by Lori Benton
He groaned at her apology. “Seona . . . it’s all right.”
“It’s not. I neglected things I shouldn’t have, let slip what I knew was right to do, while under my nose I had the example of a man doing them—Malcolm, learning to read his Bible, then reading it through, day by day, setting his hope on things eternal. That’s how a body guards their heart. I let myself get too busy doing all the things needing done, so my soul went unfed, my heart unguarded. I stopped hearing the Lord’s voice and listened to fear.”
Conviction drove through Ian, piercing as an arrow. He bowed his face into his hands, laid bare before the Almighty’s revealing light. He was no less culpable than she. Forgive me, he prayed, then confessed to Seona how he had let himself believe it was up to him to anticipate every evil that might raise its head over the horizon, every need, and get ahead of it all. “But my fear was that I could never do enough to keep ye safe or provide all I want for ye and the bairns. It’s given me no rest. No time for the things I intended us to do, like what ye said. Seeking the Almighty. Laying that foundation before I try and build upon it.”
“I want that foundation,” she said, gazing off to where he would in a few months’ time begin laying another foundation, for a home. “I want to find the time to build it. Everything else—all those good things we want? They’ll come in time if they’re needed. But not if we’re stumbling at every wind that blows.”
He straightened and took her hand in his, felt her fingers grip his willingly, marveling that after all they had been though, she could want such things. Want him. “Find the time or make it, we will. So we never again need find our way back to the Almighty.”
“Or each other.”
“Aye,” he said. “And what happened, Seona, it wasn’t your fault. Crane would have taken Catriona alone or found a way to reach the children, or ye, here. But he’s gone now. I know Joseph saw to that.”
He closed his eyes against a shower of sunlight, feeling the ring on Seona’s finger, rubbing against his skin. He blinked down at it. The tiny diamonds in the flowered band caught sunlight and sparkled like the rain beading the grasses at the yard’s edge, dripping from the golden beech leaves of the mossy giant that sheltered the cabin at their backs.
Nothing was as bright as her creek-water eyes. He leaned his head and kissed her gently, feeling the jolt go through him, tender and sweet, when she kissed him back.
He smiled against her mouth, then asked, “D’ye mind what the ring I gave ye says?”
She pulled back to meet his gaze. “Of course.”
“Ye’re my beloved. And always will be.” Though he couldn’t summon courage to ask what he wanted to, she had mercy enough to tell him anyway.
“‘I Am My Beloved’s,’” she quoted, leaning in to rest her head against his shoulder. “And he is mine.”
44
Early October 1797
The beeches edging the cabin-yard shimmering gold . . . leaves drifting down from spreading boughs, sparks on cool air, twirling in the grip of the gentlest breeze . . . a sky so cloudless blue it drowned the senses . . . the late-morning sun taking the edge off autumn’s chill . . . across the harvested fields, the distant chorus of geese on the lake . . .
Ian Cameron judged his wedding day to be as perfect as if he had arranged it so. Even when a dozen geese rose to cut across the heavens in a dark wedge, calling as they flew, he could find nothing melancholy in the sound, though in the past it had struck him as most mournful. On that day the cries of the wild geese spoke to his heart of enduring companionship, of seasons lived in community, such as that gathered to celebrate his and Seona’s nuptials.
The Kepplers were in attendance. Goodenough and Lem had come with Colonel Waring, standing now to officiate the ceremony mere moments from starting.
Along with Willa and their children, Neil MacGregor had come, having ventured from home for the first time since his injury on the mountain. With his ankle unable to long bear him up, even with the aid of a crutch, a chair had been provided him, next to Malcolm’s. Neil’s recuperation would be long, perhaps never full, but in keeping with his irrepressible spirit and indomitable faith, the man had determined to resume his doctoring, to everyone’s relief. Willa’s most especially.
The MacGregors had come not only to witness Ian and Seona’s joining, but that of Lily and Joseph Tames-His-Horse.
