Shenandoah Home (Sinclair Legacy Book 1)

by Sara Mitchell

  JosieMae laughed. “She asked me to fetch you—said you’d forget to come home iffen you was drawing.” She swiped her nose with Garnet’s hankie, then candidly pronounced, “Your dress is covered with mud. So’s your stockings and brogans, but your face isn’t bad . . . I wish I looked like you, Garnet. Even when you’re dirty, you’re purty.” Fresh tears welled.

  A funny-queer sort of catch tightened Garnet’s throat. “Well, I’m partial to my friend JosieMae, and I happen to think she’s fine just the way she is.”

  Flushing, the girl clambered to her feet. “Gotta go.” She ran a few steps, paused, then turned back. Her mouth opened and shut as if she were trying to work up the courage to speak.

  “Don’t forget our drawing lesson. We’ll do it next week,” Garnet called, understanding.

  Relief flooded JosieMae’s face. She bobbed her head, waved, then galloped clumsily up the long sloping meadow and disappeared over the crest.

  The lump in Garnet’s throat swelled. Why, she wondered as she slowly gathered up all her supplies, did God allow helpless children to suffer from the cruelties of a callous world? There was no answer, of course. The world was both cruel and callous, and all the prayers of righteous souls would not change that bitter truth. God sometimes responded to the pleas of His children—but sometimes, Garnet had learned, He chose not to.

  She reached for the sketchpad she’d tossed aside in her haste to comfort JosieMae, and realized that it had landed on top of the Sweet Cicely she’d been drawing. Two of the delicate flowers were crushed, and the stalk of a third had broken. Garnet dropped to her knees, cradling the destroyed blooms as though her unspoken apology would restore them.

  Overhead, a bird twittered in the budding branches of a willow tree, and somewhere on the other side of the hill one of Fergus Whalen’s cows bawled a plaintive message into the wind. With a long sigh Garnet rose. Enough maudlin melodrama, as Leah would uncharitably point out. She looped her bag over her shoulder and set off toward home, turning her mind toward tomorrow, when she hoped to head out in the buggy, toward Strasburg. The north branch of the Shenandoah River, along with its Cedar Creek tributary, had carved out deep, rocky gorges, over the years leaving the banks alongside choked with all manner of flora.

  Armed with knowledge, persistence, and pluck, Garnet hoped to unearth some twinleaf, a seven-petaled white wildflower similar to the common rue anemone. Unlike the anemone, however, the twinleaf was very rare. For months Mr. Smoot, her publisher in New York, had been urging her to include some lesser known species in her next batch of illustrations for his monthly magazine.

  If she were particularly fortunate, she might at least find some of the more infrequent species—puccoon . . . fumewort, or Dutchman’s-breeches.

  “Puccoon and Dutchman’s-breeches,” she told the bird. “If names like that don’t bring a smile to your face, nothing will.” Mostly content, Garnet lifted her face to the slanting sunbeams and rising wind. At least she’d be home before sunset, so Leah could only scold her about the dirt.

  Valley Turnpike, South Of Winchester, Virginia

  “God . . . why did You create humans in the first place? You’d have done better to endow a different species with a piece of Your divinity, if You were that lonely.” Sloan MacAllister, M.D., late of Adlerville, Pennsylvania, kicked one of the many sharp-edged stones littering the Valley Pike, a broad swath of crushed gravel roadway traversing a godforsaken state in a godforsaken valley.

  The blasphemous thought hovered in the air, tweaking a conscience Sloan was trying hard to forget he’d ever possessed.

  All right, he conceded, watching the rock sail over the low stone wall next to the Pike. All right. He would concede, if grudgingly, that no place on earth was altogether forsaken by God. Just men.

  Men like himself.

  Grimacing, he stepped to the side of the road beneath a scraggly oak tree, dropped his medical bag, then shrugged off his knapsack to stretch out a few kinks. Unfortunately nothing seemed to relax the mental kinks that had been slowly choking him from the brain down these past months. Or was it years . . .?

