37
Why, Lael wondered, did she recall each of the dark happenings in her life with chilling clarity whilst all the peaceful times were hazy and easily misplaced? Never would she forget the lonesome moment in childhood when she was told of Pa’s capture. Or the precise shade of Ma’s dress the night she ran off with Uncle Neddy. And then there was the black wax seal on the letter that bore the news of her father’s fate. And now this. Years from now, what would she recall? That Simon had been the one to bring her the gruesome news?
She’d been standing in the cornfield, rejoicing in the harvest. Tuck was at her heels and they paced up and down the rows, ears filled with the whisper of the wind among the tall stalks. Neither of them heard Simon approach; he was simply there, savage-like, at the end of a long row facing them. Why hadn’t she brought her gun? She was alone—defenseless. But strangely, it was the sober set of Simon’s features that set her at ease.
Ever wary, she stopped a ways from him.
“Lael, it’s Neddy.”
“Neddy? Is he ailing?”
“Neddy’s dead.” He swallowed hard, as if digesting the news. “Killed by Cherokee. I found him towards evenin’ yesterday in his cornfield.”
A sickening dismay swept over her, and she thought she might empty her innards onto the grass.
“I put his body in his cabin. They didn’t burn it down like usual.” He did not look at her. “He—”
She put a hand up, afraid to hear more. Turning, she started to run, past Simon and the skeleton of fence that bordered the field all the way to the cabin. She didn’t stop till she had stumbled onto the porch and caught up her gun.
Simon was right behind her, face flushed. “Put that gun down. I ain’t goin’ to hurt you.”
“You already have,” she cried. “And I’m not fool enough to be burned twice.”
Would he not go and leave her alone with her grief? If he thought she’d fall weeping into his arms, he was sorely mistaken. Perhaps that was why he looked so shaken. Or was it because Neddy’s death might well have been his own?
He went on slowly, “I had to come tell it to you. And Colonel Barr.”
“Colonel Barr?”
“Philo Barr’s the new colonel sent from Virginia with a couple dozen or so men to hold down the fort. You could say he’s in charge of things like your pa was. He keeps count of all the trouble and any deaths and the like.”
“I’m obliged to you for coming,” she told him, fighting tears.
“Is that all?”
Her brows drew together in consternation. “Nay, ’tis not all. There should be a proper burial. I aim for Will Bliss to officiate. Now are you going to tell him, or am I?”
She was all business, belying the soreness in her heart. He took a step back and whistled for his horse.
“I’ll tell him.” He turned away only to look back again. “I’m sorry, Lael. I know how you felt about Neddy.”
Why, oh why, had she waited so long to see Uncle Neddy again? The question dogged her clear to Neddy’s to see him buried proper. Wearing a borrowed mourning dress stained a bitter black from the dye of walnut hulls, Lael set out on the mare.
Ma Horn had felt too poorly to travel and so the Scot had come in her stead, overseeing the task of preparing the body for burial. Lael had ridden alone up the mountain and found him inside the ransacked cabin.
’Twas a strange sight to see Neddy laid out on the narrow bed, the only upright piece of furniture about the place. Perhaps the Scot had righted it before beginning his work. She stepped over the threshold into the dim cabin, and he stood, his handsome face awash with warning.
“You dinna have tae come in, ye ken.”
She understood only part of what he said, lost in the lilt of his speech. “Aye, I do,” she replied quietly. But even as she said it, her senses turned skittish. The smell of death was strong, despite the open windows. She crossed to the closest one, drawing a deep breath.
In the distance, underneath a big elm beside the tobacco field, Will and Colonel Barr were digging a grave. ’Twas better than Pa’s watery one, she thought, mindful of the hickory coffin just behind her. Blinking, she tried to hold back her tears. She cried not just for Neddy but for Pa. She’d said good-bye to neither.
Firm hands came and rested on her stooped shoulders from behind. She could feel their warmth through the ugly cloth of her dress. This only made her cry harder, as did the words he whispered between her weeping. Gentle words, words of depth and feeling. Was he praying? Was this his Highland tongue? He was so near, the lye-soaked scent of his linen shirt cut through her grief.
