by Lori Benton
By candlelight they had spoken of Morgan Shelby, who had convinced Ned not merely to purchase their bookbinding supplies from him but to invest in a massive purchase of paper, board, marbling dye, and more, which Shelby would distribute, providing their needs for years to come. Not so much as a spool of linen thread had materialized despite continued excuses for delays. Shelby had at last confessed the deal had fallen through and, their capital lost, fled back to New York. His da was hesitant to throw more funds after the man by hiring a lawyer to file suit.
“Your brother made a deal wi’ a man he didna ken as well as he thought, but we’ll recover,” his da insisted. “Ned’s taking it harder than he might, had it no’ come on the heels of everything else this year has dealt him.”
“Including me showing my face again,” Ian said.
“No, Ian. This is your home, too. Dinna let Ned drive ye awa’.”
“It’s not just Ned.”
“Seona wants ye gone?”
Ian found his surprise heartening. “Honestly, I don’t know. She doesn’t trust me enough to speak her mind.” Not that he blamed her. He had handled their reunion with as much finesse as he had handled anything to do with Seona from the day he collided with her in the upstairs passage of Hugh Cameron’s house and mistook her for one of his cousins. “I want Gabriel to know he’s my son, that I love him. But I won’t take him from Seona. I promised never to do so.”
It would be both in his life or neither. And Mandy needed a mother . . .
Thought of Judith, but three months gone, pierced him through.
His da sensed it. “If ye need time to grieve, they’ve a roof over their heads and a welcome in our hearts. That willna change, whatever ye decide to do now.”
“Thank ye, Da,” he said.
They sat in silence while Robert Cameron lit his pipe, filling the room with the sweet pungency of tobacco cured at Mountain Laurel. A scent soon to pass into their family’s history. Once the pipe was drawing well, his da asked, “It’s to be New York then?”
He told his da of Ally’s observation on the road from Braintree. “He’s right. I’ve no longing for a life in town. Not that I wouldn’t take that path if no other remained. But Judge Cooper made me an offer the like of which I’ll not hear again.”
“New York isna quite as far as Carolina.” His da sighed, smoke curling up with the breath. “Tell me more of it.”
He produced Cooper’s note, implicit in it the promise of a future. A hope.
“Leaving aside Seona and Gabriel for the moment, there’s Malcolm, Naomi, and Ally. Before we left Mountain Laurel, they were content to remain with me. Now though . . . if Boston’s where they’d rather stay, I’ll provide for their keep as I can. Ally’s a fine hand with the horses and knows his business in a field. Naomi . . . well, ye’ve sampled her cooking. And Malcolm will likely work a garden ’til he drops, no matter what I say. They can look after themselves, given time, but would ye be willing to help them settle, if I was to leave sooner rather than later?”
Even by candlelight Ian saw the lines in his da’s face, the silver dulling his hair, the steadiness in his blue eyes. “I’d do as much for any soul who served my brother in bondage. That’s a debt that canna be repaid.”
They had left it there and gone to their beds, where Ian had tossed in prayer until finally a hard-won resolution allowed him peace enough to sleep.
With that resolution propelling him now, he strode into the sunlight of a warming August morning, down the garden path to the old man still finding a way to serve his family, though the compulsion, Ian hoped, was removed.
“Malcolm? May I speak with ye a moment?” Too late he saw the old man’s lips moving. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your prayers.”
Malcolm’s eyes opened as his face wreathed itself in deeper lines. “’Twas ye I was praying for.”
“Then I hope wisdom came into it. I’ve been thinking about a thing I said to my brother. I told him to get his house in order, but I need to take my own words to heart. So I’d speak to ye now as the man of your house.”
That raised a brow. “Ye’ve my ear, Mister Ian. Go on.”
“If I was to leave and settle elsewhere, would ye go with me or stay?”
Malcolm blinked. “Stay?”
“In Boston. I haven’t a place here anymore, but ye don’t have to roam the earth with me forever. Not if ye feel this is your place now.” He laughed, but there was little heart in it. “Da will help ye settle.”
