Shenandoah Home (Sinclair Legacy Book 1)

by Sara Mitchell

  Dusting his hands free of crumbs, Sloan rose for a closer look at a walnut and burl bookcase with as fine a finish as he’d ever seen; his mother had purchased an antique sideboard from Sotheby’s in New York whose finish was no better. Perhaps not even as good.

  Intrigued, he circled the room, examining objects more closely. A small rectangular chest sitting on the floor next to the door of Jacob Sinclair’s bedroom caught his eye, and Sloan knelt to better study it. It was plain, but like the sideboard some of the best craftsmanship he’d ever seen. Curious, he picked it up. It wasn’t large, about the size of a jewelry chest, and surprisingly heavy. What kind of wood? he wondered, his fingers tracing the pattern of the grain. There was an interesting irregularity on the right panel. Curiosity aroused, he carried it to where the parlor lamp cast a brighter light. Moments later, he found what he was looking for.

  “It belongs to Garnet,” Jacob Sinclair’s voice announced quietly behind him. “I see you found the secret drawer.”

  Ten

  Jacob Sinclair stepped into the parlor. “I call it her heartwood chest,” he continued. “Meredith and Leah each have one as well.”

  “Sort of small for a hope chest,” Sloan said. “More like a jewelry box. Superb workmanship.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sloan carefully set the chest down and straightened to his full height, keeping his face expressionless.

  Garnet’s father stalked across the room and with scant ceremony dropped into the chair Sloan had vacated earlier. “Why don’t you join me, Dr.—I’m sorry. ’Tis Mister MacAllister, you claim, is it not? Been a long evening, Mr. MacAllister, hasn’t it?”

  Weary to the bone, Sloan sank into a chair. “Yes, it certainly has.”

  He’d half expected the older man’s attitude—Sloan after all was a stranger, and a Yankee. And he’d returned Sinclair’s daughter injured and unconscious. But the sting of it caught Sloan off guard. He didn’t want to care what Garnet Sinclair’s father thought, any more than he wanted to care about the daughter. “Is your family doctor planning to stay the night?” Shouldn’t be necessary, but he decided not to point it out.

  The orbicularis oculi muscle next to Sinclair’s left eye twitched. Interesting. Possibly not a good sign. “Doc Porter tells me you drugged her with some medicine he’d never heard of, something you had in your bag, an injection, he said. I must tell you, sir, that I’m no’ comfortable with such. Ye claim tae no longer be a physician, so seems to me you’ve no right to act like one. Even if you were, I dinna hold with trifling in matters best left in the Lord’s hands.”

  Why hadn’t he escaped when he’d had the opportunity? “You’re right. I should have let your daughter writhe in agony. Pain and suffering are God’s will, after all—is that what you think?”

  He could have relieved the man by assuring him that the half-grain of codeine was neither harmful nor addictive, but goaded by Sinclair’s hostility, his temper flared. “Should have left her wounds untended as well. Just prayed over her, then hurried on my way. God knows I didn’t want to be there in the first place. But I was, so I did what needed to be done.”

  He made an abrupt slashing motion with his hand and surged to his feet. “Forget it. Believe what you want to believe.” He started across the hall.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Sloan checked his stride but didn’t turn around. He heard Jacob Sinclair noisily clear his throat.

  “If I promise to explain, would you give a protective father another chance?”

  Begrudging every movement, Sloan faced the older man. “No explanations are needed. You were right. If I’m not going to acknowledge my profession, I shouldn’t practice it. Don’t worry—I won’t make that mistake, ever again. My medical bag’s by the front door. Tell Porter I left it for him.” Not that the old croaker would know what to do with the contents. “Or you can throw it away. I don’t care.”

  “Mr. MacAllister, I believe something happened to my daughter, when she was sixteen years old. What I mean to say is”—he coughed, tugging at a strand of graying hair that had fallen over his forehead—“I believe she may have been . . . harmed, in some manner, by a man or some men. Don’t you ken, when you brought her home I thought—I couldn’t but wonder if . . .” His voice trailed away. He looked exhausted—and ashamed.

  Sloan felt as though he’d been broadsided with a singletree. Slowly he retraced his steps, sat back down. “Are you trying to tell me your daughter was raped?”