In time, she turned and took the clean cloth he handed her.
“I’m sorry aboot your uncle. I hear he was a kind mon . . . a learned mon.”
Surprised, she dried her face. “Did you also hear my mother ran off with him when my father was a captive and they conceived my half brother?”
His composed features betrayed no surprise. “Aye, all of it.”
She stole a glance at him. “Ned Click is a stranger to you, yet you came all the way up here today. Why?”
His blue gaze never wavered. “’Twas the right thing tae do.”
The raw honesty in his face and voice stirred her. She moved away from him to sit on the bed and reached for Neddy’s cold, heavy hand. He looked downright peaceful in his clean clothes, eyes closed. She wondered, but would not ask, just where he’d been wounded.
Ian Justus passed onto the porch, giving her privacy, but left the door open. Neddy’s desk beckoned from the cabin corner. Books had been tomahawked and lay littered around it. She bent and began picking up scattered pages until her hands touched the intact leather of a small, black Bible. Neddy’s own? She hadn’t known him to be religious, though Ma Horn had implied otherwise. Wedged beneath the Bible’s cover was a paper sealed with red wax. On the face of it, written in a heavy scrawl, was her name. Opening it, she devoured its contents and almost smiled.
Ned Click had deeded all that he had to the son he’d never seen. Ransom Dunbar Click. But he left his most treasured possession, so he wrote, to Lael: his old, dog-eared Bible. She hugged both the letter and the Bible to her heart, glad to be alone.
She stood beside the simple mound of earth where Neddy lay, flanked by Will, Colonel Barr, and the Scot. A lifelong loner, Neddy had had few friends. Lael lay an armful of wildflowers at the foot of the cross that Will had fashioned out of ash. While Will and the colonel went in to look about the cabin, she remained at the grave with Ian Justus. He stood a few feet from her, his hat in his hands.
She felt a bit skittish standing there without a gun, hovering over a fresh grave. In her grief she’d forgotten her rifle. Who knew when the dreaded Cherokee would strike again?
She’d heard that this outlander across from her didn’t carry a weapon, which stunned her. She took another look at him around the brim of the borrowed black bonnet. “Are you a Quaker, sir?”
He almost smiled despite the gravity of the moment. “Nae, just a simple Scot, is all.”
Nay, she almost shot back, not simple at all. What was it about him that so confounded her? His rugged good looks belied the easy grace of his speech and manner. He seemed to have come straight from the elegant drawing rooms of Briar Hill, and yet here he was holding his own on the Kentucke frontier. Was he a laird, like she had read of in her books, from one of those near-barbaric clans in the Scottish Highlands? A laird and a doctor? A hundred questions burned the tip of her tongue, but this was neither the time nor place for them.
Before heading back down the mountain, the men agreed upon a time to meet and harvest her uncle’s cotton and tobacco. There was nothing left for her to do but to return to her cabin and write to Ransom.
38
In the days following Neddy’s burial, Lael wandered the woods harvesting sumac and Indian peaches and serviceberries, filling honeysuckle baskets to the brim. Solitude was a potent tonic for her grief, and the silence of the woods solaced her like
little else. Now that September had flowered, the river was at its warmest, and she took every opportunity to shuck off her shift and jump in. The water, like the woods, seemed to wash her worries away.
Tonight, Tuck swam right along with her, reminding her of Pa’s old hounds. Had they died crossing the swollen river with him? She shut away the thought, took a deep breath, and went under, grabbing handfuls of sand to scrub her hair. Glory, but it was a wonderment to be free of her stays! She’d not worn them once since leaving Briar Hill.
Scrubbed clean, she sat upon a sun-warmed slab of limestone and wrung her hair out like a mop, then combed the tangles out with her fingers. Naked as a jaybird she was, her muslin dress dangling from a laurel bush. Men had all the luck, she reckoned, with only shirt, shoes, and breeches to fuss about. She sighed and stood, pulling on her dress.
