Shiloh

by Lori Benton

  Malcolm nodded, but Seona declined. Before that glorious rainbow faded, she had asked Malcolm to tell her those fear not verses again. Now she sat at the MacGregors’ long table, pulled Mandy onto her lap, and looked through Neil’s field guide, pondering the verses, feeding her spirit as she turned pages and remarked on drawings finer than anything she would ever produce. She would take up painting again though. Among other essential things.

  “What’s this one, Mama?” Mandy asked, her voice clear as a bell.

  “It says here at the bottom. Bog laurel.” Thank You, almighty God, for this sweet girl-child. Keep Your strong arms around her brother until he’s brought back safe to mine . . .

  “I was born at a Laurel,” Mandy said, tilting her face up to Seona’s.

  “You were born at a place called Mountain Laurel, in North Carolina. So was I. So was your Granny Lily and Naomi, Ally—”

  “Gabriel?”

  Seona swallowed. Let not your heart be troubled . . . “Gabriel, too,” she said, voice steady on his name.

  Mandy tugged at her encircling arm. “Because we’re family?”

  Seona glanced at Malcolm, watching from his seat at the table. “That’s right. By blood or by heart.” All of them born at Mountain Laurel and elsewhere, linked by birth or choice.

  She was about to turn another page in Neil MacGregor’s book when Mandy’s head bobbed erect. “Granny!”

  Seona hadn’t heard the surgery door open. Lily and Naomi filed into the kitchen looking wrung from their ordeal. Josephine, startled awake, let out a wail of need no jiggling could satisfy.

  Maggie rescued Lem. She took her baby sister and whisked her into the surgery, closing the door behind her, muffling the baby’s cries. They soon ceased.

  Seona set Mandy on the bench beside her and rose.

  Naomi went straight for the kettle, peered in at what remained, and started ladling stew onto two plates. “Thank the Lord there’s leftovers. I’m give out for want of it. Lily, you too.”

  Seona rounded the table and took her mama by the arm. “Come sit.” Nearly swaying on her feet, Lily sat on a bench across from Mandy. Naomi set a plate of stew and a spoon in front of her. “Mama? Is he all right?”

  Lily pursed her lips and blew out a long breath. “He stayed awake through it all,” she said at last. “Guiding me every cut, every stitch, the setting of every bone.” She met Seona’s gaze, then blinked at Mandy, Malcolm, Lem, the plate in front of her. “We saved his foot, I think. How much use of it he’ll have, I don’t know.”

  “Time will tell.” Seona put an arm around the exhausted bow of her mother’s spine. “He’s overcome so much already, and his faith is stronger for it. I think, no matter what, Dr. Neil will be all right.” She glanced at Malcolm. “We can release him to the Almighty.”

  Lily pulled her head back, staring, a crease between her brows. “Girl-baby?”

  Seona had opened her mouth to tell her mama about the fear not verses, the rainbow, the talk in the stable, when from that direction voices rose—not just male voices.

  “That’s Catriona!” Lem exclaimed.

  Before she could catch another breath, Seona was off that bench and through the house and onto the veranda, where she halted at sight of horses congregated in the stable-yard and three . . . no, four figures dismounting. Matthew, his face streaked with blood. Catriona, handing down their son to Ian.

  “Gabriel!” She leapt down the veranda steps and flew across the puddled yard, where she halted and received her son, who clung crying not from harm—to her soaring relief he had taken none—but an exhaustion deep as her mama’s.

  “It’s all right,” she soothed, rubbing his back, eyes shut to keep the world at bay. “You’re all right now. Mama’s got you, baby.”

  “Aye, he is all right,” Ian said, his voice near.

  “So am I, in case anyone wants to know.”

  The edge of laughter in Catriona’s tone made Seona’s eyes spring open. She shifted Gabriel in her grasp and reached for Ian’s sister, pulling her into a tight embrace. “I’m so relieved you are.”

  “Pa?” Matthew asked, looking toward the house.

  “Willa is in the surgery with him,” Lily said, having followed Seona out into the yard.

  Seona turned to see Mandy in her arms. The child squirmed down and ran to Ian, who swooped her up and kissed her soundly. She looked at her brother, sagging in Seona’s arms. “Where did you go, Gabriel? You made Mama worry!”