Malcolm nudged the straw hat higher on his brow. “What o’ that shop ye and Ally looked o’er yesterday?”
Ian shook his head. “Ally as much as said it wasn’t for me. He was right.”
“And ye think that judge’s offer may be?”
“There’s one more conversation I need to have to be sure. But which would ye choose, between Boston and New York?”
Finding it mattered deeply but unwilling to sway the man, Ian held his peace and waited for Malcolm’s answer.
He was still aglow with satisfaction when Catriona, gowned for an outing in town, intercepted him in the keeping room. “Seona’s gone to deliver finished work for Lily, but you and she need to talk, Ian. Without chance of Ned, the children, or anyone else interrupting—and don’t argue with me.”
“I’ve no intention of it,” he said. “I tried last night to talk with her but . . . Ned showed up. After that, I guess we were both too rattled.”
“Proving my point.” Catriona glanced sympathetically at his bruised jaw. “We mustn’t have that again.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
She brightened. “All right. I have a plan.”
“Do ye?”
Disregarding his wary tone, she asked, “Would you be willing to climb Copp’s Hill and bide there for a bit, once Seona gets back?”
“Up at the burying ground? Why?”
Catriona grasped his arm. “Leave the details to me. Just be there—somewhere not too conspicuous. In fact, keep yourself out of sight. Come out and approach us once we’ve arrived and got settled.”
“Settled?”
She ignored his ignoring of her admonition. “Can you do that?”
He wasn’t certain he should. “Will Seona approve this plan?”
She squeezed his arm. “Trust me, Ian. This will be good. For you both.”
“All right,” he reluctantly consented. Despite her satisfied smile at having gotten her way, his sister’s eyes were puffy, underscored by shadows. “Are ye all right, Catriona? Ye’ve not seemed yourself these past days.”
Her laugh was ready, if thin. “You haven’t seen me often enough these past years to know what seeming myself should look like. Now I need to prepare things. I’ll see you on the hill.”
She made for the kitchen; presumably food was involved in the scheme. Leaving his sister to her machinations, Ian climbed the stairs and knocked on the door of Seona’s room. He had been wrong about one thing. There were two conversations he needed to have before he could make a final decision about leaving.
As striking a figure as she made, it was surprisingly easy to overlook Lily—for the way she put Seona’s and Gabriel’s needs ahead of herself, diligently going about her work, unassailably self-contained, letting others make the decisions that altered the course of her life.
Alone with Lily and the children in their upstairs room, Ian sat with Mandy cuddled in his arms, ostensibly watching Gabriel at play on the rug with a wooden horse. His attention was as much on Lily, seated on the floor in a muslin gown, braided hair wound about her head like an ebony crown. Smooth-skinned and slender, the lines about her eyes still showed only when she laughed at Gabriel’s play.
“Are ye caught up on your work just now?” he asked with a glance around the tidy room usually piled with sewing projects in various stages of completion.
The window was open to catch the morning breeze before the day heated. A buzzing fly had wandered in along with the salted air and the noise of
the North End going about its business. Lily waved the fly aside and said, “For a minute. Seona’s like to come back with enough work to keep me busy for a fortnight.”
Gabriel stopped banging his wee horse against the rug and looked up at him—or at Mandy, grown drowsy in his arms. Ian dropped his face to the warm crown of her head and waggled his brows at his son.
Gabriel grinned, which cheered him. His son wouldn’t long hold the memories of these fleeting days, should he leave again. That knowledge was a blade through his ribs. Mandy’s small, limp body moved with his sigh. “Are they getting along, these two?”
“Like they’ve never been apart.” Lily met his gaze. “I haven’t said it, but I’m sorry. About Miss Judith and the babies.”
Mandy woke with a jerking of soft limbs, then squirmed to get down. Gabriel abandoned his horse, and the two darted to the little painted chest where his toys were stored. Out came the patchwork bag that held his blocks, the contents spilling onto the rug.