“Come along, Tuck,” she said, retracing her steps to the cabin. She had yet to do up the evening’s work, fetching wood and packing water from the spring. The mare, which she’d finally named Pandora, needed to be watered and belled and turned loose in the meadow. But the obstinate animal was nowhere to be found. Lael called and whistled and waited. Truly, Pandora had earned her name; a prolific source of troubles, she was. Lately she’d been tempted to trade her for a mule.
The sun skimmed the western treetops as it bowed out in an orange ball to the west, and she headed that direction. Pandora had a fondness for the pawpaws growing along the far fork of the river. With Tuck at her heels, Lael moved quickly. Already fireflies were winging about, bearing tiny lanterns on their backs, and the evening air was sultry and still.
She’d nearly reached the river when Tuck whined and stopped. “Why, you’re as stubborn as that old mare,” she exclaimed, turning to scowl at him.
When she turned back around, she stepped straight into the path of Captain Jack. Amusement played across his handsome features as pleasure flushed hers. He was leading Pandora with an Indian bridle, and she whinnied as if chagrined at the sight of her mistress. Time seemed suspended as they faced each other once again. She almost sighed at the sight of him.
He seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, swept in with the evening shadows. Had she never noticed just how tall he was? Why, she hardly grazed his chin. His hair, black and shiny as a crow’s wing, hung to his shoulders, and he wore no war paint, just a loincloth and leggins. A string of jade beads dangled across his bare chest. From the top of his head to the tip of his moccasins, he seemed all tendon and sinew.
“Captain Jack,” she said, for lack of anything better.
“Click’s daughter,” he replied in the low, melodious voice she recognized.
With one fluid movement he reached out and caught a long strand of her loose hair and rubbed it between his fingers. Nearly dry now, it was bleached the color of cornsilk by the sun.
His eyes turned inquiring. “What is your name?”
His near-perfect English never failed to startle her. She stared back at him, tongue-tied. Never look a gentleman directly in the eye. But Captain Jack was no gentleman. And she, obviously, was no lady.
“My name is Lael,” she said shyly, thinking how strange it was that he still didn’t know and she’d never told him.
“Lael,” he echoed, then smiled and shook his head no, murmuring something in Shawnee. “Yellow Bird.”
Yellow Bird?
At her bewilderment, he said, “That is what your father called you.”
Tears stung her eyes. Once she had thought this Shawnee was the key that would unlock Pa’s past. Might he be proving it now?
Her voice was like a whisper. “Yellow Bird sounds . . . fine. What is your Indian name?”
“You know it well enough. Captain Jack,” he said, then walked around her, leading the mare.
What does your Indian wife call you?
Quickly, she shut the blasphemous thought away. When she made no move to follow but stood studying the bow and quiver slung across his back, he paused.
With his free arm he reached behind and tugged her forward but did not release her. The hardness of his hand made her work-worn one seem almost soft. They walked out of the woods into a twilight meadow where heat lightning slashed the sky. Her heart felt overfull with his revelation about Pa. Suddenly, she was remembering the blanket he’d left for her on the paling fence all those years before, after the gift of blue beads . . .
“Are you alone?” she asked, glancing around. Never before had she seen him without a half dozen or so other Shawnee.
“No. With you,” he said, eyes alight.
She smiled, warmed by his teasing. As they walked her tangled emotions ebbed and flowed and made her bold. “My father always thought well of you,” she confided.
“Your father wanted me for a son,” he said matter-of-factly.
Son? Or son-in-law? What had Pa seen in this man that had been missing in Simon? She studied his profile in the gathering shadows, as if she could find the answers in his face. Strange, but she felt as if Pa was shadowing them, giving his blessing. Did Captain Jack mean to woo her again as he had long ago? The thought seemed somewhat childish, and she felt heat bloom in her face. Never in her life had she heard of a white woman falling in love with an Indian man, though many a white trapper took an Indian bride. But then, Captain Jack was no Indian.
The possibility made her almost lightheaded. Quietly she asked, “Have you no wife in the Indian towns?”
He stopped walking and turned to her, so close the beads on his chest brushed her bodice. Could he hear her heart hammering? Her very breath seemed to stop at his nearness. Would he . . . kiss her? Did the Shawnee make love in that way?
