by Lori Benton
She had talked some to Neil MacGregor the past few days, and his sons, and caught no undertones of disdain. But it was the womenfolk—Willa, Maggie, others in Shiloh she’d yet to meet—who would make her and Lily’s lives bearable beyond the bounds of the farm Ian was building. Seona had sensed no disdain from them either, but Willa MacGregor had lived all those years as a Mohawk Indian and adopted two Mohawk children. There couldn’t be many like her.
Seona thought of Maggie, teaching white children in the village. Some of them. Some parents wouldn’t let their children attend because of Maggie’s mixed blood.
She hadn’t let that stop her trying.
Maybe she should talk to Maggie . . . which meant leaving the farm, going to visit, risking rejection, which could be far more subtle than anything she thought Ian understood. A person could smile with their mouth, say the right words, and cut you with their eyes. Cut you right out of their hearts.
“Don’t you trust him, girl-baby?” Lily asked.
Uncertain if her mama meant the Lord or Ian, Seona made no answer.
Ian and Neil MacGregor were sweating in their shirtsleeves as they finished up the roofing in solitude. Seona hadn’t returned from tending Gabriel. Malcolm had gone to his cabin for a rest. Liam was off helping Ally and Jamie cart in chimney stones collected out beyond the cornfield to the north.
“I heard ye pointing out the house site ye’ve chosen,” Neil said, clambering over the roof crest to Ian’s side and taking up a shingle from the pile. “If ye put in rooms abovestairs, ye’ll have a lovely view of the lake.”
“I hope Seona thinks so,” Ian said before Neil could bang in the locust thorn he set into place.
“How is it, having her here?”
The question was nonchalant enough Ian might have deflected it with a matching reply—if he hadn’t caught his neighbor’s gaze and read a concern at odds with his tone. “I’m not sure I know.”
Neil’s brows rose, deepening the lines in his forehead. “I’ve seen these past few days how she is with ye and how she is with Malcolm, Naomi, even Ally. I’ve been wondering, were she and Lily your uncle’s slaves as well?”
Exactly what had his neighbor seen? The same reticence Ian had witnessed? The distance?
“They were both enslaved when I came to Mountain Laurel,” he said. “My half cousin, Aidan, was Seona’s father—he died before she was born. Uncle Hugh freed them just before his death.”
“Your uncle kept his own granddaughter enslaved?”
“Aye. But it was more complicated than ye could imagine.” Ian meant to say no more but, in the face of his neighbor’s quiet attention, found himself still talking and talking, until he had told Hugh Cameron’s story, Aidan’s and Lily’s, as well as his and Seona’s from his arrival at Mountain Laurel to her leaving, the long months apart, then Judith’s death and their brief reunion in Boston, the letters shared over the past winter. The hope of a second chance. “Ye mind I went to Cooperstown on my way to meet them, paid off my land?”
“I do.” Neil reached for a shingle, then shifted along the roof timber he straddled. Ian handed him a thorn from the bag at his belt.
“While there I found a ring. I bought it thinking to give it to Seona when first I saw her again. Propose proper-like, aye? But when we met at last, I sensed . . . something amiss.”
Neil hammered in the new shingle, then sat back and asked, “What? She’d changed her mind, after coming all that way?”
“No,” Ian said reflexively. “I don’t think so. But I decided it wasn’t the best time for asking her to marry me. She was exhausted. Gabriel had been poorly. Besides, I thought it was understood from our letters we meant to marry, raise our children, make a home together. I’d told her I still love her.”
He glanced at the smoke going up from Naomi’s chimney; the scent of cookery was making his stomach rumble.
“Have ye told her since?” Neil asked.
“I tried. Once. She talked of . . .” He felt Neil’s expectant gaze. “She talked of ye and Willa. Seemed worried about ye, what ye’d think of her. We were interrupted before I could get to the bottom of it.”
By the son still interrupting them and likely to go on doing so. He pounded in another shingle, as did Neil before he cleared his throat.
“I’m reminded how it was meeting Willa. I thought her distant at first, unfeeling, until I came to understand all she’d lost. Then I kent her coldness for a shield. She was afraid of loving, of risking her heart again, ye ken?”
