Shenandoah Home (Sinclair Legacy Book 1)

by Sara Mitchell

“Ah-yup. Garnet did those for the missus some years ago, when she was scarce knee-high to a grasshopper. Local girl, bit odd, some folks claim. But it’s nice to see an educated feller like yourself appreciate her work.”

  Sloan quit rocking. “Those were done by someone you know? A young girl? Named Garnet?”

  “Mm. Lives a couple of miles south of here, over on Sinclair Run. Reckon she’s nearer a woman grown now though.”

  Years of practice at hiding his expression from patients was all that allowed Sloan to utter nothing beyond a noncommittal grunt. Slowly he forced his hands to relax on the rocker arms, while memory roared through him like a brush fire. “Well, she does nice work,” he commented without inflection.

  “Oh, are you talking about Garnet?” Mrs. Wickham came into the room, dabbing her perspiring face with the hem of her apron. “Such a sweet girl. Shy as a fawn, but a more tender-hearted soul I’ve never known.” She blessed Sloan with a twinkling smile when he rose and insisted she take his place in the vacated rocking chair. “You’re a charmer, aren’t you, Dr. MacAllister? But I do appreciate it, thank you kindly.”

  “Call him Sloan,” Eb corrected her around his pipestem. “Since he don’t do doctoring anymore, he prefers it.”

  “And here I was all ready to ask him about my bronchial catarrh. Been plaguing me all spring.”

  “Tell me about the young lady—Garnet?—instead,” Sloan said with a coaxing smile, ignoring the leading comment. “You say she’s shy?” That certainly didn’t sound like the young woman he’d encountered in the meadow.

  “Never struck me as shy,” Eb observed. “Just because she’s not a flap-tongued chatterbox like some of the young girls hereabouts don’t mean she’s shy.” He took the pipe out of his mouth and pointed it across the room. “Grab that chair over there at the table and drag it over here, Sloan.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do that.” As he walked by the two prints he paused, studying them, flabbergasted by the delicacy and precision of style. He could almost smell the flowers. The scene back in the meadow made more sense now; she’d been working, not dabbling, not being coy. “Does she draw anything but flowers?”

  “Don’t rightly know,” Mrs. Wickham said. “She won’t talk about her work much. I know a biggity New York publisher pays her to do some work for his magazine, so she doesn’t have as much free time as she used to. Meredith—that’s Garnet’s oldest sister, told us last year before she hared off to Winchester that the gentleman had seen some of Garnet’s work in the hotel lobby, up in Strasburg. Seems he appeared on the Sinclairs’ front porch the next day, wanting to carry her off to New York, have her get ‘professional training,’ or some such flummery.”

  “Uppity Yankee outlander,” Eb grumped. “Begging your pardon, Sloan.”

  Sloan turned back around. “I’ve been called worse myself. Don’t worry, Eb. Far as I’m concerned, the War’s over. Besides, human nature’s not much different regardless of one’s accent.” He snagged one of the pressed-back chairs at the table and stationed it in between the Wickhams, gesturing toward the pen-and-inks as he sat down. “If that’s a sampling of her early work, looks to me as though she could teach an art instructor a thing or two.”

  “God blessed her with a gift.” Mrs. Wickham reached behind her into a large wicker basket, pulling out knitting needles stuck in brown yarn, and a half-finished sweater. “All those girls of Jacob’s are lovely, but I confess Garnet’s always been my favorite. All the young uns flock around her after church like a gaggle of geese. She’s so . . . unassuming about herself and her art. Why, she doesn’t even realize half the young men in Shenandoah County would give her the moon for one of her smiles.”

  Ebenezer nodded. “Local feller’s been courtin’ her for several years now, but far as we know there’s still no smell of orange blossoms in the air.”

  Sloan bit back a stinging comment. He’d wager his left arm Garnet Sinclair knew exactly what effect those big eyes and the air of teasing indifference kindled in those hapless young men. Abruptly he rose to his feet. “Rain’s slackening,” he said. “I need to be—”

  A desperate-sounding voice shouted outside. Frantic pounding erupted against the front door. “Eb! Ebenezer!”

  In seconds Sloan was across the room. The door burst open, and a dripping, wild-eyed man staggered over the threshold. “A-accident, quarter-mile south,” he gasped, swiping a bloody hand over his rainsoaked face. “Whole family, flung all over the Pike—buggy wheel snapped off . . . Man’s hurt real bad. So’s one of the young uns. Me’n Ike were hauling molasses up from Woodstock.”

