Shenandoah Home (Sinclair Legacy Book 1)

by Sara Mitchell

  She gently set the animal down. “Did you know that Doc Porter never went to Roanoke at all? Leah, Papa contrived circumstances. Arranged them so I would agree for Sloan MacAllister to remove the stitches.”

  “Papa . . . lied? Our Papa? Why, he’s so honest he could tell Preacher Hunsacker it was Abraham who led the people out of Egypt, and the preacher would believe him. Our father despises lies.”

  “He despairs of your flippancy.”

  “He’s well used to it by now. He and I have clashed over faith for years. Garnet,” she said, her acorn brown eyes round with disbelief, “Papa lied.”

  “So he did.” Garnet poured limeade into three glasses, then filled a saucer of some for Phineas and set it on the floor. “But since I’ve been living a lie myself, I can’t exactly throw stones, can I?” She paused. “Neither can the one who hides all the sweets and tells Papa they’re gone or who reads under her covers past midnight after promising that she’ll turn out the light.”

  “All right. You’ve made your point.” Leah snatched a tray and loaded the glasses on top. “Hiding sweets from Papa is for his own good. They make his stomach hurt.”

  “Mm. And to Papa’s way of thinking, arranging for Mr. MacAllister to remove the stitches was for my own good.” Though whether he’d trusted Sloan more as a physician or a skilled interrogator was a question for which Garnet had no answer. “I wonder,” she half whispered, avoiding Leah’s abruptly narrowed gaze, “every day, I wonder why Papa trusted a stranger. Why I trusted him.”

  “So do I. So does Meredith. Did you know she even wrote to me, asking the same thing? Sloan MacAllister . . . well, he’s not family; I’m not sure he’s even a friend.”

  “Leah, he saved my life.”

  “All right, he saved your life. He even saved this—this creature.” Leah glared at Phineas, contentedly lapping the limeade. A smile was building before she pursed her lips in a vain attempt to hide it. “And he found the secret compartment in your heartwood chest. But he’s a Yankee! Why not Joshua, for heaven’s sake? He’s impossibly conventional and naive, but he’s besotted with you, and, well, at least he’s a Southerner.”

  A curious sensation swelled, part feathery tickle, part coal-sized lump, squeezing Garnet’s heart. “Joshua’s besotted with his own image of what he wants me to be. He thinks the chest is nothing but a trinket box, something to gather dust on a bureau. The only time in three years he made a comment was to ask why we didn’t keep them in our bedrooms.”

  At the time Garnet had been unable to explain. Like her sisters, every so often she would carry her chest upstairs to her bedroom. She enjoyed holding it, enjoyed studying the cherry wood grain. She would close her eyes, finding the secret compartment through touch alone, and the cardinal feather tucked inside. Somehow her heartwood chest offered comfort along with the enticing pinch of mystery.

  But it didn’t belong in her bedroom, any more than Leah’s or Meredith’s belonged in theirs. Didn’t fit. The chests belonged in the parlor. Always had, like the ship’s clock behind Papa’s horsehair chair and their mother’s needlepoint pillows.

  Sloan thought the chest some of the most remarkable workmanship he’d ever seen. He’d held it on his lap, Jacob had told her, his fingers stroking the grain of wood, just as Garnet loved to do. He’d found the cardinal feather. What had her father told him—what? Jacob refused to talk about it, no matter how Garnet contrived to worm an explanation out of him.

  More than the revelation of her secret, more than lingering fears over possible repercussions, that question tormented her thoughts and haunted her dreams.

  “Garnet?” Leah’s voice was puzzled. “You have the most peculiar expression on your face.” Her head tilted sideways, the little wrinkle in her forehead deepening as it did when she was thinking hard. Her eyes opened wide. “You look like Meredith did when she went chasing after that salesman! Garnet, are you falling in love with Sloan MacAllister?”

  JosieMae appeared in the doorway. “There’s a buggy coming up the lane,” she said. “With a man driving. I think it’s that doctor man.”

  Nineteen

  And I ain’t never rode in a fancy buggy like this one!” JosieMae’s pudgy torso twisted from side to side on her perch between Garnet and Sloan. “Wait’ll Matthew an’ Barney an’ Pansy sees me! Wait ’til Ma sees!”