Ian nodded. How many ways had he missed the mark with Seona, assuming she saw the world as he did? Responded to it as he? She hadn’t. Didn’t. Maybe never would. Did that mean they could never find a place of trust, of understanding?
“I’m no’ suggesting that’s what’s going on wi’ Seona,” Neil was quick to add. “I’ve a hard enough time of late with Maggie. Women are . . . complicated.”
Ian barked a rueful laugh. “But Willa married ye. How did ye manage to build a life together after such a rough start?”
“At first I thought we wouldna,” Neil said. “The day I asked her to marry me, she bade me go awa’ and leave her. It broke my heart to do so. Soon enough God made it clear I was to go back and try again, despite Willa’s stubbornness. So I did—went back to Shiloh and bunked behind the smithy, let Willa ken I was there and didna mean to leave.”
“That’s all?”
“No. I prayed. Fervently. After a time, the Almighty made it clear what I could do for Willa—to show her my love. And I did it. Helped save her land, rode all the way to Albany to fetch back her father’s old letters that proved he was no Loyalist. I asked Willa to marry me again when I brought her the news.” Neil’s eyes, intensely blue, softened with the memory. “She was more agreeable to the notion the second time.”
“I haven’t asked once yet,” Ian admitted. Not since that day in the orchard at Mountain Laurel, when he had asked Seona to be handfast with him, thinking he knew her mind, her heart. “Should I now?”
Neil was silent, thinking. Or praying. The silence held no strain. Ian was minded of how he had often felt in John Reynold’s presence. Comfortable with the waiting. The sun passed behind a cloud, then out again. The air stirred, warm on his skin, a whisper in the beech leaves.
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” Neil said at last, “establishing myself in Shiloh apart from Willa, waiting for a way to show her my intentions, since speaking them hadn’t worked.”
Ian pondered that. Did he know Seona’s mind any better now than he had that day in his uncle’s orchard? Not as well as he wished. What was it Neil had just said? Waiting for a way to show her my intentions . . .
“I should court her.” It hadn’t issued as a question, and he sensed it was, at last, a course of action he felt some confidence in following. He needed to step back, slow his impatient heart. Get to know the woman Seona was now. Let her know him. They had spent less than a fortnight together in Boston, after all, and writing letters wasn’t the same as being together, day to day.
“I think there’s wisdom in that,” Neil said. “Can ye manage it?”
Ian started to smile at the teasing in his neighbor’s eyes, when Seona finally left his cabin. She crossed the yard to Naomi’s, looking his way briefly. His breath caught with longing at the sight of her lithe figure, the grace with which she moved.
“With your prayers and God’s help,” he told his neighbor. “I mean to try.”
24
After dropping off a broken bit with the blacksmith for mending, Ian reached Keagan’s store, ready to complete his business in the village and head back to finish laying the new cabin’s chimney. He, Ally, and Neil had planned to do so that morning, but Liam had brought word that his father was called away in the wee hours to physic a sick child—but would any of the women like to come dip candles with Willa and Maggie, who wasn’t holding school that day?
Then Ally had come up from the pasture saying one of his cow
s had dropped a late calf overnight, then proceeded to drop a second, only to decide one was enough and refuse to mother its twin. After failing to interest another nursing cow, they penned the calf in a corner of the crowded stable where Ally was attempting to feed it with a bottle of its mother’s milk, capped with a makeshift teat.
The business with the calves had reminded Ian: the herd had increased by six earlier in spring. Ally’s two made eight new calves. He would need to bell them when they were weaned.
Keagan’s store was the oldest structure in Shiloh, though an addition had been built to serve for a tavern. Voices reached Ian from the taproom, but the store side was deserted. He decided to have a look round for bells. He needed a good hide, too, to make summer moccasins for Gabriel and Mandy to run around in.
Seona, Lily, and Catriona had ridden with him as far as the MacGregors’. It was the first time Seona had left the farm since their arrival. Naomi had remained behind with Malcolm and the children. On the short ride between the farms, he had asked if Seona needed anything he might obtain in Shiloh, hoping she would request something. What he wanted to give her, the poesy ring, remained tucked in a pocket on his person. Just in case. I should court her, he had told Neil yesterday and had barely ceased thinking of how to go about it.
