The Frontiersman’s Daughter

  She smiled despite herself and peeked into the pan. “Smells good enough to eat. I’m glad the doctor passed on lest he find out you’re the better cook.”

  He grinned back at her and began ladling generous helpings into bowls. It was just one of the things she’d noticed about him since his homecoming. He didn’t shirk women’s work, as Pa would have called it. And he took notice when she was tired or unable to cook and did his part, and sometimes, when she came in tuckered from a call, he did her part too.

  “Tastes like Ma’s cooking,” she told him appreciatively after he’d said the blessing.

  He grinned. “Sometimes Ma needed a hand, so I learned a few tricks. But just so you don’t get too set on my victuals, the cookin’ stops when the plowin’ starts.”

  She smiled again, her sour mood sweetening a bit. He took her attention for the next hour by drawing a crude map of their farm, outlining for her the timberland he hoped to turn into tobacco and cotton. There was a plow for sale at the fort, the kind that was all the buzzel in the east, and he was thinking of buying it. “Now’s the time to do it, iffen we’re ever, now that we got the cash.”

  It pleasured her to listen to him but she offered a word of caution. “Just take care and leave some trees.”

  “You sound just like Pa.” He pushed the map aside and took out a pipe he’d been whittling.

  She wondered that he still called him Pa after he knew all the facts, but she supposed it was a hard habit to break. Neddy would simply be uncle to him, and no more. She took up some knitting by the fire, absently working on some socks.

  “You ever stop to think,” he said quietly, “that Pa’s not really dead . . . just somewheres else?”

  Her knitting stilled. “What do you mean?”

  “What if he’s not drowned, Lael? That old trapper he was with saw him go under, but they never found his body.”

  “Oh?” she said.

  “I thought it was queer myself. Pa’s well known. Word spread along the river. Sooner or later a body’s bound to wash up.”

  She sighed. “I disbelieved he was drowned myself when I first heard. I like to think he’s gone off somewhere real peaceful-like.”

  “Back to his Indian life?”

  She couldn’t hide her surprise. This was exactly what she had thought, but she’d always dismissed it as fancy imaginings. She wondered if she should tell Ransom about Captain Jack. “We may never know.”

  He whittled faster now, dropping shavings onto the floor. “Sometimes I have a hankerin’ to go find out. Take the Warrior’s Trace up to them Shawnee towns and—”

  “They’d have your scalp!”

  He stared at her. “Don’t you want to know for sure?”

  “Nay, not enough to put you in danger. Besides, what would Ma do with a second husband if her first came back?”

  He grinned, speculating. “Sure would be interesting. The barrister’s not a bad sort. But he ain’t Pa.”

  They fell silent for a time, and she thought how nice it was to have him beside her after so long, taking away some of the sting of her lonesomeness. Till spring, she thought. She would enjoy his company till then, though she hadn’t told him she might be leaving. Only Ian knew.

  He held the pipe up to the light. “Why do you reckon the doctor took off so sudden-like today?” She shrugged, but he persisted. “You two have a spat?”

  “Nay, he just received a letter—some unsettling news from Scotland, though he didn’t say just what it was.”

  He lit his other pipe and smoke soon wreathed his head, making him look like a fallen angel. “This here’s mighty fine tobacco the doctor give me. Scotland, you say? That’s a far piece. Reckon he’s thinkin’ of goin’ back there?”

  “I have no idea,” she said, miserable at the thought.

  “I hear he’s got some high and mighty title. And yet here he is, dallying with the likes of us Clicks.”

  His expression grew reflective, but before he could say more she switched to a safer subject. “So when am I going to meet your girl?”

  “Annie?” He took another draw on his pipe. “At the barn raisin’.”

  “What barn raising?”

  “Ours,” he told her. “On Saturday next. It’s got to be done before spring plowin’ and summer’s heat. I’ve asked Annie’s pa and brothers. The doctor too.”

  “Well, now’s a fine time to tell me!” she exclaimed, gladness filling her. At last she would not have to look at the heap of blackened rubble any longer. And it was a handy excuse to be near Ian again, and meet Annie besides.

