well, I hope it proves more than that.”
Seona bit back a sigh. Catriona was the nearest to a sister she had ever had, aside from little Esther, at Mountain Laurel. Though Seona was the elder by a few years, Ian’s sister had been her teacher in many ways since coming to Boston, always with a notion to lead them into something new, especially since her nephews’ deaths. But never anything truly reckless. Was she being reckless now?
A knock at the door had Catriona jumping up from her dressing table. It was Lily, Gabriel squirming in her arms. “I need to finish up that bodice afore supper and this little man still wants nothing to do with napping.”
Gabriel leaned out from Lily’s embrace so precariously Seona hurried to rescue him. “Come on, baby. Let’s go see what the redbirds are doing.”
“Save time to dress for supper,” Catriona called after her. “I’ve faith it will all work out as planned.”
6
PENNSYLVANIA
At the first rumble of thunder, Ian nudged Ruaidh nearer the wagon to be heard above the drumming downpour. “We’d best get out of this!”
Perched on the driver’s bench, Ally nodded, funneling rain off his hat onto an oiled lap cloth. Despite a similar cape draping Ian neck to knee, rain had wicked its way inside even his shirt. Naomi, Mandy, and Malcolm were drier in the wagon with its canvas covering, but the horses were taking the brunt of the late-spring thunderstorm.
The rain had commenced innocently enough when they had stopped to eat a cold dinner. Within an hour a steady drizzle had settled in. In two it was sheeting down, the day darkened to twilight.