  Garnet smiled. Within moments of his arrival, Sloan had expertly maneuvered her father into admitting that a buggy ride would be beneficial for Garnet’s emotions as well as her physical health, coaxed JosieMae into admitting that a lift home would be a “wondrous fair” treat—and lulled Garnet into charmed acquiescence when he removed his cravat to engage in a game of tug of war with Phineas. When they left, the shredded cravat was indifferently stuffed away in his jacket pocket.

  Oblivious to peril as well as dust, JosieMae leaned forward over the dash.

  “Be careful, JosieMae,” Garnet began indulgently.

  At the same moment, a stagecoach thundered around the bend in the turnpike—in the middle of the road.

  Sloan’s hands were full controlling Dulcie and the buggy, pulling hard to the right without landing them all in the ditch. Garnet lunged forward, wrapped her arms tight around the girl, and hauled her back against the seat as the juggernaut of a stage racketed past in a whirlwind of thundering hooves, spinning wheels, and swirling dust. JosieMae screeched in terror.

  Sloan brought Dulcie to a halt and set the brake. “Everyone all right?”

  Garnet managed to extricate herself from JosieMae’s ferocious choke hold, but her sunbonnet had been knocked askew, effectively blinding her. Abruptly the girl’s weight disappeared; large masculine hands brushed her throat and her chin, gently tugging the bonnet away.

  “How’s the shoulder?” he asked. “That was pretty quick thinking, by the way.”

  “I’m fine.” Garnet coughed, clearing her throat of dust. Sloan was so close she could see the shadow of a beard darkening his cheeks as clearly as she could see the concern that had darkened the gray eyes to slate. “Um . . . shoulder’s fine too.”

  Flustered, she reached for the sunbonnet, which Sloan had tossed over the arm rail. “Somebody ought to do something about those stagecoach drivers.”

  Sloan started to reach toward her before he turned abruptly away. “And are you all right as well, little lady?” he asked JosieMae.

  “Didn’t mean to hurt Garnet.” She wouldn’t look up.

  “You haven’t hurt anybody. But I need to make sure you haven’t hurt yourself. Here, now. Let’s see, did you knock your forehead against the socket? It’s made of steel, unlike your forehead . . . easy, now. I won’t hurt you, child.”

  Garnet watched in amazement as he gentled the frightened, embarrassed girl into looking up, watched his fingers skim over JosieMae’s dirt-streaked forehead, then teasingly tweak her nose. “Fit as a fiddler’s fiddle,” he announced, and smiled. “So, Miss Whalen, you’ve survived your first near mishap on the Valley Pike. As a reward, when we turn onto the lane leading to your farm, how about if I let you hold the reins?”

  “M-me?” Incredulity flushed across the plump sunburned face. She didn’t even duck her head. “Hold the reins?”

  “Long as you promise to do exactly as I tell you.”

  “I promise.” The rounded shoulders straightened. “Did you hear, Garnet? The doctor man said I can hold the reins!”

  Thirty minutes later, having deposited JosieMae safely at her back door, Sloan guided Dulcie north toward Tom’s Brook instead of south toward Sinclair Run. “Now that she’s out of hearing range, how severe is the pain?” he asked.

  Garnet smiled sheepishly. “It’s fine, truly. Just a momentary flareup, like you warned me. No worse than when I help Leah hang the wash. Thank you for not making an issue of it in front of JosieMae.”

  “She’s enough of a confidence problem, with the divergent strabismus . . .”

  “You mean . . . her eyes?”

  “What?” Beneath the must
ache a corner of his mouth twitched. “Yes. The walleyes. And before you ask, no, I couldn’t help her even if I wanted to. There’re a few physicians I’ve heard of, most of them in Europe, who might be able to. But under the circumstances the only suggestion you might make to her parents is to cover the normal eye, try to force the muscles of the walleye to bring it into better alignment.”

  A large wagon loaded with bales of hay lumbered by; after exchanging nods with the farmer, Sloan urged Dulcie to a trot, and Garnet settled against the tufted seat with a murmur of delight. She guzzled the summer day, her spirit reveling in the joy of her release from captivity as she inhaled the baking hot breezes. Most of the wildflowers were gone, but she spied clusters of fat clover, their pinkish blossoms bobbing when they passed almost as though they were tipping their heads. Occasionally a bright patch of goldenrod flashed by, heralding autumn’s approach, and once she leaned over in JosieMae-like abandon to savor a bright ribbon of delicate lavender-colored chicory.