  “Sahwee, Mandy . . . ,” Gabriel murmured, half-asleep against Seona’s shoulder.

  Ian’s gaze stayed fixed on them as he told Matthew, “Go inside; see your da. I’ll stable the horses, put the mare in a paddock for ye to sort later.”

  Seona didn’t ask where the black mare had come from. She only wanted to hold her boy, feel the strain of his weight as she pressed him close. Everything else felt far away.

  “Let’s see to that gash,” Catriona said, taking Matthew’s arm to tow him toward the house, adding over her shoulder, “Lily, could you have a look?”

  Seona thought surely her mama had done enough, but Lily nodded and said, “I’ll be right in . . .”

  Seona turned to watch the pair cross the yard in time to see Catriona’s grip on Matthew’s arm slide down to his hand, which she clasped as they climbed the veranda steps. Matthew didn’t pull his away.

  “Is it safe to go home?” Seona asked, at last addressing Ian, her heart expanding toward him now she had fully absorbed the fact of Gabriel’s safety—knowing she had so much to say. So much to explain. He was still holding Mandy. His eyes held longing. Pain.

  “Crane is gone.” He took a step toward her as if intending to say more, when Lily spoke again, her voice sharp.

  “Where’s Joseph? Did he make it back to ye?”

  Until that moment Seona hadn’t registered Joseph’s absence.

  “He did,” Ian said. “And just in time. Crane had taken Matthew down and was about to do the same to me, but at sight of Joseph, he ran. There was a trap—a deadfall snare Crane set along a ravine. He fell and sprang it himself and was swept over the side into a creek raging high from the rain. The water took him.” Ian shook his head and looked at Lily with haunted eyes. “I thought Crane surely drowned—if not killed by that deadfall collapsing on him—but Joseph wouldn’t trust to it. He went down the ravine after the man. Let the creek carry him downstream too.”

  “With that wounded arm?” Her mama’s face went gray. “How high was the water? Raging, ye said?”

  “Aye, but Joseph’s strong . . .” Ian’s reassurance trailed off, for Lily hadn’t waited to hear it. She had turned back toward the house.

  “Mama?” Seona called.

  Lily didn’t pause. Nor did she go inside. At the veranda steps she veered away and headed toward the woods that grew between the MacGregors’ house and the lake. The north end, nearest the ridge.

  “Mama!”

  Lily reached the trees and kept going.

  “I have the horses to deal with,” Ian said. “But we need to—”

  “Ian,” she interrupted, “what’s wrong with Mama?”

  “I think she . . .” Ian shook his head. “Seona, can we talk for a moment? Please.”

  The need for it screamed from his eyes. Seona was torn by the same need, but also by the dismay she had seen on her mama’s face. She needed to tell Ian how wrong she had been for making him think her happiness—maybe even her love—rested solely on his efforts to keep them safe. But with their arms full of their children, she couldn’t even embrace him. She managed to free a hand to grip his arm, meaning to reassure, but he flinched when she said, “We’ll talk at home. Soon. Ian—I need to go after Mama.”

  43

  Lily had reached the wood’s far edge, where scattered pines opened to the lakeshore, before Seona, trotting along the rooted path with Gabriel nodding in her arms, caught up. “Mama, wait!”

  Out from under the pines, Lily halted on the path that led around
the lake to their fields and cabins. She was crying when she turned.

  Catching her breath from the chase, Seona hoisted Gabriel higher on her hip. “What’s wrong? Is Dr. MacGregor worse off than you let on? That must have been the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do.”

  Lily palmed away her tears. “Hard, but we came through. Barring any festering, we saved his foot. He’ll walk on it again, God willing.”

  “Then what’s got you crying?” Sheer exhaustion would be enough.

  Her mama held her gaze, eyes brimming with more feelings than Seona could catch and name. “Girl-baby, there’s something I need to tell ye.”

  Seona stepped closer. “What?”

  Her mama’s smile was a tremulous effort. “I aim to marry Joseph . . . if he comes back to us.”

  Under the storm-racked sky the lake water lapped in tiny ripples along its shore. Farther out a chilling breeze ruffled its dark surface. Seona had left her shawl in Willa MacGregor’s kitchen, but she felt nothing—saw nothing, save her mama’s earnest eyes as she spoke.

