by Lori Benton
Naomi had insisted she would rather watch babies than dip another batch of candles. Besides, Catriona wouldn’t hear of her staying. “Seona, you must come. Maggie and Willa want to get to know you. And Lily,” she added, quick to include the one person who seemed to understand why Seona might balk at what should have been an enjoyable visit with their neighbors.
“Ye cannot hide here from the world,” Lily said once Catriona went out to saddle Juturna. “Don’t even start down that road.”
“Listen to your mama,” Malcolm had said from his bed. “There’s time aplenty for ye to teach this old man his letters.”
Which had put an end to her heel digging.
“The beeswax we had on hand came from a wild hive,” Maggie was saying. “Matthew found it on the ridge last spring, following the beeline from our apple trees. He smoked the bees and harvested some honey and wax.”
“And a dozen bee stings!” Anni added with a grin.
Seona was thinking about apple trees, minding those of Mountain Laurel and wondering where on the farm the MacGregors’ might be, when Catriona asked, “What’s a beeline?”
Seona knew the answer but let Maggie tell it. “The path a honeybee takes heading back to its hive. They tend to fly straight there, so if you see one taking off from a flowering tree in spring, you can follow it.”
“Easier if it’s more than just the one bee,” Anni said. “They’re fast.”
Catriona was fascinated. “Have either of you ever followed a beeline?”
“Willa and I tried as girls,” Anni said. “We never found a hive.”
“It takes practice,” Maggie said. “Though I don’t think it took Matthew long to pick up the skill, once Uncle Joseph taught him.”
“So your brother’s an accomplished hand with horses and bees?” Catriona asked.
“Horses being the easier to wrangle,” said a deep and unfamiliar voice from the kitchen doorway.
They turned to see a tall, lean young man standing there, one who looked enough like Maggie to be her brother—which Seona assumed he was—though his hair was darker, crow black as Lily’s, long and straight and tailed at the base of his neck. He was dressed in buckskin leggings and moccasins, with a blue shirt belted low on his waist, open at the collarless neck. Rolled sleeves bared lean, bronzed arms. A knife and tomahawk were thrust through the belt, reminding her of Ian, the day he arrived at Mountain Laurel. Looking like a wildcat out the woods, Naomi had said.
Though two men could not have been more different in looks, this one had something of the wildcat about him too. His mouth curved as he took in the sight of his mother’s kitchen crowded with petticoats and pinned-up hair, but it was his eyes Seona noted in the seconds before the greetings commenced.
They were dark, and there was anger in them.
25
“Matthew!” Maggie exclaimed. “We were starting to worry.”
“Is something wrong?” Willa said as conversations paused, making Seona think she too had seen that anger in the young man’s eyes, from clear across the kitchen. Willa started to rise from her chair, awkward with her big belly.
“Don’t,” Matthew MacGregor said. “I’ve the horses and the meat to tend. I . . .” His agitated glance roved the kitchen full of women staring back at him. He seemed fit to burst with something wanting said, just not in front of strangers. Then, with a reckless light in those dark eyes, he threw caution to the wind. “Half my traps were violated again. Sprung and robbed. This time I know it was Aram Crane did it.”
His lean face took on a ferocity that made Seona flinch, though she didn’t recognize the name he had spoken. Not the case with Anni and Willa, who exchanged a look sharp with alarm.
Maggie’s face had taken on a grayish cast. “You saw him?”
“No,” Matthew admitted. “But you know what they say he does around Canajoharie. Pilfering traps. Taking shots at other hunters in the woods.”
Maggie shook her head. “But Canajoharie is—wait, did he shoot at you?”
“No. And Canajoharie isn’t that far away.”
“Sixty miles,” his sister said.
“Less as the wolf runs.”
“Matthew,” Willa said firmly. “You have yet to meet our neighbors, Ian’s family, arrived while you have been gone.”
Introductions duly made, Matthew MacGregor—visibly reining in his temper—nodded and said, “I saw your horses in the paddock. Which of you claims the tall filly?”
“That’s Juturna,” Maggie said. “She’s Catriona’s.”