  Since breakfast, when he’d set out, he’d passed by rolling hills, patches of forest, and a couple of streams—runs, some locals called them, all guarded by blueish haze-covered mountains running north to south on both sides of the valley. At some point, the old Indian trail had metamorphosed into a wagon route, then to this macadamized Pike, complete with tollbooths every five miles between Winchester and Staunton, ninety-three miles to the south. Since Sloan was on foot, he’d been spared the frustration of waiting at the first two tollbooths for the keepers—both of them women—to raise the pole that blocked the road until they received a two-penny toll charged for a horse and rider.

  Buggies and wagons, he supposed, would extract more. Not that he cared one way or the other. Regardless, his surroundings offered a tranquil setting, despite all the bloody battles that had swept this section of the country twenty-five years earlier. Sloan wondered whether any corner left in God’s creation was still untainted by man’s corrupted nature.

  He picked up another stone, and without looking winged it into a meadow full of placid-faced bovines. Fortunately the missile landed harmlessly in a patch of bright yellow flowers instead of striking a cud-chewing cow. A few heads turned his way, but their massive indifference to the smoldering presence of an ill-tempered man almost prompted his first smile in weeks. Perhaps he should have been a veterinarian.

  For the past six years Sloan had fought sickness of all kinds, arming himself with ongoing discoveries in cellular pathology, physiology, and bacteriology, claiming as his battle cry a verse from Psalms, where the Lord had promised to heal all of mankind’s diseases. Too bad he’d forgotten that the greatest “disease” was man’s heart. You could have done more, Lord, Sloan thought as he gathered up bag and knapsack. The pomposity and arrogance of fellow doctors . . . the ignorance and obtuseness of patients who refused to be honest with him about their conditions because revealing everything “offended their sensibilities.” Tom . . . Amos Jorvik . . . Jenna.

  His life had become a powder keg, culminating in an explosion the previous month that spewed pieces of his soul like shrapnel. Never again would he be able to face death with the naive confidence of years past. Right now it was life bleeding him dry, each breath he inhaled a reminder of two people—one of them his brother—who would never breathe again.

  So he had chucked it all—home, profession, dreams . . . perhaps even a goodly portion of his faith—to disappear here in the backwoods of an unfamiliar culture. One as alien to his roots as the squalid railroad company town that had butchered his soul. He didn’t know why he’d brought along his bag. Habit, probably. He’d sell it, in the very next town, and donate the proceeds to the first helpless beggar he passed. Sloan no longer considered himself a doctor. A man couldn’t call himself a physician when he hated people, hated himself.

  Why didn’t You do more?

  The only answer Sloan received to this silent accusation was a rumble of thunder from a line of black clouds oozing over the western ridges and a damp wind slapping his face like the kiss of a slobbering dog. With a sour grin Sloan flipped up the collar of his jacket and hunched his shoulders. April in the South wasn’t turning out to be the sunny haven old Berta Schumacher had promised.

  “If you got to run, Doc, you try the mountains of Virginia. They’ll heal what’s ailing your soul.” The trembling hands, so twisted with rheumatoid arthritis they more resembled claws, fumbled for her bottle of Kakapo Indian Oil.

  “That stuff won’t help and you know it, Mrs. Schumacher.”

  “Dr. MacAllister, what’ll help will be this tired old body lying in a cozy coffin, and me tickling the ivories with Jesus Himself singing along.” She’d given Sloan a slow measuring look that to this day had the power to make him squirm. “Go to the hills and heal, son. But don’t go because you’re running away. Go because you’re running toward the answer.”

&nb
sp; The answer to what? Sloan hadn’t bothered to ask at the time, because he hadn’t cared. He still didn’t. Right now, running away took all his energy.

  But this morning when his horse pulled up lame, he’d made arrangements to leave the faithful mare under the care of the man who owned the livery stable, then set out walking instead of waiting for the next southbound train. Nothing like a solitary hike to free a man’s mind, give him time to think. As a boy, he’d tramped the Berkshires with his father and brothers—Sloan closed that particular memory door with a resounding thud and trudged stoically down the road, his face to the wind.

  Two

  Some while later Sloan rounded a bend, and his eye caught on a splash of color halfway up another of the interminable rolling meadows landscaping the Shenandoah Valley. His step slowed, then stopped altogether, and he lifted a hand to shade his eyes.