A sudden noise in the woods gave them pause. Wordlessly, he moved her behind him and drew an arrow out of his quiver, readying his bow. Though they stood exposed in the open meadow, she felt completely safe, secure. The woods stilled again but not before they heard a horse nicker. Who watched them? Pressing the bridle into her hand, he motioned for her to go home, but she was loath to leave. He gave a reassuring half smile and nodded, so she did as he bade her.
Once on the cabin porch she waited, willing him to come to her, to give his answer. While she waited, she readied her own. Suppose she just slipped away with him? What then?
’Twould not be a bad life, Daughter.
Wistful, she lingered, watching the moon come up, wondering why he’d paid her a visit after so long. Pandora, she sensed, had merely been an excuse. At her heels, Tuck waited, tail thumping. Why, she’d not even thought to thank him for her dog.
Tired of standing, she sank to the porch step and wrapped her arms around her knees, a keen yearning filling her. He wasn’t coming after all. Maybe he never would again. The thought wet her eyes, and she brushed them dry with the hem of her skirt. Sometimes, like tonight, she felt she’d simply dreamed him up.
39
Just as Simon’s visits always left her with a sore, bruised feeling, her encounter with Captain Jack left a deep impression as well, though an altogether poignant one. The feeling followed her for days, infusing all that she did with a wistful uncertainty. She found herself almost wishing Pandora would again run off. Strangely, the mare stayed put as if the Shawnee had cast his spell on her as well.
One crisp morning, Tuck’s howling fell to a low growl. “Hush now,” Lael rebuked. “’Tis only the Scot.”
The dog slunk out of sight beneath the cool porch as if he were as disappointed as she. Setting her gun inside the cabin, she took the straight-backed chair beside the churn. The screen of roses allowed her to take a long look without being seen, and her hands fell idly to her lap.
Slowly, Ian Justus rode into the yard, scattering windblown leaves of gold and crimson that lay like a carpet on the scorched earthen floor. He dismounted from his fine horse and approached the cabin.
“Miss Click.”
So he had seen her. No hello. No greeting or awkward small talk. Just her name, spoken with a quiet confidence.
“Mr. Justus,??
? she replied.
He came to stand by the cabin step and looked down the narrow expanse of porch to where she sat. For a moment the morning air was so still even the birdsong seemed to cease. His eyes moved to the tangle of blushing roses.
“My mother’s roses,” she said, sensing his admiration.
“’Tis a fine place you have here,” he told her. “I’m on my way tae see Will and Susanna. Would you care tae come?”
She swallowed, surprised. “Why—I—my morning is chock full of chores.” She felt a keen regret even as she refused him. Had she missed her chance to ask him all the questions that clambered for answers? “Do you—would you—like a drink of water?”
He nodded. “Later, perhaps. On my way home.”
Home. Spoken with such ease! Was this how he felt about this newfound place—at home?
“Later on I’ll have some supper. Some pie too . . . if you like,” she managed.
His smile deepened, and she saw a flash of white teeth.
“I would.”
She fairly flew through her chores, berating herself as she went. What had made her so bold to ask him outright to supper? And what had made him ask her to accompany him clear to Cozy Creek? Could it be he was as curious about her as she was about him?
As she boiled her clothes in lye water then hung them on a fence to dry, she feared someone would need a remedy and her invitation would be forgotten. At noon Tuck howled, but it was only a lone hunter passing through.
She stayed busy inside the hot cabin, making a meal to rival any spread she’d ever prepared. Leftover beans and cornbread seemed too paltry for the likes of the Scot, so with a stab of guilt she threw them off the side of the porch to Tuck. She’d heard Mr. Justus detested settlement food as well as the heat. Mouth wry, she was tempted to serve him bear bacon and greasy beans, but would fix her finest, if only to repay him for tending to Neddy.
With feverish activity, she shucked some corn and picked the last of the green beans. Her turnips were small but sweet, and the tops would be delicious seasoned with side meat. But suppose Ian Justus were invited to take his meal with the Blisses? Suppose he forgot to stop by after all? The prospect was so unsettling she dropped the pan of cornbread as she removed it from the hearth.