  Sinclair winced, but to give the man his due, instead of upbraiding Sloan for his bluntness he answered with equal bluntness. As he spoke, his brogue gradually disappeared. “Nae—she couldn’t have hidden so detestable an act.”

  He splashed cider into a mug, took a quick gulp, then clutched the mug with white-knuckled fingers. “We’re a close family, and a trusting family. My daughters, they tell me things, don’t you see. Her sisters . . . Garnet wouldn’t be able to keep a monstrous offense to herself.” He swallowed more cider. “But I do know something happened. Because, after that summer, she changed.”

  In an abrupt movement he rose, crossed the room, and snatched up the small chest, hugging it as though it were Garnet herself. “She changed.”

  Sloan sat in silence, unable to respond. Memories of the past hours seared his conscience, because at the time he’d been seeing not an injured red-headed girl with frightened eyes but—Jenna. He didn’t want to face the ugly truth about himself, but Jacob Sinclair’s revelation left no room for self-deception.

  Garnet had been afraid, all right. Afraid of him. He had never intentionally hurt a woman in his life—but Garnet had felt compelled to defend herself.

  Bitterly ashamed, Sloan repeated the thought aloud, as an indictment against his self-absorption. “She was trying to defend herself.”

  He looked across at Jacob Sinclair, and the tiny hairs on the back of his neck lifted. “Take it easy,” he said, raising his hands in a pacifying gesture. “She was in pain, barely conscious. I was too close. She didn’t realize I was trying to help her.” He kept his gaze steady. “I didn’t hurt your daughter, Jacob Sinclair. From what you’ve told me, her reaction was to be expected.” Not, of course, that Sloan deserved absolution . . .

  “I’ll carve your heart out with an awl if you’ve treated her with anything less than the respect she deserves.”

  His brogue was so thick Sloan could easily picture him in full Highland dress, brandishing a claymore. “I thought vengeance belonged to the Lord,” he observed mildly. He eased back, crossing one leg over the other and letting his arms rest openhanded in his lap. “You can be proud of your daughter,” he said. “Even out of her head and incapacitated, she almost knocked me backward into the creek. You taught her, didn’t you?”

  Jacob nodded. “Aye. I taught all my lasses how to fend off unwanted attentions.” Some of the rage began to fade; the veins in his forehead no longer bulged, and his skin color was returning to normal hues. After returning to his seat, he balanced the chest on his knees and exhaled a deep sigh. “Felt it was my duty as a father—I can’t always be there to protect them. Not all men honor their God-given responsibility to be mindful of those physically weaker than themselves.”

  “Not all men honor God.”

  “Aye, that is all too true. What about yourself, Sloan MacAllister?”

  Silence stretched between them.

  “Hmph.” Sinclair scratched his beard-roughened chin, then shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll decide for myself then. So, I can’t say I like what you did, sticking needles in her, I mean. But you did bring her home. And Doc Porter told me he’d never seen better stitches.” He leaned forward, planting his hands on top of the chest in his lap. Eyes narrowed, he stared long and hard into Sloan’s face. “Och, man, ’tis for sure I’ve seen more expression on my chisel. Yet when you carried the lass upstairs—”

  “Don’t read anything into it,” Sloan interrupted. “I did as much for that wretched fox.”

  “Mm.
So you did.” Jacob didn’t smile, but the lines furrowing his brow eased, and after a moment he sat back. “Will the fox live, do you think?”

  “Probably not.”

  “But you brought it along because you promised Garnet?”

  “Its presence calmed her, that’s all.” For the first time Sloan noticed the numerous scars crisscrossing the skin on Sinclair’s hands. The nail bed of his left thumb was mangled, as though it had gotten in the way of a saw or some other destructive tool. Sloan looked up.

  “You made the chest,” he stated, stunned anew. “And . . . all this furniture? You’re a-a—”

  “Cabinetmaker. Aye. Third generation. My grandda apprenticed with Robert Adam himself, my da with Duncan Phyfe in New York. I suppose you could say it’s in the blood. Will you stay awhile? I could use the company, since Leah’s not budging from her sister’s bedside.”

  Sloan was too tired to soften the edge in his voice. “Let’s make it easier on both of us. I’ll leave.”