  So. His eyes weren’t playing tricks on him after all. It really was a woman, sitting up there in the middle of some purple flowers. Gauzy sunbeams dusted the meadow with ethereal light, blurring the lines of the woman’s shawl and the splash of blue gown floating over the grass. The setting eerily mimicked a Whistler painting hanging in the drawing room of his family home in Baltimore, except the woman’s back was to Sloan, and an old-fashioned sunbonnet completely covered her head and neck.

  Had she materialized from a sod hut on the Nebraska plains or something? Sloan hadn’t seen a woman wearing one of those contraptions since he was a small boy. Reluctantly charmed by the quaintness of it, he dropped his gear by the side of the road, then casually vaulted over the stone wall.

  As he climbed through the long grasses and clumps of wildflowers, he debated whether to hail her or wait to speak until she heard his approach and turned around. His curiosity mounted with each step—what was she doing out here all alone? Her head was bent, her elbows tucked close against her sides, the line of her spine bowed, as though she were studying, or . . . God help him if she was weeping. Sloan had always been a sucker for tears, and his weakness infuriated him. Tears were one of a female’s most effective weapons, because they reduced a man to the intellectual level of an earthworm.

  A dozen paces away, and she still hadn’t moved or given any indication that she was aware of his presence.

  Sloan cleared his throat. There was no response.

  Slightly miffed, curiosity replaced by determination, he kept walking until he was less than a yard away. “Hello, there,” he began, assuming his best bedside voice to avoid frightening her. “I was walking along the road, and saw . . .” His voice trailed away.

  Instead of a start or a scream of surprise, her only response was the irritable wave of an ungloved hand. She neither turned nor looked up. Leave me alone, I’m busy, the gesture stated as plainly as words.

  It was an acknowledgment of sorts, but certainly not what Sloan had expected. Intrigued and irritated, he stood pondering her back and that ridiculous bonnet, wondering what to do. Good manners dictated he withdraw and leave her to her chosen isolation. Somewhat to his surprise, he realized he didn’t want to do that.

  What he wanted was . . . acknowledgment. “What are you doing?” he tried next. Hopefully a direct question would force a verbal response.

  Nothing.

  Sloan deliberately stepped in front of her, where he discovered that she was drawing on a large sketchpad. Oh. At least she hadn’t been weeping. Smiling to himself over his effrontery, he knelt and waved a hand in front of her face.

  Quick as a slap her head lifted, and she pressed the sketchpad against her chest. She was young, he saw, perhaps late teens to early twenties. Neatly framed by the bonnet brim and a lopsided bow, inquiring grayish-green eyes studied him out of an oval face sunkissed with freckles. Apparently she didn’t always wear the sunbonnet.

  “Hello,” he repeated, a little stunned by the unblemished purity of her expression. It had been a long time since he’d seen one free of pain and bone-deep weariness. Disillusionment and dissipation. Coyness and calculation . . . the catalog was endless.

  And yet . . . what shadowy emotion was lurking there? Fascinated, he stared at this fey creature with her otherworldly eyes until she spoke, her words a gentle, almost musical drawl.

  “Hello. Did you want something?” She blinked owlishly, frowning. “If not, I’m rather busy. If you don’t mind.” She gestured to the sketchpad, then glanced over his shoulder toward the line of thunderclouds.

  Sloan finally shook off his bemusement. This—this self-possessed Southern country maid had succeeded in doing what no woman save one had ever accomplished: rendering him as tongue-tied as a boy still in short pants. “Sorry for interrupting. Ah . . . I wasn’t expecting to meet a young woman, all alone out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  He tipped his head sideways, trying to peer beneath the concealing shadow of the bonnet. It made an effective shield—he couldn’t even ascertain the color of her hair. For all he knew, the girl was bald as an egg. “Are you alone? It doesn’t seem very wise.” The genteel young debutantes he used to escort around Baltimore and Philadelphia would sooner boil themselves in oil than appear in public unchaperoned. Jenna . . . he suppressed an inward shudder. Jenna had always demanded a male escort, even to walk down the block to a neighbor’s house. If Sloan couldn’t accompany her himself, Tom was quick to offer his arm. Tom . . .

  “You sound like my family.” She laid the sketchpad aside and stretched, rotating her head. “You’re not from around here, are you?” she said. “Most everybody hereabouts is long used to my wandering ways.”