  He sucked in lungfuls of air. “Said I’d fetch you, then head out for Doc Porter’s.” Then, glancing at Sloan, “Mister, could you help? Buggy’s a big un. It’s flipped, and the man’s pinned beneath the axle.”

  Rage vibrated through his muscles, and Sloan almost shook a fist toward heaven. Why can’t You just leave me alone? he wanted to shout.

  “Sloan?” Eb’s voice was tentative.

  “I’ll get my bag.” Sloan shot the bewildered newcomer a look, his smile more like a baring of teeth. “I’m a doctor.”

  “Here,” Mrs. Wickham thrust the familiar brown leather bag into his hands. “I’ll put on water to boil, rip some cloths for bandages. Ebenezer, go on with Billy and Sloan.” She looked into Sloan’s eyes, compassion softening her face as she laid a bracing hand on his forearm. “Thank you,” she said, “Dr. MacAllister.”

  Four

  Garnet would have missed the child crouched against the stone wall flanking the Pike, but as the cart jogged by a dark shape leaped up, waving sticklike arms. Goatsbeard shied violently sideways. Garnet calmed the snorting animal, pulled him to a halt, then leaned around the panel.

  A pale little face with desperate eyes emerged in front of her. “Please help. I want to go home.”

  “Oh, you poor scrap . . . quick, now. Pop up here beside me.” She held her arms out, and the boy scooted into the cart like a terrified puppy. “You’re shivering.” Garnet hurriedly opened the heavy mackintosh. “Come here.”

  “I’m all wet.”

  “Well, I’m a trifle damp myself. So is this mackintosh, but if we snuggle close together, perhaps we’ll be a bit warmer.”

  He obeyed, but his nose wrinkled. “It stinks.”

  “Mm. It does, doesn’t it? But it’s better than being wet and cold and all alone in the rain, don’t you agree?”

  He nodded his head vigorously, soaking Garnet’s shawl. “I’m Timmy Bottoms. Who are you?”

  “Garnet Sinclair. Do you belong to the Jefferson Bottoms clan, the ones living in Skunk Hollow?” Their farm was tucked at the base of some hills about four miles distant. What on earth was this little tyke doing so far from home?

  “Huh-uh. That’s Uncle Jefferson ’n’ Aunt Rose. Me an’ my brothers come down from Mount Olive, to help with spring planting.”

  Garnet jiggled the reins, and they set off down the road. “So how did you come to be out here all by yourself, Timmy?”

  “Fell outta the wagon. We’d been to that store with all the barrels and smells—Cooper’s?”

  “That’s right.” Maude Cooper wouldn’t care for the unflattering description, even though it was uncannily accurate.

  “Aunt Rose boughten us candy sticks. Mine was wintergreen. I dropped it in the road, tried to fetch it. But I fell out instead.”

  “Why didn’t they stop?”

  For a moment Timmy didn’t reply, the thin face a study in misery. He sucked on his bottom lip, and Garnet felt the bony shoulders lift in a shrug. “Uncle Jefferson didn’t see. The others—they thought it was funny. They was laughin’, like. I thought it was funny too. But then I—” He stopped, and Garnet glanced down in time to catch his convulsive swallowing. “I couldn’t run fast enough to catch up. And it was rainin’ real hard, so Uncle Jefferson whipped the mules, and they . . . I couldn’t catch up.”

  Why hadn’t his cousins and brothers told Mr. Bottoms to stop? Garnet wondered
, her heart aching for Timmy. “Well, I’ve got you now. We’ll pass by Cooper’s in a few moments. I can leave you there—don’t worry, the Coopers love little boys. Did you know they have four sons and two daughters? Or”—she eyed the averted head, adding more slowly—“you can come home with me until the rain stops.”

  “I don’t care,” he muttered. “I wanna go home.”

  “I know you do, laddie. But if I don’t make it to my own home soon—” She stopped, realizing that Timmy did not need to hear how upset her own family would be if she didn’t turn up by sundown. “Buttercups and bitterweed.”

  “Huh? Why’d you say that?”

  “Say what?” Diverted, Garnet glanced down, then laughed. “Oh, you mean ‘buttercups and bitterweed’? I say that when I’m frustrated or . . . or thinking hard,” she amended, lest Timmy assume the burden of her frustration.