  He half rose, then sank back into the chair as though pushed by an invisible hand. Every muscle tensed in denial of the knowledge permeating his consciousness and gradually settling into his mind: He was supposed to stay here. Resigned, Sloan forced himself to relax. He might not like the decision thrust upon him, yet he couldn’t quite bring himself to ignore it.

  But if Sinclair himself stood up—an indication that he agreed with Sloan’s desire to leave, then—

  “Please stay, Mr. MacAllister.”

  “What?” Sloan shook his head and passed a hand around the back of his neck. He was exhausted, that was all, his mind playing tricks. And Sinclair wasn’t in much better shape, to be asking a man he didn’t know or trust to keep vigil in his family parlor. “There were any of a score or more of friends angling for an invitation. Why me?”

  Garnet’s father studied his ruined thumbnail for a moment. “Because I’m convinced you’re a better man than I might have thought at first. Possibly a better man than you yourself realize,” he finally said.

  A half-smile appeared, and he jerked his chin toward the stairs. “Because I’d like to tell you about Garnet, if I may. I—I need to talk about it. You were willing to bind up her external injuries. I’m asking you now, as her father—and as a man—for you to help me try to heal the injury to her spirit.” He hesitated. “Sometimes wounds to the inside hurt worse when they’re suffered in silence. She’s carried this pain for all these years, not even sharing it with the ones who love her the most. I don’t know why, don’t know what it is she fears so that she won’t talk to her family, her friends. But perhaps you—”

  Sloan surged to his feet, the sweat of panic misting his skin. “I’m a stranger to you, to your daughter.” He wheeled, stabbing his index finger toward Jacob Sinclair. “I’m the last man you need to talk to about her. Blast it all, I just want to be left alone.” God, why won’t You leave me alone?

  He jammed his hands into his pockets to keep from snatching up the chest and dashing it against the fireplace. “You’re not a fool, Sinclair. Why on earth would you trust someone like me? You don’t know me, you know nothing—nothing about me.” It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense, except the violent urge to flee.

  “I don’t care about your past, Mr. MacAllister. As to why I trust you . . .” He rose to stand directly in front of Sloan. “Any man who takes the time and trouble to try and save a badly injured critter of no use . . . well, somewhere inside that man must be a piece of the Lord. You hide it well, son. But that fox out in my wash house is why I trust you. Most anyone who’d found her would have brought my lass home, or gone for help. None I can name would have done the same for the animal.”

  Defeated, Sloan finally admitted the truth to himself, and for the first time in hours . . . days . . . months, the tight knot lodged beneath his breastbone began to loosen. Garnet Sinclair had intrigued him from the moment he’d seen her on that sun-dappled hillside. Even learning the color of her hair—a red flag if ever there was one—hadn’t stifled the need.

  Might be he possessed a fatal weakness for redheads. Might be a congenital easy mark for sufferers. But, for whatever mysterious divine purpose, apparently he was also being obedient. He raised his hands in capitulation. “Very well. I’ll stay, for a while anyway.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But no promises. I make no promises.”

  “No promises. Of course, I wasn’t asking for any, Sloan MacAllister.”

  Both men sat back down. For several moments they didn’t speak, studying each other with the wry camaraderie of two males who had survived a couple of rounds in the ring. Sinclair wasn’t a tall man—Sloan easily topped him by a good six inches. But there was strength in those sinewy arms, and a matching strength in his face. Dressed in faded corduroys held up only by the suspenders, with a cheap collarless shirt that looked as though he’d slept in it, the man looked stereotypically Southern dirt-poor.

  But the furniture, particularly the heartwood chest, took Sloan’s breath away. And the plea was one he couldn’t ignore, even when his soul was blackened almost beyond redemption.

  “Tell me about Garnet,” he said.

  Eleven

  Six days after the accident, Garnet stepped gingerly onto the front porch and discovered her cloth bag sitting by the front door. No note, no explanation. She glanced out into the yard, but saw nothing, heard nothing beyond the steady rasp of sandpaper against wood—her father, out in his workshop—and the hollow hum of a lazy breeze.

  Mr. MacAllister wanted as little to do with her as she with him.

