“Front porch’ll do. No need to intrude in your home. No furniture, you say?” An idea sprang to life, and it was all Jacob could do to keep from rubbing his hands.
“Haven’t needed it. I’ve arranged for some things to be shipped from my home up in Baltimore. They should be arriving in a couple of weeks.”
They reached the buggy, and Jacob watched in relief as gentleness transformed Sloan’s hard-edged inscrutability. The burning inside his stomach subsided to a negligible twinge. Och, Lord, for a while there, I doubted, but ’tis plain to see the man’s heart is to heal.
“Hello,” Sloan was saying to Garnet. “You look a lot better than the last time I saw you, Miss Sinclair.”
“Call her Garnet,” Jacob suggested. “With three daughters, it makes things simpler.”
“I can see that it might. All right, then . . . Garnet?” Sloan asked her. He didn’t even look Jacob’s way, which pleased Jacob, though ’twould also please him if the man smiled a bit more.
“Mr. MacAllister, this trip was my father’s idea. I told him Leah could remove the stitches.” For the first time the solemn gray green eyes lit with humor. “She’s an excellent seamstress, you know.”
“I’m sure she is.”
Jacob helped her climb down from the buggy, but when Garnet winced and bit her lip, he found himself elbowed out of the way by Sloan. “What kind of pain did you feel just then? And where?” he asked, his gaze sharp.
“Don’t make a fuss, please. It’s just the stitches. They pinch a bit, that’s all. The past few days Leah and my father practically carry me off to bed if I so much as grimace. They’re about to set me to howling at the moon.”
She stepped back, pulling free of Sloan’s restraining hand, distancing herself, Jacob knew, from the man. To his eternal relief, Sloan was having none of it, though he was astute enough not to crowd her again.
“We can’t have that, can we?” he said. “Tell you what. While I wash up, why don’t you have a chat with my patient up there on the porch. If I’m fortunate, perhaps he’ll convince you to trust me enough to let me examine your shoulder.”
Garnet shook her head, her eyes anxious. “I think we’ll just wait here, in the buggy.”
A patient? Jacob moved to Garnet’s side, laid a comforting hand on her uninjured shoulder. “Didn’t realize anyone in the Valley could afford that fifty dollar fee. Besides, you told me you weren’t hanging out your shingle, Sloan.”
“I haven’t. I won’t. This particular patient, like Garnet”—he finally smiled, looking almost boyish—“is an exception. Go ahead, you’ve met him before. I’m sure he remembers. Just be careful. No sudden moves.”
Beside him Garnet had turned to a pillar of salt, her face a study in confusion and budding hope. “Mr. MacAllister?” she whispered. She took a step toward the porch.
“He’s very tame, believe it or not. Perhaps it’s because a compassionate young woman taught him that some human beings can be trusted.”
In a gesture that tore at Jacob’s heart, Sloan lifted his hand toward Garnet, his fingers just skimming the bonnet’s brim. “It’s all right, Garnet,” he promised in a deep, soft voice. “Your father wouldn’t have brought you if it weren’t. Think about that, while I go clean up and fetch my bag.”
His hand dropped, he nodded once at Jacob, then turned without a word and loped toward the house. Jacob glanced at Garnet. She looked stunned, but her gaze was not on the tall commanding figure of the man. She was staring at the porch, and the splash of reddish color visible behind the weathered railing.
Fourteen
Hope squeezed her heart. Garnet all but tiptoed to the porch one tentative step at a time, not so much because she couldn’t believe her eyes, but because she did.
“I’ll stay back,” she heard her father say behind her.
Garnet lifted her uninjured arm in response but did not speak.
The fox was confined in a crude pen fashioned from mesh poultry netting, and upon first glance Garnet wondered if it could possibly be the same animal she had rescued. This fox’s luxurious rust-colored coat gleamed in the sunlight; the tail, which she remembered as thin and droopy, now dominated the small body with bushy magnificence. Alert eyes the color of ripe pumpkin watched Garnet from a collection of rumpled blankets, obviously its bed.
Garnet crept forward until her knees brushed the wire. “Hello.” The word emerged in a husky murmur because she was fighting tears. “Remember me?”