  “It’s been the same for him as me all these years. Grieving a love that couldn’t be, never finding it elsewhere. Just waiting, loving the ones in our care. Then that morning he came seeking my help for Willa . . . he says he knew as I came running from the stable it was me he’d waited for. I took longer to know the same. But I do know now. We mean to leave afore snow comes. I’m going to Grand River with Joseph.”

  “What?” Seona bit her tongue before she said the words that sprang to mind—Mama, this is no time for fooling. Plain enough it wasn’t fooling.

  Not so long ago she had wondered if her mama had dreams or hopes apart from her and Gabriel, but since coming to New York, she had been so caught up with her own hopes and fears she hadn’t thought about such things. She had fallen back into the habit of taking her mama for granted. But all the while, her mama’s heart had quietly been opening to Joseph Tames-His-Horse. She meant to marry him. She meant to leave.

  In all her planning and second-guessing those plans, Seona had never imagined a life without her mama in it. She wouldn’t be in it much longer—if Joseph hadn’t gone down that creek to his death.

  Let not your heart be troubled . . .

  “Girl-baby, listen.” Lily touched her arm, the other hand on Gabriel’s head. “Ye’ve had your doubts, especially under shadow of these terrible threats, and I know he hasn’t done everything perfect, but ye’re never going to find a man who loves ye like this boy’s daddy does. One who would march into a lion’s den for ye both—like he proved today.” She stroked Gabriel’s tousled curls, relief over his safe return plain. “Even so, he’s just a man. Don’t rest your deepest hope in him.”

  “I know that now, and I won’t.” Seona covered her mama’s hand with her own. “I just never thought you would leave.”

  “Don’t put your hope in me, either. I’m a woman, like ye.”

  Seona couldn’t stop the tears welling. “Of course you are, Mama. And you deserve everything I hope for myself. It’s just . . . I’ll miss you when you go.”

  When, not if. Catching that distinction, Lily’s dark eyes widened. “D’ye believe he’s well then? Joseph? That he’s coming back for me?”

  “I do,” Seona said.

  Her mama’s eyes flared wider as she looked past Seona to the edge of the forest that spread down nigh to the lakeshore, from whence a deep voice spoke.

  “As should you, Tsigalili. For I have come back.”

  Seona caught the joy breaking over her mama’s face before whirling to see Joseph Tames-His-Horse, bruised and bloodied, stepping from among the dripping trees. Lily ran to the forest’s edge, straight into his arms.

  Holding her sleeping boy, Seona took in the sight of the tall warrior cradling her mama to his chest—and felt her heart molding to this unforeseen turn. Over her mama’s head, Joseph lifted his gaze and, with a striking vulnerability, silently sought her blessing.

  Smiling at the man who, it occurred, had every intention of becoming her daddy, Seona nodded, receiving the unexpected gift.

  Then she left them and went to find Ian.

  His hands were shaking as he unsaddled Juturna’s dam, preparing to put her into the paddock with Ruaidh. With Nip and Tuck trailing, Ally had ridden to the pasture to check on the cattle they had left untended since morning. Naomi and Malcolm were in their cabin with Mandy. Catriona had stayed at the MacGregors’, while Willa saw to Matthew’s gashed scalp. For Joseph he still prayed, hoping someone would bring word ere long. As for Seona, Lily, and Gabriel, he had yet to see them returning around the lake.

  We’ll talk at home. It was all Seona had said before racing after her mother. He tried to summon every nuance of her expression, but it had happened so quickly. She had put a hand to his arm and squeezed—he hadn’t imagined that—and he had seen that she still wore the ring he put there. I Am My Beloved’s.

  Was she still? He wouldn’t blame her if she returned to Boston with Lily and Gabriel after all this. They would be safe there. His da would make sure of it, one way or another.

  He set the mare’s saddle where it normally rested and returned with a currying brush, his constricted heart a painful throbbing in his chest. Had she found Lily? Were they all right?

  Seconds later a notion so terrible swept him that he dropped the brush to clatter on the packed earth, causing the mare to snort. Had Crane set traps between the lake and the ridge? He and Matthew had sprung several more spotted on their way down the mountain. What if there were others?