  “We might not be able to persuade your father that you’ll be safe with me if you tumble out of the buggy at this speed.”

  Garnet laughed. “I was admiring the chicory.”

  “The what? Oh, flowers. Those pale blue ones?”

  “Yes. Aren’t they beautiful? Their perfect petals, each flower designed with the same precision. And the color . . .” She lifted her hand to her cheek, feeling a flush heat her skin. “Sorry. It’s—I’ve missed this.”

  “You really do need to be free, don’t you?” He wasn’t looking at her, and the ungloved hands remained supple and confident on the reins, but Garnet still felt as though he had touched her. “I’ve never known a woman like you.”

  A herd of brown-and-white cows plodded in a ragged line toward the barn, its roof barely visible over a rise. From the Whalens, Garnet had learned that each of those seemingly placid creatures was assigned its place in a rigid bovine hierarchy. Any new cows introduced to the herd would be forced to butt heads with all the other cows to find their position in that ragged line. “I know I’m different. Years ago, I gave up trying to be like everyone else.”

  “Different,” Sloan returned, “doesn’t imply deficient.” After a soft pause he said, “Your father told me that once, when you were a child, you dyed your hair black.”

  She groaned. “He told you about that? I was seven, and hated the color. Unfortunately, I ended up not only with this sticky black hair, but black hands, a black-streaked face, and I ruined my favorite corduroy jacket.”

  “Must have made a pretty sight. Garnet . . . I’d like you to do something for me.” Now his right hand did leave the reins, reaching across the seat. His fingers toyed with the brim of her sunbonnet. “Take this off.”

  “I . . . you don’t understand.” Her voice sounded breathless, and fresh perspiration dampened her palms. “The bonnet keeps me . . . anonymous. Safe. I know it’s naive of me to believe that. But there’s still a chance, don’t you see, that if those men . . . it’s because they were strangers to me at the time, so if I still hide my hair—”

  “You’re right about the naiveté.” Sloan’s frank pronouncement halted her fumbling words. “If those men learned your name five years ago, it’s doubtful you’d be sitting in this buggy with me. Your—let’s call it your nature—doesn’t lend itself to anonymity, after all. Garnet Sinclair, the eccentric artist who wears an old-fashioned sunbonnet? It marks you even more than your hair, especially since your father’s done his best to shout what happened from every treetop and ridge line.”

  His voice deepened. “If those men are still in the area they’ll know who you are, where you are.” Long fingers reached up and stroked her cheek, a fleeting brush whose unexpectedness caught Garnet completely off guard. “But it’s not just those men you’re hiding from. Is it?”

  Her cheek burned to the bone. Her tongue was frozen. Garnet needed to see his expression—but the bonnet brim deprived her of all peripheral vision. For five years she had tolerated the handicap. For five years she had told herself it was necessary for her family’s safety as well as her own.

  Now . . . now a thousand doubts swirled about her head. Her heart pounded, her jaw ached with uncertainty. As though the image were painted into the buggy’s forest green dash, she could see Sloan MacAllister as he had appeared that long-ago day in the meadow, a formidable, dark stranger who first disrupted her concentration, then her entire life. “Did my father ask you to do this?”

  “No.” A beat of silence passed. “Do you really want me to tell you the reason, Garnet?”

  “I—yes. I think you’d better tell me.”

  A short laugh burst from Sloan. “Well. You surprise me, Miss Sinclair. And I thought I was long past the age where a woman could surprise me.”

  Garnet finally pried her gaze from between Dulcie’s ears and turned toward him. He did look surprised. Fair enough. “You don’t like women very much, do you?”

  “You may have noticed that I don’t like people very much.”

  Perhaps he didn’t, unless he was forced into the role of physician. Then, Garnet knew well, his compassion welled up in a spring of infinite, almost Christlike gentleness. In a flash of insight she realized her own self-perceptions might be as skewed as Sloan’s.