  “That’s a stupid saying. Why don’t you say—” He’d managed several ear-burning obscenities before Garnet clapped her hand over his mouth.

  “I don’t talk like that,” she sputtered, “and neither should you, Timmy Bottoms. Nobody should say words like that, no matter how provoked or—or whatever.” She moved her hand to his chin and gave it a light pinch. “My father would wash my mouth with alum or persimmon juice or something.” Or worse, he’d let her see his disappointment. That tactic had devastated both her and Meredith when they’d gone through a spell of tossing out cuss words for effect. Unfortunately for Papa, it only annoyed Leah.

  “Uncle Jefferson says those words all the time, ’specially when he’s angry.” Timmy blinked hard, and pulled away from Garnet’s hand. “He probably didn’t come back ’cuz he was angry.”

  Garnet hugged the stiff body, then let him go. She fiddled with the reins a moment, thinking hard. “Tell you what,” she said. “We’ll stop at Cooper’s long enough for me to buy you a new stick of wintergreen candy. Then I’ll drive you home. We should be there by suppertime. All right?”

  “What if they don’t want me anymore? What if that’s why they didn’t come back for me?”

  “I don’t know why, Timmy. But there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” Garnet was interested to hear it herself. And if she didn’t like what she heard, she just might pay a visit to Sheriff Pettiscomb. Or drive Timmy back to his home in Mount Olive.

  After a moment the bony shoulders shrugged again. “I reckon you can take me home.”

  For a little while they traveled in silence. Garnet wondered if he’d fallen asleep. Then, “Do you think they didn’t tell Uncle Jefferson ’cuz of the bottle of castor oil Aunt Rose bought? I dipped their candy sticks in it when they weren’t looking.”

  Garnet barely managed to swallow a gasp of laughter. “Timmy, if you’d done that to my candy, I would have left you in the middle of the road too!” She slanted him a downward glance. “Are you sorry now?”

  He grinned an urchin’s grin that turned wobbly at the end. “They looked funny, spittin’ and hollering. But I didn’t like being alone. And the thunder . . .” His voice trembled, and all of a sudden he burrowed into Garnet’s side. “If I say I’m sorry they have to let me stay, don’t they?”

  “I have a feeling,” Garnet volunteered as she guided Goatsbeard off the Pike and pulled up at the entrance to Cooper’s Hardware and Drygoods Store, “that they’ll be as glad to see you as you will be to see them. Especially if we take your cousins and brothers a fresh batch of candy.” The pungent odors of glazed calico, buggy harness, and ripe cheese met them at the door, overlaid by the musty smell of smoke on rain-dampened wood. Next to the potbelly stove in the middle of the room, two gaunt farmers huddled over a game of checkers. The men scarcely glanced up when Garnet and her tiny charge came dripping through the wide double doors. Keeping Timmy’s hand in a firm clasp, she led him down the crowded aisle, past open drawers full of jumbled brogan shoes and the glass showcase with its meticulous display of toiletries.

  Mr. Cooper appeared in the doorway to the side room, a burlap sack of feed on his shoulder. When he saw Garnet, his bearded face lit in a welcoming smile. He dumped the feed against a large wooden barrel. “Sure, I’ll clean the whippersnapper up,” he promised after Garnet explained the predicament, holding his hand out to the docile boy. Garnet hunted down Mrs. Cooper, who was arranging a display of ladies’ millinery in the upstairs room. After waving away the woman’s dismay over her drenched appearance, Garnet asked if a message could be sent to Jacob and Leah, explaining why she’d be home after dark.

  It was almost three hours later by the time she finally pulled a droopy-headed Goatsbeard to a halt in front of the house. Garnet herself barely had enough energy to stumble out of the cart and up the porch steps.

  As she reached for the knob, the door was flung wide and her father’s wiry figure filled the entry. “Don’t worry, I’ll see to the horse and cart. Come in now and let’s take care of you.” He stepped aside, and Garnet dragged into the hall. “Did you get the lad home then?”

  She nodded. “They didn’t hug him or tell him they were worried . . . didn’t even save supper for him.” She lifted a hand to her throat, as though massaging the tightness could ease the burning constriction. “His aunt, Mrs. Bottoms, cuffed the side of his head for not being there to do his chores, and his cousins were threatening to—” She had to stop, but Jacob seemed to understand.

  He enfolded her in a comforting hug, pressed a kiss against her forehead, then rubbed noses. “You can’t save the whole world, lass. That’s the Lord’s business. You did what you could.”