“It was hard,” Ian said at last. “I’m contemplating doing another hard thing, only I first need to know what it is ye want of me.” He shook his head. “No. Leave me out of it for the moment. What do ye want, Lily? For yourself. For—”
Before he could complete the question, the door opened and the one he was about to name walked into the room.
“Mama, I’ve brought more work but . . .” Seeing him, Seona halted, then crossed the room and deposited a bundle of sewing on his old bed. “Catriona’s insisting on climbing Copp’s Hill for a . . .” With a glance at Gabriel, who tore his attention from Mandy long enough to squeal at her arrival, she mouthed the word picnic. “Just us two,” she hurried to add. “Can you watch these babies a while longer?”
Lily said she would, then, after Seona slipped out again with no more than a sliding glance at Ian, eyed him straight on. “Ye and my girl-baby need to decide what it is the two of ye intend,” she said as he stood to take his leave, ready to play his part in his sister’s scheme. “That’s when I’ll ken what I’m to do.”
Catriona had been so mood-stricken since Robbie and Eddie’s passing, Seona wondered what possessed her to want to picnic on Copp’s Hill. She didn’t go near her nephews’ graves but cut a path through the headstones of Boston’s earliest settlers, some of which bore scars of bullets fired during the battles that raged over the city twenty years ago, when Ian was a boy fresh from Scotland.
Catriona halted before a weathered stone and read its words aloud. “‘Captain Thomas Lake, aged sixty-one years . . . perfidiously slain by the Indians at Kennibeck, August the fourteenth, 1676.’” She heaved a sigh. “Remember that poem by Freneau, the one about the Indian boy? That day seems ages ago.”
Seona cut her a glance, noting the pucker between her brows.
Movement down the walkway banished Catriona’s frown quick as it had come. “Look. A couple left that bench. Let’s claim it.”
The seat overlooked the wharves below the hill’s northwest slope, jutting out into the Charles River. There Catriona unpacked the basket brought from Miss Margaret’s kitchen. Festivities were sometimes held on the broad crest of Copp’s Hill, but it was quiet today, folk visiting graves or the fine homes built up the southeast side. Back the way they had come, the spire of Old North poked high.
“I suppose we can eat,” Catriona said once all was arranged.
“This was a nice thought,” Seona said, reaching for a stuffed egg. She liked how Miss Margaret made them, with vinegar and dill spicing the yolk.
Catriona popped a sugared biscuit into her mouth, casting a look round. There was nothing new to see save a pair of seagulls perched on the nearest headstone, eying their spread.
“Shoo!” The gulls ignored Catriona, whose gaze shifted past Seona again, this time lighting with recognition. Seona bit into the egg as a throat cleared behind her.
“Nice day for a picnic, ladies.”
She nearly choked as she turned to see Ian, hat in hand, not even pretending to be surprised at finding them. She shot a look at his sister, whose astonishment was blatantly feigned.
“Ian! Why, of all the unexpected . . .” Catriona held her gaze for a suspended moment before the pretense crumbled. “Seona—don’t be angry. I had to. You and Ian need to talk, away from listening ears.”
Seona’s heart was banging. The day felt suddenly stifling despite the breeze. She swallowed, holding the half-eaten egg in fingers that trembled. “I thought you wanted a picnic with me.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want. It’s all about to change again!”
Seona stood but Catriona was quicker. “I’ll see you both at home.” She turned away and started walking. Fast.
“Catriona?” Seona called.
Ian’s sister quickened her pace, headed for the path back down the hill.
Clearly discomfited by the turnabout, Seona assented to his sitting with her on the bench, Catriona’s abandoned picnic spread between them. She finished the egg she had been eating but didn’t touch another bite.
“Had I possessed a bit more courage,” he said, “my sister wouldn’t have needed to resort to this. Don’t be upset with her.”
Seona’s mouth flattened. “I ’spect I’ll get over it.”