The narrow head tilted. Black-tipped ears pricked forward. After a moment of breathless suspense, the bushy tail wagged once, and the fox rose slowly to his feet. Garnet didn’t move, didn’t so much as inhale as she watched the catlike creature gliding toward her on dainty black paws.
He stopped a foot away, lifting his pointy snout as though to sniff the air. Then his mouth opened in an absurdly human grin. A single tear spilled over Garnet’s eyelid, dribbling down her jaw line as the fox walked right up to the wire and thrust a damp black nose through the holes, into the folds of her skirt.
“You’re alive.” Carefully, ignoring the dull ache in her shoulder, Garnet lowered herself until she was kneeling on the uneven porch. “You’re alive.” She started to lift her hand.
“Perhaps you should wait for Sloan.”
The fox blinked and backed a step.
“Don’t, Papa. You’ll frighten him. He knows me, it’s all right.” Her voice dropped to the croon a mother uses with her baby. “He won’t hurt you, I promise. You’re so pretty . . . won’t you let me pet you? Mr. MacAllister’s taken good care of you, hasn’t he? I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted me to see you if it wasn’t safe.”
Her father cleared his throat several times. “I ken you well, lass. Just . . . be careful, for my sake, hmm? I’m no’ used to my daughter flirting with a wild beastie.” After a short pause she heard him blowing his nose, loudly.
Garnet understood. She swallowed the lump in her throat, then held out her hand. “See? He’s not wild at all, not really.”
Seconds later the fox returned, sniffing her fingers. Long whiskers spiked from the muzzle, tickling her wrist. After a moment, she turned her hand. The fox didn’t flinch away. Tentatively Garnet brushed the white fur just behind his jaw, astonished when the animal butted his head against her hand.
“He wants you to scratch behind his ears, and on top of his head,” Sloan said. The toes of his work boots nudged the folds of her gown. “I’ve accused him several times of being a cat in fox’s clothing. If he starts to purr, however, I just might have to sell him to Mr. Barnum. Sure to draw a larger crowd than General Tom Thumb.”
He knelt beside Garnet, so close she could feel the heat of him, smell the clean aroma of soap. A strange sensation fluttered through her, but she resisted the urge to rise.
“He does smile like a gentleman who hopes to take all your money, doesn’t he?” She scratched the tufted ears and hoped Mr. MacAllister would attribute the breathlessness in her voice to her gladness over the fox’s presence.
“Mm. Now that you mention it, I believe you’re right. Would you like to name him, Garnet? I planned to give him to you, of course, so it’s only fair that you name him. He’s never going to be strong enough to make it on his own in the wild, I’m afraid.”
“A fox for a pet?” Jacob’s voice rose, and Garnet could almost seethe tips of his ears turning pink as they did when he was taken off guard. “A fox?”
She risked a quick peek at the man beside her, disconcerted to find him watching her. “I think he’d make an excellent traveling companion,” she offered, looking everywhere but Mr. MacAllister. “And I think . . . in honor of Mr. Barnum, that Phineas is a good name. Um . . . what do you think?”
“Phineas the fox? It does have a nice alliterative ring, doesn’t it?” His hand slid under Garnet’s elbow, holding her steady in a light but firm grip. “So, Phineas. How would you like to keep your mistress diverted while I remove her stitches, hmm? You can prove your worth to Mr. Sinclai
r, and secure yourself a position in their home.”
Utterly flummoxed by his manner—so congenial, so downright good-humored—Garnet did not resist when the hand beneath her elbow tightened. Before she could blink twice he had helped her to her feet.
“Come along,” he said. “Do you mind that your father will have to chaperon?”
“Chaperon?” She glanced toward her father, who looked equally confused.
“You have to remove your arm from the sleeve of your gown—also whatever shift or chemise you’re wearing—for me to get to the stitches.”
“No!”
Garnet stepped back too quickly. Mr. MacAllister dropped her arm and lifted his hands as though she were something repulsive.
The absurdity of her involuntary retort brought a shamed flush to her cheeks. “I . . . I beg your pardon, I’m being silly,” she stammered. “You’ve taken care of me before, and you didn’t hurt me then. I mean . . . I hadn’t given you cause. I mean—” Dear Father in heaven, what have I done?