  Panic had him by the scruff. He unlatched the outer box door and gave the mare a smack on the rump, sending her out unbrushed to graze with Ruaidh. He left the stable at a run, heading for the lake.

  He hadn’t cleared the beeches before he saw Seona coming across the harvested cornfield, Gabriel in her arms, face composed—until she caught sight of him. He halted in her cabin-yard, for the second time that day gripped with relief so powerful it nearly doubled him.

  Seona hurried her steps, rightly judging his state if not the reason for it. “It’s all right,” she said, a little breathless. “Mama’s with Joseph.”

  “Joseph?” he echoed. “He’s all right then?”

  “Yes. I don’t know about Crane or what he might’ve done to the man, but he and Mama—” She shook her head, and the most singular smile he had ever seen curved her lips, a smile with as much sorrow as joy behind it. Tears shimmered in her eyes. “They mean to marry.”

  That knocked every other thought from his head. “Each other?”

  “Yes!” She laughed and hefted Gabriel, sagging in her arms. “I need to get this boy down afore I drop him.”

  Ian reached for Gabriel, relieving her of the strain. She followed him into the cabin and pulled back the blankets of the little bed, where he laid their son, still damp from his rainy adventure. Gabriel rolled onto his side, nestled his head into the pillow, and stuck a thumb in his mouth. Seona’s breath rushed out at the sight.

  “God Almighty be thanked,” Ian said, which made her look at him.

  “And you, for getting him back.”

  The calm statement was so not what he had expected from her, he hardly knew what to say. “Seona—I . . .”

  “Outside,” she whispered. Taking an old shawl off a peg by the door, one kept for work, she stepped out of the cabin. Still chafing in his rain-dampened coat and breeches, boots a muddy mess, hair drying in ropy curls, he followed her out, knowing he looked a wreck.

  The air was chill. The storm clouds overhead were thinning, racing eastward on a shivering breeze.

  Seona sat on the bench beside the door. “I completely missed it, Mama and Joseph. I’ve been so centered on myself, second-guessing everything both of us have done and said—oh!” she interrupted herself. “Mama’s not just getting married, she’s leaving. Going to Canada with Joseph.”

  Ian stepped away, mind spinning over what she had started to say. Second-guessing everything . . . “Joseph said nothing of i
t to me. But . . . don’t ye think it’s for the best?”

  She blinked. “Why would you say that?”

  Surprised she need ask, he said, “Ye’d be better off with them, ye and Gabriel, given all the ways I . . . I’ve failed ye.” Her puzzled expression changed to something else. Disappointment? Blame? He pivoted before he could discern what and so she wouldn’t witness his own heartache as he plowed on. “Ye’d be safe with them, aye? Joseph . . . he’ll be your da once they’re married. And if I know anything of Joseph Tames-His-Horse, he knows how to take care of his kin. He would—”

  “Ian, sit down here beside me.”

  He clenched his fists, gazing stubbornly toward the lake. “Let me finish.”

  “No.”

  At that he turned. She had risen, shawl wrapping her shoulders, arms crossed. “I see the despair in you and can guess what you mean to say. I don’t want to hear it.”

  Blood rose hot into his face. “Ye won’t even hear me out?”

  “I won’t. There’s no reason for it. Despair is for those who have no future, no hope. We have both.”

  Tears came like a tide-rush, burning his eyes and nose. “We do?” was all he managed before the swell took him.

  She uncrossed her arms and walked into his, held him tight, and let him cry into her hair. He felt her fingers in his, gently stroking through the tangles the day had made. “We’re going to be married in a few days’ time. Aren’t we?”

  A strangled sound escaped him, not a sob nor yet a laugh. “I . . . I think I want to sit down now.”

  They sat outside the cabin where Gabriel slept, watching the changing sky as gray clouds parted and the westering sun peeked through, lighting up the ridge and lakeshore, faintly raucous with the calls of wild geese. Seona talked of what had happened in Neil MacGregor’s barn while her mama fought to save their neighbor’s foot, if not his very life.

  “Malcolm made me see how I was letting fear rule my heart, how I’d put my hope in the wrong place—too much in you, too little in God. That wasn’t fair, Ian. I went so far as to blame you for Gabriel . . . but it wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I insisted on taking him and Mandy into Shiloh. I’m sorry, for all of it.”