  Garnet wondered why that should depress her. She ought to be relieved that he had returned her supplies at all. Annoyed with the fluttery bout of nerves, Garnet knelt to pick up the cloth bag, her movements slow, careful. Straightening, she hugged it to her chest and waited until the lightheadedness passed before making her way to the wicker settee. What a bother. These past days she’d been nursed and bullied by her family, poked and bled by Doc Porter, and fussed and fretted over by friends.

  The convalescence had been more of a trial than the injury itself. She had suffered the consequences for her rash decision to rescue a fox, but mercysake—everyone acted as though she’d almost died.

  By noon the day after the accident, Meredith was sitting beside her on the bed and spooning hot soup down her throat, all the while talking nonstop about her job in Benjamin Walker’s fancy hotel. Garnet dearly loved her older sister, but by the time she departed after two days to catch the train back to Winchester, even Garnet’s ears drooped with exhaustion.

  Of course, Meredith was only her first visitor.

  FrannieBeth came twice, juggling nine-month-old Jessup on her lap while three-year-old Alice played at the foot of Garnet’s bed.

  Her best childhood friend, Chloe, who had moved to Luray the previous year, even surprised her with a visit. “I’ve been spending a couple of weeks with Great-aunt Louise. Her gout’s acting up. Coming to see you is a relief. Don’t be silly,” she hushed Garnet’s protest, her endearingly homely face and mild brown eyes full of affection. “Just because I moved away doesn’t mean I don’t care about you anymore.” She stroked damp strands of Garnet’s hair away from her forehead. “After all, you’re the only person in the Valley who never called me ‘Horseface Henderson.’ ”

  “You’re the only person in the Valley who never made fun of my hair.”

  A pleasant but exhausting stream of neighbors rode or drove up every afternoon to see how the patient was faring and to indulge in as much gossip as Jacob would allow. Except for FrannieBeth and Chloe, the visits were usually brief. Her father brooked no criticism of Garnet’s actions, nor speculation about the black-haired Yankee outlander who had rescued her, brought her home—and left her.

  Garnet shifted on the seat cushion, relieved when the motion resulted only in a middling tug. For the past week she had concentrated on healing as rapidly as possible, not only because she hated being a burden, but because loss of dra
wing time meant loss of tuition for Leah. Fall classes at Mary Baldwin College commenced in September, and the funds for her share of Leah’s studies wouldn’t be available unless Garnet was well enough to complete her illustrations on schedule.

  She gave another experimental shrug. Good. The throbbing ache in her shoulder had definitely subsided; the stitches only pulled when she forgot and tried to do something she shouldn’t, like move her arm. Dressing remained . . . a challenge. As for arranging her hair, for the past couple of days all she could manage was to gather it with a clip at the base of her neck.

  It would be a tremendous relief when the stitches were removed, even if she didn’t look forward to Doc Porter’s less than gentle ministrations. But the brusque fumbling of his moist hands was still preferable to the skilled touch of the stranger whose gray eyes had chilled every time he looked at her.

  Like splinters embedded under her skin, thoughts of Sloan MacAllister were not easily dislodged. The man was a troubling enigma. He plainly disliked her, yet according to her father Mr. MacAllister had taken the fox home, promising to do the best he could for the animal. Garnet did not delude herself by imagining any sanguine motivation on his part: Doubtless once he reached the Pike, he’d dumped the creature along the side of the road. Still, he’d known how much the fox’s welfare meant to her and had made at least a pretense of acceding to her wishes. But why?

  Thinking about the fox depressed her as much as thinking about Mr. MacAllister. The animal was a nuisance, cursed by farmers and hunted for sport. There was no divine purpose in what had happened. The little creature had simply suffered a stroke of ill fortune—clawed by a bobcat, shot by a farmer, or some other mishap. God had not arranged circumstances to ease the burden of guilt Garnet carried. Far better to accept bittersweet reality than cling to flimsy hopes.

  Papa, of course, would argue with her about her lack of trust. Joshua, as well.

  Ah, Joshua . . . Talking, lecturing—preaching almost—Joshua Jones spent most of the time they were together battling Garnet’s doubt-riddled conscience. An upstanding bookkeeper, son of a minister over in Saumsville, he had been alternately arguing with her and wooing her since they’d met at a county fair three years earlier, when Garnet was helping out at a taffy-pulling booth.