She closed her mouth and her eyes. Her stupid panic might have just secured a death warrant for herself as well as her family. They would want explanations, they might demand them, and she was so tired of the lies . . .
“Take it easy, Garnet. Look . . . you’re frightening Phineas. Reassure him for me, won’t you? He’s very gentle-natured, but shy. Jacob, why don’t you fetch my case? I left it in the kitchen, on a table. You can’t miss it. We’ll stay on the porch. She might feel safer if I just remove the stitches out here.”
“Out here? But anyone could see—”
“We’d see them first. She’ll be sitting down in that old kitchen chair, over there by the window. Go on, please. I want Garnet to know she’s safe even if you’re not in sight.”
Muttering, he obeyed.
Garnet listened to the slow scrape of his footsteps fade, disappear. “You don’t have to talk as though I’m not here.” Her mouth was powder dry, but she managed to meet head-on Sloan MacAllister’s watchful gaze.
“I’d like to know who caused you to fear a man’s touch, to have you look at me like that,” he said, very quietly.
“I don’t . . . it wouldn’t make any difference. There’s nothing you can do—nothing anyone can do.” She half lifted her hand. “I know I was irrational. But I can’t explain. Mr. MacAllister, I—”
“Sloan. Call me Sloan.”
“What?”
“If I call you Garnet, you’re entitled to call me by my Christian name. Here, come over here, to the chair. It’s inside the enclosure, so you and Phineas can get reacquainted without barriers. Will you let me help you step over the wire?”
“I—step over?”
“Mm. I’m going to put my hands on your waist, to steady you. Shh, it’s all right,” he murmured close to her ear. “Up and over.”
Before she had time to gasp, she was inside the pen, with Mr. MacAllister close behind her, his firm grip guiding her to an old pressed-back chair. The warmth of his hands burned through her clothing all the way to her skin. No man—not her father, not Joshua, had touched her with such intimacy in five years.
“Will it collapse?” she asked, just to diffuse the tension in the air with words.
“Will you?”
Her spine stiffened, her head going back. “No.” She planted her feet on the floor and breathed through her nose. “I won’t collapse. But I’m not certain about this chair. It’s . . . well . . . a fresh coat of paint would help. My father would strip and stain it. He hates painting over wood.”
“That’s easy to understand,” Sloan said, as though this were a conversation taking place in the family parlor. “Your father loves wood. For him, covering it up would be tantamount to desecration, or at least hiding its light under a bushel.”
Garnet gawked—there was no other word for it—at him. He was so close she could see the individual hairs that formed his mustache, the shadow of a beard darkening his neck and face. And his eyes . . . for the first time since she was a young girl, she risked looking directly at a man she did not know, accepting his proximity, absorbing the intelligence and the strength. Fear and shyness wrapped around her like vines, along with revelation: There was no threat to her here.
Until this moment Garnet had never comprehended that fear for her family’s safety was not her predominant motive for spurning male companionship. “You’re very perceptive,” she said, watching fascinated when understanding turned those gray eyes the color of smoke.
“Only when I’m not being pigheaded,” he murmured. His teeth flashed in a quick smile. “Not afraid of me anymore?”
Her gaze dropped to Phineas, who was sniffing the dusty toes of her sturdy buttontops. “You don’t understand.”
“Then help me to, Garnet.” He dropped to one knee, then grasped the chair with one hand to balance himself. “Your father thinks you’re afraid of men. He talked with me, you know, the night I brought you home. Did he tell you?”
A blush tinted her cheeks. “Leah told me. My father refuses to discuss it. I don’t understand why he felt compelled to burden you”—and betray me—“but I know he would have a good reason. You . . . Leah said you asked about our heartwood chests.”
“I only saw yours. I think your father’s one of the most highly skilled craftsmen I’ve ever known.”
“Leah said . . . Leah said you found the drawer, with the cardinal feather,” she finished in a rush. Lightly she brushed her fingers over the fox’s narrow snout, rubbed the patch of white that splashed his throat and jaw. What did you think? she wanted to ask. Do you know why my father put it in there?