“Actually she’s Seona’s,” Catriona corrected. “Though I mainly ride her.”
“She’s a beauty.” Matthew stared at Catriona, whose color deepened until Anni Keppler took him by the arm and steered him toward Willa.
“Do you truly think Aram Crane has been hanging about—near enough to pilfer your trapline? I ask, Willa,” she added, catching her friend’s disapproving look and dropping her voice to a near whisper, “because of Francis.”
“Francis?” Maggie asked. “You didn’t see him, did you, Matthew?”
“Not a sign,” her brother said. “Sorry, Maggie.”
As Maggie MacGregor’s eyes welled, Catriona frowned and said, “Let’s go out to the yard. I think your mother’s right about the weather. Don’t you feel the cooling?”
She grabbed Maggie’s hand and towed her toward the doorway, with a sidelong glance at Matthew that Seona read as wary. He lingered only briefly before following them out. Seeing to his horses, Seona supposed, and whatever meat or hides he’d brought back from the hills.
“I’m sorry,” Anni said to the half-emptied kitchen. “I didn’t mean to upset Maggie, but he’s my brother. Though I may have control of my tears, I’m worried half to death over Francis.” She turned to Lily and Seona, standing near the hearth. “I don’t know whether you know?”
“Ian’s told us,” Lily said. “Your brother’s gone missing, a long time now.”
They knew more than that. Maggie MacGregor had long loved Francis, who didn’t return her love. Or wasn’t the marrying type. Ian had written that he wasn’t comfortable around folk, instead was wont to wander the hills, sometimes for weeks. But never for months.
“I’ll make some tea,” Anni said briskly. “Do you mind, Willa?”
Willa waved a hand. “You know where it is kept.”
Lily joined Willa at the table, but Seona left the kitchen, wandering half-heartedly after Maggie and Catriona. A parlor of sorts spanned the front of the house just off the central passage. She stood at the window, spotting Maggie carrying something into the barn. Closer to the house, Catriona stood at the paddock, where their horses had grazed while they dipped candles. Just inside the fence, Matthew MacGregor bent, running a hand over Juturna’s foreleg. He turned his face in profile, mouth moving. Catriona appeared pleased by whatever he said. He stood with a supple grace, tall and dark compared to Ian’s sister, as he stroked the filly’s neck.
He led their horses out of the paddock and hitched them to a rail, ready to be saddled for the ride home.
“I thought ye’d gone out to them,” Lily said, joining her at the window. She looked sidelong when Seona merely shook her head, then glanced through the window and pointed. Not at Catriona and Matthew, but the lane leading to the road.
Two riders were approaching the house, recognizable even through the wavy glass. Neil MacGregor and Ian.
Ian and Neil helped Matthew unload his packhorse of hides and meat, while the girls returned to the house. He had asked Catriona whether Seona was inside and if she had enjoyed their time candle-making. She was and had, Catriona reported, but in truth he was still distracted by the conversation he and Neil had had on their ride home from the village and what he had learned about Richard Waring, what the man had done to Willa, how he had died, and—most pertinent to Ian’s mind—his connection to Aram Crane. Doubtful if Crane would have figured into the MacGregors’ lives at all were it not for Richard Waring.
Having coveted Willa’s land, thinking he could brand her parents as Loyalists to the Crown to get it, Richard had been the cause of their deaths years before Willa returned from living with the Mohawk. He had covered the crime by letting everyone in Shiloh believe her parents had fled, driven away by their supposed Loyalist sentiments—hence the confiscation of Willa’s farm by the time she returned to it.
When she contested the accusation, Richard had enlisted Aram Crane, working for Colonel Waring as a groom, to harass her in every way possible, going so far as to truss Matthew and Maggie, then but children, inside her old cabin and set the place aflame. The children had been spared a horrible death by Francis Waring, hardly more than a boy himself, while outside, Willa was saved from Richard’s attack by Joseph Tames-His-Horse, who fought the man hand-to-hand by the light of that burning cabin. A fight in which Richard Waring fell upon his own knife and died of the wound. Joseph was taken into custody by Colonel Waring but released when Francis came forward and revealed all that his elder brother had done.
