by Lori Benton
“There something ye want to tell me, girl-baby?”
Her meaning took a beat for Seona to grasp. “No, Mama. I didn’t mean . . . Ian and I aren’t . . .” She shook her head and laughed, not admitting how much she had been thinking of him in that way again. “Someday there’ll be more babies, I hope. I’ll need you by to catch them.”
“Want maybe, not need,” Lily said in a tone so final Seona tightened her hold as a frisson of nameless alarm raced through her.
“Not true, Mama. I’ll always need you.”
29
Malcolm had lent a hand with extending the corncrib, putting old skills to work planing wood planks and helping fit the new doorframe, then gone to his cabin for a rest. When Ian decided to take a break and see what Naomi had on hand to fill an empty belly, he detoured past the beech-shaded springhouse, built over the waters that bubbled from a hillock out behind the stable, and found Malcolm seated on the log bench outside it, elbows on knees, eyes shut. He started when Ian crouched by the spring to wash, nearly toppling before Ian caught his arm with a wet grip—an arm little bigger than a child’s, beneath its shirtsleeve.
“Dozed off, did I?” Malcolm blinked heavy-lidded eyes. “Reckon I’d have gone on wi’ it had ye no’ come along.”
“I worked ye hard today. Ally and I can finish the crib tomorrow, let ye get back to your garden.” With an eye on Malcolm, he drank from the spring and, refreshed, held out a hand to help the old man rise.
Malcolm indicated the bench. “Sit wi’ me awhile?”
Ian did swift inventory of pressing chores, one ear cocked for his offspring—napping under Naomi’s eye, judging by the quiet. Seona hadn’t yet returned. While he was glad she had finally ventured into Shiloh, he longed to see her again. Kiss her again. Saying nothing of that, he sat and leaned back against the stones. “Something on your mind?”
“Seona.”
“She’s on mine too.” Ian caught the old man’s eye and grinned.
“The pair of ye are keeping your counsel close. D’ye mind my asking, when is it to be?”
“When’s what to be?”
The creases deepened around Malcolm’s eyes. “Mister Ian, ye ken what I’m asking. When are ye and Seona to marry?”
“I haven’t actually asked her yet.” Ian’s heart still set to pounding at thought of presenting the ring to Seona, asking her to be his wife. Silly that it should. He had asked her once before, with the gift of a hair comb, and she had accepted. They had a son together—a daughter too; he could see that bond growing between her and Mandy . . .
Malcolm’s chuckle drew his gaze. “Mister Ian, forgive me saying it, but ye’re one backward white man when it comes to matters o’ the heart.”
Heat smote Ian’s face as a rueful laugh slipped out. “Backward, am I?”
Malcolm sobered. “Ye loved a woman who couldna be your wife. Then married a woman ye’d barely remarked until the moment ye proposed. I ken ye came to love Miss Judith,” he added when Ian flinched. “I also ken ye never stopped loving Seona. Or pining for Gabriel. There’s nothing keeping ye from them now, nor they from ye.”
“I didn’t want to rush things . . . again.” How different their lives might be had he been patient the first time. How much easier, for Seona most of all. He hadn’t had the Almighty then. No guide for his reckless heart.
He had both now. And he had this man, one of the many treasures fallen to him by none of his own deserving.
“If ye’d ken an old man’s mind on the matter,” Malcolm said, “I’m thinking what Seona’s struggling wi’ now is no’ about her feelings for ye. ’Tis no easy thing, learning to walk this earth free after a lifetime of bondage.”
“Aye,” Ian said. “We’ve talked of it.”
“Good. Keep talking. ’Tis no’ a thing to be settled in a moment but grown into, day by day—same as we grow in Christ, aye?”
Ian nodded, though conviction stabbed. “What of ye, Malcolm? Naomi? Ally? Are ye having the same struggles?”
“Naomi keeps too busy looking after us to worry o’er such things, though in time she may come to it. Ally . . . well, ye’ve done more for him already than I ever thought to see, giving him a herd to build—and the wee dogs. Ye ken he’ll be happy as long he has beasts to tend.”