  “I figure we’ll roast us a pig. There’s some fine ones runnin’ wild over on Hackberry Ridge. Nothin’ sweeter than a hog fattened on chestnuts. Besides, we got to have somethin’ to feed all them people.”

  “Who all did you invite?”

  “Nearly everybody but the McClarys,” he said. “No sense invitin’ that clan to rebuild a barn they burned down.”

  61

  With the approach of the barn raising, Lael’s thoughts of leaving the settlement in spring weren’t as consuming as they once had been. Now that she was working with Ian, and Ransom had come home, her life seemed more settled. Yet the upheaval in her heart continued as she thought of Olivia and her impending visit in spring. Though Ian never spoke of her, Susanna’s words lingered in Lael’s mind, overshadowing all she did.

  The coming revival in Lexington was also on her mind. Though she’d told no one, she anticipated it in a way she didn’t understand. She hoped to speak to Preacher Leith in private. She had composed some heartfelt questions she reckoned only a preacher could answer. They would be staying at the Blue Coat Inn, and it seemed both Ransom and Colonel Barr were to go.

  On the day of the barn raising, Will and Susanna and the children rode over from Cozy Creek in a clear, cool dawn. Will was soon helping Ransom yard logs to the site, while Susanna set about helping Lael in the cabin. For the past few days, Ransom had been hard at work chasing pigs on Hackberry Ridge, and now it was Lael’s turn to prepare the two he had taken. A spit in the side yard was already smoking and browning the meat, while inside the cabin a collection of fruit and game pies were baking.

  About midmorning, a fresh cambric apron about her waist, Lael greeted a crowd of settlers arriving on horseback, many driving dry sleds laden with sundry tools. Watching them in the cool February air, she felt a bit lighthearted. Susanna, heavy with her coming child, kept to the cabin and tended the food, while Lael roamed the yard, minding the roasting meat and making small talk with the other women. Try as she might, despite her freshly washed hair and pressed dress, she couldn’t stay clear of the smoking spit.

  “Smoke follers beauty, so I hear,” Hallie Ledford said.

  “And that ain’t no lie,” Eliza Harold drawled as the breeze shifted and drove the smoke westward toward a line of trees from which the doctor was just emerging.

  The women laughed good-naturedly, the younger ones flushing beneath their bonnets. But it was Lael who looked the longest as he rode into the yard. She’d not seen him for nigh on a week, and she’d missed him sorely. Missed his easy grin. Missed the familiar, deliberate way he ran his hand through his dark hair when he was pensive. Missed the charming, direct way he had whenever he spoke to her.

  Her reverie ended when Jane McFee’s voice came sharply from behind. “Ain’t you the one, Sophie Lambert, who’s been complainin’ about that queer pain in your heart?”

  Another titter from the women erupted that carried far on the cool morning air. Lael straightened from stirring the fire and turned around. The widow Lambert? What had she to do with Ian? Looking at her pretty, flushed face across the way, she knew. Sophie Lambert, not yet thirty and recently bereaved, was as smitten as she.

  “Might be the good doctor could remedy that heart trouble iffen he was a mind to,” joked another. But Lael paid no mind to the chatter. She was suddenly seeing the widow in a new light, and what she saw vexed her sorely.

  Had it only been las
t fall that Sophie’s husband died after a fall from his horse? She’d been set to return to her family in North Carolina soon after but had suddenly changed her mind. Since then she’d been living with another family at the fort, occupying the cabin between Colonel Barr and Jane McFee. Could it be that the delicate constitution Sophie claimed to have brought her in close proximity to the doctor?

  “Ladies,” he called as he rode past, lifting his hat.

  Lael started. Since when had he taken to wearing a new hat? She hated to acknowledge that it looked good on him, pulled down low on his brow, the dun-colored felt a striking contrast to his charcoal hair. A titter of female voices greeted him in return, and when he was well out of earshot, Lael turned and addressed them all, her voice as level as she could manage. “The doctor’s been spoken for, I’ll have you know. By a lady in Boston. So don’t any of you go settin’ your bonnets for him.”