“As for Crane,” Neil had said, “he escaped his reckoning and fled into the mountains—not before attempting to murder me—where he’s been living all this while.”
“Except when he’s in Cooperstown,” Ian had replied as they came within sight of Neil’s farm. “Or Cherry Valley. Where, as it happens, I had a run-in with the man on my way to meet with Seona.” He had told his neighbor about the encounter that came after he paid off his land in gold. “Mined in Carolina,” he had said, “though I’ll ask ye to keep that quiet. I’ve not told Cooper where I came by it or another soul in New York. Seona doesn’t even know of its existence.”
“And ye think Crane got hold of the letter from Cooper?” Neil had asked.
“Knowing now what Richard Waring did with Willa’s letter—and those two in league then—I think it possible.”
“If rumor’s to be credited,” Neil had said, “Crane’s murdered more than one man and never been brought to justice for it. Even without Richard having set the precedent, I wouldna put tampering wi’ the post past him.”
When the three were at last alone in the barn, Neil turned to Matthew and, to Ian’s surprise, said, “Right then. What’s going on wi’ ye?”
Preoccupied as he was with his own concerns, Ian hadn’t picked up on the tension behind Matthew’s outward calm. He caught it now as Matthew hefted a saddle onto a rack and turned to face them.
“Aram Crane,” he said.
Ian and Neil exchanged startled looks. Before Matthew could explain why he was angered over Crane, Seona, Lily, and Catriona came down the veranda steps and crossed the yard, ready to head home, having left the candles they had dipped to harden overnight.
“I’ll come fetch them tomorrow,” Catriona said as she swung onto Juturna’s back, Matthew having gone to hold the reins.
Perched behind Lily on Juturna’s dam, Seona looked down at Ian. “You coming with us?”
“I’ll be along soon. I want to hear how your visit went.” His smile felt strained; the conversation about Crane might have been interrupted, but it wasn’t finished.
When the women were away, Matthew turned from watching them go and told them about the traps that had been sprung. “I know it was Crane, Pa. He took the hides and left the carcasses in the traps. No animal does that.”
“But why d’ye think it Crane and not some other?” Ian asked. “Did ye ever catch him doing such a thing before?”
“Not me.” Matthew hesitated, glancing at his father. “Francis did.”
Neil MacGregor’s surprise made it clear this was the first he was hearing of such a thing. “Francis saw Aram Crane robbing one of your traps?”
“He did.”
“When did he tell ye so?” Neil demanded.
“Last time I saw him.”
“Clear back in autumn? Why did ye no’ tell anyone?”
As if he had long known he would face the question, Matthew’s answer was ready. “Francis was adamant I didn’t. Only later, after he was gone so long, did I wonder if he’d some notion of catching the man on his own. You know Francis.”
“Aye,” Neil conceded with evident reluctance. “Meek as a kitten but stubborn as a mule.”
An alarming combination, Ian thought, pitted against the likes of Aram Crane.
“Anyway,” Matthew went on, “after we started to miss him, I didn’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily. Then Uncle Joseph and I left for the winter hunt and . . .” Matthew trailed off, looking wretched.
Neil shook his head. “I ken ye and Maggie are especial friends with Francis but—”
“Maggie doesn’t know,” Matthew cut in.
“Ye should have told me—and Elias Waring—what Francis told ye he saw.”
“I know that now!” Eyes dark with self-recrimination, Matthew stalked down the stable’s aisle, headed for the open doors.
“D’ye mean to go after him?” Ian asked, ready to mount up and leave Neil to deal with his offspring, but his neighbor shook his head.
“No. I ken my son. Best to let him cool off first.”
Ian followed Neil to the stable doors, where the man stopped, gazing out at the clouds thickening over the ridge to the north. A cooling breeze was blowing, carrying the damp, fecund scents of growing things. “This puts another shade on matters. Crane’s being seen hereabouts back in autumn.”
“If Francis’s word can be relied upon,” Ian said.
“It can.”
Ian felt in his pocket for the letter from Judge Cooper, pulling it out to stare at that broken seal, as if the thing itself might give up its secrets. “If only Cooper hadn’t written about the gold . . .”