Until three days ago, Seona’s mother and Willa’s clan brother had meant to journey to Grand River and Joseph’s Mohawk kin to marry there, assuming Colonel Waring would refuse to officiate for them, Joseph’s having been the hand that took the life of his eldest son. The old magistrate had surprised one and all, forgiving the deed and lifting the restrictions of his and Joseph’s uneasy truce.
Now the two stood in each other’s presence for the first time since that fateful night, neither completely at ease, though Ian guessed Joseph’s nervousness—discernible only by the tension in his stillness—had less to do with Elias Waring than the reason for Ian’s own.
Taller than any man present, save Ally, the man set to become Ian’s father-by-law was a splendid sight in his native dress, bedecked in quillwork and buckskin fringe and sun-gilt silver, his long hair tied with the blue-gray feathers of a heron. A white blanket with red trim, folded long, was draped across one shoulder.
With their backs to Colonel Waring, Joseph and Ian watched the cabin where Seona and Lily had been, for the past hour, gowning up and having their hair arranged. Joseph cast a sideways glance at him, dark eyes betraying impatience. Ian grinned. The corner of Joseph’s mouth quirked in response before he shifted his gaze past those gathered, to the door of the cabin from which their brides would soon—very soon, please—emerge.
A titter started among the Keppler offspring. It swept back across the ranks of witnesses, young and old. Ian had no attention to spare for their murmured words, though he shot his children a warm look, Mandy in Naomi’s arms, Gabriel perched higher than them all, little legs astride Ally’s broad shoulders.
Ian glanced again at Joseph in time to see the warrior’s deep chest expand in an indrawn breath, his dark eyes light with anticipation. He whipped his gaze back to the cabin. Its door had opened.
Catriona and Willa were first to emerge, hurrying to their places, Willa beside Neil’s chair, Catriona to Matthew’s side—like an arrow shot. Matthew greeted her with a look so blatantly besotted Ian looked away, not before he saw their hands clasp, not quite hidden in the folds of his sister’s gown.
Then Seona appeared in the cabin doorway, dressed in her green gown, and all other thought fled his mind. She paused, framed in the opening, and met his gaze across the yard. Smiling full, she stepped aside for Lily to exit the cabin. Hand in hand, mother and daughter crossed a golden carpet of beech leaves to those gathered at the grove’s edge.
Ian’s breath caught somewhere in his throat and held there, while currents coursed through him like the blood in his veins. Joy, relief, wonder that this day had dawned for them at last and with such splendor. But no glory of nature on display could outshine Seona, dark hair held back from her face with the comb he had given her long ago, entwined with the morning glories that matched her ring, the rest left curling thick to her waist. Her head was crowned with a circlet of red huckleberry leaves. Her eyes were as vivid as the day.
Lily, similarly crowned, wore an amber gown the women had furiously stitched over the preceding days. With her face shining for her bridegroom, she took his outstretched hand as Ian reached for Seona’s.
Lily released her with a smile already teary, both clearly eager to get on with things.
Joseph and Lily, they had decided, would be married first. But as Ian and Seona stepped aside so they could stand before Elias Waring and exchange those ageless vows to love, honor, and cherish, Ian caught Seona’s gaze. They shared one of those looks that spoke without words.
The evening before, while they had shifted her and Gabriel’s belongings to Ian’s larger cabin, and Catriona’s to
Seona’s—after today, Lily would go with Joseph to stay for a while with the MacGregors—Ian had unearthed the wee portraits of Miranda and Aidan Cameron, which Seona had kept since leaving Mountain Laurel.
Their faces were fresh in his mind as they stood beneath the beeches. Ian did not deem it too fanciful to believe that, more than on that day in the birch hollow, he had the blessing of his cousin, Aidan, now. Not just for this union with his daughter—made right and true in this blessed second chance—but for Lily, who had at last found a man with whom she could safely rest her heart.
Seona squeezed his hand, her lifted face shining with the day’s double portion of joy. Ian had to will himself not to bend close and kiss her before either could speak their vows. Instead they watched with full hearts as Lily and Joseph did the speaking and the kissing.