  To his chagrin, Sloan found his gaze dwelling on the graceful line of her apricot-tinted cheek. “No,” he agreed dryly. “I’m not from around here.”

  Drawing room manners aside, he started to introduce himself, but saw that her attention was focused on her sketchpad. She even held it a little way out, obviously to better see whatever it was she’d been working on. Sloan might as well have been a tree stump.

  Disgruntled, even more annoyed with his own increasing fascination, he forced himself to relax. Then he sat down as though they were friends enjoying a picnic in the park. The situation was bizarre. Three years of Adlerville, not to mention a lifetime of Jenna’s Machiavellian ploys, should have rendered him immune to any vagaries of human nature. He should be unfazed by an unworldly looking young woman sketching without maid or companion in the middle of a deserted countryside.

  But he wasn’t.

  Sloan leaned forward with a determined smile. One more attempt, he decided. If she snubbed him, he’d swallow his pride like a man and take himself off. “My name’s Sloan MacAllister, originally from Baltimore, late of Pennsylvania.”

  “Well, I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. MacAllister, but I have to go. I’m trying to beat that storm”—she pointed toward the darkening clouds—“and make it to Cedar Creek while the weather’s still pleasant.” She smiled distractedly and reached for a large cloth bag beside her. “Do you happen to have the time?”

  Sloan lifted a brow, but tugged out his father’s gold pocket watch. “Twelve minutes past two, Miss—what did you say your name was?”

  “Buttercups and bitterweed!” She jumped to her feet in a flurry of motion. “I lost track of time.” With a graceful sweep of her arm, she stuffed sketchbook and writing tools inside the cloth sack, then looped it over her shoulder.

  Sloan had risen when she did, his gaze lingering on the guileless features and the unpretentious charm of those freckles. His muscles twitched with the urge to grab her arm, to force her attention to him. “What’s your name?” he insisted.

  “Hmm? My name?” She blinked again. “Oh, if you’re not from around here, I suppose you wouldn’t know, would you?” Suddenly her eyes were wary, evasive. “Garnet Sinclair. My name is Garnet Sinclair.”

  “Garnet Sinclair,” Sloan lifted his hand. “It’s a pleasure.”

  Instead of giving him her hand, she stepped back, her gaze moving once more to the line of clouds over his shoulder. “I ne
ed to go.”

  “Can’t you spare even a few moments?”

  “I’m afraid not. I should have been up there an hour ago . . .”

  Did the chit even notice that he was a man? Sloan stuffed his hands inside the waistband of his trousers. “You’re the strangest young woman I’ve ever met, Garnet Sinclair.”

  “Probably. I gave up trying to be like everybody else years ago.” She shrugged. “It was lovely to chat, Mr. MacAllister. But I do want to beat that storm. Good-bye.”

  She darted up the hill with the airy grace of a bird and disappeared inside a grove of cedar. Sloan continued to stare after her, hearing the unexpected refinement of that drawling voice . . . seeing the shifting shadows of a hundred moods in those eyes. Both lingered in the soft April afternoon like the faint fragrance of flowers and sunshine.

  Eventually he realized he was gazing up the hill like a moonstruck suitor. Sloan turned away with a snort of self-disgust and marched back down the slope. You never learn, do you? He needed to remember Jenna Davenport, with her dazzling blue eyes and striking red hair. Needed to remind himself how he’d been beguiled from the beginning, especially that first year, when she’d tormented him with her feigned shows of indifference.

  Fine. He remembered. So why was it, when this quaint Southern girl blazoned her lack of interest across the sky, all he could think about was contriving a way to meet her again? He’d also better remember that April showers produced violent storms as often as flowers and sunshine.

  The sky had darkened to the color of tar by the time Garnet pulled up in front of the Tweedies’ and jumped down from the road cart. A gust of wet-smelling wind tugged at her sunbonnet. As she tied Goatsbeard’s lead to the rusting iron gate, huge drops of rain splattered the dirt.

  “I’ll come back for you in a minute,” she promised the horse. Then she grabbed her cloth bag and ran for Effie Tweedie’s sagging porch. “Mrs. Tweedie!” she called, pounding on the door. Over the last year the elderly woman had grown hard of hearing.