  “Seems like the Lord’s not doing a very good job,” Garnet mumbled. She summoned a weak smile. “More likely it’s me. Timmy was clinging to my hand so tight my fingers went numb. I don’t think he wanted me to leave. But I . . . I pressed a bag of candy sticks I’d bought for him to give everyone into his hands and told him everything would be fine . . .” She leaned against the doorframe and closed her eyes. That only made her misery worse: She could still see Timmy’s defeated slump, the hopeless eyes in a face years too old for a child of eight.

  With an effort she straightened, fumbling for the buttons on the mackintosh. The fragrance of Leah’s ginger-and-garlic pork roast teased her nostrils, overlaying the smell of wet wool and camphor, soothing Garnet’s raw senses. Her father’s sturdy presence wrapped her in security. Lord, it’s good to be home. “Did you have roast pork and”—she took a deep, appreciative breath—“baked apples for supper? I’m sorry I missed it.”

  “You didn’t,” Leah announced coming in from the hall. “I left a plate on the stove.”

  Her younger sister looked as fresh and neat at nine o’clock at night as she had that morning when Garnet left. She surveyed Garnet, her disapproving look at odds with the concern that darkened her observant brown eyes. Leah didn’t miss much. “But you can’t have anything until you get out of those wet clothes.” The brown eyes twinkled all of a sudden. “While you eat, Papa and I will have another go at clipping the wings of our ruby-haired hummingbird.”

  Five

  Jacob fretted over his middle daughter. Lately, when she wasn’t aware that he was looking, a soul-wrenching dejection would settle over her freckled face. It never lasted long—Garnet’s sunny nature usually dominated the dour Scottish streak she struggled with at times. But Jacob fretted all the same. He was careful, however, not to let Garnet see. She hated to be fussed over, hated undue attention of any kind, even from her family.

  He studied the corner china cabinet he’d stained two days earlier, walking from side to side to make sure the golden oak tones darkening the grain were equally blended. At least the Brauns had given in and allowed the cabinet to be stained instead of painted, as was the current fashion in the Valley these days. Why in the name of Bonny Prince Charles did folks insist on covering up God’s natural beauty? To Jacob’s way of thinking, there were few things on earth to rival a fine piece of wood. Three of those being, of course, his daughters.

  Och, but Garnet was a pu
zzle. Lovely and long-limbed, with that mass of glorious hair, at twenty-one in the prime of womanhood—and the girl as oblivious to young men as a knothole in a tree. Meredith claimed Garnet was actually afraid of men. Pure nonsense, it was, as both Garnet herself as well as Jacob had insisted.

  Meredith had tossed her head and told them that if they wanted to be blind moles, that was fine, but not to expect her to play along. Shaking his head, Jacob picked up a clean rubbing cloth.

  Garnet wasn’t like other young ladies, he told himself, not for the first time. That was all. Why, didn’t she always natter with the neighbor boys when they crowded around her after church? And hadn’t Nahum Tweedie sidled up to Jacob at Cooper’s store this past March to tell him how much he and his grandmother enjoyed her visits? Then there was Joshua Jones, steadfastly courting the past few years in spite of Garnet’s equally steadfast indifference.

  No, Jacob decided as he rubbed in boiled linseed oil to seal the wood, there was simply no basis for Meredith’s claim. Garnet was just different. A . . . a wild violet nestled in the middle of a rose garden.

  Pleased with his analogy, Jacob began to whistle. At least she’d finally completed her latest batch of drawings and was no longer spending all her days and evenings hunched over her easel. First thing this morning, she and Leah headed out for the post office in Woodstock. With a bit of luck—and gentle bullying—Leah would manage to keep them out all afternoon. Both girls needed more outings, more frequent companionship of friends and neighbors, especially with his gadfly, Meredith, gone. When his eldest still lived at home, the old place always seemed to be filled with young folk.

  In truth, it was less than an hour later when Jacob heard the buggy pull to a halt in front of the barn. Tossing aside the rag, he sluiced his hands in a bucket of water and stepped outside, just in time to watch Garnet whip off her bonnet, then scamper toward the house like a fox fleeing the hounds. The midday sunlight washed over her willowy figure, turning her hair to a blend of burnished copper and flaming mahogany. Jacob couldn’t help but admire the sight, any more than he could help noticing her stiff posture.