“I didn’t want to cry today, Mama,” she had told Lily as Catriona and Willa left off their arranging of hair and gowns and stepped from the cabin, leaving the door open to the blazing blue-gold of their wedding day. She had slid two fingers across her cheek. “Look now, I’m already wiping tears.”
Her mama’s eyes had shimmered too. “This day deserves its tears. Let them fall, girl-baby. They’re joyful ones, aren’t they?”
“My heart is so full,” Seona had whispered and all but fell into her mother’s embrace. Lily had held her briefly, kissed her cheek, then touched it tenderly. Never mind the fine lines netting the corners of her eyes or the bit of white threading her crow-black hair, woven in a simple braid and crowned in scarlet leaves, her mama had never looked so radiantly young, with a smile that could no more be dimmed than could Seona’s own.
“Ye’re beautiful,” Lily had said. “Beautiful and whole. Shall we do this?”
Not a question. An invitation.
“Let’s go get married, Mama.” This time there would be no fragile, makeshift promises traded in secret. A real wedding, openly celebrated, as sure and true as the foundation she and Ian meant to build upon.
Seona stepped outside the cabin into the cool of the day and felt the sun’s warmth lightly touch her shoulders. She paused for her mama to join her, clasping hands as they walked on scattered beech leaves, down the short aisle created as their guests parted to let them pass, each to the side of the man who had eyes for none but her. She spared the tall, bighearted warrior who was about to become her daddy a swift smile. Then all her attention was for Ian.
His eyes were a smokier blue than the sky, his hair a less vibrant gold than the leaves drifting down around them, but his smile rivaled the late-morning sun still rising in the sky. His hand held tight to hers as her mama and Joseph spoke their vows and joined their futures along with their hearts, while she tucked away for safekeeping impressions of the passing moments.
The warm pressure of Ian’s fingers. His solid presence at her side. Geese flying over, calling to each other. The rattle of the breeze through golden leaves overhead. A brief, bright shower as some fell . . .
The sense of others looking on. Kin and neighbors—some of those neighbors becoming kin—but also those who had lived and loved and gone their way. Master Hugh, her granddaddy. Judith, whose daughter she would love and raise with stories of her mama as a girl. The father and grandmother she had never seen, save in their tiny portraits. Looking up at Ian only to realize he was thinking of Miranda and Aidan Cameron too . . .
Elias Waring finished with her mama and Joseph, pronouncing them husband and wife. There came the first kiss on the mouth Seona had ever seen her mama give a man. Joseph unfolded his red-trimmed blanket and draped it over his and her mama’s shoulders. Lily nestled against the ribs of her new husband, sheltered beneath the blanket and his encircling arm.
Seona wiped a few more tears and held her mama’s joyful gaze. Then it was her and Ian’s turn.
No stumbling over words this time. She had memorized her vows to love, honor, cherish—until death parted them. So had Ian. Colonel Waring had but to nudge them along while they faced one another, hands clasped.
Her mama’s turn to cry.
Seona already wore a ring. After the vows there was a kiss, chaste and sweet if not exactly brief, before the old magistrate said a prayer of blessing over them all.
While he prayed, Seona and Ian faced each other, hands still clasped between them, eyes closed. His breath warm on her brow. A breeze ruffling chilly fingers through her hair. The sun warming where it touched.
Something struck her left hand, cold, smooth, no harder than a finger tap.
She opened her eyes to find a perfectly formed beech leaf, yellow-gold, resting on their clasped hands, half on hers, half on Ian’s. He had felt it too and was looking at her when she lifted her gaze—all other eyes save those of the littlest still closed in reverence as Colonel Waring’s prayer went on. Again their thoughts converged.
The hollow with the waterfall . . . the canopy of autumn birches . . . Munin, her daddy’s old raven . . . the tying of a hair ribbon around their wrists . . . the birch leaf they had trapped between their bound hands.
Bound now by more than wishful thinking and unanchored hope, they opened their hands just enough to let the beech leaf fall into their cupped shelter, then closed it safely away. She would press it in their Bible, to remember.