“I hope ye know I’ll be here—God willing—to help however they need.” A lump formed in Ian’s throat, speaking of a day when Malcolm would no longer be with them. A day he hoped was still afar off.
The old man gave his knee a pat. “I’ve lived to see my daughter and grandson free. And the thing I longed to do before I stand before my Lord—read His words to me—I’m learning to do. Lily doesna worry me overmuch. She’s found her way through far more difficult days than these. But Seona has a life as a freewoman stretching before her and the need to learn to navigate it.”
“I mean to help,” Ian said, the words hoarse with feeling. “With all my heart.”
Malcolm nodded. “Let’s talk to the Almighty about it, since my opinion isna the one that matters.”
“Aye, let’s do.”
“Father in heaven,” the old man began, “’tis Your will we seek. Your blessing we need. Your hand to guide our hearts as well as our heads. We canna always see what thorny patches lie along our way or the foes arrayed against us, but we ask for Your protection in this place we’ve come to settle . . .”
Ian’s eyes flew open to scrutinize the man beside him, drawing breath to go on with his prayer. In that brief pause, he sensed both light and shadow reaching for his soul. For all their souls.
“. . . that Ye’d be the rock this man chooses to build his house upon. Give him courage to go where Ye lead and do what Ye tell him to do.” In the next pause for breath, there arose the rumble of two empty bellies. Malcolm ended his prayer with a chuckle. “And give us this day our daily bread or whatever my good daughter has prepared to sustain us. Amen.”
“Amen,” Ian echoed, sounding shaken enough Malcolm peered at him.
Ought he to tell this man about the gold and Cherry Valley and the letter with the broken seal? Matthew’s violated traps. Francis Waring having witnessed Crane’s pilfering. But Malcolm was looking far too tired and old to be laying such a burden on him.
“Come on.” Ian stood with outstretched hand. “Let’s see what Naomi has for our dinner.”
Mandy and Gabriel were sprawled on Naomi’s bed, drugged by the day’s warmth. After a quiet dinner at her table, Malcolm lay down to rest. Ian and Naomi stepped out into the yard. He looked through the beeches toward Seona’s cabin, knowing she hadn’t returned, then nodded at the cabin where Malcolm’s snores rumbled. “Does he seem to ye more tired of late?”
Naomi nodded. “He be eighty, give or take a year.” She sighed and crossed her arms beneath her bosom. Below her kerchief, sweat beaded her brow. “Daddy been strong a long time. In spirit and body. Only the one ever gonna fail him.”
Even with his aching joints, Malcolm had put in a full day’s work at Mountain Laurel in the time Ian called the place home. Since then he had more than pulled his diminishing weight. Their vegetable garden flourished, with enough produce coming in to put up excess for winter.
“This past year,” Naomi added, “he seen his share of blessings. Learning to read that Bible. Freedom.”
“What about ye, Naomi? Ye’ve not been off this farm in months.”
Naomi’s gaze took in the beech grove, the fields, the ridge to the north. “Daddy’s not up to traipsing the countryside and I want to stay by him.” Moisture gathered in her eyes as she swung her eyes toward the line of trees marking the track to Shiloh. “Speak of blessings, here come one of yours.”
Seona and Lily had returned.
They dismounted in the yard. Lily went straight to their cabin, a bundle of new muslin tucked under her arm. Ian took the mare’s reins from Seona. “Did Catriona stay over with Maggie?”
“She did. The children inside?”
Naomi had gone back into the
cabin. “Sleeping. So’s Malcolm. Are ye hungry?”
“Ian.” Seona placed a hand on his arm. “Maggie MacGregor’s school cabin . . . someone got into it overnight and busted up stuff. Door and window, benches, desks, books. Pretty much everything.”
He took her hand in his, shocked by the violation, grieved for Maggie. Some families had denied their children schooling by a Mohawk lass, but what Seona described went beyond disapproval. It was outright spite.
“I’m sorry ye had to see it. Sorrier it happened. Poor Maggie.”
“Catriona means to stay overnight at the MacGregors’. Maggie’s distraught. Matthew was furious. He went with us, taking the blue colt to Colonel Waring, so he saw it all.”
The mare whickered, recalling Ian to her needs. “He’ll have told Waring what happened?” he asked, leading them toward the stable.