“Cameron? I’ll be right over.” The proprietor, Jack Keagan, peered from the taproom, clutching full pewter cups. He set them on a table where two men brooded over a checkered game board.
Ian found four cowbells tucked away on the shelves. He was setting them and a rolled hide on the counter when the tall, graying Keagan came in announcing he had a letter come for Ian. He went behind the counter—not to where he normally kept the post brought in weekly by rider, but into his room in back. Emerging, letter in hand, he explained, “I’d normally not keep a letter tucked away private not directed to me. But look at this.”
Ian took the proffered letter, once wax-sealed, stamped with the sender’s signet. The seal was broken in half.
“Come up from Cooperstown,” Keagan said. “Looks like Judge Cooper’s seal.”
Ian had unfolded the sheet and seen the letter’s signature. “Aye.” He handed over coin for purchases and post, wrapped the bells in the hide and secured them with string Keagan donated, but decided to read the letter before heading out to Ruaidh, hitched at the smithy. He skimmed the judge’s erratically spelled missive. The man was checking up on Ian, hoping all was well, then—
Despyte your Protestashuns that the Gold with which you compensayted me for your Land was not discoverd under New York earth, I have not relinkwished Hope that such a Vane may be found beneath Otsego Grownd—
Ian bit back the impulse to swear. Spotting Keagan puttering about, wiping down shelves, he asked, “D’ye know who might have seen this, besides yourself and the rider who brought it? It was the usual rider?”
Keagan returned to the counter. “I presume so, but I didn’t see. It was in with the regular post, waiting on the counter when I came back from the mill, three days back. Might have broken in the satchel. They do.”
“What’s broken then?” Neil MacGregor asked, coming into the store. “Saw your roan at the smithy, Ian. Figured ye were over to here.”
Ian was careful in explaining the broken seal, not wanting Keagan to think he held the man to blame, but caught the troubled look the store proprietor and Neil shared, full of things unspoken. “Clearly ye’re both thinking something about this letter. What is it?”
Neil looked suddenly tired and haunted. “I dinna recall whether I’ve told ye about Colonel Waring’s son—his eldest. Richard Waring.”
The name drew a blank. “I don’t think ye’ve told me anything. It’s the first I’m hearing of a Richard Waring.”
Keagan glanced toward the taproom at the name, as if a ghost had been conjured and might come gliding through the doorway.
Neil dropped his voice. “Richard stole a letter directed to Willa, one that would have proved her parents’ loyalties during the war—when such evidence was needed to save her land—and spared me a trip to Albany and a shooting by Aram Crane.”
Aware that his jaw hung slack, Ian shut it. What had they told him, back in autumn, about their history with Crane? That the man, a British Army deserter, had done them harm. Not that he had gone so far as to shoot anyone. And one of the Warings had been involved?
“Had I not handed the letter over to him like a fool, you mean,” Keagan was saying in response to the comment that had silenced Ian.
“No,” Neil said. “Ye had no reason to mistrust Richard’s motives. Not then. Ye thought he meant to take the letter to Willa.”
“Anyway,” Keagan said. “Richard’s gone beyond tampering with anyone’s post—cabins and children and anything else.”
Cabins and children? Before Ian could respond to that bewildering statement, Neil asked, “But Crane? Have ye seen him?”
“I have not,” Keagan said with unmistakable fervor. “Was he to show his face in Shiloh again, I’d be liable to shoot it off, ask questions later.”
“All right,” Ian said, impatient to understand. “Explain why this Richard Waring would have troubled ye and Willa so. Was he in league with Crane?” He had yet to tell his neighbor the tale of meeting Crane again in Cherry Valley. Seona and Gabriel’s arrival, the many needs that pulled at him, the work needing done, his concerns over Seona, had pushed the encounter to the back of his mind for days. It came roaring to the forefront now.
“Reckon ’twas more the other way around,” Keagan began, but Neil cut him off with another glance, then met Ian’s gaze.