Memory. That was what that old raven’s name had meant. Nothing to flinch from now, be they old memories or new, painful or joy-filled. For what was memory, after all, if not the trail of God’s grace following them all the days of their lives?
Early that morning, once it seemed certain the fine weather would hold, makeshift tables, benches, and chairs had been set up in the cabin-yard for the wedding feast, some brought from the MacGregors’, others from as far away as the Warings’, enough for everyone to have a seat or at least a block chair set nearby.
One table groaned under the bowls, platters, and kettles that kept coming out of Naomi’s cabin, some provided by Willa and Maggie—including a spiced ginger wedding cake that all but melted in Seona’s mouth. More contributions had been brought by Goodenough and Anni Keppler, creating an abundance that left Seona and her mama once more on the verge of tears for everyone’s kindness and generosity.
Pure thankfulness.
After everyone had eaten their fill and then some, there was dancing, none other than old Hector Lacey providing the tunes, having come by a fiddle from Jack Keagan’s store, already possessing the skill to play it.
They had wondered for a full day about that old man, after the ordeal on the mountain with Aram Crane was ended. Turned out he had fled his squatter’s shack at Crane’s invasion, shortly before the man brought Gabriel and Catriona there, captive. Mr. Lacey had found his way eventually to the MacGregors and since been provided that promised home with Colonel Waring, Goodenough, and Lem, where he seemed content to spend the winter.
“After giving himself a thorough scrubbing, out back of the stable,” Goodenough had been heard to say more than once. “But I cannot rid him of that mangy critter nesting round his neck—what he calls a beard,” she added as her foot tapped time to the old man’s fiddling and she watched the young folk and a few of their elders cutting circles in the cabin-yard. “Yet,” she was quick to add.
Seona and Ian hadn’t risen from their places at the table. Neither had Lily or Joseph, seated nearby, exchanging tender looks that made Seona want to cry—again—whenever she caught one.
They watched the dancers, Catriona and Matthew in particular.
“You already posted that letter to your parents,” Seona said, leaning close to feel Ian’s warmth, his thrumming energy. She knew he would be asking her to join the dancers before long. “But you didn’t mention them.”
She nodded toward his sister, being twirled among the dancers by Neil and Willa’s adopted son. The two made a handsome, striking contrast. Seona had seen Catriona happy before—giddy, even reckless—but now her joy was settled, centered. Seona knew she wasn’t the only one who had learned these past months where to place her hope
. Or in whom.
Lord, that we never need learn this again. Establish it in our hearts. Evermore.
Ian had written to Mister Robert and Miss Margaret of their pending nuptials, and of Lily and Joseph’s, and had given account of all that had transpired on the mountain—leaving out the more harrowing bits, including what had happened between Joseph’s going over the ravine into that raging creek and his showing up again on the lakeshore to claim himself a bride. A thing of vital importance, as it turned out, dispelling all doubt as to Aram Crane’s present situation, though they were left to wonder whether he perished by his own snare, drowned in the swollen creek after his fall, or escaped those perils only to be ended by human agency.
Joseph refused to speak of what he found downstream where the creek made a bend, nor in what manner he dealt with what he found there. Perhaps he had told her mama. As for the rest, knowing Aram Crane would never trouble them again was sufficient to render their sleep untroubled.
But Ian hadn’t mentioned Matthew in his letter, though from the way that young man was looking at his chosen dance partner, Seona knew Ian had best give his parents due warning. And reassurance. Matthew had accepted the position Elias Waring offered, of training the man’s horses full-time—which included a cabin on the property to live in.
It would come as a shock to Ian’s parents, no doubt, but if they could see her for themselves, they would discover a daughter vastly altered from the one they bade farewell to back in spring.
“They’ve my blessing,” Ian said. “Especially since they don’t mean to rush into things. Next summer maybe, aye?”
“That’s the last I heard on the matter,” Seona said, seeing Ian narrow his gaze as Matthew spun his sister in the steps of the dance, mirrored with varying degrees of success and laughter by the other couples, including Lem and Maggie.