“He told Anni Keppler he would.”
“Anni lives on that rise above the mill. She didn’t hear or see anything? Did anyone?”
“Anni came with us to Mr. Keagan’s store and asked. He seemed sorry for what happened but didn’t know a thing. I don’t know who else she might have talked to.”
In the stable, Seona stood outside the box while Ian removed the mare’s saddle, gave her a brushing, then opened the paddock door for her to go out to graze. He hung saddle and bridle to clean and oil later.
Seona fished through the slit in her petticoat and pulled from her pocket a parcel, wrapped and tied. “Mr. Keagan had this for you. Mama paid the postage.”
“I’ll repay her.” Ian took the parcel, letter-size but thicker. He looked it over, checking for signs of tampering. “This is how it looked when ye got it? Ye didn’t tie it up proper or rewrap it?”
“I didn’t. Why?”
He could have bitten his tongue. From the front of the stable, the calf bawled, wanting its bottle. “I meant to feed George before ye got back.”
“I think they’re calling it Blackie,” Seona said. “Where’s Ally?”
“Down at the pasture. He’ll be back soon for his dinner, unless he found fencing to mend. But never mind. I’ll feed wee George—Blackie—whatever he’s called.”
Ian grinned, but a frown marked Seona’s brow. He hadn’t distracted her with talk of cows. She had drawn breath to speak when the doorway darkened. Lily had come with the feeding bottle.
“I heard one too many arguments about this calf’s name,” she said as they joined her at its pen. “Yesterday I taught those babies the meaning of a new word—compromise—and their first letters of the alphabet. They settled on calling it G-B.”
Seona grinned. “Ian was about to feed him, Mama.”
“I’ll take care of G-B.” Lily eyed the parcel in Ian’s grasp and told them to take whatever it was and open it while the children still slept. “Might be your only chance today.”
Under the beech tree by her cabin, seated shoulder to shoulder against its trunk, Seona seemed preoccupied, picking at a broken fingernail. He hadn’t opened the parcel but suspected it was from John and contained some amount of gold. If so, it would be wrapped apart from whatever missive he had sent. He could ask Seona to read the letter aloud and slip what else the parcel contained out of sight . . .
“Who is Aram Crane?” Seona asked.
That name on her lips sent shock flooding through him. He leaned away from her and stared, thoughts of subterfuge juddering to a halt. “Did Matthew say something to ye about Crane?”
“Not to me. In my hearing. After he saw what was done to Maggie’s school. He thinks this Crane person had to do with it.”
“Why would he think that?” Ian asked, though the sinking in his gut made him realize he already knew.
“I don’t know, but he thinks Aram Crane’s been messing with his traps. What upset me most, he said something about that man following you, at a place called Cherry Valley.” Her eyes pierced him, green and steady. “Was he not meant to say that?”
He read her preoccupation more clearly now. She knew he had been keeping a secret from her—a troubling one. And with all his talk of honesty.
“Here,” he said, handing her the parcel. “Open it. If it contains what I think it does, it will help me explain.”
He sensed her bottled questions as she took the parcel, worked loose the twine, then the oilcloth wrapping. Inside was a letter, as well as another piece of oilcloth wrapped around something small. He took the letter. “That’s the bit I want ye to see,” he said of the other item. “Open it. Careful though. Don’t want to spill it.”
Seona set the small parcel on her lap and unwrapped it to reveal a scattering of gold flakes and a few small pieces of quartz stone, veined with gold.
“Oh,” she breathed, then covered the gold with a sheltering hand when her breath stirred the smaller bits. “I don’t know what I expected.” She raised her hand, peering again. “Not this.”
“D’ye know what it is?”
She touched a flake with a fingertip. “I’ve seen something like it. Ally found a rock like this once, but bigger. About the size of a hazelnut.”
“Did he?” Ian asked, surprised. “When?”
She stared out toward the corn standing high, thinking. “I must have been seven, maybe eight. You mind me telling how Ally used to give me things, like the arrowhead I found the day Gabriel was born?”
He grinned. He had given that arrowhead back to her in Boston, when they parted. “D’ye still have that?”
“Not on me, but yes.”