Her gown was finer than any he had seen her wear, pale-green muslin, high-waisted and sashed, with gathers in the elbow-length sleeves. Her fine straw hat, under which her hair was pinned, sported a matching green ribbon. The breeze off the water stirred stray curls around her face as she looked out over the river, showing him her slender neck and the hairs at its nape that made a little whorl, dark against her skin. She was as beautiful as he remembered, but today there was an elegance about her that stole the words he had prepared on the climb.
Sensing the weight of his scrutiny, she looked at him, stunning him with the clarity of her eyes—creek-water eyes, with bits of amber centered in the green—as on that day they collided in the passage of his uncle’s house. Here he was again, jarring her world just as she was finding her footing in it.
“Does it hurt?” she asked. “Where Ned hit you?”
Ian fingered his tender jaw. “It’s fine,” he lied. “I don’t want to talk about Ned now, though. I want to talk about the future. I need your help deciding, Seona.”
Wariness sharpened her gaze. “My help? How?”
He imagined taking her by the shoulders, imploring . . . by telling me what ye want of me, woman. Instead he asked, “Could ye listen while I natter on for a bit? Maybe speaking things aloud will clear the fog.”
“I’ll listen.”
She sounded relieved that was all he asked. Maybe this was the way. Tell her as much as he could of his own heart, hope she might reciprocate. If he could find those elusive words.
“I’m struggling with this choice,” he began, “because it’s not just my path I’m choosing. I know I must choose, but soon as I do, I sacrifice the man Gabriel might have become—or the woman Mandy might—had I chosen differently. And which would have been the better path for them? How can I know?”
Seona was staring now. “You got the weight of this world on your shoulders and you’re imagining the weight of other worlds, too? Ones that won’t ever be?”
Heat crept into his cheeks. “I guess I am. Am I ridiculous?”
“No.” She dropped her gaze to her hands, knotted on her lap. “It surprised me hearing you say it, is all. I’ve thought on it too. What my choices mean for Gabriel. And Mama.”
That recalled the conversation with her mother. “Is Lily happy in Boston?”
“She talks of us finding our own place here. She’s doing well with the sewing. I could help more. We could take up midwifing again, too.”
His gut plummeted.
“But Mama will stay with me and Gabriel, no matter what,” Seona added.
No matter what. Was she leaving room then—for him to have a say?
“Malcolm and his kin mean to cast their lot with me,” Ian said. “He told me so just this morni
ng. So we can add them to that list of souls my choices now will forever impact.”
Seona pulled her lower lip through her teeth. “Think you’ll choose New York?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Aye, well. Probably.”
She sat gazing over the river below, pain gathering in her features. “You letting Ned drive you away?”
The question surprised him. “I hope that’s not what I’m doing,” he said, wanting her to understand the bent of his thinking. “Can I tell ye about New York?”
When she nodded assent, he told her everything he knew of William Cooper’s offer of frontier land ready for settlement. “I’d have put little credit in it, only the man set it to paper, signed it, made the offer binding. And I will say being back in Boston has made me know I’d rather be on my own land farming, working with the cabinetmaking on the side. Rather than the other way around.”
“Like it was at Mountain Laurel?”
“Aye. But it’s more than just the offer of land I find appealing. It’s the notion of a fresh start in a place that holds no memories. Not ours, anyway. A place new to us all.”
A frown pressed her brows. “Us all?”
He realized how it had sounded, as if he presumed she was coming with them to New York. For one reckless moment, he was tempted to ask her, but he had been there all of a week, barely time for her to adjust to the fact of Judith’s passing, much less to decide the course of her and Gabriel’s future.
“Any who’ll come with me,” he replied at last and didn’t know himself a wise man or a coward for stating it so.
“What about Gabriel?”
The question left him short of breath. “I promised ye I’d never take Gabriel from ye, and I won’t.”
“But you want him.”
“He’s my son, Seona. I’ll always long for him, to be a father to him. But if this,” he said with a gesture that took in all of Boston spread below them, “is where ye want to be, Gabriel stays with ye.”