“Mm. I found it . . . intriguing.”
“You wondered why there wasn’t a piece of heirloom jewelry?”
“No.” He hesitated. “At the time I didn’t want to know anything about you or your family history,” he said. “But sometimes we don’t get what we want, Garnet Sinclair.”
The door opened behind them and Jacob appeared. Mr. MacAllister finally turned away then, leaving Garnet to flounder over that uncomfortable truth while he thanked her father for fetching his medical bag.
“Best let you do the job then,” Jacob said. “Those clouds are moving in fast.” He shuffled his feet. “Um . . . what do you want me to do, Sloan?”
“How about,” Mr. MacAllister said after a thoughtful pause, “if you stand opposite Garnet and me, by the railing over there, where you can keep a watch out for visitors?”
“Ye wouldn’t be needing me tae hold something then? Your scissors or . . . or wipe away blood or—”
“There won’t be any blood, Jacob,” Mr. MacAllister promised soothingly. “And no, I don’t need you to hold anything unless Garnet needs you to hold her hand.”
“I’ll be fine, Papa,” Garnet added as confidently as she could. “It will help me more, if you watch for someone who might be coming up the track.”
“Aye, well.” He sidled toward the front of the porch and stepped over the pen. “This ought to do it, about here, I reckon.”
“That’s fine, Jacob.” Mr. MacAllister smiled down at Garnet. Amazingly, he winked. “Keep your eyes peeled on that track now.”
Flustered anew, Garnet scarcely noticed what else he was doing until his hands deftly untied the bonnet strings and removed it from her head. “There,” he said, and she felt the brush of his fingers against the back of her neck. “Now I can see the buttons on your gown.”
She went rigid.
“Remind me to write out a list of the foods I’ve been feeding Phineas,” he commented. “I’ve been meaning to do a spot of research on foxes, you know. Just haven’t taken the time, with all that’s been going on lately.”
The resonant baritone voice flowed around Garnet. Instead of what he was doing, she tried to concentrate on the sound of his voice, with its not unpleasant clip so different from the slow mountain drawl she was used to hearing. He was talking about Phineas, how the previous day the fox had been watching him munch on an apple with such longing
that Sloan had sliced off a piece. How he’d watched in astonishment when Phineas ate the piece and begged for more . . .
“Breathe, Garnet. You’re doing fine. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Breathe? Oh. A breath shuddered through her, but when he gently maneuvered the long sleeve down her left arm and exposed her flesh from fingertips to neck, her right hand flew up and she flattened herself against the chair.
“Easy. Remember, I’ve done this before. I’m a . . .” There was another pause, so fleeting Garnet might have missed it except her gaze had fixed blindly on his throat and she watched in a sort of stupor as dark color spilled over the collarless neck of his shirt. “A doctor,” he finished. “For you, right now, I’m a physician, Garnet. Sworn to heal, to do no harm. As God is my witness, I’m not going to harm you.”
“I know that.” She closed her eyes, but the swarm of memories that had been buzzing around her intensified when her eyes closed. So she kept them open, fastened on Sloan MacAllister’s intent face.
He could be harsh, bitter, intimidating, she knew. And in spite of his present manner, she was convinced he didn’t like her very much. But her father trusted him, and there was a helpless animal sitting quietly pressed against her ankles that owed its life to this man.
She had been a naive sixteen-year-old girl when she wandered off onto a sun-dappled path and her life had changed to a constant battle with fear and darkness. Perhaps the time had come for her to take a step toward a path that might lead her back into the sunlight.
Surely God would not punish her—or her family—for trying.
Fifteen
Leah was absorbed in her dog-eared copy of The Brothers Karamazov when a knock sounded on the front door. Grumbling, she marked the page and rose, padding into the hall on stockinged feet. If JosieMae begged to talk to Garnet one more time—
Leah flung open the door. Instead of the pesky JosieMae, a strange woman dressed in a bottle-green silk gown waited, poised as a duchess. A matching green parasol was hooked over her arm, and beneath her smart straw Empire hat, thick black hair had been swept up in elegant coils.
Shenandoah Home (Sinclair Legacy Book 1) Page 11