  Without warning he turned Dulcie off the road. They bounced along a grassy two-track path until they reached a stand of hardwoods—locust, sycamore, maple. A dead tree reached forlorn, skeletal branches skyward, while tendrils of Virginia creeper encircled the trunk, binding it to the merciless earth. Garnet ran her tongue around suddenly dry lips and upbraided herself for demanding answers that were better left unexamined and unstated.

  Sloan pulled the horse to a halt on the far edge of the woods, out of sight of the turnpike. In front of them the Massanutten ridgeline marched straight across the horizon. Then his hands closed over her shoulders, turning her to face him. “Garnet, we—” He stopped, a peculiar expression dimming the silvery gray eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you. Garnet? Don’t be afraid of me. Please.”

  His hands fell away, and his head dropped, but not before Garnet glimpsed a raw vulnerability that made her want to weep.

  “I’m not—it’s not you I’m afraid of. That is . . . I know you won’t hurt me, physically.” Somehow she had known almost from the beginning that despite his fierce temper, this man would never harm her physically.

  And yet, forced to confront emotions that had quietly been intensifying over the past weeks, despair choked her as surely as the vines choking that dead tree. Words at the moment were unprofitable. Garnet faced a choice, a choice that might lead to unimaginable joy. More likely she would suffer pain far more devastating than five years of isolation and secret fear. Especially if Leah was right.

  Possible joy—probable heartache. The choice remained Garnet’s alone, since she could not depend on the hope of divine intervention. She possessed neither Jacob’s unswerving faith, Meredith’s stubborn optimism, nor even Leah’s skepticism. And yet . . . freedom of choice was a gift from God as surely as the Son He had sacrificed because of it.

  Slowly her hands lifted. She began to untie the ribbons with fingers that felt like jumbled kindling. Even more slowly she pulled the bonnet from her head.

  Sloan, of course, had seen her without the bonnet, and had even seen her partially unclothed. This was different, and she knew they were both aware of the difference. The cloying summer air seemed to collapse, pressing down, forcing air from her lungs. A bead of moisture slipped down her temple. A rebellious strand of hair, freed from restraint, drifted along her cheek, tickled her chin.

  “Thank you.” Sloan’s hands covered hers, gently prying her fingers away from their death grip on the bonnet. His gaze, serious, absorbed, moved over her face, lingering on the strand of hair. “The first time I saw you,” he murmured almost absently, “I wondered about the color of your hair. And I wanted to touch each one of these freckles.”

  “My freckles?”

  Beneath the mus
tache one of those rare half-smiles appeared. “You sound so astonished. Don’t tell me—you don’t like your freckles either.”

  A curl of bewildering heat spiraled from her toes to her flushed freckled cheeks. Embarrassment . . . yearning . . . the chill of hopelessness. “I’ve never been able to do anything about them. Most of the time I forget they’re there, until Mrs. Kibler urges me to try another remedy she’s concocted.”

  His eyes had gone all smoky and warm, their expression tender. Yet he wasn’t a physician right now. He was a man. Only in her most secret dreams had a man looked at Garnet like that—seen beyond the red hair, beyond the facade of cheerful indifference.

  But she couldn’t stem the rising panic, “Sloan—don’t. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want this. You didn’t like me at first, I knew it. I sensed it. Whatever you’re doing now . . . it’s even more difficult to bear. If you leave—”

  In a move that startled them both, Garnet leaped from the buggy. She took several halting steps, then stopped. Beneath a shaggy-barked sycamore a dogwood tree grew, its slender trunk bowed outward, away from the sycamore as the branches sought the sun. For a moment she stood, her heart thrumming like a flock of panicked birds. Then Garnet pressed her clammy forehead against the smooth trunk and willed the nausea to subside.

  She heard Sloan approach and steeled herself.

  “I owe you an explanation,” he said.

  He made no further statement, nor did he touch her. Garnet’s muscles loosened, one by one, until she was able to face him. She clasped her hands behind her back and leaned against the dogwood. “I want to hear whatever you need to say,” she admitted. “But I’m afraid to ask.”

  His breath exhaled a long sigh. “I know. That day, in the kitchen, I was a bad-tempered oaf. My brother used to tell me—” His head jerked suddenly, and the broad shoulders turned as rigid as the Massanutten ridge. “I told you earlier that I didn’t much like people.”