She smiled back, and he felt the tension in his chest uncoil a little.
“Seona . . . what ye’ve got in your lap there is gold. That’s how it looks, come straight from the earth.” He told her of the discovery across the creek on John and Cecily Reynold’s land. “We kept it secret until I returned to Boston. Da knows. And Neil MacGregor. Matthew, too, though I didn’t mean him to hear of it. Now ye.”
She was quiet, shoulder no longer pressed to his, eyes fixed on the substance in her lap. “This is how Mister John’s been paying for the land you sold him?”
“Aye. Which is where the trouble with Aram Crane comes into it. Remember I told ye I’d paid off this farm before I met ye in Albany? I paid with gold—as I did when I chose this tract.” He gazed out over his land, but it was Crane he saw, those predatory eyes watching him leave that morning in Cherry Valley. “I never told Judge Cooper where the gold came from, though he tried his best to pry the knowledge from me. He’s fixated on finding ore on his own landholdings. I hoped he’d drop the matter—employ some discretion about it at the least.”
A hint of alarm clouded her expression. “Judge Cooper told people?”
“To be fair, it mightn’t have been the judge who set Aram Crane’s nose to sniffing after me to start with. Cooper’s wee son saw the gold. As did his lawyer. Perhaps his wife did, too, or a maid that dusted the room. Could be it was my own fault. I made a particular purchase in Cooperstown and paid for it with gold.”
He had that purchase in his coat pocket now.
“Somehow Crane must have got wind of the gold and linked me to it. I’ve no other explanation for why, when I left Cooperstown to come to ye, the man followed me to Cherry Valley.”
Seona’s eyes widened. “Did he follow you to Albany? Was he nearby all that time, while we were coming to this place?”
“I never saw him again after Cherry Valley,” he said, wishing it meant Crane hadn’t merely done a better job of eluding his sight. “I’d hoped that was the end of it. Then a letter came from Judge Cooper. It arrived with a broken seal. Which mightn’t have worried me had Cooper not written of the gold.”
“You’re thinking Aram Crane got hold of your letter; he’s the one broke the seal? How can you know that?”
“I cannot know. But taken together with what Francis Waring saw, evidence the man has been hanging about Shiloh again, and now Matthew . . .” He stopped, noting how her face had paled. “Seona, I can see you’re worried—”
“Worri
ed?”
“Afraid,” he amended, feeling wretched. “It’s why I haven’t told ye this until now.”
She rewrapped the gold John had sent and thrust it at him. “Scared witless or not, I need to know what threatens me and Gabriel—all of us. So I can be on my guard, not go riding off to Shiloh again or anything foolish.”
“That’s just it. I didn’t want ye to be afraid here. It’s the last thing I want.” Setting the parcel and unread letter aside, he took both her hands in his and rose to his knees to face her. “Whatever threatens us, I will protect ye. It’s what I mean to do and all I want to do. Protect ye, provide for ye.”
“Ian.” She gripped his hands, leaning toward him, eyes pleading for his understanding. “When I was at Mountain Laurel, I had ample cause to fear. But I could generally tell where the meanness would come from. If I couldn’t, Mama could. Or Malcolm. Sometimes I could hide myself, let it pass. But here . . . I don’t know this place, these people. I don’t know where to trust or where to keep up my guard.”
“Trust me. Let me guard ye.” Ian let go a hand to touch her face. They were both older now, more life lived, griefs borne, but she was as artlessly beautiful as on the day they collided in his uncle’s upstairs passage, with her coiling hair and creek-water eyes, that mouth he still wanted to kiss every time he saw it.
“Seona . . . will ye marry me? Let me be a covering to ye in every way, as I’ve always wanted to be.” Her eyes held his while his heart slammed. He kept talking. “I know it was understood we would marry when ye came here with Gabriel, but I want to do this right.” He dug into his coat pocket and found the ring. “I’ve wanted to give ye this, as a sign of my love and my pledge, since Albany. Will ye accept it? Will ye be my wife?”
The tiny diamonds set into the morning glories entwining the silver band glinted in a dapple of sunlight. Seona took the ring, turned it, noticed the words engraved around its inner surface. Words he had memorized.