  The heated scolding brought no immediate comment. Instead, Sophie and the others regarded her seriously, for who should know best about his comings and goings but Lael, working closely with him as she did?

  “Boston’s a mite far off for courtin’, ” Eliza Harold said at last.

  “I don’t reckon a lady in Boston could prevent me from dancin’ with the doctor in Kentucke,” challenged Sophie, as if anticipating the evening’s frolic.

  Lael turned away, walking in a huff toward the cabin. What had come over her? She was not half as put out with the women as with herself, standing her ground and defending the unknown Olivia! But in her heart she knew Olivia was merely an excuse. It was herself she defended, in a pathetic attempt to keep these women apace from him.

  She plunged into the shadows of the cabin and found Susanna stirring a pot of beans. With one look Susanna said, “Your feathers are as ruffled as I’ve ever seen them.”

  Lael waved an exasperated hand toward the yard. “It’s those women—wed and unwed alike—circling the doctor like a bunch of buzzards!”

  Susanna suppressed a smile and bent to take a pie from the hearth. “Well, I reckon they can circle all they want. They just can’t light.”

  The rest of the day passed swiftly enough. The barn was built, beam upon beam, until it stood nearly finished by sunset. A cartload of cider pulled into the yard to commence the evening’s frolic. Bonfires were laid and the leftovers from the noon meal were consumed with relish by the host of workmen and their families.

  Lael surveyed it all with forced gaiety, hiding the hollow feeling in her heart. What good was a barn if she herself would not be here to use it? But it would be of use to Ransom. And Annie. She’d met her that afternoon and greeted her warmly, masking her surprise. Annie was plain and small, with light brown hair and hazel eyes, and given to plumpness beside the strapping Ransom.

  Soon the moon rose, shining cold light on the dancers who felt only the heat of the bonfires and the exertion of the sets. Ian and old Amos riveted them all with one lively tune after another, spelling each other by turns, with nary a lull in the music.

  Lael hung back in the shadows with Susanna, the one not of a mood to dance and the other not of a condition. “The doctor ain’t had one dance,” mused Susanna, eyeing Lael. “There’s no reason for both them men to fiddle themselves to pieces.”

  “They look happy enough,” replied Lael, unwilling for him to stop. When he played she was able to soak in the sight of him unawares, thrilling to the intensity of his fiddling and the slow, easy grins he shot at them by turns when he began and ended a piece.

  By and by he lay down his instrument and disappeared into the shadows while old Amos played on. When he touched her arm, Lael started. The familiar notes of Sir Roger de Coverley sang out, and she knew what he wanted. Smiling slightly, she followed him out onto the grass. In and out of his arms by turns, her heart was warmed by the fact she’d shared his first dance, though the fiddling stopped woefully soon.

  Lael watched him spell old Amos and partner Sophie Lambert twice. Two reels, to her one! They danced well together, Lael thought. How fetching the young widow looked with her red tresses caught up in horn combs and her supple figure wrapped in blue linsey-woolsey. She’d seen that shade of red before on the miniature of Olivia. Same fiery hair. Same milky complexion. Same heart-shaped face. And Sophie claimed to be a believer. Did he have a penchant for red hair? Ian said something and Sophie laughed, throwing back her head and revealing a long, slender neck adorned with a green ribbon.

  Riveted, Lael stood in the shadows. The longer she watched them, the more intense grew the stranglehold on her heart. It had overtaken her subtly at first, when the women had fawned and cackled as he rode in, and now its ugly tentacles tightened as she watched him partner Sophie not once but twice.

  Unable to watch a moment longer, she turned and fled to the empty cabin where a mountain of dirty dishes hid the trestle table. Tears stung her eyes as she thought of Simon for the first time and realized he was absent from the frolic. And the memory of his ugly, battered face brought a sickening revelation to her soul. For tonight she understood him . . . and what had led him to do what he’d done to the doctor in the woods.

  She worked feverishly, as if keeping time with the music, body weary but soul alert. So intent was she on washing and scrubbing that she failed to hear the cabin door open and shut.

  “I couldna find you. Why are you no’ dancing?” Ian stood at one end of the hearth, hat in his hands.