“I’ll tell ye, Ian. But not here. Ride wi’ me, if ye’re bound for home.”
“I am,” Ian replied, taking up the hide-wrapped bells. “And I’ve a thing I need to tell ye, too.”
“This has been such fun,” Catriona said, spreading her arms above the rows of tow-wicked tapers dangling from drying racks laid between straight-backed chairs. “I’ve never dipped candles before.”
Every woman in the MacGregors’ kitchen paused in an act of tidying to eye her. Anni Keppler—the miller’s wife—burst out laughing. “I hadn’t harbored a doubt on that score!” She studied the tapers Catriona had dipped, notably lopsided compared to every other batch. “I’m guessing your family bought their candles?”
“We did,” Catriona replied, unbothered that her misshapen tapers were a source of poking fun. “From a seller around the corner. Right, Seona?”
Slightly panicked when the weight of all their gazes fell upon her, Seona forced a smile. “In Boston we did. Back in Carolina we dipped tallows every fall—didn’t we, Mama?” Like the passing of a plate at table, she fastened her gaze on Lily, thankful when those of the MacGregor women and Anni Keppler—who she hadn’t known would be joining them—swung to Lily and away from her.
“Just after the hog butchering,” her mama said.
They had also dipped beeswax candles, but those had gone to the big house. They were never allowed the best candles in the kitchen or cabins. Most times just an old Betty lamp with a tow wick. Or a pine knot. She and Lily shared a look in which those memories stirred, but Seona mentioned nothing to connect her to being a slave in the minds of these freeborn women.
She was still uncertain what Willa and Maggie knew about them. No chance of asking with Willa’s plump, fair-haired friend present. Not even if Anni’s blue eyes shone amiably as she said, “We’ve dipped our share of tallows too, but beeswax is easier to come by since Goodenough started keeping bees—mainly for honey to use as sweetening and for poultices.”
Though Willa had had some beeswax on hand, it was Anni who had brought most of what they had melted at the hearth. They had propped the kitchen door open to the back veranda, emitting a breeze. Even so caps were off and temples gleaming from working over a hot kettle, though Willa had remarked on the grayness of the day and feeling a storm coming. Perhaps some cooler air with it.
“Poultices?” Lily said, ears perked to healer-
talk.
“That’s right,” Anni said. “Goodenough is a midwife.”
Best Seona could grasp the connections of these Shiloh folk, Goodenough had been the slave of Anni’s father, Colonel Waring, back when Anni was young. Goodenough was free now, as was her son, Lemuel. Though Seona had heard talk of them—Catriona had met both while helping at Maggie’s school—they hadn’t come to the MacGregor farm this day. Only their beeswax.
Willa looked up from scraping a hardened drop off the table. “So is Lily, a midwife,” she said, then flicked the bits of wax into the dying hearth fire and eased herself onto a chair, a hand on her swollen belly.
“Are ye well after all this work?” Lily asked, drawn to Willa like iron to a magnet. “Ye’ve been on your feet all the morn.”
“Beeswax candles are so much nicer than tallow,” Maggie said, resuming the conversation while Lily and Willa fell to talking of aching backs and swollen ankles.
“The smell for one thing,” Anni, who had declared herself done with birthing babies after two sets of twins, said. “And beeswax burns so much brighter. I was thrilled when Goodenough started raising bees and putting out more honey and wax than she could use.”
Seona glanced at her mama, talking with Willa. They had had no beeswax to contribute, though Anni and Willa insisted they take home the candles they had dipped. And Catriona hers. Not that anyone else coveted those.
Ian’s sister seemed at ease in the MacGregors’ home. But then she had spent nearly as much time with Maggie as she had at Ian’s farm. Their companionship made Seona think of Judith, of what might have blossomed between them by way of friendship had Miss Lucinda not come between.
Hoping no one would notice her silence, she tried to look busy gathering up the leftover tow wicking, wishing she had remained at Ian’s farm after all. Naomi alone had stayed back to mind Mandy and Gabriel, and Malcolm, still abed but awake when they gathered for breakfast.
“We can start on those reading lessons, Malcolm,” Seona had said. “I don’t have to go.”