He turned to look at Neil. Just behind him, in the shadow of the stable door, Matthew stood. Well within hearing. Neil turned, following Ian’s gaze.
“What else has Crane done?” Matthew asked, stepping into the overcast light, eyes dropping to the letter. “Tampered with the mail, like Richard Waring did?”
His father raised a cautioning hand. “We dinna ken. The seal was broke on Ian’s letter before it came into Keagan’s hands, but what it speaks of is no one’s business but Ian’s. Understand?”
“I won’t mention what I heard. I’m not even sure I know what I heard. But what if whoever broke it—?”
“If anyone did. The seal might have been broken any number of ways.”
Matthew opened his mouth to argue, then shook his head and left them in the stable doorway. They watched him cross the yard and go into the house.
Ian swallowed. “So ye don’t think Crane had anything to do with the letter’s seal being broken? I thought ye did.”
“Oh, I do,” Neil said. “I just didna want to fuel the lad’s hatred of the man. Joseph does enough of that. I dinna blame him, really. Joseph blames himself for letting the man escape.” He sighed. “While we’ve no solid evidence Crane tampered with your letter, with what ye’ve told me today . . . the suspicions are piling up.”
“And if he read the letter, he knows my whereabouts—if he didn’t already.” Ian unhitched Ruaidh from the paddock fence. “But he’s been back in these parts—so Francis Waring said—when he’d been gone for how many years?”
“Nearly thirteen now.”
The look they shared before Ian took his leave made it clear Neil MacGregor didn’t believe they had heard the last of Aram Crane.
No more did Ian.
The morning after the candle dipping, as the sun streaked the clouded eastern sky with pink, Ian stood at Seona’s cabin door, a bouquet of wildflowers in hand. As he raised a fist to knock against its freshly planed wood, a screech rose beyond it. Then Seona’s harried voice: “Gabriel! Stop that . . . Mama, look out—”
A crash of wood. Water spilling. Lily’s gasp: “Caught it—thank goodness.”
Seona’s dire warning: “You’re getting a spanking right now, young man!”
His son: “Sah-wee, Mama. Sah-weee . . .”
Ian stifled the laugh wanting to b
urst forth, certain it wouldn’t be well received just then. He didn’t need to see whatever havoc his son had wreaked to know that between himself and Seona, he’d had the easier time of child-rearing. Until now.
While his boy loudly protested Seona’s disciplining, Ian knocked and, deepening his voice, demanded, “Everything all right in there?”
Lily opened the door, looking no more than mildly ruffled, though the entire front of her petticoat was soaked and her grandson was screaming bloody murder, bent over Seona’s knees, getting his bum swatted.
“Good morning, Ian. Are those flowers for me?”
He felt his face redden at her teasing. “Ah . . . well.” He peered past Lily to the new bedstead, where Seona, gowned for the day but hair unbraided, was now cuddling their crying son, patting his back for comfort. She eyed him over Gabriel’s tousled head, looking as harried as she had sounded. Brazening it out, he held up the flowers. “I wondered if ye wanted to take a wee walk with me, before breakfast?”
“I was heading over to help Naomi—before this one did his mischief.”
“Girl-baby,” Lily said, “I’ll mind that boy ’til breakfast—and his sister. Catriona can help Naomi. Get ye gone.”
Seona obeyed, hair streaming in ropy ringlets down her back, forgetting a cap as she bolted for the door. While Gabriel pouted on the bed behind her, she set off walking with her back to the rising sun.
Ian handed the flowers to Lily and hurried to match Seona’s step along the narrow track that cut between their cornfields to the lake. After a bit she slowed her pace. “Tough morning?” he asked.
“First in our new cabin and he’s already into trouble.”
“A new place. He’s curious.”
“Mister Mischief, Mama calls him. He’s living up to the name today.”
Ian thought to halt her, make her take in the sunrise, but when he glanced back, what color the clouds had reflected was passing swiftly into gray. He hoped it wouldn’t rain. While Seona, Lily, and Gabriel had moved into the cabin the evening before, he still had work to do on that chimney.