  “I have no heart for it tonight,” she replied brusquely. “There’s work to be done.” He said nothing for a moment and the silence rankled.

  “I came tae ask if you’d call on Loy Tucker with me in the morning.”

  She suppressed a sigh. Loy Tucker was ever complaining about a misery in his chest, and everything they’d tried had fallen short of a remedy. In the morning she wanted nothing but to go up alone into the mountains, rain or shine, and sort out her tangled thoughts. But they had an understanding. When they were needed, they were of a mind to go, no matter the personal inconvenience or sacrifice.

  She nodded and added another log to the fire. In the background old Amos ground out a final tune. She wondered dully if Ian would be escorting Sophie back to the fort.

  “I’ll meet you here at first light,” he said.

  She took up the ash bucket. “No need. I’ll meet you there.”

  “I’d rather we ride together.”

  He was being as mule-headed as she tonight, and it sparked her temper. She nodded and turned away, willing him to go. But the next sound she heard was the scraping of a chair against the rough floorboards.

  “Oot with it, Lael Click. Or do I have tae stay the night?”

  She perched at the far end of the hearth, a dusting of ashes on her face. “I’m tired, is all.”

  His eyes were sharp. “More than a wee bit tired, I ken.”

  He was looking at her in that straightforward manner that demanded she respond in kind. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him for fear he would see in her eyes the ugliness reflected in her soul. The jealousy. The self-revulsion. The unworthiness. Not to mention her fickle, unbridled heart, swinging first from Simon to Captain Jack and now to him.

  Beside this believer she felt unclean, soiled in soul and spirit. Dead in her trespasses and sins, the Bible called it. She could hear wagons rumbling out of the yard. Would he never leave?

  “You’re no’ ill, are you?” The sudden gentleness of his question caught her off guard. Hot tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them back with sheer stubborn will. She didn’t want his pity. She wanted his love. And if she couldn’t have that, she wasn’t sure she wanted anything at all.

  She set the ash bucket down with a thump and made her voice hard and cold. “Just tend to your own business, Doctor, and I’ll tend to mine.”

  Soon the clearing in front of the cabin was bare, gently lit by the dying bonfire and a full moon. The revelers had all departed. Even Ransom had gone to see Annie home. The dishes were done and put away and the floor swept clean.
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  Try as she might, Lael couldn’t stop crying. The neckline of her sprigged muslin dress, softened with a bit of embroidery, was damp from her tears, her apron soiled, her hair falling free of its pins. No one remained to see her misery and so she let anguish have its way, her whole being suffused with angst and longing and lonesomeness.

  She hadn’t heard the cabin door open and was startled to see Ian standing there. It was nearly midnight. Had he not gone long before?

  She stood, a bit lightheaded from hunger. Oh, that he should see her thus, weeping and dirty and disheveled! She wiped a hand across her face, unable to find her hankie.

  He came closer, his expression inscrutable, and tossed his hat onto the table. Before she could fathom it he was facing her and taking her chapped, soap-scented hands in his own. Turning each one over, palms up, he smoothed her callused skin with his thumbs, his touch feather light, almost ticklish, the gesture oddly intimate. He’d rarely touched her, and the feeling it wrought made her weak. Though his head was bent, his eyes on her hands, hers remained fixed on his handsome features. He was intoxicatingly close. She could smell the masculine scent of him brought on by the exertion of the fiddling and dancing. It drew her inexplicably, flooding her senses and turning her insides to jelly. What must he be thinking? Feeling?

  If he looked up even slightly, he could kiss her. Their lips were but a breath apart. Oh, would he not kiss her? If he loved her, he would. All her composure began to crumble. For once she wished he wasn’t so careful with her . . . so self-controlled . . . so godly.

  Slowly he lifted his head. His features remained inscrutable, but his eyes were like deep water, reflecting love and longing and all things inexpressible. They held hers, much as his hands did, and she couldn’t look away. Looking into his eyes, her head told her what her heart could not believe: he did care for her— deeply.

  “Lael.”

  It was only one word yet spoken with such yearning she longed for more.